OK, now that Ima done with the leaf peeping trip we can get back to interesting critters from Neil’s trip to the Okavango Delta in Botswana in August.

On the home front…they had the final vote on the merger resolution at the Elks lodge last week. The first attempt was in our opinion sabotaged by people who are only interested in merging with a lodge in what they consider a good neighborhood. The problem with that is that in days of overall declining membership the only way to afford to have a lodge in a good neighborhood is to have been there for 80 years…otherwise you have to have an acceptable neighborhood instead. The second attempt was to merge with the supposed good neighborhood lodge and it failed…miserably. We figured it would fail to get the required percentage of votes to pass but it did not even reach 50%. We’re now in the throes of “what do we do now”…for Neil the handwriting is on the wall and the only answer is obvious but he can’t speak for management and we await them coming to their senses if possible. Neil and Connie carried their transfer forms to the voting meeting just in case it passed…and the good neighborhood people were politicking until the last possible minute in an effort to move people to their side of the question and he at least was glad to see their efforts fail. We’ll see what happens now.

Around the home front…we baked our pumpkin from Halloween and it’s in the freezer (well, 2/3 of it anyway…we had the last third with some ham for dinner tonight.

We discovered a minor leak in the rear hatch of Connie’s car Li’l Red…and tracked it down with the lip of the guys at Mike’s Auto Glass to a fault installation of the rear spoiler during repairs from the rear ender when Neil was hit in the back up in Tampa in 2019…it just started leaking a couple months ago. He contacted USAA to see if it could get re-fixed on the old claim or if it needed a new claim or was just too long ago and we need to pay to fix it. We’ll figure that out and get it fixed after the Thanksgiving weekend I suppose.

Don’t know if I mentioned it…but we signed up for a Viking River Cruise next year from Budapest to Amsterdam along with business class airfare tickets so we can sleep on the plane. Looks interesting and we’ve talked for a couple years about doing one so we went ahead and signed up. The human kids (well, Bryan anyway) want a report on it later on since they (or maybe only he, dunno) want to do one as well. 

Not much else new here so let’s get on with it. As you recall from my last post…he had arrived in the Okavango Delta at the Kanana Camp for the middle third of the workshop with twice daily game drives…so let’s see what he got from the first full day there.

A little more about the Kanana Camp. It was far and away the nicest camp Neil had ever stayed it…and if one ignores the ‘camp’ part and just considers it as lodging it’s still in the top 3 of all the places he’s ever stayed. There are 10 cabins with 2 beds each spread out over about 1/3 of a mile in length with cabins separated by 50 or 60 yards…so one needs an escort if it’s after dark. There’s an electrical fence around it but it’s just for elephant management…everything else can just walk in and they spotted baboons and assorted herd animals (what Steve calls cat food) in the camp. Tents…although again they’re really, really nice tents as you could see in the last post) have wifi but there is none in the main lodge since the camp wants people to socialize rather than stick their nose in their phones. Four meals a day…breakfast before the morning drive, lunch after it, afternoon tea before the afternoon drive and then dinner after that. The staff knew each of the 10 guests after the first evening and when they came in from the afternoon drive the response from the staff was “will you have your usual cocktail”. Food was spectacular…and way too much to eat. Neil’s roommate had requested gluten free meals so when they got to their tent there were not only fresh cookies (replaced daily) but also fresh gluten free ones. And afternoon tea which consisted of a lot of pastries along with a couple of savory things…again had plenty of gluten free options for his roommate…in fact the roommate ate more than he should have since it was baked especially and solely for him. After dinner every evening they sat around the main lodge building for bit before heading back to the tents to backup photos, charge batteries and sleep for the next day’s events.

First up was lions…they found a pride consisting of 2 males, 3 females, and 9 cubs and we got to see all of them in various combinations over the days in the Delta. This is all from just the first day…more to come on them later on.

Next up were some wild dogs…although we only found 3 so they were away from their pack for whatever reason. Their territory is usually at least 100 square miles and they stayed within a couple miles of the dam mostly so finding them is pretty much luck of the draw.

More Lilac BreastedRollers and Impala

Zebra and ostrich

Snacking on the remains of a Vervet Monkey they thought based on color

Little Bee-eater…guess you can see where the name comes from

Southern Ground Hornbill near dusk

And finally…some shots as the sun went down.

All in all…an excellent day 5 of the workshop.

Cyas.