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Hello Valued Guests and loyal
friends
I cannot believe that it is
already the Easter Weekend and four months since our
last newsletter. I hope that the year has been kind
to you so far. Once again, thank you all so much
for your continued support, we sincerely appreciate
it. We also look forward to the first timers whom we
will be meeting shortly.
I am writing from a cold,
overcast and windy Botswana. It seems all the bad
weather of in SA of late has come up this way and is
heralding the early arrival of winter, although I am
sure we will have a few more hot spells before that
happens.
We had excellent rains up to
January (420mm) in total, but since then it’s been
mostly dry with the odd shower now and then. TWT
entered the New Year with a bang! Molema Dam,
as we call it, broke. It was so full from all the
rain and the wall was struggling to hold back the
water. This, combined with the continual mud bathing
of elephants on the weak point of the wall,
eventually led to all the water finding its way to
the Limpopo River.
Broken Molema Dam wall (now
repaired!)
Thanks to Jannie of Talana farms
and his bulldozer, the dam has now been repaired.
All we need now is some more good rain to fill it up
again. I hope this happens otherwise it will have
no water for the rest of the year.
The rain did wonders for the veld,
I have never seen so much grass here since we
started TWT. This, in turn, attracted a lot of
grazers, especially Zebra, Wildebeest, Eland
and of course Elephant. Even now it is not
uncommon to see 60 + Zebra grazing on the
plains south of Mohave Bush Camp.
 All the game in the area is in
excellent condition. Elephant love all of
the grass. I am sure they are enjoying the change
in diet from bark, leaves and roots. A very calm,
magnificent bull is being seeing regularly at TWT.
He made for a peaceful sunset sighting recently.
With all the thick, seeding
grass around, there has been an amazing number of
seed eating birds around. Probably the most
remarkable species of birds thriving in the grass
have been quails. In all the years I’ve lived in the
bush, I have never seen so many quails around. Both
the Harlequin and Kurrichane buttonquails
are thriving in the thick patches of grass. When you
are walking through the grass you frequently flush
coveys of them from under virtually under your feet
and they generally give you quite a fright. In
general, birding has been excellent throughout the
season. Most of the migrants are still here, but are
starting to quieten down now as their breeding comes
to an end and they prepare to head off on their
amazing migrations.
 We also often saw Common
Flap-Necked Chameleons this summer – usually
seen out and about just before rain.
Lion
and Cheetah have once
again made up most of our predator sightings over
the last few months. In February, we had a French
couple visiting here who were ending off their self
drive tour of Botswana. They spent two nights with
us and were fortunate enough to see a young
lioness kill a baboon close to Rutt
Camp. To see a kill is one thing, but to see a
lioness killing a baboon is really unusual. I
suspect the lioness was really desperate to eat,
probably as a result of difficult hunting in these
wet conditions, and being opportunists they are, the
lioness grabbed her chance.
One of the best game drives I
have ever been on was in January. My son, Joshua and
some of his friends were up here for the holidays.
Late one afternoon, I joined them for a game drive
north of Eagle Rock. The first sighting was
of 2 Cheetah lying in the shade of a mustard
bush. We watched them for half an hour and they
didn’t budge. We kept edging closer and were
eventually parked ten metres from them. When we
left, they just stayed put. After sundowners, as we
started heading back to Mohave Bush Camp, we
found a beautiful male Lion and his female
mate - obviously a mating pair, both in their
prime. We followed them for about ten minutes and
at times were as close to them as fifteen metres.
They led us right through a large breeding herd of
Elephant.
It was getting dark, so we
decided to leave the cats and pachyderms and head
for home. Not five minutes later, a Brown Hyena
suddenly appeared cantering, his long shaggy hair
bouncing as he ran ahead of us in the headlights. He
wasn’t with us for very long before he slipped out
of sight into the darkness.
To top it all, as we reached
Mohave, an Antbear suddenly appeared in front
of us. It was totally unfazed by our presence and we
watched him for a long while, snooping, listening,
smelling and digging for termites. What a drive!
The exciting news is that Mashatu
will be releasing a pack of Wild Dogs on the
Reserve and we hope that you might then have some
sightings of them when you next visit TWT.
The flowing Limpopo River has
dropped quite a bit recently. In late January/early
February it was in full flood and even the cable car
at Pontdrift was closed as the water level was too
high. I actually watched the empty cable car
crossing over the river during this time. The water
level was about thirty centimetres from the bottom
of the cable car. Just imagine if there had been
people in it . . .next stop Beit Bridge
J
Mashatu organised a small motor
boat to ferry people over the river at this time as
Platjan border was also closed. It was quite an
adventure crossing by boat, but was quite a mission
when you went shopping in SA and had to bring all
your goods back over on the boat. Thanks to Mashatu
for their help.
 Rutt Camp
is up again up and ready for the Trails
season. We have a number of Trails booked for the
winter and I really look them.
Folks, that’s about it for now. I
won’t take up anymore of your time (besides, I’ve
got Writer’s Block).
We really look forward to seeing
some of you very soon, and some of you in the not so
distant future. Take care and thanks again for all
your support.
Regards
Craig and the TWT team
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