Scalped in Botswana

We knew we'd enjoy our time in Botswana as soon as we entered the Immigration Office at the border. Two smiley and excessively happy officers shouted out welcomes and complimented all the male members of our group on their 'handsomeness', 'youthfulness' and 'beauty': ).  At a Foot & Mouth checkpoint soon after the border crossing, another Botswanan official was very excited to inspect our Eskys and find we had vast quantities of his favorite beer - Windhoek.

After the crew became slightly lost, we were forced to camp the night on a farmer's small holding.  At 4am Andy was awoken by a huge fart and some rustling in the bushes.  He opened the tent to investigate and found himself nose to nose with a huge steer with 2 foot horns.  'Falcon' and Laura had a similar experience.  After cowering in his mosquito net for a few minutes, he got out and shooed the cattle down the road.  Dan awoke to the sight of his flip-flop being chewed by a very large cow.  Both were startled.  Dan shouted and the cow dropped his flip-flop and catching a horn on the net as it tried to back away.

From the bush-camp we drove for a morning to get to Maun, one of Botswana's main towns. We had a rare opportunity to spend a few hours catching up on emails and admin (snack-shopping). Andy decided to get a much-needed haircut. One of our truck buddies, Jane, is a barber and has been cutting people's hair at the bargain price of one can of beer. But a local 'barber' (with his own barber shack) sweet-talked Andy into letting him do the honours. Unfortunately, while one of the barber's mates distracted me with offerings of the local booze (a disgusting maize alcohol concoction called Shake Shake) the barber sheared Andy's head with a zero blade. NOT a good look.

Dodgy barber shop

He's smilin' now...

I stuck at hat on Andy's frighteningly white head and we headed out of town to our campsite and booked our activities for the next couple of days - a 2 night mokoro safari into the Okavango Delta  (mokoros are traditional dug out canoes) and a scenic flight over the Delta in a 5-seater Cessna plane.

The canoe safari was something we'd really been looking forward to and we weren't disappointed. We were accompanied by a group of local people who acted as our guides / polers. Andy and I were  led by Lizzie - surprisingly strong for her advanced age and, we quickly learnt, as fond of Savanna as I am (we always manage to organise a very well-packed Esky of ice cold beers and cider wherever we go - benefit of having an Aussie for a group leader).

Being out in the Delta was totally serene - nothing but us, calm waters and big skies.  We made up camp under a huge tree  on one of the islands and over the two days did several bush walks, spotting elephant, antelope, zebra and warthog. On one walk Andy convinced himself we were all going to get trampled by an elephant but, thankfully, we all managed to escape alive.

The highlight of the Delta trip was a sunset mokoro ride out to the hippo ponds, where we were lucky enough to get pretty close to one hippo (I wouldn't have wanted to get much closer in a flimsy canoe) as an amazing sunset unfolded around us. Back at camp the guides performed a series of local songs for us, in amazing harmony with great ease. It was pretty embarrassing when all our group of 23 could muster in response was a few rounds of the hokey kokey, a bit of YMCA and a  pathetic rendition of '500 Miles' (we quickly realised we didn't know the words). We have been working on a repertoire since...

The Cessna flight on our last evening in Maun was  one of the coolest things I've ever done. Flying low over the Delta at hair-raising angles to spot herds of 50+ elephants, giraffe, buffalo, hippo, eagles and impala. Our pilot was 21 (but looked about 14), which added to the fear / adrenaline factor. We saw more animals in that 45 min flight than we'd seen all trip.

From Maun we headed to Chobe National Park, stopping on route to admire a massive concrete aardvark  (!?) on the side of the road and to bush-camp amongst cows and elephants (there's no escaping elephant poo on this trip).

Throwing Zebra poo at 'Falcon'

In Chobe we all went on a sunset river cruise. Andi, our group leader, must have told us about 12 times that it was "NOT a booze cruise" but we still managed to get our full Esky on board.  It was the best activity we've done to date. Three hours on the river getting close to over 15 hippo, 50 elephants, crocs, buffalo, monitor lizards, kudu, baboon, bee eaters, fish eagles etc. Watching elephant families bathe in the waters, throw mud at themselves and have a leisurely drink was really special and everyone on the boat couldn't stop smiling as the sun set around us.

We are really getting into the swing of truck life now. There is always a task you can help out with; cleaning, filling jerry cans and lighting fires etc. Andy particular likes finding fire wood and is a bit too fond of the truck's axe supply and gets his hands on one at every opportunity! We have a truck running club, poetry book and are enjoying our cook group duties. The group is split into 8 cook groups of 3, so once a week we have to plan, shop and prepare 3 meals for 26 people.

Leaving Botswana behind we headed to Zimbabwe to become trillionaires...