Magotho madness!
My “wildest” travel story (or at least one of them)
On one of the branches of the fallen tree, suspended a few inches from the sandy ground, was a little, battered metal sign with an “8” painted in white. This was the sum total of the facilities provided at campsite number 8, Magotho.
I was planning to submit this story to another publication, but this was closed temporarily and the story certainly involves Wildlife and Trekking, so it’s an even better fit here!
It was mid-2019 and we had driven through parts of Botswana, had seen a spectacular selection of wildlife, and had experienced the inland Okavango Delta from up close (on the water) and from the air. And yet, the “wildest” part was still to come…
The trekking
After Okavango, we drove through the Moremi Game Reserve in Botswana, drove over some “interesting” bridges, got stuck in loose sand, were pulled out by a passing game ranger while we were digging sand away from the wheels and nervously looking into the bush at the same time.
None of these game reserves are fenced, so wild animals essentially go where they please. I am not a particularly juicy person, but lions might nevertheless enjoy snacking on an unsuspecting idiot sweating on the sand. This, however, was still not the “wildest” part of our trip!
My wife and I were traveling through this part of the world with lifelong friends. They are still our friends and talk fondly about this trip, so I think we did OK, in spite of the experience...
Our next stop was to at the Magotho “Campsite”, a term that I use loosely. The site is managed by a local community, the Khwai Development Trust, and it was necessary to make prior online reservations since there were no reception facilities (or any other facilities…) on site. We had however been promised the opportunity to camp between magnificent trees and equally magnificent animals. As mentioned, there are no fences surrounding the Moremi Game Reserve to the South and the Chobe National Park to the North, so that animals can come and go as they please.
Which they do.
As humans, however, we need to follow roads to get anywhere. Which was a bit of a struggle. The turnoff to the site was supposed to be along the main road from Moremi towards Savuti, but there were many turnoffs, none of them signposted in any useful way.
So, after driving back and forth along the main road a few times, we selected a side road that appeared to go approximately in the right direction. It did, but quickly deteriorated from a dirt road into a dirt track and was eventually crossed by many other sandy tracks. This tends to provide more decision points than you really need when you are trying to find a campsite while the sun is setting…
We were somewhat guided by the “maps” that we’d downloaded, but were worried by the complete absence of any signboards. Anything that said “Magotho” or “campsite” or “Khwai Development Trust” or any combination of these words, would have been very useful.
Like the intrepid explorers that we pretended to be, we worked our way through the network of tracks, back down to the river valley, where we spotted a large, luxurious tented camp. Men in “safari uniforms” had erected large tents and were busy building campfires and setting tables with white linen and wine glasses.
This was so very obviously not our destination.
They were clearly waiting for jeeps full of camera-wielding foreign tourists to arrive after a hard day on safari in Africa. However, they were kind enough to provide a vague response that Magotho was nearby, just a few hundreds of metres further.
So we drove onwards, between lots of trees and broken branches that clearly indicated the recent destructive activities of elephants. Circling through the bush, we passed a huge plastic water tank lying on its side, and a small uncompleted building. They were obviously made for each other, but the marriage had not yet been consummated.
No sign of any campsite.
Eventually, we located two South African registered camper vans, containing two Australian couples. We asked them for directions and they were as much in the dark as we were, but collectively we assumed that we must have arrived at the “campsite”. We drove further on, to a very scenic spot under trees and between bushes, but there were quite a few elephants walking around, carelessly destroying trees, so we decided not to risk camping there. We returned to the two campervans and duly saw that little sign with the “8” on it.
We had obviously arrived. This was a good thing, the sun was already setting.
The wildlife
The Australians mentioned that they had had lots of elephant visitors during the day and the previous night, they didn’t recommend that we pitch our ground tent (or that anybody should sleep in it, anyway). However, having grown up in Africa, being hardy types (cough, cough) and not to be put off by some Aussies, however friendly they might be, we pitched that tent anyway.
