DAY #13

We left Mahalapye at 8am.


Martha, Mike, Chris, Darla, Martina, Bento, Patricia, Carolyn, Me and Diego


My filthy work pants

Sechele drove us to Palapye in the kombi. Our ride was a bit peculiar as we ended up on a very uneven dirt road. Sechele insisted that the airport was down the road although you could see in his eyes he wasn't really 100% sure. We even backed up and got the trailer hitch stuck for a little bit when we encountered a herd of cattle crossing the road. After getting some directions and to our surprise, Sechele was correct, at the end of that dirt road in the middle of nowhere was a huge field and a trailer-size tent - this was our airport.





We laughed hysterically at our "airport" and then started prancing around like the kids we are, taking pictures of us "in the airport". We still weren't convinced that we were not going to be left in the middle of that field until the plane actually landed.










Botswana from above

The plane was a small 13 seater plane and we loaded our luggage in the luggage compartment all ourselves. For the first half hour of our flight we all had our eyes peeled looking for herds of wild animals. Duraid promised 10 pula to the first person to find a wild animal. We had to stop quickly in Francistown to fill up and then arrived at our final destination - Maun.

We were met by Richard and Emma, two of our three guides. We went to one shop in the town of Maun because Carolyn needed to replace the hat she lost the day before. The items in the shop were beautiful! Duraid called me over to try on a necklace so that he could see if he liked it so he could buy it for Martina. He ended up buying two - one for Martina and one for me! YIPPEE! Duraid is so nice!

After the shopping we headed to Audi Camp where we had lunch (sandwiches and fruit!!!!), packed up the large landrovers and drove to the Community campsite.


Audi Camp - where we ate lunch

We set up our tents in Elephant Grove Camp and went to the "tiki bar" and had a drink. Yep, a drink in the middle of the wilderness. I would think that would be the last place they would want drunk people!! :)


Elephant Grove Camp on the edge of the Moremi




Outdoor bamboo spiral toilet area

We also went out for about an hour to see if we could find some animals. We stopped our drive at sunset so that we could take in the beauty. Martha, who has been raving about seeing elephants since the first minute we all met her suddenly turns around and sees the most beautiful elephant cross the road behind us. She just started to gasp and yell, "Elephant, elephant..." so of course we all turned around. Low and behold...there was the elephant. It hardly made a sound! Such a large animal and SO quiet! We were all SO thrilled to see our first real African animal...and the largest one to boot!





I was kind of glad we were sleeping outside in the tents because then everyone could witness firsthand my snoring dilemma. And boy did they hear it! :)