Day 15 - Monday July 2, 2007

Good morning all!

 

Well Monday was recreation day to make up for a busy weekend. All of team one as well as others of the volunteer staff went on a day trip to Botswana. Our destination was the Chobie Game Reserve with 14 people stuffed into the Condor and the pick-up truck. We got up at 5:30 AM and got back at 6:30 PM so it was a full day.

 

Getting 14 people across the Namibian and Botswanian boarder check points was no small feat. Multiple forms to fill-out and lines to stand in, but everyone got through OK. The real fun started when Ed tried to pay the fees at Chobie. Of course the credit card machine was broken so we had to pay in cash. The gate official did not the color of Ed’s US money. They were all new 20’s from an ATM machine in the US and the new bills confused them. They insisted on taking Ed’s name and address in the US and said they would come and arrest him if the bills turned out to be counterfeit.

 

Once through the gate everything went much smoother. We spent about eight hours driving all over the Reserve (it runs along the banks of the Chobie River which is a tributary of the Zambezi River). Michelle, Becca, Stephen, Kate, and Kattie rode in the back of the pick-up truck and ate a lot of dust from the dirt roads. The Chobie Game Park is an up close and personal experience to say the least. You are asked not to get out of your vehicles because something will either eat, bite, or run off with you. We saw zebra, monkeys, baboons, giraffes, cape buffalo, antelope, elephants, hippos, crocks, and many birds (this is only a partial list). The only disappointment was no lions, they were apparently all well fed from eating the last group of people to come throug the park and in hiding. Our most exciting moments came when the pick-up truck had a face-off with a hippo on the banks of the river, but the hippo eventually gave up and went into the river. Several times our two trucks became part of a herd of hundreds of cape buffalo or elephants. They would surround the trucks and were so close you could touch them.

 

Don’t worry we took thousands of pictures.
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Have a wonderful day!
Jeff T. and Michelle T. on behalf of Team One

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Published:
7.2.07 / 3pm
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