20th April

It's actually 21st but there's too much for one day. On Wednesday I went tracking with Phale again. He had to see his bank first so he parked me at the Kalahari Arms, the only posh place in Ghanzi and I spent a very pleasant hour having coffee and muffins. Since finding out which animals are around here I've been studying a field guide and since tracking on the game farm I've been cramming for the Know Your Antelopes exam. I can now identify most of them on the page but when they're galloping away from you through 50m of dense bush it's another story (unless there's a white toilet seat on the rump). However I did spot and identify five black wildebeest as opposed to the blue (actually dark steel grey) from the day before. The black are slightly more upright have bigger horns and a stiff mane on the neck. We also saw two pairs of Gemsbok and two pairs of ostrich but much else.
I must be toughening up as a second day of lurching into aardvark burrows didn't faze me at all,  and boy did we lurch. Some of the traffic directions were a bit slow coming but in faith the tracks are sometimes so overgrown before you know it you're up to wheel arch in a burrow and trust me the wheel arch on a Toyota Hilux is DEEP. Talking of which virtually every 4x4  out here is a Toyota they've cleaned up. I happened to see a copy of the Botswana Guardian and there's a big hooha because the Botswana Democratic Party has ordered 63 specially adapted Toyota 4x4 at a cost of nearly £2m but won't reveal who has funded it. FYI I also learned that man bags have just made it to Botswana.
But I digress. Towards lunchtime we tracked some cheetah spoor a short distance to the other side of the pan we were at before and found scat on an old marking tree not thought to be in use so no camera in place. The trees they use are normally dead fallen trees so they are horizontal. Cheetahs have non retractable claws which makes their spoor distinct from any other predator and helps them climb on marking or look out trees but they can't haul themselves up into high branches like leopards. The claws also give them grip to reach their phenomenal speed but not in this area there are real open spaces. Anyway that was an interesting find and no doubt the PC World batteries will be doing their stuff there at some point. Losing two cameras in two days is a blow, they're at least £200 each and more if they are in a hyena proof steel case
In the afternoon we had to drive through several flooded pans and because he had wellies on Manga had to wade in to test the depth so Phale could see where to drive through. One pan was enormous and it was a bit hairy driving through but I had faith in Phale and respect for Toyota which is obviously the vehicle of choice in this harsh terrain. So another  very interesting day and three more to go..
More next time..