Some closer to home too, as well as further afield.

 

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Lovely photos Andries. Thank you for sharing I half expected to see a covered bridge in one!

 

Ahhh... now Third Bridge in the Okavango.... it consists of logs piled against one another accross two beams of logs that span the crocodile infested stream.The visibility of human impact on that jewel is being kept as low as possible. That is why they are hard on the numbers of vehicles and humans being allowed into it. And all you carry in there you carry out - there are NO trash bins, let alone dumpsters. It is five star bush and that is why I never go to the lodges at Xaxanaxa.

Just two years ago a German tourist group had two children taken by crocodiles at Third Bridge - the parents encouraged the kids to swim in the crystal clear water "because they could not see any crocodiles". What a loss, but I would have charged the parents with Culpable Homicide as there is a clear sign that the threat of being taken by a crocodile while near the water is very high. It is THEIR domain and we must tread with respect and good manners and care.

Every year in Botswana there will be a German tourist who gets himself eaten by a lion or hyena while camping because he sleeps with his tent open. Every year there will be numbers of German tourists who get themselves stuck in the mud or sand or crossing a stream while off the track in a river with a hired, self drive safari vehicle. "It is an off-road 4x4, no?" (by the way - NEVER will you see a For Hire 4x4 vehicle with the Landrover motif ("The Best 4x4x Far") in South Africa or Namibia or Botswana.

And for photo three:
"And be one traveler, long I stood and looked down one as far as I could to where it bent in the undergrowth..."

 

The females are the most dangerous because they are unpredictable, and this one's newborn calf had approached close to the Mitsubishi and the lady kept on wanting to come back and punish is for the stupid calf's wanderings. It was a herd of about 1,500 animals that we had to wait for to cross the road and she was torn between having to follow the herd, or return and put her horn into the Mitsibishi's radiator.

 

Did you at least tell her politely that she had something stuck between her teeth?

 

What's up with the Germans? and forgive me if I'm mistaken, Mr. Montero, but I thought I read in another post (in response to mine) that hyenas don't bother people


Lovely photo three - do you remember which way you traveled?

 

Oh certainly neither hyena nor lion will bother to tear open a tent - but at night an open tent containing a body of red meat protein is just that: food - and being at night outside the radius where you can feel the heat of your camp fire the same applies. It is their world.

We are at times trespassing into that domain and that is OK but we should do so in the understanding that we are trepassers. If we do so with disrespect we deserve the treatment that disrespect to this huge universe called Creation should be met with.

Oh, the splitting track? We went left because the track we were on was a detour around an area where the warring factions in that land had long time ago planted land mines and these have never been removed. I had carefully marked the track on large scale aerial photographs I had of the difficult stretches of that 400 mile wilderness trip to the sea, and my son and I navigated this to the accuracy of 15 yards.

This single vehicle safari into this wilderness was his reward for a most excellent 6 years law study result. Not an area where you would take a lady into. There comes a time when a young man has to face real hard options and discuss the best decisions with someone who has not been exactly there but who knows the risks and can apply the principles of navigation and map reading and common sense.