Khutse NP - It's raining cats and dogs - Day3

Lions walking from the waterhole

We woke early on Sunday – around 5.30am – the idea was to get in a drive as the sun came up, especially since we were pretty close (Ok, about 10km) from the Motailane waterhole.  Finally managed to drag ourselves out at about 5.45am and were driving by 6am, after dropping the rooftent. 

Arrived about half an hour later at the waterhole and hit the jackpot.  As we were driving towards the waterhole, saw 5 animals walking up the road at a right angle to the one we were on.  I said “zebra”, though thinking after saying it – there aren’t zebra around here... 

Khutse NP - It's raining cats and dogs - Day2

Springbok in morning light

Late start to the morning.  The plan was to be up for a dawn run, but think we were both buggered from the day before – I had been up since 6am for the travelling in and Dru hadn’t been up much later.  So by the time we were up, it was late in bush time, although it was only 7.30am.

Since we were up so late, we decided to just have a couple of muffins and then head out straight away to catch the last of the morning sun to see if there were still some animals about before they moved into the bush to get away from the heat.

Khutse NP - It's raining cats and dogs - Day1

Khutse, Botswana
Friday (2 March 2007)

I was never supposed to go on this trip. 

Here was the scenario – I was coming over to Botswana for 2 months for work, but was only supposed to be arriving on Sunday 4th March.  And Dru was going to be doing his monthly camping trip to Khutse with Rob.  But at the last minute, Rob pulled out and I managed to get the Friday off and travelled that morning to Gabs.  All this was organised the week before.  So the plan now was arrive in Gaborone at 10.30am, Dru would pick me up, we’d go straight home, get unpacked, throw some clothes into the car and head out to Khutse, to be there by nightfall.  From Cape Town to Khutse in a matter of hours ;)