Shumba set 7:30 as the departure time, so everybody got up bright and early to do a few things. As we were all up, he decided at 7:00 that we would leave in 10 minutes, so nobody got anything done. We've stayed in some great campsites, but never had time to wander around and look at them. It seems that the overriding criteria to everything is putting distance between you and where you've been.
Saw giraffes, baboons, wildebeest, impala and a large number of elephants lining our route, but lots of the time we didn't stop.
We did make it to Kasane about 11:30 and, as soon as we did, our phones came to life and delivered all of our messages. They had tuned in to Zimbabwe cells and given up on the Botswana network, so we knew that we were really close to the border.
Set up camp, pitched our tents, and thought we had free time till 3. But no! At lunch we were gravely told that we would be leaving in 20 minutes to go into town, and then on to our scheduled cruise.
As expected, around 3pm we got our usual afternoon deluge, so we arrived at the wharf and boarded our cruise launch looking like drowned rats. Anyway, the rain eased off, and we had a lovely cruise. It was one of the most relaxing bits of the tour after thousands of noisy, bumpy kilometres in the bus. The star attractions were the hippos who dived and surfaced near the boat - even swimming under it on occasions. Also saw more elephants, which by now hardly attracted a murmur, crocodiles, eagles and lots of other bird life.
Last camp night together, and finally a couple of hours to relax and sort yourself out. Gosh, we had flushing toilets, power to charge our devices, a light to cook by, and a bar to buy a cold drink. How quickly the simple things become luxuries.
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