Bobby Dazzler and his Delta of Dreams

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Money we’ve spent on ‘solo-operator’ guides has, without exception, been a really rewarding investment with returns of insights and access we just wouldn’t have got otherwise including meeting a lot of good and interesting blokes (doesn’t appear to be a business for the ladies). Basic rule is to go as local and as small as possible - made a golden rule after a visit to the Chu Chi Tunnels in Vietnam (where entire villages outside Saigon lived, fought and whopped the Americans from a 250km three storey network of tunnels) with a coach load of tourists. Unfortunately it was a cheap experience in every sense!

Some of our local legends include; Kai, who we ended up celebrating Hmong New Year with; Seum, who took us on a spontaneous three day jungle hike staying in remote rural villages; David, who took us on an óff-limits’ back street walking tour in Calcutta before dropping us at a friends because we said we wanted to learn how to cook curries West Bengal style; Edgar, and the days we spent canoeing in an Amazon flooded rainforest… apparently you just need to know whether you are up or down stream and where the sun is! However, top of the list has to be Daryl and our road trip/safari experience in Botswana.

Options were 1) hire a 4x4 - v. expensive and not so easy for the Kalahari Desert, you need spares of everything, 20l of water and an extra weeks worth of food plus a spade to dig yourself out of the sand. 2) Catch local transport - even on the routes between main towns, buses ran once or maybe twice a week. 3) Join an overland tour - huge converted lorries, which are stuffed full of tourists who seem to think that the whole of the continent, not just the national game parks, is a safari and spend their time literally looking down at people out of the windows and taking photos. No thanks.

Option 4) was Daryl, a top bloke that we meet when he took us down to the Apartheid museum in Johannesburg and then drank half a dozen beers with us afterwards as we discussed modern Africa. He was living and working in South Africa after being driven off his family farm in Zimbabwe in/around 2000 (certainly didn’t help matters that his family name is Smith) and our first impression was that he was clearly a bit of a nutter (a very nice nutter!) with a huge lust for life and his home - Africa. What we later learned and benefited hugely from was from his endless love and knowledge of animals (being a hunter turned conservationist meant he wasn’t bad at tracking and spotting them too). Long story short is that having stayed in contact with Daryl while we worked at the two township focused charities, because he actively supported a couple of his own, we sorted an eight day road trip through Botswana with him as our guide and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, as our steed. We got lucky as for Daryl this was going to be his last trip for the foreseeable as the Bots Government had decided to ramp up the permit costs ahead of 2010, which is fine for the big overseas operators but not the local independents… which is the typical and sh8tty way of the world.

Anyhow, we set off from Sabie in SA where Hel and I had hiked the Fanie Botha trail through the North Drakkensburg Mountains as a last bit of prep for Kili, with plans to hit the Okavango Delta and Chobe National Parks camping along the way. It was an incredible eight days and here are various highlights in top fives;

Note on Okavango Delta. It is the largest inland delta in the world which annually floods the Northern region of the Kalahari Desert in Botswana when the rivers drain out from Angola. The result is that the event is on the migration circuit of hundreds of thousands of animals in Southern Africa who roam on and between the islands that are created and enjoy the bounties that plentiful water produces. For me it has also been near the very top of the list of places I wanted us to visit this year. Our timing deliberately coincided with peak flooding and we planned to go in via makoro’s (canoes) using local polers as guides and to explore -hopefully to get up close and personal with the animals - on foot. It is also the only place in Africa where you can truly wild camp amongst the Big Five.



Animal Action Top Five

1. Invisible hunt - for the second morning in the Delta we got up before sunrise to try to track and catch up with a local herd of buffalo. During the night we had been woken at times to sound of hyenas, which usually means lions are about, a fact that was confirmed when I came back from a wee in the wild with a startled expression. Yes we had all unmistakably heard an extremely close lion! An hour later we sat a little despondently as we had just missed the buffalo, which had gone past some bush and through to a flooded meadow we couldn’t access. But the next thirty minutes were absolutely electric as we listened to a just-out-of-sight lion hunt. The sensation of intently straining to hear the next move as the lions communicated to each other while driving and confusing the herd back and forth across the flooded plain was just incredible and I know we were treated to a once in a lifetime experience

2&3. Both with elephants. No.1 was also our first animal encounter in Okavango Delta, at dusk at the end of the first day as we were collecting fire wood just 20m from campsite. The second was the following morning, again just behind the tents but in the opposite direction, On both occasions both us and the elephants froze and while they worked out that we were far enough away and not a threat, I stood in awe with my heart in my mouth. It really is a different perspective on foot!

4. A journey (best ever collective noun?) of giraffes stretching out in front of us, enjoying the morning warmth and lush leaves of the Delta

5. Elephants again. This time on a river cruise in Chobe when four young bull elephants decided to swim out in front of the cameras before the two youngest stayed to play fight in the water. Picture postcard stuff!

