Ted's Tours: The Penultimate One

Stephanie Abbott-Grobicki
Apr 8, 2016
3 min read

Hi all! "Two blog posts in the same week?!" I hear you say, "It cannot be!". Well you are in for a treat.

Our tale this morning begins at the wonderful hour of sometime-before-the-sun-itself-had-risen, as we were getting ready to hit the road by 6:30am. Although this wasn't the farthest we were going to drive, it was going to be the longest day. We were driving from Chobe to Moremi, south through Botswana, and Ted had decided to take the "Tiger Line" (his words, not mine) and drive through sand for 9 hours straight. That is as fun as it sounds, folks. But hey, new experiences, right?

Down sides: an elephant carcass (although fascinating, I will spare you the visual - there's something deeply sad about a hollow elephant skin), bumps, more bumps, deep sand, bumps.

Up sides: Ted got us lost - which I think is a little funny, James did some good driving in tricky terrain, we saw painted dogs!*

Ted also stopped at multiple points along the journey and imparted some nuggets of wisdom about the surrounding environment - it's definitely a plus on safari when your uncle/tour guide is a geologist.

Lesson about said piece of wood Ted is holding: it makes for a fantastic braai. I believe it's truly special because one can cook on it in the evening and it will still be warm enough the next morning for some breakfast eggs!

Our little adventure through the deep sand and along a bumpy (have I already mentioned it was bumpy?) road ended with us getting stuck in the wrong nature reserve. We had travelled for thirteen and a half hours and we were slightly behind schedule so we arrived at the exit after closing. With a lot of luck, we tracked down a guard and - with a little bit of sweet talking - we convinced him that we were not poachers or crazy people and asked if he could kindly let us out.

We awoke the next morning at our campsite and packed up as per usual. I don't think I've mentioned this but there are many bugs out in the bush. Many bugs. I'm okay with bugs. Flies? All the time? Not so much. This morning was especially bad and, well, one thing led to another and I ended up eating breakfast like this:

Now you might laugh. Yes, I look ridiculous. Yes, this may seem extreme. But it was effective, I tell you! I enjoyed that bowl of fly-free pro-nutro**.

Day Nine was a phenomenal day for game viewing. After many stories about how we were not going to see leopards because Ted has bad luck with leopard spotting - guess what? We saw a leopard. He was a little guy, just sitting in the shade of a tree, minding his own business. But, wow. They are beautiful.

I maintain that my favourite animal experience was the baby impalas - it was so rare, and a very unique experience. However, it was nice to tick a few animal boxes as well. Next on our list was number four of (the big) five: lions.

We found a whole pride of them: a mom and dad, a grumpy teenage daughter, and two ickle babies. Look! It's Simba!

Did a part of me want a cuddle? Absolutely. But this little guy had big parents. They definitely look lazy, lying there in the midday sun, but I was not about to take a chance. One swipe from them and you are dead. Dead dead. Still cute though.

After an incredibly satisfying day, we headed south for our campsite. That night we replaced roaring lions with braying donkeys, staying in the most populated campsite thus far. It was a little disgruntling being surrounded by people but we got to witness this gorgeous view of the skye on the way down: