March 1st to March 5th, Botswana

Sunday March 1st: Chobe National Park
We’re just back from our first game drive of the trip ....wow! We started before dawn and encountered a small group of elephants on the side of the road before we even got to the National Park. The highlight of the morning was encountering a couple of lionesses who were nice and full after they’d feasted on a dead elephant! Hippos, jackals, buffalo, eagles, vultures, impala, giraffe and warthog made for an eventful morning that left the memory card on the camera pretty full. Amazing!
Monday March 2nd: Driving through Botswana
Another travelling day on the truck from Kasane to Maun which is a 300km drive through Botswana. We spotted many elephants on the side of the road eating only 10m away. An interesting drive, but the big action happened after lunch when our truck collided into a donkey. Apparently the law says that if you hit a donkey in Botswana during the day, the driver has to pay the farmer $200!
Tuesday March 3rd-5th: Maun to Okavanga Delta Bush Camping.
We took a 1 and a half hour Mokoro ride (canoe made from a local tree) to a bush camp site in the Okavanga Delta which is our first go at proper bush camping. We did a few walking safari’s (spotted elephant, croc and zebra) and swam in the waterhole nearby (which we found out afterward was not safe from hippos and crocs!). There was a big storm all night and it was a pretty wet trip overall... needless to say that there was a lot of card playing (as usual Richard cheated, and became the self titled “el president” of the game).
After our bush camping episode, we took a small Cessna flight over the delta in the afternoon. It was amazing to get such a different perspective of the area and to see the herds of elephant, hippo, gazelle, zebra, wildebeest, giraffe and warthog from the air.