Northern Botswana, A Cornucopia of Wildlife

Upington, South Africa, October 9^th

We have been lingering here in Upington for a few days now as our first loop around Southern Africa nears its end next week.  I probably should have written more blog posts, but there always seems to be something else that needs doing.  We only left Botswana a week ago, and we already miss it.  It was such an amazing country to travel through that I think I will split the blog post about it into two or three bite-sized chunks, rather than one huge War and Peace-style omnibus edition.

Chobe, the greatest collection of elephants in Africa

Entering Botswana from Zambia on Friday, September 2^nd was like moving between two separate worlds.  On the Zambian side, all is chaos and unpleasant touts and hassle.  Once on the ferry, peace returns and the Botswanan side of the border is quiet and orderly and efficient.  It took very little time (and much, much less money than was the case in Zambia) for us to pay for our Temporary Import Permit and third-party car insurance.  A quick shopping stop in downtown Kasane and we were settling into our campsite just outside town, Kwalape Lodge. 

It's heartening to see lots of baby elephants in Chobe

We had heard horror stories about how hard it was to get camping reservations in Botswanan national parks, and how we wouldn’t be allowed into the parks without reservations.  We had ended up paying quite a lot of money for camping reservations for 9 days around Chobe National Park and Moremi Game Reserve, with the plan being that we would drive the sandy track linking the two.  The plan was to spend 4 nights camped on the Chobe River in a couple of campsites not far outside the national park boundaries, then have a long, hard day of driving to get to Moremi Game Reserve, where again we would camp just outside and do day trips into the reserve.  It was kind of a goofy itinerary, dictated by the impossibility of getting camping reservations at the key stopover campsite of Savuti, or indeed at any public campsite in Chobe or Moremi.

Kudu buck running beside the Chobe River

The trip started out well, with a day spent driving through the Riverfront sector of Chobe National Park, where we had spent a memorable 24 hours back in March along with a party of Japanese high school students on a humanitarian service trip at the Olive Tree Learning Centre in Livingstone.  Chobe is, to my mind, the single most impressive collection of big game in all of Africa.  The banks of the Chobe River, a tributary of the Zambezi, are thick with huge herds of game:  red lechwe, impala, zebras, buffalo, kudu, waterbucks and, especially, elephants in prodigious numbers.  Plenty of predators stalk this food supply, and the birdlife is awesome.  We were looking forward to a repeat performance this time around.

Giraffes just don't look graceful bending over to graze!

We left our campsite by 8:15 and by 9:15 we had entered Chobe, having paid for 5 days’ entry.  All we had heard about not being allowed into the park without accommodation vouchers proved to be inaccurate; the national park folks weren’t at all fussed about where we were staying, and were very welcoming to day visitors.  We turned down towards the river, then proceeded through huge numbers of elephants, along with big herds of giraffes, impala and zebra.  There was even a big herd of sable antelope, the species which we had searched for in vain in Kasanka (northern Zambia) a month before.  The landscape had changed; it hadn’t rained for five months, and the bush was tinder dry away from the river.  Almost all the animals in the park seemed to be out on the riverbank, grazing on the grass and drinking the water.

Sable antelope at last!

The birdlife was certainly less numerous than it had been in March, when thousands of migratory birds were present, but there were still lots and lots of species, particularly waders, egrets and herons.  There were pink-backed and great white pelicans (both new for us), several types of storks, spur-winged and Egyptian geese, red-billed teal, spoonbills, African and lesser jacanas (the latter a new species for us) and many more.  As always, there were so many species, and so many individual animals, that it felt like trying to drink from a firehose.  We spotted three well-fed lions lying comatose under a tree, with four other game drive vehicles clustered around; sleeping lions are not the most interesting of subjects, so we soon gave up and headed further along the river.

