Day 4 - Shakawe, Botswana

Today was the lovely leisure day that we had all been looking forward to for the last few days. We all slept in late, in fact Kim and Ernest were sitting around the early morning fire for ages before the guys started crawling out of their tents.

It was a perfect morning, not too hot and not too cold, a really beautiful place to wake up in. As I said before the camp site is full of these huge trees, fig, Jakalsbessie and Knob thorn and we are right on the rivers edge. The sound of the hippos snorting in the distance certainly added to all our enjoyment of the place.

Yesterday Ronel had brought out her special mootie called Timjan Wonder juice. It is one of those natural Aloe and grape seed juice and is very good for constipation and also handles stiff joints plus plus plus... An old boere remedy. So as Steve was walking past very busy fiddling around with the truck and minding his own business, he casually asked Rouvierre what the stuff was that we were all talking about. She said he should try some so he very obligingly opened his mouth and down went a whole tablespoon full. Well he was the last one to crawl out of his tent looking very worse for wear this morning. He had spent his night running from his tent to the toilet, back to his tent and then back to the toilet. It made the poor man so sick but on the other hand it certainly handled his constipation. He won't be trying that stuff again in a hurry.

Breakfast was a real leisurely affair, no muesli for us today, special cooked breakfast- "full house" as they say in the lodge.

We needed to get a few things in town like fresh veggies and milk which we have been going through at a rapid rate, so we went to ask Jack how far away town was and if the shops were open on a Saturday Afternoon. Our vehicles were all out of action, we could not get the truck out of the campsite and the rest of the guys had their tents up and were feeling lazy about  packing them up so that we could drive to town. So Jack very kindly insisted that we take his car to do the shopping. Well that was an experience all on its own, it was like driving a rudderless sailing ship across the ocean and it wandered all over the road and had virtually no breaks at all and one shock was very obviously broken. And I thought the hippo was bad, shew our baby is steady as a rock compared to this wallowing 1982 Jeep Cherokee. On top of which we daren't hit a pot hole as I think the whole wheel would come off and we would land up doing a complete rebuild of his car all for the need of buying a few liters of milk. Fortunately we had taken Steve with us and as you know he can fix anything so that was comforting.

Shakawe is a bustling town with one "Choppies Supermarket", one bank, one service station and a Pep. My gosh, I couldn't find much in terms of veggies but we did get a few things to carry us for a few more days....fresh stuff of course as I haven't really dented the tins of stuff in the bottomless pit.

We came home to find that the monkeys of the camp have finally found our interesting and obviously abundant camp. They managed to open Ken and Rouvierre's boxes and even opened up her special muesli, what a tragedy as that was a great quick eat and go breakfast. Never mind everyone will now have to stick to the lodge muesli. You have to put away literally everything as they dart in and out to grab anything that is further than two feet away from you. I dropped one raw potato and before I could walk the half a meter to pick it up, the little beggar had darted in picked it up and was off into the trees with a dozen of his palls after him.

We had booked a sundowner cruise on the boat up the river, so at 15h35 we all set off for the main jetty to meet our guide and boat skipper...Ray. He was a local Shakawian who had lived all his life on the river. Unlike Tintswalo game drives we had to pack our own cooler box of drinks but it was still a great experience to go cruising up the river looking for birds, crocs and of course the elusive Sitatonga (otherwise known as the underwater buck) it is very rarely seen but they had seen them the day before so we thought we might get lucky. They had also seen a Pels fishing owl the day before which is what got Fritz's attention. Ernest and I had seen it once before and Fritz said he had seen it once but other than that it would be a new sighting.

Our little Ray really tried hard to show us these two rarities but I am afraid it wasn't our lucky day. There had been a fishing competition that day and Ray said that all the boating activity had frightened the Sitatonga away, the speeding boats had even scared the crocs away so we only saw one small one sunning himself on the bank of the river. However we did see African Skimmers, a very rare bird which got Fritz very excited and then our little Ray bought a fish from a local fisherman and first of all called the Fish eagle, then threw the fish into the water. It very obligingly swooped down in front of us and picked up the fish out of the water. I of course had forgotten my camera back in camp but Friz and Steve got beautiful pictures. Ray was very amusing in his description of different birds, he was always asking for our bionicks ( binoculars) and the plum colored starling was a plum colorful starling.

Andrea took the blond bimbo prize today as when we were all intently looking for the Pels fishing owl, she asked to see a picture of it so she knew what we were looking for. She took one look at the picture and said in a very loud and surprised voice that it looked just like an owl at which point we all nearly fell out of the boat laughing.

There is something so magical about that river, it is flowing fairly fast, about an average of 70 meters wide and lined with high reeds which flatten out now and again to reveal swampy grasslands. This is the river which flows into the delta and creates the Okavango swamps.

We decided to spoil ourselves in the evening and went to the lodge for dinner. It was great to sit in a little bit of luxury and at the end of dinner we didn't have to wash dishes, yippee. 

Till tomorrow!