June 21-23: Linyanti Marsh

Next stop, Chobe National Park’s Linyanti Marsh, located at the far northwest corner of the Park and to the north of Savuti along the Linyanti River (which is the Kwando River above the marsh and then eventually becomes the Chobe River) across the border from Namibia’s Caprivi Strip. To the west of this area lies the vast Selinda Game Reserve and across the river is Namibia’s Mamili National Park, making this area a transfrontier haven for wildlife. This area, renowned to be one of the most beautiful sections of the Park, is centered around the extensive riverine woodlands, lagoons, channels, marshes and wide-open flood plains dotted with wild date and ilala palm islands.

Like Savuti, it is exceptionally difficult to get here by road, so almost all visitors fly in, making it even more special for those few of us that dare to meet the challenge of the area’s remoteness and difficult road conditions. Indeed, the sand track to get here had some small patches of deep sand, but none were too long and none created a real problem for our overland vehicles with our tire’s deflated appropriately. Here’s a short video of Mark driving the Green Dragon on the Linyanti access road:

Linyanti access road video (1.5 minute)

The Chobe National Park portion of the Linyanti Marsh is but a tiny section on the Botswana side of the expansive marshland, which means that we had very little area accessible to us for wildlife drives. The uplands along the marshlands consist of a narrow strip of “gallery” forest (i.e., big trees with open understory) heavily beat down by the animals, and then mopane woodland stretching inland for as far as the eye can see. Curiously, though, there are sections of the woodland in which the trees/shrubs have all lost their deciduous leaves and nearby sections where they are still green on the branches, without any visibly obvious differences in the soils (it’s all deep sand here) or terrain. It’s a mystery to us, but nonetheless it created an interesting patchwork mosaic of green and brown vegetation. Here are a few shots of the landscape in this small section of the Park accessible to us:

Given the paucity of tracks to drive in this section of the Park, it goes almost without saying that we spent a lot of time simply relaxing in camp, and what a campsite we had, situated on a bench above the marshland under some large shade trees with a view out over the extensive marshes, and a great vantage point for watching sunsets over the marsh. Here’s our campsite and some afternoon siesta activity:

Given the extra time we had in camp, we opted to make something special for dinner and top it off with a treat. For dinner, we made a full-fledged pizza – yes, that’s right, pizza! The crust was a yeasted dough crust topped with a tomatoe pesto sauce, sauted onions and green peppers, a layer of chopped fresh tomatoes, and drizzled with cheddar cheese. Wow, was it yummy! FYI, we cooked it in a dutch oven in the fire with hot coals around the pot and on top of it:

And what do you think we had for dessert? Any guesses? Anyone know my favorite dessert in the whole world and the thing I make on an all-too-regular basis? Nathan? Caitlin?

We saw comparatively litle wildlife on our short drives, other than a few elephant here and there, along with a few giraffe and kudos, and of course the ubiquitous impala, warthogs and baboons. However, we did come across a very nervous herd of cape buffalo that were grouped up tight and would start to stampede and then suddenly halt, change direction and start to stampede again. At one point, it looked like they might come crashing into our vehicle, but they stopped a good 50 feet away and looked very concerned. Not much we could do at this point but sit and wait and let them decide what to do. Ultimately, they turned and moved off to the side of us. Not sure why they were so skiddish in our presence. Perhaps it was because of the lion that we saw the next day near their location? Here’s a shot of what we were seeing out our window:

Perhaps the most exciting wildlife event of our stay at Linyanti was our nightime visitors to our campsite. It began with a rustling near the vehicles behind us while we were seated at the campfire. To our surprise and delight, it was a honey badger trying to steal our trash bag that had a few food scraps in it from dinner. Despite our vigilance to avoid being raided by baboons, which were always close by, we let down our guard after dark knowing the baboons were safely up in the trees for the night. Of course, what we forgot about was the possibility of a scavenging honey badger. After a few rounds of us advancing towards the badger to both get a better view and to ward him off the trash bag, and he advancing towards us to get to the trash and intimidate us, eventually he won the battle and stole the trash bag with Mark hopelessly chasing after him (note, Nancy recovered the trash and bag from the woods the next morning). So, while we have been able to outsmart all the primates on this trip, we were ultimately outsmarted by a badger – go figure. Here’s a picture from the internet to show you what this impressive little creature looks like:

Note, this is truly an amazing creature. It inhabits all environments across Africa except true deserts such as the Sahara and Namib. It occurs from sea level to over 12,000 feet in elevation and thus occupies virtually every type of habitat. It eats virtually everything and anything, from insects to small antelopes, and scavenges from unsuspecting campers like us at times. It defends itself even againts the likes of elelphants, lions and humans, and has even been known to “go for the genitals” of humans when being threatened – yikes, it’s a good thing Mark didn’t catch up to that badger!

The other exciting visitor (actually, we were the visitors) to our campsite was a small spotted genet. This is a really cool-looking mammal that is strictly nocturnal and spends the daytime concealed usually in an aboreal tree cavity. This little creature came out of a tree cavity in one of the large nearby shade trees after dark. It posed for us for a while in the crotch of the tree and then scrambled down the trunk and ran off for a night of foraging. Like the honey badger they eat just about everything small enough to catch.

Here is a comparatively short composite video highlighting the Linyanti marsh and our campsite at sunrise and a special fireside serenade by yours truly of a short piece I composed that I call, simply, Kalahari:

Chobe Linyanti composite video (8 minutes)

Good night all! See you on the Chobe river!