it what you will the rest of the day passed relatively quickly.
John had told me that around 100km away near the end of the savannah
the road dipped through a grass pan then climbed a shallow hill before
turning to the right. If I spotted this he said I should pause at the
top and walk to the right, through the Mopane, for about fifty yards.
Hills are few and far between around these parts and I easily
recognised the spot. As John had recommended I walked through the
trees and quickly came upon a stunning view. Laid out about fifty
metres below me was a small salt pan with beautifully sloping hills
down to each side. By small I mean Kalahari small, it must have been
at least a mile across and probably three miles long. There are of
course much bigger pans, mostly to the north, such as the famous
Mackadikadi pans which are hundreds of kilometers across. The base was
pure white and quite dazzling in the now almost midday sun. I sat for
about ten minutes under a tree at the edge of the hills, eating an egg
and scanning the edge of the pan with my binoculars for any signs of
life, there was nothing. It was just me and a vast expanse of nothing.
I'd told John I hoped to reach Letlhakane that evening and he'd said
if I arrived early enough he had a friend there I should try to meet
for coffee. As I rolled into town I recieved a text from John. His
friend was in town and had even offered me a bed for the night. This
was great news.
John had spent the day out on the savannah putting up a fence at his
primary school and was a couple of hours back down the road heading my
way planning to stop by and introduce me as he passed. This gave me
time to seek a shady spot, write the blog and watch the town go by
(Letlhakane was the biggest place I'd seen for three days, full of
beeping taxis and skinny donkeys) and chat to locals who were, as
always interested in my bike and my maps. Since none of them were
Afrikkaners or Horsemen they all asked why I didn't get on a bus.
John arrived and I followed him to the house of Johan Steyn. Johan is
a very interesting guy. He is a cardiothoracic surgeon who trained
under Christian Barnard. He's also done a lot of mountainering and
lived in Europe to climb the Alps and also in New Zealand. He's canoed
the Orange river and now lives in Letlhakane occasionally running HIV
clinics but spending most of his time out along the Boteti or on the
pans filming for a wildlife documentary. The day I visited he'd just
returned from a long trip in the bush documenting the approaching
flood. He showed me some of his film and photography. If you managed
to see the fantastic 'Great Flood' episode of 'Natures Great Events'
series on the BBC earlier this year you'll know the kind of thing i'm
talking about... except his stuff was better.
He had film showing water flowing across the dry dusty river bed
(remember this year's flood is the biggest for twenty two years)
steadily moving forward one by one filling the thousands of footprints
of Zebra, Elephant, Impala and many others, left over the years as
these beasts had trudged up and down it's dry sandy course searching
for water. Then he showed me shots taken one and the two days later
with deep flowing pools and green shoots beginning to appear
everywhere and birds starting to arrive, following the water. Amazing.
But the most incredible things he showed me were the crocs. He knew
this river very well and had been filming around it for a number of
years. This meant he knew where certain creatures lived and was able
to anticipate their behaviour. There is one section where croccodiles
live out the dry years hidden away in caves dug into the river bank.
These caves can be quite deep and often contain water which keeps
these animals alive. I asked him what they did for food. Reptiles have
much lower calorific requirements than mammals or birds but they still
need to eat at some point. Well, he explained, these are not just any
crocs. Some are massive. One, which he showed later, was five metres
long. That's a big animal. This croc would lie still just like an old
log and was able to take down a fully grown zebra if it was careless
enough to pass too close as it walked up the river bed. It would do
this on land! No water! Terrifying!
There were other crocs in that area too. Now, unlike the shots you may
have seen of crocs on the Mara river near the Serengeti, these ones
could not be sure of an annual feast. They took what they could when
an opportunity presented itself. As a consequence they were always in
a life and death struggle competiting with one another and did not
live together in the sort of large groups seen on the Mara. The
biggest would try to kill any smaller crocs. Johan showed me a shot of
the mouth of a large cave lying at the bottom of a mud cliff with the
dry river bed in the foreground. Then he showed me the water slowly
appearing and moving across the frame. Within a few moments of the
leading edge of the water passing by the huge head of the five meter
behemoth he had told me about appeared from the cave. It was a very
pale colour I assume because it not been in water for a long time. You
could really see how, when motionless, a Zebra might easliy walk right
upto it. It slowly pulled it's massive body out of the cave and moved
down the shallow sandy curve of the river bed towards the water. I'm
not one to anthropomorhesise animals and if I were a croccodile would
surely be one of the last creatures one would attach emotions to, but
as that croc moved down the the water the curve of it's mouth, studded
with glistening teeth it looked very much like there was a broad
calculating, scheming smile across it. This was was probably the first
time it had seen water in years and I probably new happy days were
here again. It slid into the water, which had now become quite deep,
and gently wafted it's tail a couple of times and cruised out of shot.
Now I'd mentioned the competition between these crocs. The next shot
showed a similar scene but with mcuh deeper water and slightly smaller
caves the tops of which were just visible above the surface. The huge
croc was floating in the foreground facing the caves about a metre or
so from the bank. In the dry times these caves were where some of the
smaller crocs (but we are still talking animals measured in metres)
would seek refuge from the bigger creatures. And these caves were now
flooding and the big croc knew it. There was a ripple at the entrance
of one of the caves as one of the small crocs made a break for it. The
big croc whipped it's tail and shot forward (quite frightening how
fast they can move, particularly given some of my perhaps rather
foolhardy paddling sessions just a couple of days earlier in the
Okavango) there was a struggle and the water turned red. The smaller
croc would not be enjoying the fruits of this flood.
Johan lit a braai and got some meat out. His house keeper made some
chips and salad and we tucked into a great feast. Then we sat round
the table on the veranda to enjoy the cool night air, drinking shots
of coke on ice, Johan chain smoking camels (and he a cardiothoracic
surgeon) playing maps and discussing adventures.
I told him about my trip, the hardships of the desert, the oasis of
the Okavango. Then about my plans to take a canoe across Scotland next
spring. About the time Ian and I spent in the rainforests of Ghana
helping collect frogs at midnight and how we had looked back at one
point to see the phosphorescent glow of the leaf litter marking the
path we had just taken. Johan recounted tales of daring in the high
peaks of the Alps and then how it was to sleep out in the nothingness
of the pans at night, no tent, just the stars above. His adventures by
canoe down the orange river. I only wished I could head out with him
on a journey into the bush and see some of the things he'd only been
able to show me on film. Maybe next time I'm passing on my bike I'll
ring ahead.
Eventually even the coke would no longer keep my puppet strings taut
and I had to make my excuses. I had a long way to go tomorrow and
another early start.
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