Day 3 of 31

Marula country, no worthy spoor

Thursday, 24 April 2014

A wide circle around camp. Soft wet ground from overnight rain. Young-bull tracks, cow-and-calf sign, and a patch of small mountains near the border fence we had not seen before.

A slow day. We made a big circle around camp looking for a spoor worth the walk. The ground was soft and wet — wetter than yesterday in places — and the bush was green, and between the two the elephants did not need to come in to any of the water we were watching. We saw several tracks. None of them belonged to an old bull.

Wet ground after overnight rain, day 3 — Soft ground and no decent spoor to follow

Past yesterday’s sun-pump pan near the Botswana border we pushed further south than we had been — into a set of small rises we had never visited. It is beautiful country. The elephant sign there was heavy, but none of it was what we were after. Inside the rises there were stands of marula, the fruit ripe, the ground under them torn up where elephants and other game had been feeding.

Ripe marula fruit on the ground under a big tree — A stand of marula — the elephants are eating here

After lunch we turned northwest. A pair of young warthogs, a gemsbok cow and her calf, more warthogs, kudu cows, wildebeest, another single gemsbok. Every animal looked fat. It is the right end of the rains — the whole country is nourishing itself.

Gemsbok on the move in late afternoon, day 3 — The plains game, heavy-fed, moving through tall grass