There’s safety in numbers, they say, so it was agreed that we would all camp in the same area and that we would also keep a fire going all night, to ward off any wild animals that might come to investigate… The staff at the large, more luxurious campsite that we could see in the distance, had lit a number of fires around their tented village, to do exactly that.
We erected the ground tent strategically between two large bushes and very close to our truck, hoping that even a short-sighted elephant would not walk over all this by accident. And then, with the sun rapidly setting, and with the crashing sounds of elephants dining in the distance, we set about making a fire and our own dinner. The Aussies did the same at their own fire. I think we had already depleted our stock of wine (and they had not) so they needed to conserve their stock and kept to themselves.
After a basic but delicious meal, we settled down by the fire for the usual night-time discussions about deep, meaningful issues and other nonsense. All the while thinking about those nearby elephants…
As we retired to bed, my wife and I in the rooftop tent, our friends in the ground tent, we placed one of our camping lights on the table behind that tent, just to make the tent even more visible to abovementioned short-sighted elephants.
After we’d settled down and stopped talking, the crashing sounds of nearby elephants damaging the trees were even more worrying in the darkness. I struggled to sleep and regularly sat up to look through the gauze windows towards the origin of all the noise. (From my lofty position in the rooftop tent, I had assumed the role of unofficial lookout. Our friends were our guests on this trip and it would not be good form to let an elephant trample them in their tent while we were asleep!)
Sure enough, one elephant bull strolled by, probably about 10 metres away, completely ignoring us, walked straight up to one tree, and started bashing his head against the trunk. This was surprising behavior, to say the least! Anyway, it turns out that they do this to dislodge seed pods from the trees, which they then pick up from the ground and eat. They don’t mind sand in their food, apparently.
Soon after, another elephant passed through. With all that tree-bashing going on so nearby, I was struggling to sleep and kept looking out through the windows of our tent. Somewhere around midnight, I heard one of our friends exit the ground tent, clearly looking around for a safe place to water a tree, as one tends to do at night. Presumably, he was trying to locate an elephant-free area.
For some reason, I just looked out the other side of our rooftop tent, to the other side of the truck, and saw two huge hyenas that were just strolling into our camp, towards one of the campfires, some 3 metres away! Our friend, probably still thinking about his bladder and elephant-avoidance techniques, was on the other side of the truck and couldn’t see them. I was feeling helpful and urgently hissed “…, get in the car!” He immediately repeated the same instruction to his wife, who was somehow prepared and the two were both inside the truck within 2 seconds.
The two hyenas had not even noticed all this happening just a few metres away, or perhaps they just didn’t care. They walked right up to the glowing coals of the campfire. They clearly hadn’t read that book about animals being afraid of fire, since they stuck their noses right into the coals, probably smelling some residue of whatever an Aussie had been barbequeing there.
Disappointed by the lack of nourishment between the coals, they turned around and slowly wandered off again, not even disturbed when our friends switched on the headlights to see them better.
If you are somehow thinking of hyenas as that manically laughing threesome from The Lion King, don’t. They have some of the strongest jaws in the animal kingdom , they are quite prepared to fight lions for their prey, and they have been known to drag sleeping people from a tent, and to kill and eat them. Just a small comment to explain our caution.
For some reason, our friends then decided to spend the rest of the night in the car, the need for watering a tree forgotten. I suspect that, after visits by elephants and hyenas, they were probably not keen to find out if Magotho had more to offer, while sleeping on the ground in a tent…
The next morning, as the sun rose red between the trees, we all stumbled out of bed (and car) with plans for tooth-brushing and so on. In various directions we could still see and hear elephants and wondered what else was still out there. So we very carefully ventured out in pairs with our little shovel, to find somewhat secluded (but not too secluded!) spots behind a fallen tree. One needs to balance the desire for privacy with the need for safety. We also had to ensure that we chose spots that had not been used by the others, for the same purpose.
Having survived Magotho, after performing our ablutions and after a little breakfast, we packed up our campsite and headed off towards the next adventure. There was more excitement to come, but I’ll keep that story for another day.
