Day7 - Botswana at Chobe

---

We got to sleep in a bit today as our first game drive wasn’t until 8:30. We headed out with our driver, Tito, into the 11,000 Kilometer square park where we drive parallel to the river. It was a relatively slow game drive but we still saw lots of elephants, impala, kudu, various birds, some giraffe in the distance, warthogs and baboon.

After the drive we relaxed in our room until lunch time. Following lunch, we did a massive repack. Tomorrow we catch a bush plane out to Rra Dinare, our stop on the Okavango delta. We can only take a maximum weight of 44kg and bags have to be smaller than a particular size so we are going to have to ship one by courier to our next stop. This is apparently something that they do all the time - but it meant we had to repack our things to consolidate bags. We managed to do this without arguing - at least not much.

Mid-afternoon we headed out to our next game drive. It was a bit more active as we were able to get up close to a pod of hippo - maybe 30 feet away. We also had some close encounters with elephants and giraffe. We also saw a group of mongoose up close. Lots of baboons, impala, kudu, birds, and monkeys.

When we got back to the room, the power was out so we sat on the porch and watched full darkness come in. It’s 4 months to the federal election and the parties drive around blasting music and political messages all day which added an interesting note to the atmosphere.

We’ve just had dinner and are settling in for an early night. We have our final game drive at 6:30 am tomorrow before we pack up and head out.

IMPORTANT: we don’t know if the next place we’re staying has internet. It does not have cell phone coverage. If no internet, we’ll be offline until we get to Cape Town on Wednesday, June 19 so won’t be able to post an update.

---

Photos

The dogs
The owner has 3 Irish wolfhounds, a fat jack Russell terrier and a cocker spaniel that all cam to see us. The German Shepard is owner by the assistant manager and is diligently hunting for the flies that show up on poo.

young elephant
The elephant got all feisty with us and nick charged the Jeep and trumpeted at us.