Sitatunga Campsite Maun

Where else than in the Okavango delta can you feel you are really part of Nature.

Flying over the delta to grasp the intensity of this huge wetland was breathtaking.

Going then on a 3 day Mokoro (dhow) trip, finding your own little island to camp, digging your toilet hole :-), cooking on the fire, being waken up by the elephants in the morning, walking in the bush to observe the zebras, warthogs and giraffes.... was just a unique experience...!

... wet due to water leakage coming in from the window frames. (yes, this old Mercedes Benz copy keeps getting more impressive). By noon, however, the mist and drizzle stop, the sun peeks through, and skies turn to blue. Consequently, the temperature and humidity rise considerably.

Of course we have to stop for a picnic lunch, today consisting of tuna pasta salad and self-made sandwiches.

We are stopped at a foot and mouth checkpoint ...

Island Safari Lodge 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, & 7th September 2009

It was a straight road west from Nata to Maun driving through the Makgadikgadi & Naxi Pans National Parks. We saw a few giraffe, antelope and birds of prey before we had to stop at the police checkpoint and veterinary fence again. This time Neil just had to produce his driving licence and give our destination. We arrived in Maun town just before lunch and ...

Monday 31st August. We left in the dark at 5.30am - damn hard packing up in the dark. We drove for many many hours and stopped for a lunch stop at a village selling salted fish and fruits. We drove all day to get to the large town of Maun and camped outside about 20mins along the road at a campsite called Sitatanga camp ...

... pieces to feed the cheetahs, nice. After that we were brought out to the large area of land owned by the farm where 15 wild cheetahs live. We brought a bin full of raw zebra meat and the cheetahs soon found us and circled the truck. We were so close to them that we could nearly touch them. After we got many photos and watched them interact the raw meat was thrown piece by piece to the cheetahs who competed for the meat until there was only one cheetah left. Once they got their food they ran ...

... of South African Airlines. We had changed the date for our flight to Kenya with them a few weeks back, but the trainee who served us overstepped his authority in handling our booking, and booked the flight one month earlier than we had asked for, and the date had passed a few days ago. Thus, technically we had missed our flight. The scary part is, missing a flight on a round-the-world ticket leads to a cancelling of every scheduled flight on that ...

... would be interesting to return in 10 years and witness the improvements made in this area.

The language spoken in Botswana is Setswana and the currency is the Pula (divided into 100 Thebe).

After a long drive, we were delighted to have a hot meal waiting for us at the camp site. We all got dolled up in our 'fancy' dresses from the market in Rundu and had a classy meal of chicken, cabbage and more!

List of close encounters
(we've seen far too many animals to mention here, so we just list the ones we’ve eaten)

Pig
Cow
Sheep
Oryx (= Gemsbok)
Kudu
Blesbuck
ZebraSpringbok
Eland (we’ve actually only seen this massive antelope on our plates)
Impala
Maun, North West, Botswana arjenandeline