Updates

Botswana 

New guest amenities at Sanctuary Lodges & Camps.  Being based in Africa Sanctuary Lodges & Camps have changed their product line to a local and indigenous product. Beautiful Earth Essentials is a small family run company based on the beautiful slopes of Simonskloof in Simonstown, Cape Town, which specializes in hand-made aromatherapy products. These products are created by a registered, qualified aroma therapist as well as a cosmetic chemist. Beautiful Earth Essentials pride themselves on the quality of their products and make up batches in small quantities to ensure that the standard is maintained. No synthetic fragrances are used, fragrances are created purely from 100% therapeutic grade essential oils and base oils and they use organic or wild crafted organic where possible. In line with their current recycling practices, products are bought in bulk and decanted into 300ml PET plastic dispensing bottles, which is a recyclable plastic, allowing Sanctuary to minimize on disposing of additional packaging. 

 

The Pangolin with a Pangolin at Khwai River Lodge.  On an eventful afternoon game drive guests from Khwai River Lodge had the privilege of a very rare – and possibly once-in-a-lifetime – sighting of what is called in the local language, a Kgaga (Pangolin). This is a secretive animal that is a very popular character in African folklore and thought to be a purveyor of magic and charms.  The Camp Environmentalist Kgaga was obviously very taken back by this sighting as his name and family name is Kgaga Kgaga, literally translated as Pangolin Pangolin and this is the very first time in the history of Kgaga’s family, that one of its members has sighted one of these armored creatures!  The guests were in the Khwai concession area at the time and so had the opportunity to view the Pangolin “up close and personal” and were even able to touch its robust scales under Kgaga’s supervision, as the Pangolin has some defense mechanisms of its own - the cutting action of their armor-plated scales. These scales are worked by powerful muscles and are capable of inflicting very serious injury to anything caught between them. The Pangolin also has a great defense mechanism, emitting a strong, foul smelling secretion and word has it that you don’t want to get in the way of that one. They also have the ability to roll themselves up into a ball whenever they feel threatened. According to the Camp Environmentalist, this particular individual was actually very interested in the interaction, it followed the guests around, it didn’t drop any ‘bombs’ and actually flicked out its 25cm long tongue on the odd occasion. This looooong tongue gets retracted back into a sheath deep down in the chest cavity. Large salivary glands coat this long tongue with gummy mucus to which ants and termites stick, ants and termites being their stable diet.