We’re getting close to the end of the Botswana posts…just have a few more to go.

On the home front…it finally warmed up a bit but things are going back to winter Monday with lows about 40 for a few days. 

Other than that…well, we got Connie’s car back from Crash Champions after almost 4 full weeks for what turned out to be a pretty minor repair job to fix the leak. The only part they replaced was the bushing around the wiper motor with all the remaining cost being labor to remove and reinstall things. We won’t know until it rains whether the leak is actually fixed or not but we can tell ya that their service and communication leaves a lot to be desired. For a company with over 600 locations it’s surprising how poor the customer service was. We heard exactly zero from them and only got information when Neil called or via the occasional text (which with the exception of the one saying it was complete all merely extended the estimated completion date by one workday). After dropping it off Monday they didn’t do anything until Friday when we got a text that the estimate was in progress and after that came the series of “the guys are troubleshooting” reports when he called and the texts extending the completion date. And when it was finally done (at least the work part) last Tuesday there was still the “we gotta talk to the USAA guys about payment” report followed by another 2 extensions texts before the “it is finished” one. Frankly I’m not sure we would use them again but they’ve pretty much bought up all the decent independent shops in our area and if the work is done right that’s at least a point in their favor. Cost to us was zero as USAA covered it all…no idea why we didn’t have to pay the deductible but probably because USAA did it under the previous claim from the rear-ender in 2019 and not a new claim. Overall though…it was a pretty depressing experience with them.

Neil and Connie added on some optional things for their river cruise in the summer from Budapest to Amsterdam…a 2 night pre-departure stay in Budapest (which is actually 2 different cities Buda and Pest on opposite sides of the river) and a couple of concerts and experience things along with the upgraded wine/cocktail package and the prepaid tips package to limit the amount of cash they’ll need to hand out later on.

They celebrated Valentine’s Day on Friday the 13th as it would be much less crowded at the restaurant and had dinner at Ristorante Fabio which they like…and brought home enough leftovers to have a couple of meals and a lunch out of them. Then on Saturday they went to the diocesan anniversary mass and sat in the 50 years section since that’s upcoming for them in November. The couple sitting next to them was celebrating their actual 50th on Valentine’s Day so that was a good thing for them.

Then on Sunday they had a Sarasota Symphony concert so it has been a pretty eventful time since my last post.

OK…on to photos.

They spent Day 9 with a morning boat drive, then the houseboat proceeded upriver about 20 or 25 miles and tied to the northern bank on the Namibia side of the river with another boat drive in the late afternoon.

Cape Buffalo

He really likes the way this one turned out with the backlit and the rim light on the fur.

African Jacana

Not a great shot but he wanted you to see the size of the feet on this species…they essentially walk on water with the large feet enabling the 5 ounce male and 9 ounce female to get enough support on floating grass or leaves or whatever. The bird itself is about 9 inches max long so those are pretty big feet.

Malachite Kingfisher. These are smaller than the Belted Kingfishers we have in the USA and easily the smallest of the 3 or 4 species they found there.

And launching for breakfast

It flew around a bend and landed about 30 feet from the first perch then went down for another attempt…neither was successful that they could see.

This is either a Little Bee-eater or a Swallow Tailed Bee-eater depending on which reference you want to believe…Neil thinks it’s the latter based on the longer tail and white tip it has.

And heading off on a food run…caught the wing backlight pretty nicely but that’s what the high frame rate gets you.

African Fish Eagle launch sequence…very close in size and appearance to our Bald Eagle here.

A different Malachite Kingfisher but he was able to get the takeoff sequence. This is less than a quarter of a second from first to last and based on the bird size it covers about 10 or 11 inches of travel in that time. Quick little critter.

Not the world’s greatest image…but even at 1/4000 of a second exposure it wasn’t fast enough to prevent motion blur of the wings.

They stopped by the old houseboat andI have to admit it’s not nearly as nice or large as the new one. The new one as I said last time is solar powered with electric propulsion but I’m sure they have a generator for cloudy days. They also got to see the almost ready as of last August but surely in use by now excursion boat (they were waiting on instrumentation on battery charge level that was due in pretty shortly after)…again electrical powered but charges from the houseboat although he was surprised that there were no panels on the canopy to help. Nice rotating seats with built in gimbal for the telephoto lens feet just like the existing boats.

Yellow Billed Stork

Nile Monitor…this one is about 4 feet long.

And as it so happens…that’s the end of the morning boat drive.

Interesting things found on the net.

And now we know why crime is on the rise…although to be honest at least on the TV show he mostly changed in an unused storage room at the Daily Planet building.

Cyas.