We left Cape Town on January 17 and flew to Botswana for something neither of us had ever done before: safari.
Our original safari plans had been changed because of flooding, so the itinerary we ultimately followed wasn't quite the one we'd expected. We spent our first night at Grays Eden in Maun, then three nights at Little Sable in Khwai and two nights at Chobe Game Lodge before crossing into Zimbabwe.
Whatever expectations we'd had about safari, the reality was different.
It was considerably more comfortable than we'd imagined.
And considerably wetter.
Maun
Our first night was at Grays Eden in Maun.
The property immediately surprised us. It was expansive and beautiful, and we were upgraded to a villa.
Shirley walked into the room, looked around and asked how long we were staying.
One night.
She was disappointed.
We changed into swimsuits, took a quick dip in the pool, had a cocktail and then enjoyed something we'd been missing in Cape Town: a properly hot shower.
Dinner was excellent. Then we went back to the room and promptly fell asleep.
The next morning we headed for the airport and the real beginning of the safari.
Into the Bush
Getting to Little Sable was part of the experience.
We left the relative familiarity of Maun behind and arrived at a much smaller camp in Khwai.
This was closer to what we'd imagined when we thought about going on safari.
Our days quickly settled into a rhythm: very early wakeups, a little breakfast and then hours in an open safari vehicle looking for animals.
And rain.
Lots of rain.
Little Sable
One night we could hear lions roaring somewhere around the camp.
The next morning we were up at 5:00, eating at 5:30 and in the vehicle by 6:00 trying to find them.
We found fresh tracks.
But no lions.
We went to a place where a dead hippo had recently been, although by then the carcass was gone. Some young hyenas were nearby and became curious enough to follow us for a while.
We saw zebra, impala and other antelope.
Then our guide noticed a group of antelope staring intently across an open area.
He headed in the direction they were looking.
There we found a mother cheetah and her cub.
We followed them for a while before the rain began again.
On the way back, our guide spotted fresh leopard tracks.
So naturally we went looking for the leopard.
We never found it.
Then the radiator in our safari vehicle began leaking and the engine started overheating.
Another vehicle eventually arrived, we switched trucks, and kept going.
By the time we returned to camp, we'd been out for five hours.
It hadn't felt like five hours.
Rain
The rain became almost another character in our stay.
It rained overnight.
It rained during game drives.
It rained hard enough that we sometimes retreated to camp.
We rode around wearing ponchos, trying to stay mostly dry while our guides searched for animals.
On another morning, our guide noticed baboons on alert and immediately headed toward whatever had their attention.
We didn't find the predator they apparently saw, but we did find jackals, zebra, elephants, hippos, monkeys and more leopard tracks.
Then the rain started coming down hard again.
Back to camp.
Oddly, neither of us minded very much.
We spent quite a bit of time wet or stuck in our room, but we never became particularly agitated about it.
At one point we joked about how different the rain would have felt a year earlier.
If we'd still owned the schools, a storm like this probably would have meant worrying about roof leaks and maintenance problems.
Now it was just rain.
And Shirley was smiling a lot.
Life at Camp
Little Sable became increasingly quiet during our stay.
For our final two days, we were the only guests.
That was both wonderful and a little strange.
Every meal was prepared for us. Every game drive was effectively private. The entire staff seemed to be there for two people.
I found myself slightly uncomfortable with that much attention.
But it also gave us a chance to know the people taking care of us and to experience the camp without much distraction.
The food was surprisingly good. One lunch included avocado tacos with crema, pan-fried fish with a sweet sauce, salad and fresh bread.
Then we'd take a nap and head back out looking for animals.
One evening we returned after another downpour, had a beer and ate dinner while frogs made an extraordinary racket around the camp.
They didn't sound like the frogs we knew from home. They sounded like someone banging sticks together.
And somewhere outside camp, we could hear lions roaring on both sides of us.
My note from that evening ended: "Great…"
We went to bed at 8:30.
The alarm was set for 5:00.
Flying Between Camps
Getting between the safari camps was an experience in itself.
We flew in small aircraft from one remote airstrip to another. The airspace was uncontrolled, and watching the young pilots work brought back memories of my own flying days.
With clouds covering much of the sky, they'd take off and look for an opening that would let them climb through. On the way down, they'd find another hole in the clouds and descend through it toward the airstrip.
At one point, the pilot pushed the nose down fairly aggressively to get us through an opening.
Rather than making me nervous, it took me back to flight school.
I found myself watching what the pilots were doing, thinking about how young they were and remembering what it felt like when flying was simply part of my life.
And for the first time in a very long time, I had an unexpected thought: Maybe I should come back to Africa and fly.
Nothing ever needed to come of it.
But I liked that being here had awakened the thought.
Chobe
On January 21, after another rainy night, we left Little Sable and continued to Chobe Game Lodge.
It felt completely different.
Little Sable had felt like a small bush camp.
Chobe felt more like a hotel.
And it had hot water.
There were other guests again, although not many, and the entire experience was more polished and comfortable.
The early mornings continued.
On our last day we were awake at 4:30, escorted from our room at 5:00 and out on another game drive at 5:30.
We saw jackals and a kori bustard and continued searching for wildlife.
Still no lions.
But by then we'd learned that safari wasn't really about checking animals off a list.
Some of the fun was looking.
You'd see tracks.
Or baboons staring in one direction.
Or antelope suddenly becoming alert.
The guides would notice things we'd never have seen and change direction.
Sometimes there was an animal at the end of the search.
Sometimes there wasn't.
Along the way we even found ourselves fascinated by a dung beetle rolling elephant dung across the ground. Signs along the road warned drivers not to run over the beetles—or the piles of dung they were working on.
Everything seemed to have a role.
What We'll Remember
We'll remember Shirley walking into our villa at Grays Eden and immediately wishing we were staying longer.
We'll remember the early wakeups and climbing into safari vehicles before sunrise.
We'll remember hearing lions at night but somehow never finding them during the day.
We'll remember the young hyenas following us.
We'll remember watching a mother cheetah and her cub.
We'll remember searching for a leopard by following tracks that never led us to the leopard.
We'll remember our safari vehicle overheating in the middle of a game drive.
We'll remember the little planes and remote airstrips, watching young pilots find holes in the clouds to climb and descend, and unexpectedly wondering whether I might want to fly again.
We'll remember elephants, hippos, zebra, antelope, jackals, monkeys, wildebeest and animals whose names we'd never known before arriving.
We'll remember the frogs that sounded like sticks knocking together.
We'll remember the rain.
And we'll remember that somehow, despite the weather, Shirley seemed to be having an absolutely wonderful time.
Would We Return?
Absolutely.
We learned that we liked safari.
We also learned something about how we liked doing it.
Three nights at Little Sable was about right. We loved the intimacy and the experience of a small bush camp, even with all the rain, but we probably wouldn't have wanted to stay much longer.
Chobe was different. It was considerably more comfortable, and we could easily imagine staying longer at a lodge like that.
Perhaps the biggest surprise was that safari didn't feel nearly as rugged as we'd imagined.
We were being driven around by expert guides, fed wonderful meals, returned to comfortable rooms and taken care of at every turn.
At one point I wondered in my notes whether what we were doing really qualified as adventure.
Maybe it didn't matter.
We were in Botswana, soaking wet in an open vehicle, following leopard tracks through the bush while Shirley smiled beside me.
That was good enough.