Kristen visits and the trip to Tau

Welcome to the life and times of Thom and Debra. In the next couple weeks we'll be updating some of things that have happened in the last 5 months since Thom arrived in Gaborone. Since Thom's sister Kristen just left we'll talk about some of the adventures we had with her this past week (On or about Feb 24, 2007).

Kristen arrived on Wednesday. As soon as we were in the car heading in to the city she started commenting on how the airport and the roads did not feel like a developing third world country. On Thursday, Thom took Kristen shopping at Riverwalk, one of the "malls" in town. Upon entering the grocery her immediate comment was that "this is bigger than any grocery store in Paris."

Friday afternoon we headed off to Madikwe Game Reserve just over the boarder in South Africa. We arrived at Tau Game Lodge (http://www.taugamelodge.co.za/) in time for lunch and then before we even got settled in our rooms, the elephants came to the watering hole.

Our rooms were at the end of the watering hole where about 25 elephants spent 30-45 minutes playing in the water and taking their afternoon mud baths. So we sat out on our patios and were entertained by the show.

Around 4:00 we met for tea on the lodge deck and then set off with our Ranger, Cornell, and a British family who is also living in Gaborone for our evening game drive. We saw a lot of impala, some rhinos, and an old giraffe. We spent some time parked next to 3 8-month old lion cubs (photos). Their mother doesn't hang with the rest of the pride, so leaves the 3 cubs in a safe place while she hunts and drags the kill back to the cubs. She works really hard but what is truly amazing is that the cubs stay where she leaves them!!! (In the picture to the right->>You have to look in the grass in front of the jeep to see the lion cubs)

Saturday morning, our day started with the 5:00 am wake up call from Ranger Cornell. By the time Thom and Debra stumbled unto the lodge deck for coffee, everyone was quite wound up about the racket that the hyenas and zebras were making that morning. So we set off to find out what was going on. And it turned out to be quite a dramatic morning (really too much drama for one hastily downed cup of coffee).

Before the sun even came up, we drove around a corner and came across a pack of 9 hyenas that had the stolen the kill from the mother lion and her cubs. The lions were on one side of the road and the hyenas were on the other (and we were in the road just a very short distance away!!). The mother lion was quite irritated that their breakfast had been taken away but couldn't do much about since she had the cubs with her and there were 9 hyenas!

So the hyenas were taunting the lion while they ate her breakfast and the lion was stalking about on the other side of the road. The kill turned out to be a baby zebra and the mother zebra came around crying and looking for the baby. That almost turned really ugly but she ran off before she got eaten too. A brown hyena (somewhat rare to see apparently) came around to see if he could get some breakfast too but the spotted hyenas weren't in a sharing mood so he got chased off.

Finally the hyenas had enough to eat and dragged the leftovers off with them. The lions came out to see if anything was left but they were sadly disappointed.



If you have some extra time and want to see more Safari pictures from Madikwe Game Reserve and the Tau lodge, click here for Kristen's pictures that she posted on shutterfly