By: Cat Murphy, Ithaca College
It has been two full weeks of being in Botswana, and I’m so utterly in awe of the environment. There is nothing I can complain about. The months of waiting to fly out of New York to Maun were worth it tenfold. Going from a few feet of snow to rain pouring down in thick, heavy drops has been unreal. I absolutely love the rain. Learning in this environment feels surreal. Every animal encounter feels like a dream I’m scared to wake up from.
At our first campsite in Kaziikini, the day started early with a 5 a.m. wake-up for a 6 a.m. transect. That morning was a bit damp thanks to buckets of rain drenching the camp. I would even say it rained an inch or so in less than an hour, which is just incredible. The wet season this year is said to be the wettest Botswana has seen in 20 years, and that’s incredibly lucky to experience. After loading into Lucy, one of the Land Cruisers, our instructor, Lily, began the drive to T.3, one of the transects monitored in NG34, which is Ngamiland. We were accompanied by our guide, Kells, and a fellow student, Ansel. The roads had been soaked for days, and the morning rain had settled into large mud puddles. Can anything get better than being damp and bouncing around in the back of a car at 6 a.m.? Trust me, it cannot.
However, throughout the three or so hours of driving, we spotted absolutely nothing of note. We sat in silence, moving through Mopane woodland with a faint mist settling on every surface, with zero sightings of herbivores, elephants, predators, or even birds of concern – all something that we’re taking data on. That is pretty odd for a transect… like the calm before the storm. Everyone knows what happens when dirt gets saturated with water, and these are very real dirt roads in a remarkably wet environment. Yay mud!
About 75 percent of the way through the transect, we turned down a path that is not often used, meaning the soil is less compacted. Within five minutes of that turn, Lucy’s wheels lost traction and halted. A beast of a car, defeated by very soft, silty ground. For the entire five hours Lucy was stuck, I found a permanent smile plastered on my face. To be stuck in the mud in Botswana is where I’d choose to be over anything else. With a bag of melted granola bars and a block of cheese, we were set. Killing time by playing rounds and rounds of a card game called Hearts and losing horribly, then stretching out on the car roof cloud watching. After contacting our instructors and guides Dix and SB with our inReach, they came to the rescue within four hours. They cut down large mopane branches and wedged them under the tires for traction while towing Lucy out of her muddy hole. With one strong pull, she was free, and so were we!
