We had an all-day travel day, covering several kinds of transportation: an hour in the bus to the airport, an hour in a small plane over Chobe National Park to land in Khwai private airstrip; an hour in the jeep to our lunch stop in a lovely shaded area under large trees on a river bank.
After a delicious lunch looking out over the water, we spent an hour in makoro canoes. Each canoe had a “poler” which was a good thing because the boats were very tippy. Our poler, Titi, pointed out the different types of lily pads and their uses, as well as birds, reed frogs and snails and other interesting facts about the river and his own life. He also made lily pad necklaces for us, which were beautiful and smelled delicious.
We then had another 2 hours in the jeeps on very sandy, bumpy roads. That trip ended in an off-road adventure leading to a leopard cub in a tree. The cub was spotted because an impala was standing still looking towards it and making huffing alert noises. After the cub descended from the tree and ran away, we drove around for a while looking for the mother. Eventually we found the momma leopard and another cub. We enjoyed watching them for a long time. So much fun.
We arrived in our “Eco” camp and got settled in our lovely tent on the Mababe River. We had a peaceful night listening to hippos and water buffalos in the river outside our tent flaps.
We started out the next morning in the jeeps to explore the Okavango Delta. This area is quite different than other areas we have been in because it is very green. Our first adventure was following a pride of nine lions, mostly females and cubs. We enjoyed watching them move about and taking an inordinate number of pictures.
Next, we went to a waterhole and sat for half an hour spotting many many many different birds and water bucks, elephants, and Impala all enjoying the beautiful morning. The Okavango Delta has hundreds of small water holes where animals and birds drink and sometimes relax.
After tea in the bush, we returned to camp and our regular lunch and siesta- when we cover ourselves with wet cloths to endure the suffocating heat from 12:30 to 3:30.
Towards the end of our siesta, we had a little bit of excitement when Marie who was in a neighboring tent, had a African spitting cobra come into her tent. We were alerted by a scream, and Cheryl went to get help to remove the snake from her dwelling. There were a lot of stories to tell about that incident.
In the afternoon, we had a fascinating presentation about the Okavango Delta - how it was formed and how the human and animal life relate in parks in East Africa. It really helped us to understand this unique environment, which is a river delta entirely situated within the Kalahari desert.
Afterwards we went out for another game drive looking for more adventure. We soon found ourselves in the midst of many families of elephants. We spent about half an hour completely surrounded by elephants of all sizes coming up from their evening bath in the river. There were numerous groups with large bulls, females with young of all sizes, led by a matriarch who at one point trumpeted her annoyance with us for following them around. It was amazing to see how many incredibly cute baby elephants and other animal life are supported by this environment.
In the evening after dinner, Noss gave us a really interesting and personally powerful story about HIV and AIDS and South Africa and her family‘s own experience with some of the crippling myths and traditional beliefs, still evident in this part of the world. Our Tour Leader has consistently done an incredible job of bringing her own life experience to us in a way that absorbable and meaningful. We feel really fortunate to have had such a caring and dynamic leader to share her life with us on this trip.
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