Roan antelope out for a jog, Chobe

Towards early afternoon, after hours of happy photographing and bird-spotting, we finally reached the far western end of the Riverfront sector and turned inland on a very sandy track to do the last 5 km back to the paved road.  It was much, much sandier than anywhere else we had gone, so it wasn’t surprising that we got ourselves thoroughly stuck in the sand, especially as we hadn’t let as much air out of our tires as we should have.  What was surprising, and a bit alarming, was that when Terri put Stanley into low-range four-wheel drive, nothing happened:  the wheels didn’t get any power at all, and we just sat there with the engine revving.  To make it even more alarming, ominous squeaking and grinding noises came from the gears.  We put it in high-range four-wheel drive and I started digging, but before we could get ourselves out, a game drive vehicle came from the other direction and very kindly offered to pull us out.  We pulled out our towing strap, and within a couple of minutes, we were free.  Terri drove very carefully up to the gate and the pavement, and we crawled the 18 km to Mwandi View, a beautiful little campsite on the banks of the Chobe River run by a personable South African named Anton. 

An impala utterly unfazed by our presence

Mwandi View was really a lovely place to stay, with abundant birdlife and sweeping views over the river into Namibia; sunset was spectacular, not just because of the great coppery flames of colour reflected on the river, but also because of the astronomical numbers of quelea birds flying back to their roosts for an hour around dusk.  Silhouetted against the red sky and the sun’s elongated disk, they darkened the sky in a continuous dense undulating stream, hundreds passing every second.  It was one of the most awe-inspiring sights of a trip that has been big on awe.  Queleas, a little finch, are the most numerous wild bird species on earth (with about 7 billion individuals, only domestic chickens live in greater numbers) and we had seen them before, but never in such prodigious profusion.  We sat there watching the sky slowly fade to black with a crescent moon near to Venus, and Jupiter closer to the horizon.  It was a place of sublime natural beauty, and it was hard to tear ourselves away to eat dinner.

Quelea darkening the sky at Mwandi View

The next day we were up early, breakfasting quickly on coffee, tea and rusks (the South African standby quick breakfast) and driving back towards the park by 7:10.  By 7:30 we were in the park, with Terri successfully navigating the sands that got us stuck the day before.  We kept Stanley in high-range 4WD and it seemed to work fine, especially with the tires further deflated to just over 1.0 bar of pressure.  There were no predators to be seen, but there was a huge herd of buffalo enveloped in a cloud of dust, a big herd of roan antelope, and a big male sable antelope looking majestic with his long, curving horns silhouetted against the sky.  

Buffalo herd in Chobe

Kudu and waterbuck mingled with impala and lechwe on the river plains.  There were lots of southern carmine bee-eaters, one of my favourite bird species with its brilliant red colours, and a few little bee-eaters with blue and green in place of red.  There were lots of fish eagles patrolling over the river, and little sandpipers along the banks.  Finally at 9:45 we stopped at a hilltop lookout to cook up a more substantial brunch of bacon, eggs, toast and fried tomatoes, looking out over huge herds of zebras below.  Commercial safari vehicles stopped by with their passengers, many of them paying many hundreds of dollars a day, and some of the passengers cast covetous eyes on our fry-up as they had tea and cookies. 

Terri and Stanley at our hilltop breakfast site

Replete, we headed back out in search of animals, heading away from the river to explore some inland routes.  It really wasn’t worth the effort, as the tinder-dry bush was bereft of game except for a handful of elephants. As we bumped downhill back towards the river, a new sound began underneath Stanley, a grinding, clashing, squeaking noise that we couldn’t locate.  It sounded like a broken bearing in one of the front wheels.  Lots of Terri driving slowly while I walked along listening and looking didn’t show definitively what was wrong, so we gave up, watched giraffe and roan antelope for a while, then drove cautiously back through the sands to the gate and on to Mwandi View, worried about what was wrong with Stanley.  At higher speeds, the noise went away, but as soon as we slowed down or turned sharply, it returned.  We saw another magnificent male sable crossing the road close to Mwandi View:  what an imposing creature!

The deep sandy track that injured Stanley

Back at Mwandi View, we took counsel from Anton and from some of our fellow campers as to what might be going on.  The consensus was that we might had gravel stuck in a brake pad making the squeaking noise, but that something more dire might be going on in 4WD low-range.  We called Ken Webster, a mechanic in Kasane, who said that he was going to be in the area the next day and could come check out whether it was safe for us to keep driving.  We had another breath-taking sunset and quelea display, then barbecued our steaks at Anton’s excellent riverside braai setup under the stars while Anton regaled us with tales that had us in stitches.  We went to bed in a jovial mood but worried what Ken Webster might find the next morning.

