Elephants and our ‘candy wrapper’ tent

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After pitching camp, it was recon time. And by recon, I mean driving along the cutline/road that travels the full north-south eastern boundary of the park. The road traverses through pans for much of it, making it impassable for most of the year. So, we only got to see about half the boundary on this trip. But it confirmed our fears; our little Prado was never going to make it through this terrain, even in the dry season. We need a bigger car. Unfortunate but expected. Anyway, as we drove along the road, looking for signs of elephants we became unwittingly the centre of some drama. We found elephant tracks in a pan out the front of San Camp, a luxury camp that almost rises up out of the pan in the form of huge white tents. It turns out that as we were stopping to look at the tracks, then getting back into the car to drive a little further, then repeating the process a number of times, we were being watched. The camps were radioing back and forth to each other. Sayings like ‘possible poacher’, ‘strange behaviour’, ‘unknown vehicle’ were being bandied about. The nearest gate, manned by the Botswana Defence Force, was called. Meanwhile Hayley and I were musing over the tracks – how long were they there for, why did they seem to stop half way in the pan, etc. etc. We had no idea we were causing such hoopla. We eventually decided we’d looked at the tracks long enough and moved on. A little while later the commotion was finally over when the concerned parties found the one person at Camp Kalahari that knew who we were, and why we were there. To be clear, we had organised the whole trip with management before our arrival to avoid this sort of complication (and get approval to stay in their camp), but it seems the communication channels weren’t working and no-one knew we were there. Fortunately, our identities were finally discovered prior to the defence force being set upon us! In a country that at the time had a shoot-to-kill policy** against poachers, this was pretty lucky!

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**This shoot-to-kill policy was introduced into Botswana by former President Khama. It was in place to deter poachers from seeing Botswana’s wildlife as a meal ticket, through poaching. After 5 years, in May this year, it was announced that the policy was revoked by the new President in an attempt to calm international outrage (particularly from Namibia and Zimbabwe, who seemed to have the most citizens affected by this policy), and since then there has been an increase in reports of elephant and rhino poaching throughout the county.

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Despite this (unbeknownst to us) exciting start to the trip, the rest went smoothly, and we spent much of the trip in a constant state of awe. We alternated between speechlessness and letting out strange excited sounds every time we turned a corner and saw something new.  As well as using the time to do our own physical recon, we also wanted to speak to the lodge staff. After all, these people live out there day-in, day-out and some have done so for years. So, they know the ins and outs of the place and could give us good advice. We also had the chance to meet and talk with some tourists and safari guides, who we spoke to about EfA’s past and future research plans and how our work directly links with benefits to the local communities. One of the camp managers, Danica, later cornered us with a bit of a confession. We were her “favourite poachers”. This is when we found out about all of the commotion that we had caused the day before, when Danica reported possible poachers out the front of San Camp. After we gave a presentation, then were shown around the amazing camp and spent time with everyone there, including Danica, she decided that Hayley and I were definitely her favourite poachers. A moniker that I have grown strangely fond of!