Toledo, Spain

I was very surprised by all the things I remembered. I mean I didn’t get lost once when I was walking around the city. It was 11 years ago that I was last in Toledo, and it seemed like the city hadn’t changed a bit.

Starting in the train station, I guess that had changed a bit, now with the ave going there. Inside the train station though was just like how I had remembered it. It is a pretty cool and old train station. When I first arrived, I was a bit nervous because of all the fog that was everywhere. Luckily, the fog lifted soon enough and it was a beautiful, blue day during my short time in Toledo.

I remembered that I sent some letters at this mailbox just outside of the station.

Instead of walking into the city, I decided to take the city bus. The bus dropped me off right near one of the walled entrances. The cool thing about Toledo is that it is a walled city. It definitely looks like you are somewhere with a lot of history.

I walked into the city a little bit and ran into some trees and a bench. Not until I was looking at my pictures when I got back home did I realize that I took a picture of this same bench 11 years ago. A little girl was sitting on it at the time.

I started to walk up the city to go to the main plaza in Toledo, and I saw a store at which I bought a lladro figurine. I bought that for my mother 11 years ago! The store looked a little bit different inside, but I was for sure this was the same store.

Finally I made it to the main plaza. My friends and I spent many a night hanging out in this area. There were always people there 11 years ago, and there were many people there now. It is really a great place to just sit down and people watch or just amble around the area. The old people love to hold each other’s arms and walk back and forth, back and forth around this plaza.

I sat at this bench 11 years ago when I met up with a woman to do an intercambio with, her name was gema.

We spent a lot of time at the Mc Donald’s if I remember correctly. One day we bothered one of the employees about how much money that they make, saying that we too worked at mc. Donald’s in the United States. The person never did answer us.

I made my way out of the plaza to try and find my school. I remember always getting lost trying to get from the plaza to the school, but this time I knew exactly where to go. I passed a tobacco shop where I remember buying some stamps.

Finally I found the passageway to my school. It is a weird spot for a university. I went inside and the doorman asked me what I was doing there. I told him that I went to the school 11 years ago. He let me look around a bit, but there wasn’t really much to see. It was Sunday, so everything was quiet and closed. Oh well, it was cool to just be in the main lobby and reminisce.

As I was walking away from the school, I saw a pub that I remember going to one evening. It is very possible this is where I had my first beer!

I left that area and tried to find the cathedral of Toledo. I found it, but it was closed for some reason. I just walked around the area and took some pictures. It was very beautiful. There were a fair amount of tourists walking around as well.

Then I walked back to the plaza to find a bus that could take me to the parador (the place outside of the city where you could get a great view of all of Toledo. Before I got on the bus, I checked out another area that I remembered going to 11 years ago. It was just an area that has a great view of the river that surrounds Toledo.

I made it to the parador and took a few pictures, but I needed to hurry because my train back to Madrid was going to leave. I called for a taxi and I just made it back to the train station with 5 minutes to spare.

I was only in Toledo for like 3-4 hours, but it was totally worth it to go back to a place that I spent an important part of my life. It was my first trip abroad!

Madrid, Spain

I feel like I haven’t written on my blog for such a long time!

I just got back from a 5 day weekend trip to Madrid, Spain. I went there to go to a teacher conference called MAIS. I was so excited to go back to Madrid. I hadn’t been back there in 11 years! I went to a University in Toledo, Spain called Fundación Ortega y Gasset – http://www.fogtoledo.com/CEI_eng.html

I also went to Toledo for like 5 hours on my last day there, but I’ll post an entry about that after this one.

I have to say I think I like Barcelona better than Madrid. Madrid has some cool stores and restaurants as well as some nice, well maintained buildings, but I just felt it lacked the character that Barcelona has, not to mention that Barcelona has mountains and the sea. It was weird too that people were only speaking Spanish there. I think I like living with the Catalans!

The conference wasn’t very good for the first few days, but on the third day I was really impressed with some of the workshops. I went to one where some person showed me voicethread.com. I think I’m going to really like that website, both personally and educationally.

One of the evenings we (Gloria – my ESL teacher partner and I) met up with a former teacher at our school for dinner, Ashleigh. She now lives in Madrid. We went to this awesome organic vegetarian restaurant next to the la latina metro stop. This place was so cool; it was like someone’s dream came true. If I had a restaurant, I would make it very similar to this one. It was decorated very well and eclectic. All of the food was great; you paid by weight. We ate our dinner in the downstairs area, which was also very cool looking. We found a wooden parrot friend to play with while we ate our food. The food was so good there that I went back the next day for some take away.

