Africa - Day 8

Today didn’t get off to the best start. We met in the lobby at 5:45am for our game drive, and were still waiting half an hour later. It turned out that the hold-up was a young Australian couple on honeymoon. The guy was slightly apologetic about being so late, but the girl wasn’t at all apologetic and everyone gave her evil looks and put her on their mental list of enemies. The drive ended up being extremely quiet. We didn’t see any lions, and the only time we saw elephants they were so far off in the distance I could only identify them with the use of my binoculars. Buffalo in the park have been dying of disease and we were unfortunate enough to drive past one lying on the side of the road. Scavengers are clever enough to leave the diseased bodies alone, so the buffalo was instead being eaten by insects. Thousands upon thousands of insects. It was a truly disgusting sight, and the smell was foul. We approached the buffalo from behind and I’m glad I looked away by the time its face came into view. Shanon said it was the stuff of nightmares, crawling with maggots. Fortunately our minds were soon taken off the gruesome sight when we saw some impala babies. This was followed by the hilarious sight of two rival hippos running across the grass on the island in the middle of a river, one chasing the other one away. We also saw a spotted hyena rolling in the mud. It was much bigger than I expected, and really quite ugly. And that sighting was followed by one of a warthog with 3 gorgeous little babies.

For our last night in Botswana we could think of nothing better to do than to go on another sunset cruise. The cruise was once again fantastic, with animals everywhere we looked. The highlight was when we spent some time with a pod of at least 40 hippos, all packed in tightly together. As the young guide said, it was ”the biggest pod ever”. Our last sunset in Botswana was absolutely stunning…the perfect way end our stay.