You may have surmised that we are in Botswana. But weren’t we just in South Africa attempting to extend our visit? Yes. . . well. . .turns out, SA was happy to let me stay for a few more months but they did not grant Jim the same courtesy. Time to leave, and really, it was a relief to just drive away from SA and bureaucracy. Time to go camping instead of hanging around a visa office. Time to go hang out in a campsite reservation office in Maun instead.

Besides CKGR and Makgadikgadi, the hypnotizing Kalahari desert has more parks for us to visit. Nxai Pan (pronounced Nie) National Park and Baines Baobab Reserve are chock-full of fenceless camping and they contain enough predator species to keep us on our toes, not that we are slacking after the lions at Njuca in Makgadikgadi.

Nxai Pan campsites are unfenced, but the ablution block is ready for war. The eight-foot wide concrete slabs woven with spikes of rebar repeal the elephants. The elephants don’t like this. A trio of bulls hovered near the block, trumpeting and rumbling all day, even though there is a perfectly wonderful waterhole only four kilometers away. We left those ellies to their ablutions and headed for the waterhole, content to park the truck and let the show come to us. We were not disappointed.

This lion pride entertained the waterhole for two days. Eight lions; one youngster, six females and one male. After shading up in the heat of the day, they would wander out of the bush to drink and socialize in the evening. The male does not appear to be the pride male, but only an off-spring and likely to soon leave the pride. He tolerated his sister/cousin to sit on him. She went and found a stick. The afternoon went on.  

Bull elephants appeared out of nowhere to refresh themselves, and test each other. There is plenty of water in this waterhole, but no, they all want to drink from the same place – the incoming water valve. There is a whole bunch of elephant energy posturing there at the edge of the water, and one lioness could not resist teasing the bulls. The other lions did not join in, why work so hard when you don’t have to? Still the lioness looked quite pleased with herself. As the day ended, a typical and stunning magenta/mango/pink grapefruit sunset completed the picture. Nxai Pan waterhole is easily reached from Maun; we based ourselves there and resupplied for the next sector, Khwai and Savuti.