Mombo Camp Moremi Game Reserve

... is the distressing part earlier I indicated we came to a dead end river crossing.. well just past the hippos we recognised the part of the river I had previously waded through .. Humm in hind sight maybe it was not my greatest decision.. retreat with dignity!!<br><br>Funny thing.. we had to pay a considerable sum of cash to have the privilege to drive into the NP and not a dam sign or anything to indicate we were heading to the North gate.. found some happy campers at ...

... like crazy! <br><br>Once we had packed up our tents and the breakfast stuff we headed to our Mokoros. When I asked our poler if I should get in she said to hold on because they were going to sing Happy Birthday for someone. I laughed and said okay. Then, the whole group of polers and guides got together and sang happy birthday to me. It was so sweet and cute as about a third of them didn&#8217;t know the song and were ...

... and ears and I was soooo excited I could barely contain myself. Sitting so low to the ground and having no barriers in our way it seemed incredible that we could paddle right up to it. As we watched it turned towards our polers and as if it was posing began lumbering towards the Mokoros. I couldn&#8217;t wait to get near! <br><br>And then, our poler stopped poling and I watched helplessly as a handful of Mokoros ...

... But we trundled on... we came across elephant herds wading into the river to feed on the tall reeds, we saw many hippos doing the same, there was a beautiful array of birds darting around the waterways and we came across new species of antelope including the rare red lechwe, hartebeest, topi and reedbuck... but we still didn't come across any predators. It was more of the same in the coming days. We continually received reports from other visitors that there was a huge ...

... when to our amazement just on the next site there was an elephant about 15m from us. Totally oblivious to our presence it continued to munch on the trees and allowed us to get reasonably close to take some good photos. In the evening we took another game drive and once more saw amazing amounts of hippo and elephant. Returning we were amazed to see another car on our site. Apparently because the site is ...

... Incredibly we made it to the other side and the relief was palpable. We decided that the accident was not going to ruin our holiday and the leaking fluid only came out when the engine wasn't running so why not go for a game drive. This is a lovely area exploring close to the Khwai River and the best place to see hippo. We even had one running across in front of the car, its little stunted legs carrying it pretty quickly when you think of the quivering weight it is ...

... back in one of these traditional dug out Mokoros silently floating through the reeds and papyrus, it was an almost surreal experience and so relaxing a few people had slept on the hour journey to our camp. At the campsite we pulled up the dugouts and unloaded all the gear, setting up our tents before we were given the rules of the site. Basically don't wander off anywhere as there are loads of wild animals around, only swim in the nearby pool that they assured us was ...

... and we used a hole in the ground behind some trees as a toliet so you can imagine how good the shower felt. the rest of the afternoon was spent washing our delta clothes by hand to get the smell out of them. At 1515 ten of us headed to the local airport for an 45 minute scenic flight over the delta. I managed to get the front seat of the six seater 1978 cessna. we flew about halfway to the center of the delta and then made a big u-turn ...

... Excited to have showers and real toilets we made the most of it!! After we were all clean again (until we stepped outside into the dirt again) we went to town and had a look around the markets, finishing at the local pub talking to the locals (who are all so amazingly friendly!)

... with hippos. Because there are no fences around the camp, animals are free to wander around as they please; consequently, none of the guests are allowed to walk around unescorted at night, since they might happen upon scary animals. I kept hoping that I'd wake up in the morning, look out the window, and be able to say something like, "Hey, Al, there's a giraffe on our porch." Unfortunately, there was never a giraffe that close, but we did have an ...