Quelea silhouetted against a Mwandi View sunset

It took Ken quite a while to deal with the other vehicle that he had come to rescue just up the river, and we sat at Mwandi View looking out over the river, walking along to do some bird (and hippo) watching, and sorting through the hundreds of photos from the previous two days.  When Ken finally arrived, he had a look and a listen, and diagnosed that even in high range, our four-wheel drive wasn’t working at all, and that the squeaking noise was probably coming from the gear box and transfer case.  We arranged to drop the car off at his garage in Kazangula the next morning, and drove off to our new campsite, a few kilometres up the river at Muchenje.  Muchenje proved to be another good-value well-run campsite, although the views over the Chobe River weren’t as perfect as at Mwandi.  We decided not to go game driving, and spent the afternoon relaxing in camp, watching birds and chatting with our neighbours, a German couple whom we had met on the Kazungula ferry three days earlier.  They told us about once discovering that there was no oil in their transfer case after having work done on it in a garage in Zambia.  We listened and thought something like “luckily nothing like that would happen to us!”.  Terri and I spent some time on the internet trying to research what might be ailing a Mitsubishi Colt, but it was a slow, intermittent connection and we didn’t learn much for the investment of a couple of hours.  I made a beef curry for supper, then we sat and watched another great sunset and another flight of queleas before playing guitar and packing up for an early-morning departure.

Buffalo crossing the road in a cloud of dust, Chobe

Tuesday, September 6^th was a long day but a good day.  We were awake by 6 and packed up and driving by 7, taking the paved transit road through the park straight to Kasane, arriving at Ken Webster’s garage by 8:15, even before he had arrived.  We dropped Stanley off to be investigated, took out our folding bikes and rode the 9 km back into Kasane to make use of our day without a car to do a boat trip on the Chobe River.  We used Kalahari Tours, the outfit that Terri has used for a decade for her student trips, and since we already had park permits for the day, it only cost about US$ 14 per person, a tremendous deal. 

African skimmer in flight

The boat trip was as fantastic as we had hoped.  Although the bird life wasn’t as overwhelming as it had been back in March, there were still lots and lots of species, including the African skimmer, a very pretty, fairly rare and (for us) new species.  There were big herds of red lechwe, big herds of elephants and (very sadly) a dying elephant lying in a puddle of water; our guide said he had been wounded by poachers, possibly across the river in Namibia, and that he was expected to die that day.  Other elephants stood around him, splashing him with water and, in the case of a very young elephant, lying down beside him.  As the other elephants eventually moved off, we heard them vocalizing, and it sounded very much like humans crying, which is very much what we wanted to do.  Botswana has been the biggest, safest sanctuary for elephants during the blood-soaked past ten years during which Africa’s elephant numbers have plummeted by 25%, as documented in the recent Great Elephant Census, but now poaching is starting to nibble at the edges of Botswana’s safe zone.  Some 19 elephants have been poached near or inside Chobe in the past couple of months, despite Botswana’s strict anti-poaching shoot-to-kill policies. 

Dying elephant with distressed comrades beside him

We spent a bit of time rescuing a boatload of Korean tourists whose pontoon had run aground in the shallows, before visiting more hippos, crocodiles and waterbirds.  The whole time we were on the boat, I felt as though I was in a BBC Nature documentary narrated by David Attenborough, with new wonders of nature around every bend in the river.  It was a perfect way to spend the day while Stanley underwent his checkup.

Helmeted guineafowl at Chobe

We returned to shore around noon, and cycled off for lunch at the Chobe Safari Lodge.  Terri was feeling unwell, so I left her there to rest while I cycled back to Kazungula to pick up Stanley.  Ken said that it was safe to drive Stanley to Maun the long, paved way around through Nata, but that he wasn’t able to solve the gear-changing issue.  He had checked the transfer case, though, and found that it had not a single drop of oil in it, so he suspected this was the root cause of all the problems.  We thought back to our conversation of the day before with the German couple and winced. 

Giraffes always look so supercilious!

