Day 56 Nairobi to Cape Town
Victoria Falls to Kasane, Botswana We were up early, packed our gear and walked it over to the truck for our 08h30 departure. We said goodbye to more of the crew who were leaving, Harriet was heading to Dubai, Nick was heading back to Toulouse and Patrick was off back to Harare but we would be seeing him in a couple of weeks when he brings down another truck to Cape Town.
We set off for the 70 km trip to the Zimbabwe/Botswana border arriving around 11h00 checking out of ZIM and into Botswana in record breaking time. Before being granted entry into BOTS we had to sanitize our footwear and throw any fresh fruit we had due to an outbreak of foot & mouth disease several years ago.
We drove 20 minutes to the town of Kasane nestled in the northern part of Chobe National Park and grabbed lunch before heading to Thebe River Lodge where we would be camping the night. We upgraded to an air conditioned room which was bliss in the 35 degree heat. We then headed out on a photographic safari with Pangolin Photo Safaris with their customized boats designed specifically for photographic safari tours. We headed into the Chobe after receiving our Park permit. We were instantly rewarded with a mother Crocodile guarding her nest, then a monitor lizard in search of food. We then found a large herd of Elephants drinking and bathing in mud baths next to the river which we spent a large part of our afternoon. We continued along the river seeing Fish Eagles, Impalas, Giraffe, Hippo and as the sun faded we got silhouette photos of Buffalo against another incredible sunset. We then sped back to the dock passing within 100 meters of the Namibian border as darkness fell. We made it back to the Lodge just after 19h00 and wandered down to the busy lodge restaurant where we had dinner and an early night as we would be leaving early the next morning for the 500km+ trip to Maun in the heart of the Okavango Delta.
