Day 18 Kasane

You guessed it, it rained. I got up at 4:00 to bring in bathing suits and stuff and put the cover on the tent and zip the windows.

It let up by the time we got up and packed. We had time before we left to take a group photo in front of our Baobab tree. Then we headed off. We drove east through a couple of heavy down pours to a small town where we stocked up again and then headed north on the Elephant Highway. It's a road that connects Cape Town to Cairo! After six hours of driving we arrived at Kasane and the Thebe River Safaris Lodge.

Set up camp, had lunch, booked our two excursions for this afternoon and tomorrow, and pick a pattern for our group t-shirt. Then Ed, John and I went for a swim to cool down.

At 3:00 be boarded our truck for the ride to the river cruise game drive. Our boat was a large party boat which we shared with another group of overlanders from Australia. We cruised down the Chobe River into Chobe National Park. The river is fairly wide and we sailed around a big island between Botswana and Namibia. We saw red lechwe antelope, water buck, a fish eagle, crocodiles, hippopotami and elephants! As we were looking at the hippos we could see the elephants up on a ridge a ways away as they made their way down to the river. It was amazing to watch thirteen of them come down for a drink, mothers and young ones. Then as they were leaving another group about the same size joined them! We floated on our boat quite close and got a good look at them. Fantastic experience, probably the best yet.

When we got back to camp we all sat around our site and had dinner. Then people were beginning there New Years Eve Party with drinks. We continued down at the camp bar in the off and on rain. At midnight there were lots of noise makers. Larry's son Corey, had a great time and got thoroughly tanked. John and I were in our tent by 12:15 to get some sleep for our morning game drive.