So sorry for only now writing about the end of spring break! Suffice it to say that things have really picked up here in Cape Town with the arrival of Spring and the final weeks of the semester. I am freaking out a little about accomplishing everything on my bucket list before I leave, and I have already committed myself to definitely making it back to South Africa some day. I can't pin point what it is about this part of the world, but it pervades your consciousness, and somehow, you wake up one morning and realize that you are desperately in love with i
And now to finish off the tales of Spring Break. The morning leaving the Delta, we retraced our mokoro rides back to the station, piled our things back into an overland truck and met up with our bigger safari overlanding truck back in the town of Maun in Botswana. That day we traveled to elephants sands. The campsite, situated essentially in the middle of nowhere felt like heaven. We all showered for the first time in a few days, under taps that were akin to being spit on, but felt like heaven. Clean and refreshed, we relaxed around a giant campfire with drinks and watched the watering hole. Elephants Sands was named for the fact that elephants stop and drink at the watering hole there frequently. While we didn't see any elephants then, at one point there were some impala that visited the watering hole. Definitely my favorite campsite of the trip.
That next day was spent traveling to and enjoying the first part of Chobe. The ride itself was amazing. I can't imagine another place where one can drive for several hours and not see a single person, car or village. More incredibly was the amount of wildlife that we passed. On our journey we saw elephants, including a herd with a little baby that was too young to know how to use its trunk properly yet- so adorable! After riding through what seems to be the end of the world, it is almost disconcerting when, all of a sudden, we turned a corner, and began to see stoplights, buildings and a fully functioning town. This was the outskirts of Chobe National Park. Our campsite was great again, right on one of the tributaries of the river, and we all took a opportunity to relax around the pool for a while. As our tour leader Ruth says, "it's Africa, all of the campsites NEED to have a pool." This is so true, technically we were traveling in what was still "winter" although it is more apt to name it the dry season to summers 'wet' season.
That evening, we took a wonderful sunset game viewing cruise in Chobe, at one point, I actually stopped taking pictures of elephants because I had seen so many of them. The sunset was gorgeous again, as all of them seemed to be during the trip, and seeing the variety and quantity of animals was truly incredible. Along the river there were several large waterfront restaurants that made me think of places along Lake Winnepesauke, if not for all of the African wildlife.
The next morning we took a safari ride through the national park itself where I saw my first wild lion! It was really exciting, as only about 12 lions live in the entire park (and it's quite large). We saw 3/4 female lions sleeping with a recent kill that they had made. It's a little disgusting, but lions will actually sleep on top of the animal that they had just slaughtered. Sometimes I think I am learning too much about nature here, first all of the lessons about animal poop in the delta, and now about feeding and killing habits of large cats.
In addition to the lions we also saw plenty of baboons, warthogs (who have really delicate and dainty looking legs), giraffes so close we could have reached out of the vehicle and touched them, more elephants and plenty of impala and antelope. Later, we packed up camp again, and headed for the border of Zimbabwe! Crossing was a curious experience. At several points, all I could think was "This is Africa." The border crossing amounted to a building with fences around it in the middle of a semi-arid "wasteland". It took a long time for our entire tour group to be stamped through, but the visa we all received was beautifully colored and made the process and waiting around in the hot sun totally worth it.
I promise to finish with tales from Zim sometime soon. Victoria Falls was incredible!
Thanks for reading,
xoxo
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