Xakanaxa - the tip of the Mopane Tongue

Trip Start Jul 09, 2008
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Trip End Jul 30, 2008


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Flag of Botswana  ,
Thursday, July 24, 2008

We followed the northern edge of the Mopane Tongue to take us to Xakanaka (pronounced kakanaka). We took the opportunity to visit the large hippo pool en route - Dombo Hippo Pool . It has a large viewing platform that felt about as safe as North Gate Bridge and visibly shook as we climbed it. Unfortunately the hippos were all at the far side and although we waited for a time they were not going to move so we left disappointed. Luckily the game drive yesterday had yielded lots of hippos so we didn't feel too cheated.

Xakanaka was a good campsite with working but cold showers - there had been no water at North Gate yesterday evening so we were happy with anything. The pitches are roughly marked and it took a few minutes to work out which one was ours. Unfortunately the bins had been ravaged by hyena and rubbish was everywhere so first job was to pick this up - a little bit of déjà vu. We set up camp in record time - we were getting good and went for a game drive. There were lots of hippos and elephant around as well as impala and for the first time waterbuck. The area is much wetter than elsewhere and quite a few times we had to go through quite deep puddles in the car Lion cubs
Lion cubs
 . The best way was to put it in low gear and just keep going, it is very difficult to judge the depth and my worry was that if we got stuck we would have to wade in waist deep to push the car out. Luckily we were careful and went round the wet areas where we could. Still obsessed with finding big cats we decide to go down to the hopefully named - Lion's Den Pan. Alas there were no lions and we were running out of days.

Back at camp we decided to play a few hands of rummy 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 big they can often book as many as five cars on it - or so they said. I wasn't so sure as conveniently they had returned after the rangers went home and disappeared incredibly early the next morning before the rangers returned.
That night the hyenas moved in once more and decimated the bins. We watched from our perched position completely helpless. Later we were woken by an unmistakable sound - the roaring of lions!
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