But that's not it...


Did You Know? Top Five Animal Facts:

1. A giraffe has a sponge above its brain that allows it to stand quickly from drinking without getting a head rush that would give predators an extra couple of seconds, however the Lions in Kruger will chase them onto the tarmac as they can’t run on roads

2. The hardest animal in the African bush is the Honey Badger (also known as the Ratel, a name borrowed by the SA army for their toughest vehicle). Elephants, lions all give them a wide birth as they will attack first. Amongst the best facts; it has loose skin that means you happily can drive over them in a tractor over - not sure how Daryl knew this! Cheetah cubs have evolved to be born with a white stripe so look like a honey badger… and when a Honey Badge attacks it goes for the balls, every time!

3. No such thing as an elephant grave yard. As they get old and on to their last of eight sets of teeth they can only eat certain select soft vegetation, which is why a lot die in the same place

4. All termite mounds face due North (except for those under shady trees) because the spittle nearest the sun dries fastest. Useful to anyone lost in the bush, except Prime
Meridian who’s already on it!

5. A genuine-you-won’t-find-it-in-a-book fact from the Daryl ‘Look, listen and learn in Africa’ school; a crowned plover that nests on the ground is able to scare aware potentially egg trampling elephants by putting its black head down and charging so it looks like the black open mouth of the (Black) Mamba!


There's more...

Top Five Is Daryl Actually Gerald Durrell?

1. Washing a bath and then sowing up with fishing wire the guts of his dog Buster, spilt by the swiping claw of a blue-balled (dayglo) Vevet monkey

2. Aged 12 carrying out a kitchen table autopsy on Ossie his pet Ostrich who died after eating a battery

3&4. . Going school everyday with a pet crow (Dimmy) on the handlebars of his bike and a bushbaby in his shirt pocket

5. Warthog as a pet that thought it was a dog


Still coming...

Top Five Moments on the Road: (it was a road trip!)

1. Speeding… the first we just felt sorry for the policeman after he let it be known that he’d clocked us at 64kph in a 60 zone… it only took five mins of Daryl storytelling before we left without paying a bribe or fine. Second time was a little trickier as we were clocked at over 90 in a 60 coming into Chobe. Twenty mins of Daryl’s chat didn’t work so the situation was resolved by Daryl claiming he had no cash and promising to report to the police station the next day to make the payment and us then spending the next two days dodging the police around town before leaving!

2. Flying through the air after emergency manoeuvre that launched us up and over a sand bank to avoid an oncoming truck

3. Helen’s face when Daryl asked her to quickly hide the fish we wanted to bbq that night under her seat as the police approached for a vehicle inspection at the border crossing

4. All of our faces when a car of dodgy drunkards pulled up behind us and got out in a remote lay-by and we thought we might be car-jacked

5. Daryl’s face as he launched into a hilarious tirade (while driving) about Bear Grylls and an episode of survival in the Kalahari we asked whether he’d seen. For the record; You’d never sleep under ‘that’ tree as it has a tick that lives in it just to drop on to the animals that sleep under its inviting shady canopy. The tree does however have really good deep water retentive roots which Bear missed while he irresponsibly starting a fire under a huge nest complex of the social weaver bird - which, by the way, you wouldn’t sleep under as the nest are always also home to a species of cobra… and as everyone knows, the nests always face North towards the sun so Bear should easily know which direction to head out of the desert from… Genius!


Just unstoppable...

As you might have guessed, Daryl always had something to say which made for some lively and interesting conversations. “Where’s my spade?” was a classic just after we set up our wild camp, home for the next three days, after travelling all morning by makoro into the Delta. This is after we listened to Daryl telling us non stop for the previous 24hrs how we need to be prepared and take everything into the Delta… no spade and so the toilet is dug out by hand. Very Bear Grylls!!!

Top Five Botswana Road Trip Phrases:

“Like a monkey with a snake” (monkeys aren’t fans and go nuts shaking snakes). Best used when Mohale our local guide and poler in the Delta used an entire roll of tin foil to wrap a potato to go into the fire

“It’s easy in Africa” & ”It’s hard in Africa”, which is basically Africa all over

“No worries, we’ll make a plan”. Which for Hel and I seems to have stuck, in a good way!

“Öne for the swinging gate” - last beer of the night, if you’re a farmer from Zim and have a long dark road home!


Ok, stoppable - I promise. The guy was a legend and the trip through Botswana was one of the best weeks of the year… because of the incredible wildlife we saw but also the different side to Africa and just having a good laugh. If you’re headed that way, google Daryl Smith, guide, Africa!

P.S.to put my man-love into context we had just spent a month working in female only charities!

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