Well…we’re down to the last day of the Botswana trip but it’s going to be divided into 2 posts as despite a relatively short photo outing as I’ll discuss in a bit it was photographically speaking pretty productive.

Since my last post on the 5th…we’ve not done all that much but Ima gonna report on it anyway. 

We were supposed to go to Wichita Falls TX for a Saint Saëns Organ Symphony concert last weekend but the weather had other ideas. We had flights our early Saturday morning with a connection through Dallas to Wichita Falls and had car, hotel, and dinner reservations as well as tickets to the concert with a planed flight early Sunday afternoon back through Dallas to home. Unfortunately…the weather in TX had a severe thunderstorm warning with hail and that resulted in a ground hold of all flights for about 2 hours. And that resulted in our flight out of Fort Myers getting delayed to the point that even if the weather in Dallas cleared we would miss our connecting flight. So we gave up and came home about 0900 and cancelled the hotel, car, and dinner reservations. On the bright side…Neil took Connie out for a nice dinner at Longhorns instead…he had lamb chops and she had the chopped steak with onion mushroom gravy. All was excellent and they had enough leftovers for a dinner and a lunch. 

Then there was an issue with some fraudulent ACH transactions on the Ladies of Elks account…but that eventually turned out OK and all the funds were restored as of today. She’s going to be the treasurer in the next year starting April 1 and they’re going to move their account because nobody at their current  bank offered to freeze the account after the first of three fraudulent transactions. 

Connie had her 6 month post cancer surgery mammogram and she was seriously worried about it…Neil thought that after her easy acceptance of the cancer itself and the surgery it would not be a problem but she was really down until the radiologist told her everything was normal. She’s still a bit concerned about the appearance of her chest after the surgery…basically they had to dig around a lot more than they expected to looking for this little marker thing they leave in after the biopsy…and the surgeon had some issues finding it so she’s a little more lumpy than she would like. Neil told her it’s just fine…neither of them are spring chickens anymore anyway and I think she occasionally actually believes him.

They had another nice Date Night on Friday…went to Carrabba’s and had fish since it’s still Lent…but they took advantage of the 10 dollar take home entree and brought home some lamb chops that made an excellent dinner later on. 

Neil’s right side hearing aid failed…it was the speaker part and not the electronic part but the audiologist found a crack so he had to order a new pair at his appointment today. The good news is that the 4 versions newer firmware provides much better voice isolation from background noise and that’s mostly what he has a problem with. The bad news is they’re expensive…but they’ll be in on Friday. He’s been using just a single one the past week and he’s gotta admit that not being able to hear well sucks.

Ok, let’s talk about the last day in Botswana…at least the first part of it. In order to go on the houseboat, after leaving the Okavango Delta they went across the river to the Namibia side after going through Botswana immigration and went through incoming immigration for Namibia. No big deal really…the clients had already gotten the visa for Namibia ahead of time so it was just a paperwork drill. On leaving the houseboat they had to reverse the process to get back into Botswana of course. They had flights out to return to Johannesburg (4 of the clients) in the early after noon while the other two were headed off overland to Victoria Falls. Long story short…it was a short boat ride in the morning followed by the immigration shuffle, lunch at the Pangolin Lodge and getting off to the airport for the flights.

So…on to the first half of the photos.

African Fish Eagle right after sunrise…Neil rally liked this silhouette shot.

Goliath Heron…the largest heron on the planet at about 5 feet tall and 8 foot wingspan. They saw several of them on the trip.

This African Fish Eagle obviously got too close to the nesting site of the Long Toed Lapwing pair as they harassed it until it left. Strange that such a large predator bird would be easily chased off.

Next it was off to the area in the river known as the Race…a rapids area with a lot of rock piles. Many nesting birds there so they got a lot of bird in flight (BIF) possibilities.

African Darters and Cormorants.

Bushbuck Doe…these were actually in the property of another hotel they passed on the way to the Race.

A couple of hippos measuring their prowess.

African Sacred Ibis

Yellow Billed Stork bringing some nesting material

And another couple of those…the males get that pink underwing coloration during mating season.

Striated Heron…about the size of a night heron here in the US…perhaps 18 inches tall maximum.

African Jacana walking on water.

It really liked this plant bulb thing. Not sure whether it wanted to eat the inside of it or whether it had some bugs inside it wanted but it was pretty darned interested in it.

Cormorant launching

African Open Bill…guess how it got its name. It’s a stork and the opening in the bill facilitates grabbing the snails which is its primary food source. Fairly large bird…larger than a Great Blue Heron and more in the same size as the Yellow Billed Stork but smaller than the Goliath Heron.

I will pick up later with the rest of the shots from the morning as well as some description of the remainder of the trip for Neil.

Cyas.