And Away We Go!!!!

And Away We Go!!!!

We walked across the street from the Intercontinental Hotel at the Jo'burg airport to board our plane for Maun. We had a little extra time in the airport lounge to send last minute emails before "going dark". Our South African Airways flight was filled to the brim. After we deplaned in Maun, Botswana and went through immigration, we were met by a Wilderness Safari representative and taken our waiting mini-airplane for our light to Kings Pool which is located in the Linyati region of Botswana. Kings Pool is located on the Linyati River which is the boundary line between Botswana and Namibia. We stopped in route at a camp called Banoka Bush to drop off some passengers. We were met at the Kings Pool airstrip by our guide, Lemme. Being from the South, of course, we play "the name game" no matter where we are in the world! Quickly I learned that our Kings Pool guide, Lemme, was a brother to Tshepo whom we met at Mombo almost 2 years ago. I have communicated regularly via Face Book with Tshepo since we left. Tshepo was not our guide, but the long suffering guide for a week to a difficult German couple. We learned that Tshepo was no longer guiding at Mombo but is now learning the management side of things....with the same company. And he was nearby at Savute Camp. We arrived at camp after a 20-30 minute ride in our open Land Rover....and was it ever hot!!!! We were shown to our fab "tents" with beautiful views looking out over the river...each with its own plunge pool. We got settled in and left on our first game drive with Lemme. We saw a good many animals in route from the airport, too. Baby elephants are the cutest!! There were giraffes, baboons, impala, vervet monkeys, kudo galore. BUT!!!!!!!!........ The craziest, wildest thing we sat and watched for several hours was 4 male lions. They were all brothers. One was older and more dominant than the others....but all of them were quite large. The dominate male has a "Thing" for 1 of his brothers....only 1! He tried to have sex with his brother every 7 minutes. It was as reliable as watching Old Faithful! He would not let either of the other 2 brothers touch or get close to the favorite brother. There were several fights! A lot of roaring! And a lot of bared teeth! We witnessed a beautiful sunset.....African sunsets are the best! At dinner, we sat with a fun couple from Connecticut. The have a son at Tulane and a son that lives in New York. We had a great dinner and went to our tents to crash for a few hours before our 6am wakeup call! We were very happy to see hot water bottles in our bed!!!

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