OK, Ima gonna call a bit of an audible here. We just got back from a 6 day trip up in NC/VA…after Connie’s brutal summer of breast cancer, doctors, surgery, and radiation she needed a vacation. We’ve toyed with going up to New England for leaf season…but then everybody goes there so she decided that a little further south would be a better idea. I’ll put in some more details later on…but we basically went to the southern end of the Blue Ridge Parkway near Asheville, NC and drove almost to the northern end north of Roanoke, VA before heading back south.

Anyway…the audible is that after today’s post on day 4 of the Botswana trip he’s going to process the images from our leaf peeping trip and I’ll put those up in the next post or two before getting back to Africa.

So…we left town Sunday a week back after Mass and drove north stopping near Valdosta, GA for the night. Monday we continued north and did the first 40 or so mile of the parkway before stopping at Asheville for the evening…and I’ll update more of the trip when I put those photos back.

We arrived back home Saturday evening after a long 10+ hour day of driving from Belmont, NC. Fortunately…we had decided ahead of time to just get a frozen pizza from Publix on the way home from the freeway and that’s what we did.

Anyways…back to Botswana.

As I reported last time…we had an early morning boat ride but it was a bit short since we had to get back to the Pangolin Lodge, check out, have lunch, and get to the airport for our flight. On arrival back at the Kasane airport we boarded our bush plane from Mack Air…the pilot looked like he was about 12 to Neil…and headed 150 miles or so southwest to the Okavango Delta. The Okavango River flows southeast from Angola into Botswana and then spreads out into a large delta area which is composed of a mix of swamp, grassland, and woodlands. There are dozens of safari companies in the area…each has leased a section of land from the Botswana government and they have exclusive rights to run tours in that area Due to the swampy nature…pretty much every camp has it’s own airstrip for landing and we saw a couple of dozen airstrips as we headed to our destination at Kanana Camp.

Here is a general map of the area…you can see Kasane at the upper right and the red circle is the approximate location of Kanana Camp…the island to it’s northeast is Chiefs Island and he has no idea where that name came from. Although the Kanana concession has some wet spots and while they didn’t go everywhere in the concession…his estimate is that the swampy, can’t drive the trucks there percentage is maybe 5-7% of the area with the remaining being about 60% grassland and the rest woodlands.

Here’s a look at our plane after landing.

It’s a small 12 seat plane and they stopped at another camp to pick up several people who were ending their trip before heading to Kanana…then the plane was continuing on to Maun a bit more south so those people could go wherever they were headed to next. Their vehicles are in the background on the right side but I’ll have better images and descriptions of those in the next Africa post. It was just a short ride to the camp where we had a brief orientation in the main building before heading to the tent accommodation.

And this is their tent…yeah, right. Neil has to say that Kanana was not only the best bush camp he’s ever been to but it is also about the best overall lodging and meal combination he’s ever had anyplace. As you can see…they were really roughing it at the camp. Strangely enough…although there was pretty good wifi in the tents…there was none in the main lodge building because the staff/management wants people to socialize there and not bury their faces into their phone. The staff was extraordinarily good…and by the second night they had memorized both your name and what your cocktail of choice was and it just showed up. The food…breakfast, lunch, tea before the afternoon game drive, and dinner afterwards were all spectacular. Neil’s roommate had requested a gluten free menu and not only was this taken care of it was plentiful and varied…but over on the table right of center there was a canister of cookies…and on their arrival at the tent there were both regular and gluten free available. Guests were free to walk back and forth between the tent and lodge during the day…they were in tent 9 (of 10) about a quarter mile from the lodge…but after dark the staff escorted guests to and from the tents because…wild animals ya know.

After a quick checkin they headed back up to the lodge for afternoon tea followed by a short game drive.

Wattled Crane. These are about the size of a Sandhill Crane here…bigger than a Great Blue Heron and more of less the same size as a Wood Stork.

An elephant munching on grass…a relatively small one perhaps 7 or 8 feet to the shoulder.

Glossy Ibis…same bird as we have in the US.

Lilac Breasted Roller…same bird as he saw up in Tanzania the year before…first perched about 10 feet from the truck and then as it flew off.

Next stop…a hyena family. The adults were all of hunting but the cubs were left behind in the company of one of the teenagers to watch over the kids. While adult hyenas are not all that attractive to look at…the cubs, like all baby animals…are pretty cute. This guy was about a foot high and pretty fearless as he walked over to the truck to see what the heck these strange things were.

Here’s big brother keeping an eye on both the kids and the truck.

As you can see from the shot of big brother…it was almost sunset so they headed back to the camp but did spot one last critter on the way back.

Despite the fact that they are in the tree…these are Southern Ground-Hornbills…he has no idea why they’re up in the tree but his guess is that they roost there overnight to keep away from predators. Although it looks from the sky in these shots that it was daylight…in reality it was at or just past sunset but still before full dark and the birds were just silhouettes until Neil did his magic Lightroom tricks to bring the birds back.

From there it was back to the camp…Kanana has a concession about 30 miles by 30 miles which is crisscrossed by roads but they probably never got more than 4 or 5 miles from the camp as it just takes too much time to get out and back that could be better spent seeing critters. Overall…the roads were a lot better than those in the Serengeti last year he says.

After dinner…here’s a shot of the last bit of orange in the sky at sunset taken from the lodge. Tent 9 is off to the left side…basically directly across past the first torch light on the left but in the trees in the background. Dinner was kudu…which was excellent…with some side dishes and a custard thing for dessert with a very nice port to go along with it.

And that ends day 4. As I said…he’ll process the images from the leaf peeping trip next and I’ll do a post (or 2 or 3) on that before getting back to days 5-10 of the Botswana trip.

Interesting things found on the net.

An interesting astronomical fact for ya.

While we all know the universe is composed of galaxies with a lot of free space in between them…occasionally there are sections of it that are basically empty. The best known and among the larges of these is the Boötes void which is located near the constellation Boötes of course. It is about 330 million light years in size and roughly spherical…normal galaxy distribution would have about 2,000 galaxies in it but it has just 60…this is what it looks like when obsessed from earth.

Cyas.