About 2 a.m. I woke up, alarmed and not sure why. I realized that there were noises outside the tent and the tent flaps were rustling. Could have been the wind, but the side of the tent closest to where I was sleeping was also bowing in. Ulp… Buffalo? Bandits? Then all of a sudden all of the noises and rustling stopped. Ulp!!! Buffalo! Bandits! I lay there for a minute and all of a sudden heard Fred’s tent door unzip. My first thought was that someone was trying to get into his tent. Then I heard him take care of his business. At that point I figured what the heck. If he wasn’t worried, I wasn’t either. I went back to sleep.
It turned out that it was just the wind — a cold front and cloud cover had moved in during the night. So this morning was cloudy and overcast but strangely warmer. We left Likan and Nami packing up and went off on our morning game drive. It was fun to sit and watch a whole troop of baboons and some black-backed jackals who were sleeping out in the open and more.
 Chacma baboon |
 Black-backed jackal |
Puku
As we drove the short distance out of the park and into Kasane, we saw our one and only sable antelope, our one and only puku, some kudu stags, a whole group of mongoose (Grant said they were territorial), and a family of warthogs rooting around in the grass. It was hard at times to know what to look at!
At one point, I wanted to open the truck door to take a photo of a particular flower, and Grant told me to look up first: there was a whole herd of elephants not far away! Then we stopped dead in our tracks for perhaps as much as a half hour while a whole huge herd of buffalo crossed the road in front of us.
Namibian boy
Fred was adamant that we couldn’t be that close to yet another country and not at least try to check it out (and, of course, get a stamp in our passports). So we took a motorboat ride across the Chobe River just before noon to Namibia, got the stamp, took a brief walking tour of a local village. The guide Calvin was excellent — highly educated, knew the latin names of most of the plants — and it was interesting to see the mix of old and new in the village. One woman came up with a plastic bin of tomatoes carried in the traditional fashion on her head. She had her baby strapped to her back with her shawl, but a cellphone in her hand. (Cellphones are positively ubiquitous in Africa, even more so than in the US. Given the lack of landlines, it’s either a cellphone or no phone, so everyone has a cellphone.)
South African friends
Back in Botswana we boarded a boat for a sunset cruise of the Chobe and found ourselves back with our South African friends. We had a good time with them, they’re all bright and friendly folks in their 20s and 30s, and I’m awfully glad we had the chance to see them again and say goodbye. The boat ride itself was great fun by itself (Fred, of course, not only charmed the female tour guide but got her email address — and probably her phone number!) — but the Chobe River area is famous for its elephants, and this cruise surely did not disappoint on that score!
First, we saw elephants walking in the river:
Then, we saw elephants playing in the river:
We even saw a whole herd of elephants swim across the river:
That was followed by a truly spectacular sunset.
Chobe River sunset
Back on land, we found that Grant had managed to find two cabins at the lodge where we were to be camping that were open due to reservation no-shows and he got them for us. This was just another episode that underscored for me the kind of guide Grant is. His concern was that the campground would be noisy and crowded, and it would feel like a letdown after the really wonderful camping we’d been doing the previous nights. So, he said, he’d rather have us in basic cabins where we could shower and relax so we’d remember the camping part of the trip as a uniformly good part.
Dinner at a local lodge with unbelievably mouth-watering chicken, a good hot shower, and tomorrow we’re off for Victoria Falls. Weather permitting (and even if not!), we’ll walk the Zimbabwean side of the falls tomorrow afternoon.