We phoned the agency which had arranged our camping reservations, Mackenzie 4x4 in Maun, and managed to re-arrange our camping dates for the coming days so that we didn’t completely lose the expensive bookings.  Coincidentally, Ken Webster recommended Mac Mackenzie, of Mackenzie 4x4, as the man to fix Stanley once we got to Maun.  At 4 pm, we drove out of Kasane along the paved road, past elephants, giraffes and lots of tiny steenboks beside the road.  We were outside the boundaries of Chobe National Park, but it was still some sort of game reserve, and looked just as wild (and just as dry!) as inside the park.  We nearly hit a black-backed jackal that darted in front of the car, and had the same experience with a roan antelope.  There were lots of impalas, ground-hornbills, red-crested korhaans and plenty of zebras.  Just driving along the highway, we were seeing significantly more game than we had seen in two days in Kafue National Park in Zambia a few weeks before.

Contented young elephant at Elephant Sands

We watched sunset from beside the road, then drove on towards Nata in the gathering darkness, hoping for a place to camp.  Our GPS told us that there was a place named Elephant Sands about 50 km before Nata, and we turned off gratefully to camp there.  It was a popular place, and the reception area had lots of warnings of how to avoid alarming the elephants.  We didn’t see any in the dark, but we could certainly hear them.  Terri went to bed, still feeling unwell, but I sat up writing a blog post and sorting through photos until the animal sounds got more alarming; what sounded like a nearby lion roar sent me scuttling to safety inside Stanley with great alacrity!  (It turned out to be an elephant snuffling while drinking, amplified by the trunk being inside a water trough.)

Pachyderm skin, Elephant Sands

We woke up to find ourselves in a wonderful place the next morning.  Elephant Sands is a campsite/tented camp/cottage complex built around a waterhole to which a dozen or more elephants come every day for water.  They walk right through the campsite and spend hours at the waterhole, drinking, bathing and socializing.  We spent some time watching the elephants and trying, vainly, to sketch them.  Around us were the students of the Travelling School, whom we had last seen at Jollyboys Campsite in Livingstone; they were spending a week here doing classes.  We looked through their science text, compiled by the teacher, and were impressed by the choice of topics (ecology, wildlife behaviour, conservation) that could be directly related to the experiential learning going on at Elephant Sands. 

Elephant Sands, with the guest cottages right beside the waterho

We drove into Nata, a dusty crossroads, had a disappointing takeaway lunch, then headed out to the Nata Bird Sanctuary, on the edge of the great Sowa Pan.  Central Botswana was filled, millennia ago, with huge inland lakes that have slowly dried over the years, leaving seasonally flooded salt pans in their place.  Sowa Pan is part of the Makgadikgadi Pans complex, a huge, wild area that is a favourite among hard-core 4x4 adventure enthusiasts.  We wanted to have a tiny nibble of the pan to get a feeling for whether it was an area that we wanted to return to.  We drove into the bird sanctuary and along a deserted track, past a few wildebeest and zebras, to find ourselves at the shore of an extensive shallow lake.  I had thought that the pan would be dry in the middle of a drought, but there was quite a bit of water, with a number of pelicans bobbing about.  It was an unearthly, empty landscape that hinted at the infinite, and I could see how exploring Sowa Pan could appeal to lovers of wild spaces.  On the way out, we spotted a few ostriches and a distant secretarybird, along with larger herds of zebras and wildebeest.

Terri and Stanley on the shores of Sowa Pan near Nata

Ostrich seen between Nata and Maun

We drove back to the main paved road and zipped along towards Maun, passing more wildlife and the turnoffs to the Makgadikgadi Pans and Nxai Pans National Parks.  We got into the outskirts of Maun at the exact moment that our main fan belt snapped.  It took us a while to figure out why our battery was losing voltage and our engine was starting to overheat, but as we sat in the parking lot of an Engen service station, Jake, a passing mechanic who was driving home from work, rescued us and replaced the fan belt in the parking lot.  We were relieved and impressed and after paying him, we kept his number just in case we needed his services again in the future.  We made our way out of town to Crocodile Camp only to find it had gone out of business, and we ended up at Audi Camp, a well-run campsite about 10 km north of Maun.

Jake replacing Stanley's fan belt in the Engen parking lot

The next day we delivered Stanley to Mac Mackenzie’s workshop to investigate what was going on with the four-wheel drive.  It took his mechanics hours to open up the transfer case, which was completely seized up from the lack of lubrication.  Mac decided that since it was going to take a long time, he would outsource the work to the workshop of a friend of his, Mike.  

