Today was the day we had to transfer from Camp Kadizora to Camp Sevuti, another small plane ride.  In the morning we did a two hour delta river cruise, a birder’s paradise.  It was a beautiful time of day, early, and it was quiet.   It was teeming with life.  It was just the two of us and our guide, and it was quite pleasant.

We saw hundreds of birds, including stork, pelicans, king fishers, egrets, African fish eagles and others I can’t remember.  The water was still and we heard nothing but the birds at first.

We cruised up the river to the hippo area.  On the way we encountered more crocodiles than you can imagine, and two elephants feeding in the shallows.  The elephants weren’t happy with our presence and turned their backs on us.

The hippo pond had at least thirty hippos, all of who popped up to watch us approach.  We kept our distance, and listened to their bellows and calls, and watched the jets of water they would create.

It was a nice way to end our stay at Kadizora.

The last crocodile we saw was the old man of the river.  He is 5 meters long.

OC drove us out to the airstrip, stopping at a Baobob tree as requested.  I have a thing for these trees and love to see and touch them.  There is one here in Botswana that is said to be over 5,000 years old.

Our next camp, Camp Sevute, was 85 nm east of Kadizora.  I sat in the front of the plane with the pilot and watched the nautical miles slowly count down.  We were only traveling at 115 knots, at an altitude of 5,500 feet MSL, approximately 2,500 feet above the ground.

The landscape changed dramatically as we headed east.  We left the green and wet delta for a very dry landscape.  It seemed as we approached Sevute that nothing could live here.  I would be wrong about that.

We were met by a driver from another camp, who gave us a ride to Camp Sevute.  Our camp was a very short distance from the gate to the Chobe National Park.  Our tent was much smaller here and no all night electricity.  They had a generator for power that shut off at 8 pm.  All lights after 8 pm were solar.  You could only charge your camera/laptop batteries at one common station in the main tent from 8 am to 3 pm, which turned out to be problematic for us.  The tent was too hot to be in during the afternoon, but we were given hot water bottles for the beds at night.  That was the extreme temperature swing.  It was quite cold in the mornings on the game drives, but by 10 am we were shedding layers.

The routine at Camp Sevute was a wake up at 0600, breakfast at 0630 and start the game drives at 0700.   We were usually back in camp around 11 am for brunch.  We had until 3 pm on our own, at which time we would have high tea, and then set out for the afternoon game drive at 3:30 pm.   That drive would start out quite warm, but we would be putting on our jackets after sundowners on the way back to camp.

Our game drives were in the national park, so there were strict rules.  There was no off road driving, so we had to stay on the “roads” (more like tracks) at all times, and we had to be out of the park by 6:30 pm.

We headed out on our first game drive in the Chobe National Park with Bonnie (sounds like Boney) and a family from England (Mark, Lucy, Louie and Max).  We saw impala, giraffe and buffalo, but we had a particular destination in mind.

On the early morning game drive, the English couple with their two children had witnessed a leopard with a kill.  She had just taken down a male impala when they came upon her.  They saw her drag the impala into the bushes. There was a very good chance she was still at her kill, so we were headed in that direction to find out.

She was still there, and my sister got her first leopard sighting.  We were able to get quite close to the leopard because her belly was full and she was sleepy.  She had eaten part of the impala and was guarding the rest of it.  There were a few other vehicles that came up after us, so we moved on after watching her about 10 minutes.

We moved on in search of more wildlife.   As we headed deeper into Chobe, our Toyota Land Cruiser quit.  Bonnie was able to start it twice, but after the third time, it was done.  Yes, another break down.

We got out and stared under the hood, discussed the possible reasons for the stall, and radioed for help.  Unfortunately, our radio produced no such help.  It was about 4:30 pm when we first got stuck.  It starts to get dark around 6 pm and we were supposed to be out of the park by 6:30.  One other game drive vehicle from a different camp came by, and Bonnie asked the driver to contact our camp for a rescue.

We attempted a push start, with more human power than our previous break down, but it did not produce the same result.  We were stuck.

With nothing else to do besides watch the African night descend upon us, we broke out the sundowners.

Help arrived about 2 1/2 hours later, and we pulled into camp an hour late at about 7:30 pm, no worse for the wear.

We were disappointed to hear that we missed a possible lion sighting, as the other vehicle from our camp watched a pride of lions with cubs during our break down time, but these things happen.

We had a very good dinner, and headed to our tent with our hot water bottles.  All but our solar lights were out by 8 pm.