Another day for lunch, Jen (another work friend of mine) and I went to a Thai restaurant. It was so cool inside (I didn’t take any pictures though) and the food was so tasty. They had my favorite meal on their menu. Jen got some vegetarian pad thai that was so good it tasted like candy! One person said that it was the best thai food restaurant in all of spain.

On the last night of the conference, all of the conference participants went out to celebrate at a gala. The gala was held in a gentleman’s club near the center of Madrid. It was pretty nicely decorated inside. We had some appetizers first and then we sat down for some dinner. During dinner we were sung to by some opera singers. They put on a nice show for us. I sat with all my work friends. There were also some teachers from the American school of paris at our table. We took many photos of each other after dinner.

This is sue.

This is marta.

This is jen.

This is me.

And this is Gloria.

I had a really great time in Madrid. I remembered a lot of places that I went to 11 years ago. I would walk by one place and be like…wow I think I have been here before, and most often than not, I immediately remembered the specific moment when I was there last. Oh memories….

Canadian Thanksgiving

I’m sure most people did realize that it was thanksgiving in Canada last week. I only know because I work with like 100 canadians. They have basically taken over our school!

My friend jen is from London, Canada and she always has people over for a thanksgiving dinner every year. This year she invited her work friends (she is the middle school science teacher).

Anne and I both went together to her house. Everyone brought some food to eat. Jen and her husband cooked a turkey and made other delicious things to eat.

I actually didn’t take any pictures, but our friend Christy did.

It was a good time.

La mercé, Barcelona

Actually the é in la mercé should have the accent mark going the other way (something catalan does), but I don’t know how to do that on my keyboard.

Last year I missed la mercé, so I was really looking forward to checking out the craziness again.

I went with my friend Claudio to plaza jaume I to watch some of the correfoc (the fire run). It wasn’t the main corre foc, but it was a little parade of corre foc. The dragons were out and bursting with fire, as well as a number of other figures. There were also some groups of people doing drumming. I saw some people get confetti all over themselves (something that happened to me my first year here). This year, no confetti for me.

And you gotta love the people dressed up like devils!

There was this awesome laser light projector that was displaying a variety of images on the opposite building. It was really cool to watch.

Basically, most of the people watching the corre foc are tourists, so we got out of there right after the parade. La mercé is also known for many locations with live music. We checked out a few bands; one from bcn and one from finland called “the do.”

Then on the last day of the la mercé activities, there is always a grand fireworks show on mont juic. It wasn’t very spectacular this year, it was better 2 years ago. But with that being said, it was still pretty fun to watch.

The finale was so loud and bright, I thought it looked like the end of the world.

I got these great photos of people with sparklers in their hands.

Yea, la mercé!

Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe

I had one extra day in Africa after I left my group. I really didn’t know exactly what I was going to do. I think I was just going to relax and walk around the city of Livingstone. While I was sitting in the lounge area of my lodge I noticed a poster on the wall advertising a “Lion Encounter.” So, I asked the lodge manager about some more information and to make a long story short, I went ahead and booked my adventure to cross the border into Zimbabwe to walk with some lions.It was basically my last little treat to myself, but I really didn’t know exactly what to expect. I didn’t really know what lions would actually be there; their age, their sex, how many of them there would be.

Crossing the border into Zimbabwe was interesting. It all went smoothly though. The taxi driver that the lodge manager set me up with was very nice to me, and I needed for him to be nice and trustworthy because he was to bring me to the border and then pick me up at the border when I was to come back.

Of course there were people at the border really to accost me, but the taxi driver by my side made me feel safer.

The lion encounter driver on the Zimbabwe side was waiting for me; he was nice as well.

We picked up a couple more tourists and were off to the reserve.

Basically this place was designed to help increase lion numbers in the wild. There was a 5 step process of the increase the lion numbers program. Step 2 involved raising money from the public/tourist to help fund the program; the part that I played a part in when I paid my 100 dollars to experience this encounter.

We got there and watched a short video as well as getting the low down on the dos and don’ts of walking with wild lions. Well actually there weren’t wild just yet. They take the lion cubs away from their mothers at 3 weeks. Then they keep the lion cubs until like 16 months (when they no longer are playful with human being encounters). We got to walk with two male cubs that were 14 months old (they were brothers). I thought that they would be smaller because they really looked like grown, big adult lions.