Stanley's saviours:  Jake and one of Mackenzie 4x4's mechanics

Since it would likely take several days to deal with whatever the problem was, Mac offered to rent us another 4WD, a Prado owned by his wife, to use in the meantime.  At $100 a day, it was pretty expensive, but this is about a third of the going rate in Maun, so it was a deal from our point of view.  We still had our accommodation bookings to use in the Moremi and Khwai area, and didn’t want to spend days cooling our heels in Maun instead of seeing wildlife.  We selected a small subset of gear from Stanley and loaded it into our new substitute-Stanley.  We borrowed a portable fridge from Mac, borrowed a heavy canvas safari-tent from his son, took some cooking gear, clothes and bedding from Stanley and returned to Audi Camp for the evening.

Stanley's 4WD being inspected at Mackenzie 4x4 

The next day, Friday September 9^th, it took forever to get away from Maun, as we bought cables at an electrical shop to run the fridge from the cigarette lighter in the Prado, went to an ATM for cash, picked up our accommodation vouchers from Mackenzie 4x4, bought groceries, picked up our fridge from Stanley to replace the one that Mac had lent us (it stopped working an hour after driving away from his workshop the day before) and generally ran errands.  We finally drove out of town by 1:30 pm, headed north towards the fabled Okavango Delta.  The road was perfect asphalt for the first 30 km before turning into a sandy track.  The Prado, much more powerful and lightly loaded than Stanley, handled the sand with ease, especially with the tires partially deflated.  It took us a little over an hour, driving fairly quickly, to get to Kaziikini Camp (where we would spend the night) and then another hour to reach the South Gate of Moremi Game Reserve.  The park rangers gave us a quizzical look when we said that we wanted a day ticket that late in the day, but also gave us good tips on where to go with limited time (the Black Pools).  We asked about accommodation in the park’s campsite at the South Gate, and were not surprised that, although it was supposedly booked solid, there were tent sites available for the night if we wanted them.  As we’d paid for an expensive tent site already at Kaziikini, we said no to the offer, and resigned ourselves to a long drive back to camp after our game drive.

A couple of tsessebe near Black Pools

At first there was precious little game in the dusty bush to justify our long drive into Moremi, but as we got closer to the Black Pools and their life-giving water, there was suddenly a profusion of game:  red lechwe, our first-ever tsessebe (a type of hartebeest), ostrich, secretarybirds and zebras.  As we beat a hasty retreat towards the gate, trying to beat the 6:30 pm closing time, suddenly a large feline shape crossed the track in front of us, and we realized that it was a leopard, the first one that we had spotted entirely by ourselves. We sat and watched it for a while, trying to get decent photos and admiring the powerful build and surprisingly dark-coloured coat before reluctantly resuming our drive.  We stopped beside the road halfway back from the South Gate to Kaziikini to watch another brilliant African sunset, then continued to our campsite, arriving in the dark.   We passed a nightjar and a sandgrouse both roosting on the sand of the road, and saw slender mongooses hurrying across the track in front of us.  In camp, as we cooked, Terri spotted a couple of honey badgers wandering off into the bush; we watched them for a while, trying to get photos, happy to have seen them until we realized that they had quietly and efficiently pillaged our kitchen for bread and sugar. We also discovered that our fridge didn't run well off the cigarette lighter in the Prado; so much for cold beer and fresh meat!

Pearl-spotted owlet, Moremi South Gate 

We slept well and got up very early the next day for a big day of game driving:  our alarms went off at 5:20 and we were driving back towards the South Gate by 6:20, fortified by hot tea and coffee and dry rusks, the standard Afrikaner fast breakfast.  By 7:10 we were back at the South Gate where we saw a beautiful pearl-spotted owlet sitting on a road sign, and soon afterwards we were headed into the park toward the recommended game-viewing area of Xini Lagoon.  It proved to be a great choice, with dense clusters of herbivores eating the recently-burned vegetation with its green shoots.  We saw big groups of red lechwe, impala, tsessebe, zebra, buffalo, waterbuck and more.  At the shrinking water pools, we spotted lots of waterfowl skulking amongst the reeds.

