Botswana

Pictures: sunset boat cruise on the Thebe River between Namibia and Botswana. Elephants in the background! I kept singing "I'm on a Boat" from SNL...no one knew it and thought that I was crazy. Oh well. Also, bench pressing an elephant bone! The awesome cheetah picture is below this post.

The last week has been my favorite of the trip so far. We took ride a 3 ½ hour mokoro ride (picture a canoe carved out of a tree) into the Okavango Delta. The mokoro boats are made from the African Sausage Tree. Gerad/Bridget/James, if you recall, we saw one of those trees at Jungle Island. The ride was so peaceful on the Delta. Each boat had its own poler, so all we had to do was relax, watch the world go by and avoid eating too many bugs.

We were literally miles away from anyone in the Delta. Just the wilderness and us. We went on over 8 hours of bush walks around the Delta. We were hiking through bush as tall as and taller than most of us… no trails! We saw elephants, lots of baboons, zebra, wildebeest and hippos. I swam in the Delta, but I didn’t stay in long because of the crocs and hippos in the area! I also tried my hands at poling the mokoro. Thank goodness I’ve got okay balance or else I certainly would have flipped it!

The last evening spent on the Delta will probably go down as one of the most memorable nights from my time in Africa. The African guides and polers who were with us wanted to perform some local music for us. They ended up singing and dancing for at least a half hour…some of the coolest acoustic music I’ve ever heard. Then, they asked each country represented on the trek to perform for them. Of course the other 4 Americans nominated me to choose what we would perform (their mistake!). So, when it was the USA’s turn, I had the 2 guys shaking their rump and the other 2 girls and I rapped ‘Baby Got Back’ as loud as we could. I was laughing so hard that I cried! We all danced, sang and laughed for hours. It was great to have so much fun with no electricity, no cable…nothing but a campfire under the stars.

Chobe National Park, along the Thebe River, was definitely the best game viewing so far. Lots of carnage: a recently dead water buffalo being eaten by several crocs, a jackal devouring a recently killed impala and vultures picking at another deceased water buffalo. Let’s get it on: baboons join the list of animals that I’ve witnessed mating! Baboons are very promiscuous.

There are over 120,000 elephants in Chobe, and we saw at least several hundred of them. At some points during the game drive, they were no more than 10’ from our open air truck. The definite highlight of the trip was watching 2 lionesses and their 3 lion cubs playing in a grassy plain. We heard a warthog nearby and then watched as the two lionesses started stalking the warthog. They divided into two different bush patches – one chased the warthog towards the other. Unfortunately, they didn’t make the kill…but it was awesome to watch it all transpire. They ended up walking right past the truck, no more than 5’ away! It was crazy to be so close to them!

We camped overnight in the park. Trine and I stayed up later than anyone else chatting around the campfire. We could hear elephants ripping down tree branches nearby, watched two honey badgers devouring our leftover food in the cook’s area of the camp and saw stars shooting around the Milky Way (star gazing is incredibly here!). Then, a lion roared very close to our camp. We screamed and ran like hell into our tents!

We made it into Victoria Falls on the Zimbabwe side yesterday. I’ve already purchased one hundred trillion, fifty trillion, ten trillion and twenty billion Zimbabwe dollars. They’re worthless, but it’s cool that I have a fifty trillion dollar note! This afternoon I’m doing the ‘adrenaline’ package. Just down from Vic Falls, I’ll be repelling down the gorge, jumping into the gorge, swinging into the gorge, zip lining across the gorge and something else that I can’t remember but it sounds cool! I hope we get helmets. I’ve booked a spa package for Sunday – an hour massage, hour facial and mani/pedi for $45. You have no idea how dirty you can get by camping in the bush. Monday we head into Zambia where I’m doing a micro light flight over Victoria Falls.

Medical update: had some kind of crazy reaction to either a plant or insect. Not sure what it was, but I basically thought I would have to amputate my toe for about a 24 hour period. It was really swollen, red and I couldn’t walk. It’s much better now. Probably picked it up in the bush during one of our roadside restroom breaks!

Lenna, congrats on the Dean position! That is awesome! Candi, sorry to hear about Misty. I named one the baboons in her honor. Internet access will become more difficult as we move farther north and east. I’ll do my best to update when I have the opportunity! That’s all for now from Zimbabwe! (Just in case you’re curious, I wrote all of this in Word on the truck on someone’s laptop and then just copied and pasted – don’t want to waste all my time in an internet café!)