WE left ‘Nanna the Hippo’ at the wallow and moved on to the other end of the Hippo Pool, passing a whole herd of ‘impala with deformed horns’.
Corrie agreed that so many impala could not all have the same deformity and Big Boy informed us that they were red lechwe. That we had never heard of this variety of buck was not surprising, as they live nowhere else in the world, other than in the wetlands of Botswana and Zambia.
There were plenty of signs of elephant in the area – we had to take to the bush to avoid huge trees which they had knocked down across the track and some of the piles of ‘fertiliser’ were still steaming – but we searched for three hours before we found any. There were only four. and they were a long way away, but Karen did get her first sight of a real, live elephant.
On the way back to the tent, Big Boy showed us the proper campsite. He said that they only got four or five visitors a year in that part of the park, so we might as well spread ourselves out in comfort. Of course, he didn’t say it quite like that – his English was as non-existent as our Setswana – but we got his meaning.
We inspected the camp and decided that it would be worth moving into it. There was no water, but a clean long-drop and a little thatched hut with a stone floor. Walking into the hut was like going into a fridge, even in the hottest part of the day.
As soon as we had moved our stuff, we took our beers out of the so-called cold box and put them on the stone floor, where they quickly chilled to a very pleasant temperature.
For some reason or another, while we were in Moremi, Katie started guzzling petrol, and our reserve supplies, which we had calculated on the basis of her normal fuel consumption, were looking a bit sick.
This meant that we had to ration our game viewing trips in order to have enough fuel to get us back to Maun.
Luckily there was plenty to see without going out and the binoculars, bird book and cameras were in constant use during our days in camp.
As there was no water in the camp, washing of both clothes and selves had to be done at the bridge.
On the first day we discovered that we had left both the washing powder and the bath soap in Maun, so we were a source of great amusement to the local population, as we rubbed ourselves all over with washing-up liquid and then poured buckets of water over each other.
Karen found that the best way to wash her hair was to stand on her head in the bucket.
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