Day 123 - Maun to Kasane, Botswana

RobT:  Another long day on the road.  600km (375 miles).  We tried to leave early but had some last minute computer work to finish.  Last night I had noticed ants all over my motorcycle.  This is the third time this has happened and I’m not sure why they like my bike so much. RobC has not had this problem.  (Ed. It's his dainty perfume!)  I made a special effort to put my helmet on the bench and not on my bike.  We came back from breakfast to find a 1000 ants crawling all over my helmet!  Sigh.  I spent 20 minutes trying to evict the lousy freeloaders in the hopes of avoiding having one crawl into my ear while riding along the highway. After that we were on our way.  We passed our new friends we met last night at the Audi camp.  All three of them biologists working on their PhDs, Irene (Dutch), Chrystal (USA) and Peter (Frisian/Dutch) taking a break from their field work in animal behavior in the Kalahari. Apparently I have lost a lot of knowledge from my university days, as I should have known what an "ornithologist" was.

 Road near Nata, Botswana

As we passed a game reserve en route to Nata we saw our first elephants!!  200 m from the road. They looked massive standing beside the trees!  WOW!! The road north from Nata traveled though several more game reserves.  We saw more elephants, several giraffes and massive termite mounts all without going off the main road.  We even had to stop and let several elephants cross the rough two lane highway in front of us.  We had to be extra careful along this road, as it was under construction as well as the tall meter and a half high grass growing alongside the road, no shoulder.  We were also warned of warthogs.  New obstacles to add to an ever growing list of road hazards.

 Termite mound

We stopped for fuel about a 100 km from Kasane only to find a paper sign taped to the fuel pumps ... “No petrol”.  We both had fuel in our auxiliary tanks so that wasn’t a big issue.  We arrived in Kasane to even more elephants crossing the road in town before we found our way to the Chobe Safari Lodge and Campsite right along the Chobe River.  We picked a site and reserved a safari and boat ride for the next day.  

It was time for dinner and as usual I had to try something different.  I had impala, gazelle and warthog.  Word to the wise, I don’t think you could ever acquire a taste for Pumba the warthog ... yuk!  The other two were quite good.