Riley's Hotel Maun

... delta. It is 10.30 at night and it is still 30 degrees.
We paid $5 for this camp site and it has a great pool with a bar 20m away so all is good.
The dood at the petrol station gave me directions to the Yamaha motorbike shop to buy a new tube for the bike, this is what he said.
Yea boss, go to the to the T intersection and ...

... is also a 6km trail within the grounds of the lodge and here Neil and Paul came across a snouted cobra, both were well pleased especially as they got a photo of it. They also got a photo of a bush snake along the riverside pathway. I was quite pleased to take videos of the birds along the waters edge and just in front of the pitch, as well as the monitor lizard in the tree when it decided to actually move.

This lodge is ...

... who was lying in the grass beside the road. Then I heard a lion roar and realised there was another lioness only just a few feet from the truck. They jumped up and moved pretty quickly into the bush but not before we managed to get a few photos. Pity they didn't hang around. There was three lionesses and four cubs in total. That made my day and I was happy to head for the campsite then. That evening many of the passengers went down to look at the watering hole overlooked by the campsite ...

... Most of the spays were older, mid to large sized dogs who were in heat or had already had litters. Most were emaciated, parasite-ridden and diseased. To complicate things even more, the anesthetic drugs were, as always in these situations, of the archaeic injectable variety that would make Steph’s anesthesiology professors faint!

Chad was a wonderful assistant. He quickly found his place calculating and pulling up injectable drugs ...

Today we ventured into Botswana. We will be spending the next six days here and it is interesting how different it is from Zambia even though the two countries are located so closely together. Botswana is a really vast country that is semi arid and empty. The economy of Botswana relies on mainly mining [this country supplies de Beers with over 50% of its diamonds] cattle ranching and tourism. When we checked in at the border we had to walk in chemicals because ...

... drain at the side of the road……I now know what they must have felt!

There is water everywhere - in front of us, on the bonnet, on the roof on the floor….we drive….Steven calmly leading his herd through one waterhole deeper than the next. Despite our somewhat shaky start, Bertha cruises through each one of them…be it due to great driving skill, fantastic tyre tread, high engine torque or (in my personal opinion) buoyant angel wings. By ...

... where we spent the rest of the day chilling by the pool. Life is good. Wonder how the others are getting on in the Delta. Be scorching hot. Those who didn't go are me, obviously, Oliver, Sarah, Martin, Muz, Jamie, Lindsay, Suzy Q, Jay, Mum Kate, Clara and Luke.



We have another 3 full days here so really looking forward to just chilling and catching up on diaries, blog, photos. Suze, Sarah, Martin, Oliver and I are going on our flight tomorrow at 8:30am. The rest on ...