Posting this entry for Wednesday on Saturday, June 3, around 6:30pm from Maun, Botswana.

It’s Thursday, June 1, 2023, 1:15pm as I type, sitting on the deck at Moremi Crossing in the Okavango Delta of Botswana while Ash is napping, pinching myself, completely amazed that this is my life. I just got through culling through almost 200 photos and videos from yesterday and this morning to figure how to do this blog at least partially daily without Wi-Fi. My original thought was to be very selective and just post all three days here as one entry. But it’s clear after not even 24 hours here that that won’t work. I’ve got the 200 down to about 80, but there’s still this evening and all day tomorrow to go.

In the end, what I did was write it out in Word, indicate the file number of the image where I wanted it, then copied it all and uploaded once I got online again.

Gail, our tour leader, several times referred to the Okavango as the most “wild” place she’s ever been. And I would hear her use “wild” as an adjective. But no, she meant it as a noun: there are no fences, the animals can go wherever they want, including up to and into your own cabin. You keep your door locked but give staff the key when you go out on safari drives so they can do things for you. Here, keys are to keep animals out – monkeys and baboons know how to work doors – not other people.

Wednesday, we were up about 5:30am, I got the blog up for Tuesday – so all caught up to that point – just before we went over for breakfast shortly after 7am. We walked around a bit and discovered an outdoor chess game that we played a little. Ash beat me badly of course. Never was very good at chess and he’s a great strategist.

Above and below: We packed and our group went to the Kasane International Airport – international because it hosts flights into and out of Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, and Johannesburg, South Africa. We left out of the domestic side since we were staying in Botswana.

We all got into a 12-seater plane – just enough for the 11 of us.

From the air you could see the airport and the Chobe River behind it.

Ash and I were in the first row with Dylan, just behind the pilots.

Ash can’t resist a selfie, and Sheryl, Jim and Gail joined in while Maire slept.

This map reflects where we’ve been: Vic Falls and Hwange, Chobe not shown but essentially to the left of Vic Falls, and Maun where we will fly out of on Saturday. In between is the Okavango Delta.

Specifically, we are in Moremi Game Reserve which is a huge portion of the southern end of the Delta.  The circle roughly indicates where the lodge is where we stayed.

Dead center is the airstrip we landed on after an hour’s flight.

[videopress xJYnJrJo]

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ash took a video of landing.

We transferred to 3 much smaller planes that only sat 4 people, so we went 3/4/4.

Ash and I went with Gail on the first plane. There wasn’t a co-pilot on this flight, so the pilot let Ash sit up front.

We landed on an even smaller airstrip about 15 minutes later and waited for the other two planes. We joked about the screen shelter on the left being the business class lounge, but it was a useful protectant from the dust that sprayed around as planes landed and took off.

Both of these airstrips were dirt, and a worker had animal duty – we watched him chase warthogs off the runway! This last one is the shortest in the Delta; pretty much every camp has their own. There aren’t any real roads here.

The entrance to our lodge, Moremi Crossing: MX.

We were greeted by locals in song again. Video below.

[videopress RNEHtauX]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once again, the accommodations are terrific. Here’s the buffet line for all of our meals.

Beautifully set table.

Just to let go of something, I’m not going to include food photos for these 3 days unless something really astounding is served. Suffice it to say it’s all great quality stuff; we decided (at the end) better than Chobe but not as good as Sable. We did not go hungry for sure: continental breakfast before the first safari drive at 6am, snacks and coffee at a stop in the bush mid-morning, a full brunch upon return around 11am; teatime at 3:30pm, sundowners with snacks at 5:45pm; dinner around 8pm.

Our view from the lodge. One of them anyway. You can see pretty much 270 degrees the way it curves. Elephants and warthogs shown; usually buffalo out there, too.

The gang at our first meal here, around 2pm when we first arrived. The host standing up on the left is Nature. Seriously – that’s the name his mother gave him.

From there we were walked to our cabins, where we found our bags were already taken. There are only 17 cabins, roughly equal number on each side of the main lodge. We are almost at the end on the left side, cabin 16, between Dylan and Gail.

One of the instructions we received on our initial briefing is that we are not allowed to walk to/from our rooms at night without a staff escort. That’s how wild it is – they want someone experienced with the animals around to navigate – or not – should you encounter something.

This is our front porch, where we enjoyed time doing not much at all.

Bedroom. While technically it’s a tent – it’s made of canvas and has lots of flaps, zippers and Velcro – this is beyond glamping even in my opinion. Proper doors, hardwood floors, actual furniture. The only inconvenience was no heat – and it’s COLD at night – and no electrical outlets. But a little light and a hard-wired fan.

Sink area.

Toilet. With sort of a door and everything! (Our last one had no door…)

Outdoor shower. As long as you used it during the day it was GREAT. Superhot and great water pressure. But it got me out of my travel habit of showering just before bed because it was too dang cold once the sun went down.

The view of the plains from our deck.

We had time enough to orient ourselves and head back for teatime – although we weren’t hungry – and our first safari drive on the delta.

The water hasn’t made it to the Delta yet which is a big disappointment. It comes down from Angola, through the Caprivi strip of Namibia and finally into Botswana. But we are at the most southern point of it. It’s normally here this time of year, but with all kinds of things syphoning water off the river as it comes downstream, like for farming, it’s getting here late. They’re thinking by July. But upside is, the animals are more concentrated because there’s so little water. I can say this now, but in the next day’s post there will be the WILDEST experience we had on the whole trip, and it wouldn’t have happened if the water had been in.

We’ve seen lots of warthogs on this trip, but this was our first closeup. They are usually running away from us. Let me say here that we’ve learned a lot. The guides – except for that one at Chobe that one morning – all share an incredible amount of information about what we’re seeing. That said, remembering it is something else! All I remember about these guys is they are very family-oriented, somewhat visible in this photo.

We’ve seen thousands of termite mounds on this trip. They’re all over. But in the Delta they play a special role. It literally wouldn’t exist without them. And they were sometimes different – as seen here – where there were trees growing out of them. And yes, the termite mounds were likely there first. You can read more about it here if you’re interested.

There are palm trees everywhere, first time we’ve seen them on this trip.

We came across a den of hyenas. Forget what you learned in The Lion King; Disney got it all wrong. The “laughing” thing is a myth. These guys are also very family oriented, and we were delighted with the 2 pups. This pup was curious about us. There was another adult around the corner of the brush.

[videopress B1faHw35]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brothers playing tug of war with a stick!

Yes, there are elephants here, too. This is probably one of the last photos you’ll see of one unless something special happens. We’re all like “we’re good with elephants now!”

What we hadn’t seen was elephant bones, as seen in this photo. We’ve actually seen this quite a bit here.

Another beautiful sunset at sundowners.

The camp had a lovely fire for us when we got back.

We had dinner and Ash and I were the first to say we were ready to go back to our cabin, around 9pm. With the exception of 1 couple, everyone was on our side of the camp – and decided to join us so the escort just had to make one trip. So we broke up the party early 3 nights in a row! No one seemed to mind. They were long, action-packed days.