Thursday/Friday 4/5 th May. Spent a day in the reserve with an early morning drive and then back for pancakes on the fire that was still burning from the night before. The baboons gather at a tree opposite our tent and after loud squabbling, they do settle down to a nights sleep without bothering our camp. They are a large troop of something like 30 individuals and last night we watched some younger ones fighting in the tree and suddenly one dropped out to the ground, about 20 m, but seemed unarmed. By dawn we hear them scurrying from their rests and away down to the waters edge for a drink and family gathering before they wander off again for a day searching for food. This morning we didn't see any elephant but lots of impala, white faced ducks, eqyptian ducks, spare wing geese, squacco herons, egrets and our best view yet of a bataleur as it perched on a low branch giving us an excellent view of its red feet and red bill with a yellow tip. We also saw more fish eagles and a marsh eagle near the waters edge. The lower track near the floodplain gives a good view over to Namibia and the occasional Mokoro and village hut but too far away to see animals. However, on this track we saw animals coming from the bush to drink including water buffalo and a lone female bush buck with its distinctive spotted side. Later in the day we saw a family of elephants going to drink and also the two bulls that were sauntering down the track towards us, with it seems little intention of moving off the track. Recalling our previous days experience we decided to turn the vehicle and find another route!. We had our last night camping in the bush with the animals, observing a wonderful sunset with lots of mayflies and birds flying low to capture their feast of insects over the waters edge. A truly magical moment with the noise of animals in the background and the light of the campfire as we cooked our last soya mince!
We left Chobi reserve by the west gate travelling about 23 km on a rough track and not seeing much apart from impala at the start. However, we later came up on a small herd of water buck that were quite close and distinctive with their white moon stripe on their bottoms, see photo. There was a youngster as well and a little drama as a couple of males approached the herd and were seen off by the resident dad. The last few kilometres were deep sand but the 4WD coped without any problems. The exit from Botswana and entry to Namibia by the Ngoma bridge was effortless and we were soon in Katima to get some refreshments before heading to Rundu. So that's our trip to Botswana and we're pleased to say we can thoroughly recommend it with the friendly people who generally have good English, great reserves that still have that wilderness feeling and cheap diesel ! We had been warned about mosquitoes as it is the end of the wet season and of course we were near water quite a lot at many campsites; we used insect repellent at night and didn't encounter more insects than we're used to in Rundu and only got two or three bites on the whole trip, so I guess we were lucky.