A wildebeest at full tilt near Xini Lagoon

We returned to the main track and continued towards Third Bridge, an almost mythical location that is about as far northwest as you can drive into the Okavango along the Moremi Tongue of land at a slightly higher elevation.  At the campsite there, we stopped and fried up steak and potatoes for a substantial early lunch while we watched other vehicles brave the water crossing at Third Bridge, where swamp water drains over the road at a spot where slender logs have been laid to create a corduroy road surface.  We had heard a few horror stories of people getting stuck here, but after watching a few successful crossings, Terri had figured out an optimal line to take without getting bogged down.  We polished off our lunch and Terri hopped into the driver’s seat to take us across the “bridge” without the slightest problem.  We were glad to have the power and light luggage load of the Prado for this sort of water crossing.  

Red lechwe fleeing through the marsh at Paradise Pools

Once on the other side, we drove a bit further to Xakanaka and Paradise Pools, two areas that other tourists had raved about.  The scenery was spectacular, with flooded plains dotted with massive trees, and red lechwe and waterfowl frolicking in the water.  It really felt very prehistoric and peaceful and far from the madding crowds of the modern world.  It was hard to tear ourselves away and drive back along a different track, far from the waters of the delta and utterly devoid of large or medium-sized animals.  By 5 pm we were back at Kaziikini, where we were one of only two couples camped in the entire campground.  We showered (the shower areas were full of birds drinking from the drips of the shower heads, including lots of pretty parrots), ate and were in bed early, tired by a long but good day of wildlife viewing.

Paradise Pools, Moremi

Sunday, September 11^th found us driving 60 km north along a fairly good sandy track that the Prado handled brilliantly, headed towards the Khwai River Community Nature Conservancy via our new campsite of Dijara.  The track had been recently graded, and we sped along at 45-50 km/h until just before Dijara, where we found the road blocked by deep water across the road and floundered around looking for detours in the bush; after one track petered out entirely, we found another, more heavily travelled route that brought us out on the other side of the flood.  Dijara proved to be a scruffy little campsite with a great riverside location, run by a pair of South African guys barely out of their teens.  We set up our tent,  cooked up some bacon and eggs and then drove off 15 km down the road into the Khwai to see some animals.

Impala drinking at Paradise Pools

The Khwai River Community Nature Conservancy is one of the unsung gems of northern Botswana.  We had heard about it from tourists driving the other way, and it lived up to its billing.  It’s a relatively small area, adjacent to the northeastern corner of the much larger Moremi Game Reserve, and it shares the same low-lying landscape and dense concentration of big game.  Technically, it is supposed to be open only to those people who camp at the Khwai’s campsites, but those campsites, like the ones in Moremi and Chobe, are booked up months in advance.  In practice, no effort is made to stop people like us camping just outside the boundaries of the Khwai and then driving in to see the animals.  Since no entrance fee is collected at the gate, the experience is free, although I think most tourists would be glad to pay a fee equivalent to that charged in Moremi.

All along the banks of the Khwai River the green vegetation draws vast numbers of big animals from the bone-dry surrounding bush.  We spent the afternoon meandering along the tracks beside the river, taking photos of large herds of elephants, giraffes, kudu, waterbuck, impala, zebra and even a few common reedbuck (our first since the Nyika Plateau in Malawi), while big pods of hippos wallowed contentedly in the water.  There was a wealth of waterbirds to be seen as well, and the entire atmosphere was one of peaceful tranquility in the Garden of Eden.  It was hot, and after a while we rested beside the track for an hour, sheltering in the shade of the Prado.  Our late-afternoon game drive was productive, yielding a leopard (seen at a distance across the river) and three contented lions sleeping under a tree, seemingly undisturbed by the nine safari vehicles clustered around them.  We drove back to Dijara along the road, stopping for roadside sundowners when the sunset caught us still 10 kilometres from camp.  We fried up some vegetables with cheese, onion and bacon and fell asleep early.

We woke up a bit late (6:45) the next day to the unwelcome discovery that Terri’s air mattress had sprung a leak.  We set off without breakfast back towards Khwai, keen to make the most of the early morning coolness.  Red-crested korhaans scuttled around in the dry brush beside the road as we approached the Khwai, and groups of elephants emerged from the bush to cross the road towards the river for a drink.  Giraffe and kudu appeared beside the road too, making the commute towards the Khwai more rewarding than our day of game-viewing inside Kafue National Park a few weeks before. 

