Day 9 

We spent day 9 in the Safari Lodge hotel in Maun. The previous day had been wonderful, but it was a long tiring day. To get maximum enjoyment out of our adventure we knew we needed to put in some “nothing “ relaxation days …this was one of these. We slept in late, prepared the bag to send to 5he laundry and reflected on our previous day….. The Okavango is an extremely expensive adventure, camping makes it slightly cheaper but even that’s probably one of the most expensive camping experiences anyone can have. Mobile camping with a company also reduces the cost slightly but John and I are no campers. It was the same as in the Pans area, unless you are an extremely competent 4×4 driver and know how to get through soft sand tracks which can leave all 4 tyres spinning helplessly, you need to go with a Safari company or hire both a vehicle and a driver……( for those who think they are good enough to self drive don’t forget to let your tyres down ….hard tyres really churn the sand up so always drive this type of road with soft tyres. One of the reasons it’s so expensive here is that with both the two safaris we did in the pans and the two from Maun you have to either be a party of 4 or pay for 4 people…..it seemed the majority of companies were charging US$250 per person and all insisted on a minimum of 4 people…..this is what makes it so expensive when it’s just the 2 of us…most people on normal budgets just find the cost prohibiting……..we had decided that this was a very special occasion so it was worth “splashing the cash”.

We updated our Facebook pages, what’s append home and prepared for the following day. We had agreed with Monametsi that we would have a full day in Moremi Game reserve. He had kindly dropped the price to US$800 for the day.

Day 10

We were stood outside the hotel at 5.00am, ( an hour which doesn’t appear on my clock at home, unless we are jet-lagged !!!), waiting for Monametsi to arrive and for one of his Safari vehicles ……time was passing at 5.50am we were about to give up our wait…besides it’s cold even with fleeces, scarfs and gloves at that time of the morning…..just as we were about to go back to bed! …the Safari vehicle arrived…. It turned out the battery had been stolen during the night so the driver had put his car battery on it but that wouldn’t allow us to stop and start with confidence. So we were to set off and wait at the end of the tar for Monametsi to catch us up with a new battery, our breakfast and lunch…. Which is exactly what happened although the blankets were forgotten and we were very cold…

With new battery fitted off we went again…before we got to the Reserves gate we saw a variety of wildlife both dead and alive……this included the sad sight of an elephant who had got stuck in the mud of a waterhole and died, another elephant was showing its last respects. 

Once inside Moremi Reserve we stopped at the gate again and had breakfast, used the ablution block and watched some squirrels playing and hornbills scrounging bits of dropped food.
Then we were off on our day of sightseeing and wildlife spotting. We saw copious amounts of Lechwe, Tsessebe, ( both of these we rarely see so we were delighted to see such big herds)

We also spotted elephants, zebra, giraffe, warthog, hippos, and lots of birds however our search for lions was in vein.

The reserve was quiet and, other than at the main gate, we saw very few other vehicles all day. Some of the tracks we traversed looked hardly used and were extremely overgrown. This added to the experience as we parted the grasses, it was almost off-roading, and the air of suspense hung around as as we scoured the landscape for exciting wildlife spots.

We pulled up under a tree out of, the now, hot sun for lunch……Days like this need either a strong bladder or nerves of steel if you risk nipping behind the bush !!! We once again passed through the South Gate as we made our exit before the 6.00pm deadline.

It was a lovely day, we returned about 8 pm and had a nice supper in the hotel…..if we were honest the day probably wasn’t worth the money but it was an area we had never explored before and we thoroughly enjoyed seeing different types of landscape and terrain as well as the wonderful wildlife.
We once again ate in the restaurant. We chatted happily to a newly retired Doctor and his wife both of whom were from England. They were on a very interesting ‘Intrepid Traveller’ Overland tour from Cape Town to Victoria Falls. The itinerary was truly adventurous and we might have been interested in something like this in the future if it hadn’t been for the couple saying how exhausting it was….this is often a problem on guided organised tours, they rarely put the much needed rest days in, which I prefer to call laundry and catch-up days…or just sleep-in days…..it’s really worth remembering this, I’d learnt my lesson on a trip to India where we’d gone a straight 7 days of sightseeing and moving on , we’d comeback needing a holiday !!!!!