Farther from home than usual!
and on Freeview 262 or Freely 565
These last few days of freezing temps had me searching my files for some memories of somewhere nice and hot so I looked at my photo files from Botswana’s Okavango Delta and the Kalahari Desert did the trick! Days of blisteringly hot days and believe it or not frosty nights in the Kalahari! One of the most interesting Kalahari Desert facts is that it is not a desert in the strictest sense of the word, as it receives too much rainfall. However any rain filters rapidly through the vast expanses of sand, leaving nothing on the surface, turning the Kalahari into the ‘thirstland’. The name ‘Kalahari’ is derived from the Tswana word Kgala, meaning ‘the great thirst’, or Kgalagadi, meaning ‘a waterless place’.
Now, the Okavango Delta in Botswana is a fascinating place – it comprises of permanent marshlands and seasonally flooded plains. It is one of the very few major interior delta systems that do not flow into a sea or ocean, with a wetland system that is almost intact. One of the unique characteristics of the site is that the annual flooding from the River Okavango occurs during the dry season, with the result that the native plants and animals have synchronized their biological cycles with these seasonal rains and floods. It is an exceptional example of the interaction between climatic, hydrological and biological processes. The Okavango Delta is home to some of the world’s most endangered species of large mammal, such as the cheetah, white rhinoceros, black rhinoceros, African wild dog and lion. We were lucky to see so much wildlife on our “Dad and Lad’s Desert and Delta Adventure a couple of years ago. Apart from the rhino which is in serious trouble due to poaching!
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide AdPoaching is a massive problem especially where lion, elephant, rhino, wild dog and some of the rarer antelope species and its not just confined to Africa. The tiger is also impacted on by poaching for its skin and its bones – we really are the worst species on the planet!!


Then there’s poaching here in the UK, doesn’t threaten the species with extinction but there’s the pain it can inflict on any animal. We have deer, salmon and game bird poaching here in the UK. It also goes back centuries when the village poacher (who was well known by his neighbours) and the Estate Game Keeper who had to catch him in the act so he could be punished. A gamekeeper friend who Keepers a large estate on the Outer Hebrides told me of the man traps that were regularly set to do serious damage to a poachers leg!
Getting back to the Delta here’s a photo I took of one of our neighbours –up close and personal – too close when we were in a small two man tent – and one night heard a sound I will never forget, one of the lions, from the prides territory we were camped in, was licking the dew off the tent walls, I’d never experienced pure heart thumping fear before – and not an emotion I ever want to experience again!