Back to Botswana

The next morning we got up, ate breakfast, and put our duffels on the boats for our last trip out from the camp. We stopped along the way to enjoy the hippos and other animals and then stopped at the border crossing tent to get ourselves checked back into Botswana from Namibia where the Caprivi strip camp was. We then continued on to the river bank where we stopped, got out, walked the path back to the airstrip and waited for our plane to arrive. The plane arrived with the next OAT group. They got off and were anxious to hear about the camp and what we had seen which was fun. We boarded the plane (the 12 passenger one again) and took off for the next camp. The plane flight was about 35 minutes this time. We got off the plane and got into our safari vehicles and the guides asked us what we wanted to see most. We said more lions and almost immediately, they took us to a pair of lions nearby. There was a big male and his lady and they were courting, so we got an up close and personal lesson on lion reproduction. The lion we had seen before was a female so it was really neat to see this beautiful male up close. The vehicles are able to pull right up amazingly close to the animals and as long as we are pretty quiet and don't stand or make sudden moves, they seem not to recognize us as any kind of threat or as any kind of meal. We continued and saw giraffes, a number of birds, tsessebe, an elephant, impala, wildebeast and a python on the way to the camp.

This camp was an OAT wilderness tented camp and we really did enjoy it. The tents and lodge were built up on boardwalks and that felt really safe, somehow. There was evidence all around of the elephants and other animals visits-the elephants eat the bark off a lot of trees and rub them and destroy a lot of the vegetation. There were some steenboks wandering around between the tents when we arrived. I had rather expected this camp to be more rustic than the others, but it really was not. We had to zip and unzip the tent to get in and out, but it was very open and spacious and well designed. We could lie in bed and look out over the savannah and see the animals as they grazed. One afternoon there was a pretty terrific thunderstorm and rain and it was dry and beautiful inside the tent, despite the winds and rain. Before the storm, it was so hot we were just resting and sweating. The rain came and it cooled things off and it was just delightful. After the storm, we went on a later afternoon safari and saw several new things. We saw an African wild cat, a giant eagle owl, two types of mongoose (or is it mongeese?) a rabbit, and a tree monitor. At night the bell frogs at all these camps sang to us. They make a weird clinking sound. I heard a lion nearby one night and the guide confirmed that he heard one and saw the prints out nearby-he was stalking some cape buffalo that were grazing not far out.

the next day we divided into our 2 groups and our group went for a mokoro ride. It is a dugout canoe and the guide poles us through the water. You have to sit very still and not make sudden moves or you will tip over and with the crocs and hippos in the water, we definitely didn't want to do that. It was interesting to see things from so low in the water. We saw some the eggs of the Jesus bird (he walks on water, really the lilypads). The eggs were lying on the lily pads and were well hidden and neat. It was a very peaceful journey and we had our tea and cookes on the bank near a big pod of hippos. They were not too happy about being so close and it definitely felt closer than even in the boats from Lianshulu! But it was fun to stand around close to them and watch. The other group went on a safari while we did this and the next day, they did the mokoro and we did the safari. Jim's hat had blown off during one of the boat journeys at Lianshulu so he bought an OAT hat at the small gift shop at the camp. It became a joke to keep up with Jim's hat. But with the sun, he really needed one. It is easy to get burned even though there was a canvas top to the safari vehicle. We went for an evening drive and saw a pride of lions. There were two females who the guide said were sisters and they were raising the cubs of one of the females. The cubs were good sized now so were not small babies. There were 4 of the cubs and two of those were males. We sat and watched them for a good long time. We saw warthogs, impala, zebras,kudu, red leche, cape buffalo, a kori bustard which is the largest flying bird, a big group of giraffes among other things. On the way back to the lodge, we got a call that another vehicle had gotten stuck down near the water. So we went to help them. It was a research person from near Boston and his two associates who were studying leopards...but they had just gotten there so were not any help in pointing us to where some might be hiding! But we had to get out of the vehicle, which was a bit disconcerting at night when we could not see much of what was around us! After a bit, they were able to unmire the other vehicle and we climbed back in for the drive back to camp. On the way we saw a painted hyena as well as a spring hare. It was a fun adventure.