Smoke gets in your eyes...

The week of August 11^th was full of celebrating: Jon and I celebrated our 7^th wedding anniversary, his 32^nd birthday, and our 3 months in Botswana anniversary. Even though Jon was on-call the day of our anniversary he managed not to get called out so we were able to be together. This may not seem like much of a feat to you, but we don’t have great luck when it comes to anniversaries – this is only the second time we have been together since we were married. We went out for dinner to one of the nicer hotels in town marking the first time we have ever done anything special to celebrate an anniversary (we prefer to celebrate whenever we feel like it, which is usually pretty often). For Jon’s birthday my ten year old neighbor Tao came over to help make Jon a cake. While the cake was baking she and I played a few hands of Dutch Blitz (a card game) and were so focused on beating each other that we forgot about the cake until the smoke coming from the oven jarred us back to reality. No birthday cake for Jon. Instead of eating cake we met some friends for dinner and then worried about our Turbo Diesel super power booster on the way home when the truck couldn’t accelerate (did I say ‘we’? I meant Jon worried. Don’t fret, it took Jon 30 seconds and $0 the next morning to fix the problem. Yes, he is that smart.).

After a week full of celebrating I hadn’t yet had my fill. Thursday night as we were lying in bed I sleepily suggested (as I have many times), “Hey, we should go camping this weekend.” The next morning Jon surprised me by calling to ask if Khama Rhino Sanctuary would be an okay place to camp. We spent that afternoon borrowing/buying the camping gear we were still missing, organizing meals, and finding a place for our dog, Mickey, to stay while we were gone. The next morning we set out on the three hour drive to Khama Rhino. In the last thirty minutes of our drive we noticed the sky seemed to be getting more and more hazy. We couldn’t tell if it was just overcast (pretty uncommon here) or if there was a reason for it. Before too long my sensitive nose started to pick up that sharp acrid smell of something burning. The closer we drew to the park the hazier the sky grew. By the time we arrived at KRS we could see distinct pillars of smoke rising from fires that stretched across the horizon and little bits of ash were blowing into the car through the open windows.

The fire burning on the horizon

Arriving at the Sanctuary Jon went inside to register. Feeling a little apprehensive about the fires he asked a staff member how far away they were. With a blank look on her face she replied, “Fire, what fire?” Jon laughed a little and repeated the question. “Oh!”, she replied, “that fire. We are working on it.” All right then. Feeling completely reassured (can you sense my sarcasm?) we started the slow drive through the park looking for animals. After driving for a few minutes we passed a vehicle going the opposite direction that flagged us down. A man jumped out of the truck (which is unusual as this is expressly forbidden in all parks – wild animals, you know) and walked across the road to let us know that we had to turn around, the fires were burning across the road a couple hundred metres up. For the rest of the afternoon we drove around looking for animals while everyone else we passed was dirty from firefighting, we felt ridiculous. After turning around on three different roads because of the fire we figured out that only the southern quarter of the park was drivable and stuck to that area. I was a little nervous when fire seemed to surround us on three sides not too far off, it felt a little surreal, but Jon was confident that all would be fine. That day we saw rhino, giraffes, ostrich, red hartebeest, wildebeest, steenbok, and many others.

A rhino blocking our path

Returning to our campsite in the evening, we grilled steaks over a fire and sat back to watch the stars and listen to the sounds of the African night – it was so full of life. As we sat there, it was one of those times when you hardly dare to breathe because you are so overwhelmed by the grandeur of it all. Our evening finished on a perfect note: hot showers in the bath house (its pretty sad when you have to go camping to get a decent shower) and then falling asleep under the canopy of stars.

By the next day the fires had subsided (we later learned most of the fires in the park were preventative measures against the real veld fire nearby) and we were able to drive throughout the park. We spent several hours sitting on the edge of a pan (a salt/mineral flat where animals tend to congregate for water) with the engine off watching the animals as they roamed across the pan, reading when nothing was going on, and soaking in the sounds of the wind in the grass and birds in the trees. When it was time to leave that afternoon, we exited the park feeling refreshed and thankful for the time away from the city.

A curious giraffe

Note: If you are interested in seeing more pictures of our trip and the animals, we have them posted on our shutterfly pictures site. The pictures aren’t titled and organized yet but we hope to do that within the next few days.