Imposing waterbuck male, Khwai

Once inside the park, we drove slowly along the river, past fewer animals than we had seen the previous afternoon but still enough to be seriously impressive.  We identified a new bird for us, the long-toed plover, and watched a juvenile martial eagle beside the water, looking improbably huge.  We stopped to cook up some oatmeal for breakfast beside a river crossing, one that we had been warned about as being treacherous.  Once again Terri took notes on where commercial safari vehicles crossed, checking out their line, and once breakfast was done, she drove across smoothly and without incident, to her great relief. 

The Khwai leopards aren't shy about being seen!

The other side of the river had more kudu and impala, but we quickly spotted a cluster of safari vehicles not far from the crossing.  Reasoning that seeing more than three safari vehicles probably meant lions or leopards, we drove up to find a young female leopard up a tree.  We spent the next hour watching the leopard as she climbed down out of her tree and up into another, larger tree where she obligingly posed at the end of a branch while dozens of camera shutters clicked furiously away.  Terri got us into position when the leopard started walking across open ground, and we had the leopard walk directly past us at a distance of a few metres, giving us an unconcerned glance as she finally cut into deeper bush and away from the gathered paparazzi.  It was by far the longest and most action-packed leopard encounter we had had, and it gave us the chance to take some really high quality photos. 

You lookin' at me?

This one meeting by itself would have made our Khwai visit memorable, but there was more to come.  We spent the heat of the day (the daily temperatures had been climbing to uncomfortable levels ever since our arrival in Botswana) in our camp chairs in the shade of the Prado beside the river, watching nearby elephants and giraffes and waterbuck.  We cooked up some lunch and I sorted through photos, very happy with some of the images I had captured over the previous few days.  We chatted with a French couple in a custom-built camper built on an Iveco truck; it was immaculate, perfectly designed, well maintained and thoroughly out of our price range. 

Magnificent kudu buck showing off at Khwai

That afternoon we drove along the bank of the river, our progress agreeably halted by a herd of 25 elephants who blocked the road.  There were a couple of tiny babies in the group, and we sat and watched them running along, full of energy, trying to keep up with the long, slow pace of the adults.  We eventually made it past the obstructive elephants and recrossed the side channel, the Prado’s power and Terri’s accurate route-finding making it seem trivial.  On the other side, kudu bucks came and displayed their magnificent spiral horns and pelts, while waterbucks grazed in the water.  Across the main river in Moremi, a lioness was on the prowl and we watched her for a while through our binoculars.  Our youthful camp operators in Dijara had told us that none of their guests who visited Khwai had ever missed seeing a lion or a leopard, and we had seen both great cats on both of our visits, proof of the tremendous game viewing to be done in this little paradisiacal part of the Okavango Delta.  We ended a day of unforgettable game viewing with one of the best sunsets of the trip, the sun turning the river and its drowned trees the colour of molten copper.  We drove back to Dijara in the gloaming, overwhelmed by the beauty of the natural world.

The next morning, September 13^th, was my birthday, and we awoke in our borrowed tent to the sound of hippos and plovers.  We cooked up our remaining bacon and eggs, packed up and drove back to Maun content with the four days of world-class wildlife safaris we had had.  Stanley was on the mend, which was a great relief, and we used the Prado one last time to buy groceries at our new favourite shop, Beef Boys, stocked with top-notch meat, veggies and deli items.  We returned the Prado to Mac, glad to have been able to use him while Stanley was out of action, and settled in for a few days in Maun. 

As Terri cooked up a feast at our digs at Laphroaig Cottages (without Stanley, camping at Audi was expensive and impractical, so we found indoor accommodation in town), we were glad that our first 12 days in Botswana had lived up to and exceeded expectations.  We looked forward to further adventures in the central and southern parts of the country, hoping that they could meet the impossibly high standard set by our travels through Chobe, Nata, Moremi and Khwai, and thankful for being lucky enough to experience all the Attenborough-esque wildlife that we had experienced.  My 48^th year had been a great one, starting in Corsica and passing through Sardinia, Canada, the Falklands, South Georgia, the Antarctic Peninsula, Patagonia, the Carretera Austral, Paraguay, Uruguay, Buenos Aires, Zambia and now four and a half months of travelling in Stanley around southern Africa.  I hoped that my 49^th year would be just as idyllic.  

Sunset at Khwai