Safari: Nxamaseri Day 2
Today was our full day at Nxamaseri, and we took off early to drive to Tsodilo Hills. We had another couple with us for the drive. It was about an hour and a half drive – in the states it probably would have been less than an hour, but the roads we were taking were mostly dirt. I think we had about 10km on a paved road, but those are rare in Botswana.
When we arrived at the site, we split up from the other couple, each of us with an additional guide from the site itself, along with our Nxamaseri Camp guide. They took one look at my booted foot, and decided that Andrew and I should take the easier trail. Unfortunately that meant we didn’t get to see as much, but I understood the decision. Even at that, there was one cave that I couldn’t go into – or rather, I probably could have gotten in, but I wasn’t confident I could get out again.
We took a path along the base of one of the hills – the Mother. Along the way, our guide would stop at various tableaus to show us the paintings. The paintings weren’t exactly dense anywhere that we looked, but they were quite different from the ones I’ve seen in the Southwest. Rather than horses and desert animals, these paintings featured giraffes, rhinos, buffalo (okay, there might have been those in the Southwest), and antelope.
In one place, there was even a whale and penguin. The hypothesis is that a traveler came through and wanted to share what they had seen at the coast.
The final paintings we saw were the rhinos. Sadly, these were the only rhinos we got to see on our trip.
Tsodilo Hills was well worth the trip. If we ever go again, I’ll try to have a healthy foot, and insist that we do one of the other trails. And there were many trails.
We opted out of the evening boat trip in favor of just relaxing in the lodge on our last night in Botswana. I knew I would miss Botswana – our whole trip was so amazing that I knew that safari would lodge itself in my blood. I hope we get to go back someday.
