Seth and Maureen's African Road Trip

I was lucky enough to have my boyfriend Seth come and visit me for two weeks! We started in Botswana, stayed in Namibia for a few days and then headed to Victoria Falls. Then we crossed back into Botswana at the other side of the delta and looped back around to Maun where he flew out of. He was able to spend a few days in my village and even shadowed me at work. Here are some of the highlights in pictures: 

Morning rainbows. If you go during a full moon there are moonbows. Pretty incredible!

Rain jackets were a must, and we got soaked anyways

The water went over the falls at such high velocities and then shot back up into the air, causing a perpetual rain storm despite the sunshine. You can see the contrast between spray from the falls here along the bridge you have to cross. 

A rock hyrax, the closest living relative of the elephant if you would believe it

Lilac-breasted roller, one of the most common birds in this country.

We saw so much wildlife on our trip through Chobe National Park near Kasane, Botswana. This is a pensive impala

Seth's first elephant! (not in a zoo) We pulled over to watch him for a bit

Botswana has the most elephants out of any other country in the world....we saw hundreds over the course of a couple days.

(Sorry for the rotation issue) This is a fish eagle, the Bald Eagle's close African cousin

Hippos everywhere in Chobe!

This croc is regulating his temperature by sunning with his mouth open like this

This is a family of kudu, a beautiful species of antelope.

A family of elephants crossing to higher ground by the Chobe River just outside of Kasane where we were staying. 

Sorry again about the orientation issue! Thirsty giraffe

We found ourselves in the middle of a pride of about 11 lions during the last few minutes of the last game drive we did. We stopped the car and watched them as they passed us before following them for a bit. There were two or three large females with their offspring.

A young lion.

It was neat to listen to them "talk" to each other with little growls and gutteral noises. 

Next we headed for the salt pans in the eastern part of Botswana. During the time of year we were visiting, they were filled with water. The entrance area to the pans is actually a bird sanctuary that the local village created as a community cooperative project. There were some beautiful birds residing in and around the pans. We even saw some flamingos fly by!

Wildebeest! Lots of them in the pans 

This pan, called the "Soa" pan, is the second largest in the world. But when combined with the neighboring networks of pans, it forms a body of water even larger, making it the biggest in the world.

The salt pans looked like one big lake, but they were shallow enough to walk across if you wanted to. 

Botswana is in the middle of a multi-year drought, so it felt strange to stand on the shores of what looked like a lake, knowing that the water is far too salty to be potable.