Namibia/Botswana/Zambia 9

Tags

black-winged stilt, buffalo, Caprivi Strip, Chobe dwarf gecko, Dark chanting goshawk, elephant, European bee-eater, Giant kingfisher, hippo, Kaisosi River lodge, kudu, Mahango National Park, Mahangu Safari Lodge, Okavango, Painted snipe, pied kingfisher, Pygmy-goose, ruff, Sable antelope

Friday 1st March. Just before sunrise over the Okavango River from my ‘garden’ at the Kaisosi River Lodge.

A little while later, a fisherman was working from his dugout canoe opposite my room.

And just before we set off after breakfast, an African Pygmy-goose appeared.

We had been at the north of the Caprivi Strip, (that ‘handle’ at the north east of Namibia) and this morning were moving well towards the south of it but not much further east yet.

En route, we (they) couldn’t resist visiting the previous evening’s sewage works again. But before getting there we saw (among other things – it’s always among many, many other things, especially birds) ..

I’ve spent over half an hour searching for what this pretty bird might be, to no avail. Thank goodness that after this I started making a note of the name of every bird of which I took a photo! Much later: I’m beginning to suspect that my first thought, which I rejected initially because of the beak, was right. A Carmine bee-eater, its beak very much foreshortened in the photo.

Upper wire: giant kingfisher with prey. Lower wire – pied kingfishers.

At the sewage works.

Painted snipe. Seeing this caused some excitement.

Black-winged stilt

If the ground is too low for the telescope to be of use, you use whatever else is to hand, here the luggage trailer.

Ruff

European Bee-eater

We moved on.

Dark chanting goshawk

And in due course arrived at the Mahangu Safari Lodge, still on the Okavango (or Kavango) River, and by the Mahango National Park.

We were due to go on a river cruise later in the afternoon.

Almost as soon as we arrived, I was thrilled to see this Sable Antelope on the far bank. I had been doing my homework and knew that there was a possibility. Beautiful creature!

Chobe dwarf gecko on the side of one of the rooms

And this is the view from my own lime-green-painted room, which was to be home for three nights.

There was a small ‘normal’ swimming pool at the lodge, but this one had been carved (not sure that’s the right word) out of the river. One of our number tried it and said it was quite impossible to swim there. He was just swept to the far (in this photo, near) side of the pool by the current.

Way upstream these buffaloes came down to graze on the opposite side of the river.

But directly opposite were many, many elephants. They entered right and left left, for over an hour. I stayed and watched them while most of the others went off for a bird-wander before our cruise.

The white mounds are salt, put there by the proprietors of the lodge to attract creatures needing it, here elephants and, behind, kudu.

Glimpse of a hippo