adventures 206: "love it when we're cruisin together"

Day 6 [Thursday, September 8]

We left Plant Baobab early. We were headed to Chobe, a quick four hours away. We got about halfway there, and as stopped to help out another truck that had broken down, Siri and Ketil took that time to borrow a hammer and try to break open the nuts from various trees that Siri had been collecting. I walked up at just the wrong time, and as Ketil slammed the hammer into the little round pod, it popped right up and into my chin. It was minor, obviously, but a safari battle wound nonetheless.

Wounded

We got back on the road, and arrived at our next campsite in time for lunch. We ate and set up camp, and then a nice young man came and helped us design our trip T-shirts. Thank the Lord we only had to do this once, because when people start designing group shirts, they start getting pretty ill with one another. It was 20 minutes of "I like this design," and "That won't look good." We finally came to a consensus, though, and we loaded up for a game cruise. We sailed off on a huge flat pontoon down the Chobe River, Botswana to our left, Namibia to our right.

Botswana on the Left
Namibia to the Right

We saw baboons and antelope. We saw hippos and crocodile. And the elephants. We saw around 120 elephants in that 3 hour cruise. We saw our first giraffes of the trip, about 14 of them. But more than the animals, we saw each other. The sliver of tension from shirt designing fell away that afternoon, and more than ever, we were Team Elephants. Those 3 hours, I believe, were the real turning point in our trip. Now, don't get me wrong, we were having an absolute blast before the cruise. We were animal spotting and mokoro riding and tent pitching in harmony, but being out on that river, the sun on the water making it seem like we were enclosed from all sides in a bright glow, we started being family. I could ramble on and on, but there aren't words for that afternoon turned night when we started really loving each other, and the pictures don't do it justice either. You really would've had to be there to appreciate how much we loved it when we were cruisin together.

Hippos

Yawning Hippo

Croc

The First of Many, Many Elephants

Lost Baby Elephant with Giraffes

Water Buffalo

Roommates
Siri, me, Colleen

Eva, Ashlee, me

Team Elephants!
[A few of TE are missing, but for the most part, here we are...]

Girls: (back): Vanessa, Franzie, Kylee, me, Siri, Colleen, Laura
(front): Senta, Allie E., Allie D.

Boys: (back): Mike, Trevor, Aaron
(front): Evan, Ketil, Jeff
[Jeff was technically on another trip, but we picked him up for a few days due to illness]