Sunday, 2 February 2020 - Botswana
Breakfast at 8 a.m. No more elephants in sight, what a pity! I really can’t get enough of them. However, when we got to the main road, there they were at the side of the road! All 4 of them! Well, I don’t know if they were the same 4 as last night but it was as if they were there to bid me farewell and godspeed on my journey through Africa, through life. At least, that’s how I choose to see it.
We stopped on the way to fuel up. The greeting here in Botswana is dumela - dumela-rae for boys and dumela-mafor girls.
I’m feeling very emotional today, I think it’s that time of the month again. Once in a while it hits me hard, and I feel as if I’m having an out of body experience in that I am saying and doing things that I know I shouldn’t be saying and doing but I can’t seem to stop myself. I also feel so very useless, that I have failed everyone especially myself, and that I should do the universe a favour and just kill myself. These thoughts stop as soon as the period comes, I can’t seem to stop it 🙄. I better tread lightly lest I offend and regret.
We also passed through a village called Pandamatenga, a small farming village, which produces mainly millet and sorghum which is then used to make the brown version of pap. Pap is usually made from maize; it is white and sometimes shaped into balls. I tried some yesterday at dinner; it is plain tasting just like white rice and has to be eaten with some gravy or sauce, the most common being onion and tomato sauce which I also tried yesterday. Not bad. I saw huge silos for storing these grain at the side of the road.
Then we reached Kasane, in particular a place called Kazungula where the Chobe River meets the Zambezi River, and which is also the meeting of 4 countries: Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Zambia. How cool!
We reached our hotel, had lunch and some rest time. I walked around the hotel and saw many warthogs and monkeys just moving about freely in the hotel compound. I bought some souveniers and books at the shop in the hotel. I am spending way too much money, and ordinarily I wouldn’t care but this not earning business is making me feel uneasy but still I spend 🙄.
At about 2.45 p.m. we went down to the Chobe River for a sunset cruise. The Chobe River originates from Angola, goes into the Zambezi River, and eventually into the Indian Ocean.
The scenery was very nice, and we had good views of many animals and birds, including water bucks, impalas, hippos (hippos everywhere!), Nile Crocodiles, a greater kudu, giraffes, elephants (have I mentioned that I will never get enough of them??? 😍), more hippos with a baby 😍❤️, pukus (in the antelope family and only found along the Chobe River), the African data or snake bird, Egyptian geese, African Jacana, the lesser jacana (very rare), lapwings, marabou stork (the lightest stork although quite big), and the African Fish Eagle.
Although named the sunset cruise, we came back before the sunset (the cruise lasted for about 3 hours from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m.) so Jette and I had a beer, chit chatted and watched the sunset. Then we walked to a nearby bank to withdraw money for tomorrow’s activity, and then back for dinner.
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