Botswana Day 6: Fire and Rain

Up again at 5a for our last morning at Lagoon Camp. We headed out with just us and Tim and Val. Graham and Anna didn't want to make the transfer drive again. Although it's a good idea in theory, the transfer drive really does put a damper on being able to search for anything not on the given route. On that morning, not much was on the route at all.

We did see some eland with babies but they were very distant and ran away before we could get pics. Three ostriches were out and about.

We made it to the transfer point where we had to wait on the other vehicle. There were lots of decomposing bones scattered around (i.e., hyena food).

Finally the other vehicle showed up.

This little yellow-billed egret was hanging around watching the goings-on.

Finally, we set off in the other vehicle with Jacob as our driver and two other couples (who did not shut up the whole drive). Once again, there didn't seem to be much in the way of wildlife for them to scare off so it was more annoying than anything.

We passed a couple of warthogs and a wildebeest before making it to Lebala Camp.

We arrived at camp and barely had time to drop off our bags before lunch.

We had lunch of egg and sausage casserole with various types of salads then headed back to our tent to take a nap before the afternoon drive. Our guide at Lebala would be Sugar and our tracker was OT. We'd be sharing the vehicle with Graham and Gillie, an elderly English couple. There was some sort of drama with Gillie and others in camp that we weren't involved in. Apparently, they assigned them to us for this reason. We got along with them just fine, however.

The afternoon drive started out just as slow as the morning drive. We saw a few of the regular suspects.

Wildebeest.

Impala.

Leopard tortoise.

Various water birds poking about.

Bee-eater.

Then the sky opened up and it started raining. We scrambled to put on ponchos and cover the camera equipment. It didn't last long and when the storm broke, there was a beautiful rainbow.

I guess the animals had watched the weather better than we had. Very few came out on the rest of the drive.

Guineafowl.

Giraffe.

Fish eagle.

We decided to give up and stop for sundowners at a watering hole.

After drinks it was back to camp for a dinner of corn fritters, chicken with gravy, and potatoes. We quickly discovered that this camp had the worst food of them all. We retired to our tent early as we were tired. In the not-so-far distance, we could see that lightning had started a fire on the Namibia side of the river. Mike spent a long time watching it, worried it would come our way. Thankfully, it did not, and we eventually fell asleep.