Heffalumps

Here we go again, back to the narrative and Botswana. Our first stop was at the Thebe River Safari Camp, which is just outside Kasane, which is just over the border. So there wasn't far at all to drive before setting up for the evening, which was lucky as, as has already been noted, we were running late for obvious reasons. Unfortunately, this meant making camp in the dark again, but I'd been at this log enough by then that it wasn't really an issue. The evening was pretty muted, as a few of us went to the bar and watched the latest news from London on the TV. Then it was off to bed for an early night, ahead of a dawn safari drive in the nearby Chobe National Park.

Now, we did a few game drives in the course of my trip with Acacia, and quite a few of them were dawn ones (dawn and dusk being the best times to see animals, and often the best light for photos as well). But I don't think we ever did one that was anything like the anticlimax of that Chobe one. We saw a few hippos at a distance, a hyena, several of the ominpresent antelopes (I'm pretty certain there was an impala among them), and one elephant. Which is both pretty pathetic for several hours driving in the freezing cold (the nights in Botswana actually made it feel like winter in Africa), and astonishing given that Chobe is near-enough infested with elephants - there's apparently something like 15 or 16 per square km, as part of one of the biggest elephant populations in the world. The one we did see was pretty good value, though, as it was an old bull elephant who was "in musk" - basically, we had stumbled upon a horny grandpa heffalump! Valdy had informed us that you never forget the smell of an elephant in musk, and he wasn't wrong - it's not particularly easy to describe, but it's very distinctive! It almost got a little hairy, though, when our pachyderm pal decided to wander forward and challenge the land cruiser next to our truck (it promptly got out of the way, and he ambled off into the bushes). So that enlivened things a little bit near the end, but it was generally agreed that this was a bit of a damp squib.

Back at the camp, we had a bit of down-time, and people could just catch up on their diaries or do their washing or whatever, while lunch was prepared and we waited around for the afternoon's scheduled sunset cruise (this time, NOT a booze cruise!). One good precedent was set when we got a couple of the balls (a football and Scott's Aussie Rules football) out of the truck and a few of us had a bit of a kickabout - thenceforward, the balls would come out at almost every stop (including our frequent stops at the side of the road for people to water the bushes), which probably saved me from getting even more unfit in the course of the trip than I already would have.

After a quiet afternoon, we were taken back down to the Chobe River (which forms the northern border of the park, as well as the border between Botswana and Namibia at that point) and loaded onto our boat for the afternoon's cruise. We were quite glad to have gotten there moderately early, as we managed to bag some seats - in the end, there were several other groups on there as well, and it was pretty cosy. A few of us were indulging in quiet sundowners, though most people were happy to leave this at the stage of a beer or two rather than anything too exotic (there were plenty of dodgy memories of what happens from mixing alcohol and boats to go around). And the cruise more than made up for the morning's disappointments - plenty of elephants, bunch of hippos, whole load of antelope (including Kudu, which we hadn't seen many of yet), and we saw it all from so close up. This is the joys of these river cruises, which use shallow-draft catamarans to get in really close to the wildlife, most of which is now habituated to having humans nearby. Combined with a gorgeous sunset, this was a really nice end to the day.

Back at the camp, it was potje (POY-key) for dinner - can't remember if I explained about it before, but this is a South African speciaility, a stew cooked in a cast-iron pot over the fire. If you get the chance, do try it, as it's reeeeally nice. After that, I took advantage of having a campsite with power, and backed up another load of my photos using Paul's laptop (having a guide with a laptop he is ready to lend you has to be one of the most best things you can have on one of these trips - saves a fortune on getting it done at camera shops, and is often more reliable given some of the experiences people had, especially in Tanzania). Again, though, it was a relatively early night, as we had another early start and another long drive the next day, as we headed down across Botswana to Maun, the gateway town for the Okavango Delta. That, though, will have to wait for the next instalment, as I've already burned up a lot of time and money online today (damn MSN Messenger...)

Take care and have fun y'all,

Pat