We left Boteti River quite early in order to take advantage of the sprawling metropolis of Maun, or so we thought. Malls, supermarkets, a museum all there for the taking, but in reality it was nothing to get excited about.  The Nahbe Museum was a British Military building, built to surveille the Germans in the Second World War and now boasts itself as Maun’s finest and only museum.  We walked 2 Km in searing heat and viewed 4 stuffed vultures for about 3 pico seconds and then left in search of somewhere cooler.  K was happy to go roadside shopping for hand carved hippos and the elusive wooden wild dogs, but M was wilting in 43 degrees, so we headed back to our guest house only to find our air-con had broken down.

After a hot night we departed early, we seriously stocked up on water (60 plus litres), filled the 140 litre fuel tank to the brim and set off for the wilderness.  We drove to the South Gate of Moremi Game Reserve and did a long game drive via Xkanaka to Khwai Northgate.  Due to the empty waterholes and dry rivers, we saw almost no animals, just hours of totally scorched earth and smashed trees where the elephants had decimated the landscape.  

Khwai is a beautiful, small-scale campsite with 10 camping pitches about 20 metres from one branch of the Okovagno Delta.  There was flowing water and we could see hippos only metres away, only this time we were not fenced.  The SKL camping guide told us not to provoke any animals that came into our site, “which animals are you referring to” M asked,  “hippo, elephant, lion, hyena and honey badger” was the reply, so our stock of wood for the fire was doubled. Oh yes and he told us to be in bed for 9pm and avoid going to the ablutions. 

This campsite at Khwai and the next one at Savuti are always in huge demand and we had to book more than 6 months in advance to have the privilege of wild camping in Botswana's best national parks.  We paid £100 a night to park up and the camping pitches were only serviced by a fire pit and very average communal ablutions.

We heard our neighbors shouting and banging metal to fend off hyena around 9 pm, so we scarpered to the safety of our roof tent. Fortunately, the only thing that bit us that night was mosquitoes and we were up and out by 6 am on our first game drive.   That said, our camper was surrounded by hyena foot prints and in the morning the monkeys stole our breakfast (even a litre carton of milk) when we turned our back for a few seconds.

We have ticked all the animal sightings boxes apart from wild dogs, so we were over the moon to see a pack of 10 devouring a fresh kill.  Having watched the dogs for half and hour we drove up and down one dried out river bed and spent many hours in awe of the abundance of wildlife in such a tiny area of Botswana.