On Tour: Botswana

I've been pleasantly surprised at the frequency of emails from Michaela. Hopefully she keeps up this pace so we can all learn about the wonder that is Botswana. Here is the latest:

Just a quick note to describe my adventurous weekend......As I mentioned before we headed up to Kutsi National Park. Its about 270 km outside of Gabs heading north, into the desert area. The trip started early early (im talking 4 in the morning) on Saturday, why so early is beyond me but i was just going with the flow. The benefit of the early start was that it allowed me to watch the sun rise as we drove into the bush (so beautiful), after stopping numerous times to accomadate everyones bush runs (there was three vehicles) and a leisurely breakfast on the side of the road we didn't actually arrive at the park until 10. I was surprised at how nice the camp sites were, there was an outhouse (probablle the nicest I've ever seen) and a shower contraption that allowed you to place water in a bucket and dump it over your head. ( though I don't know where people would get the water from, it seems like kind of a waste out in the bush). The only thing that surprised me was that there was no fence that enclosed the site, we were just out in the open, nothing to separate you from nature ie hungry animals!!

We went on a game drive late in the afternoon, unfortionatly we didn't really see a whole lot (just mainly springbuck and kudu). This could be attributed to the fact that our group had consumed....oh maybe just a couple beers, and therefore wasn't really in the mood for a quiet game drive. Im sure any animals that were close by were scared away from all the yelling coming from the back of the truck! Anyway, it was quite unsuccessful..however the next morning we went out around 6 this time everyone seemed a little quieter (i wonder why). On the way out of the camp site we saw large paw prints all over the road (can only assume what that would be). so we continued on and about .5 km away we saw 5 lions watching some springbuck in the tall grass. Unfortionatly they were quite far away from the road, and becuase the grass was so high all we could see was their heads. Now some might be worried, waking up and coming face to face with lions just outside your camp, but i don't think we had too much to worry about because its the end of the rainly season, and there is lots of other, easily assessable, animals for them. the downside to the season was that its harder to view animals has they are not all around a water hole, and there is lots of bush to hide. So other than the lions, we didn't really see too much. Fortionatly sean and I will be going to the Masi Mari game reserve in kenya in october, so hopefully we will have better luck.

We left camp around 3 and drove home, for dinner we stopped at the best place (dad you would have loved it). The system entailed that you buy your food (steak and pap-ground maize cooked with water- )and drinks (local cider called savana) then cook the meat outside yourself on a braai(bbq). This meat was some of the best I have ever tasted (beef is the second main export in botswana, and- i hate to say it- it could compete with alberta beef). For $2cdn you got a organic, probably straight from the cow, big piece of meat, and after cooking it med rare(everyone eats their meat welldone down here) it was the best thing I have tasted in a long time. After a weekend of camping it was the perfect end, i am trying to convince everyone to go there again next weekend.