Botswana
As we left Vic Falls we picked up a hitch hiker, a french canadian guy travelling with a suitcase and a laptop through Africa, but he was paying us 20USD a day, so providing a few luxury items of food and along with him we crossed in to Botswana, and stayed at a dusty campsite at Kasane, and experienced our first fully stocked supermarket and ATMs! We took this opportunity to takes an evening river cruise in Chobe National Park, with a chilly bin full of food and beer, fantastic evening, though the smoldering corpses of animals was a little disturbing, apparently they were having some problems with anthrax infection.
Next stop was the town of Maun on the south side of the Okavango Delta, we drove directly to the airport, and along with 4 others rented a plane to fly us over the delta, it was a magic experience, seeing all the animals from the sky, and the tracks they followed was something else. The pilot seemed to make sure one of us was sick, and succeeded with a dive from 2000ft to about 20 feet of the ground , in fact if we had been any lower I think the girl is question would have got out! The delta is formed by the Okavango river hitting the Kalahari desert and being absorbed, the river never reaches the sea, and from the plane the waterways and islands were obvious, of you get a chance to fly over this place before the Angolans complete the dam on the river do it its amazing.
We based ourselves at Sitatunga camp, and next morning packed a few essential items (by this time that equalled a tooth brush and mozzy net) and jumped in the back of a truck heading to the edge of the Delta, on the outskirts of Maun we had a reminder of how HIV was seriously effecting sub saharan africa in the form of a grave yard that had filled in only 6 months, and as you can see from the picture, the average age of the occupants is around 25.
We were soon packing our gear in to hand made Mokoros ( dug out canoes) and making friends with our poler who would ensure we stay upright and dry, and with that we headed in to the delta with a the unique perspective of being 30CM above the water level with reeds brushing past my bear feet. Unfortunatly lieing in a canoe in the heat of the african sun for 3 hours isn’t a great idea for someone like me with fair skin, by the time we arrived at our campsite, and dry land, I was burnt to a crisp. Thanks to particularly high rains we were able to see the Delta at the best it has been for around 25 years, and were able to penetrate much further than is noramlly accessable, we were truely enveloped by the delta and its wildlife.
Our Campsite was an island somewhere in the middle of the delta no one around for miles apart from a lots of animals, the days passed lazily with early morning foot safaris, reading books, and swimming in the cooling water. Our hitch hiker friend nearly caused disaster to the camp when he decided to aproach an elephant that was investigating the area around out campsite, unsuprisingly the elephant charged, causing absolute havoc in the camp, increased by the herd of Buffalo in the bush exactly at the point where all the guides sprinted to at the elephant charged. At least we got some excitment 
After our trip in to the delta we returned to our campsite in Maun and had a quick change of clothes It was time to say goodbye to a couple of people from our truck, as they were to continue on to Jo’burg and miss out Namibia, we also said goodbye to our hitch hiker, the truck decided he was a bit of an idiot!! So the night started with a sit down meal, and then passed in the campsite bar and resulted in my tent being locked so I couldn’t go to sleep, some how I managed to rip the padlock to peices and got some sleep though! 
We left maun and headed on to the Tsolido Hills for a bush camp in the shadow of a huge set of hills rising from the surrounding plain, the hills are famed for bush paintings scattered around them, and we spent the early evening investigting some of them. Next morning was an early start, to see the sun rise from 400m to the top of the hills guided by an expert on the paintings, we even had the experience of seeing a VERY large millipede. 
After we had climbed down and enjoyed a breakfast cooked by the lazy ones, it was time to hit the road again on route to the border with Namibia, a border post that seemed almost abandoned, but very efficient.