It was really amazing to see them up close. Their bodies and the size and shape of their heads are just amazing to look at. They are definitely a work of art and something special in this world.

The two lions all of a sudden came out of nowhere. They told us that they had just be woken up to go on the walk with us; so they were both a bit tired and basically only wanted to lie down on the ground.

The guides really wanted for us to get ample shots of us sitting next to the lions, which was cool, but it got to the point where it was just really false what we were doing. I mean are people really supposed to be walking with lions and getting so close to them to take a picture with them?

Oh I forgot to mention that we all got walking sticks. The sticks were meant to use as a decoy so that the lions would play with the stick instead of playing with my face.

The whole afternoon was really just amazing. Perfect lighting. Small number of people. Just 1.5 hours walking and playing with the two lions. They sure loved each other too. They kept laying on each other and licking each other’s faces clean.

I got to touch them a number of times. I thought that their fur would have been softer to the touch, but it was actually pretty course hair.

It was so much fun to take photos of these amazing animals up so close to them.

When our time was up, they brought the lions back to their enclosures.  But right before they were to go into the caged area, they darted off to try and catch a bunch of nearby vultures.

Well, this entry concludes my African adventure blog entries. I hope that you enjoyed them!

Livingstone, Zambia

I thought I was on my last African entry, but then I realized that I hadn’t uploaded a whole folder of photos – the ones from livingstone, ZambiaWell we got to livingstone by way of ferry. The border crossing was one to remember. There were long, long lines of semi trucks and other cars waiting to cross to the river into Zambia. I guess some people/trucks have to wait for weeks and months to get across. So you may ask how we got across so fast?? (there is only one working boat ferry to take everyone across) well our tour driver had to bribe some people there. Luckily we got across without any problems; I think we did it in less than 2 hours. We heard later that some other tour groups took much longer, including one group that got across in 21 hours which included a physical fist fight as well! It was a bit of mayhem and feeling of being uncomfortable.

Guess how much U.S. visitors need to pay to get a visa in Zambia? 135 dollars!!! I couldn’t believe it. Luckily, I was prepared to pay (because you had to pay in crisp new U.S. dollars). I guess the process of Zambian people getting visas to the united states is much more expensive and takes much more time. Why do countries do this to each other?

We went straight to enjoy the Victoria falls. We spent like 3 hours there I think; way too long in my opinion. But it was spent well because they were amazing to look at, but like anything looking at some waterfalls for 2 hours can get a bit tiring. Dare I say looking at a pride of lions for 2 hours might get tiresome as well.

Here are my photos from walking around the falls.

The bridge in the background, I found out later, is the bridge to go to Zimbabwe.

After walking around, I went to do some shopping. I bought 2 animals this day – a zebra and an elephant. I gave the elephant to my roommate, and I kept the zebra to myself. I had the artist sign his name on the bottom of the zebra. I like to buy art that is original and I like to buy art when I know that I am supporting the artist and their craft, and that day I felt like I did just that. But it is tough to walk around and be molested by all the sellers. A simple no thank you wasn’t good enough for most of them; they would keep bothering you to stop and buy something. All you can do I guess is to be the most polite that you can.

Just outside of the shopping area, I saw a sign warning us about the nearby baboons. They were crazy and I made sure to stay away from them.

This is Mick. I took this photo of him because he looked so funny with all that sun cream all over him.

We left to settle into our last lodge together. We had a last minute lodge change because our previously booked one just failed a health inspection! We were pretty please with our last lodge, it had a lot of character and it felt like we were truly surrounded by nature.

At night we all gathered to have our last moments together in a meeting area. We all talked about what were some of the highlights and lowlights of our trip. We all rated the trip from 1-10 (the average was a 6). We were all pretty disappointed with a number of things and how things went, but we were overall pretty happy with our experiences. Somebody said that it is normal to complain during a tour, but when you are at the end most of the time you can look back and realize how many wonderful things you actually did and saw. And that was exactly what happened to me, I really did experience so many things and boy am I very appreciative that I was able to go on this trip.

After our meeting, I walked back to my cabin. I saw some things jumping from tree to tree in the dark. I thought it was nothing at first, but then I realized it was something. I had to run to my room to get my flashlight, and when I got back I got to see what they were. After confirming the next morning with some lodge employees, what I saw were some bushbabys! I guess they are very common in this area. They were the coolest animals. Nothing like I had ever seen before. I had no idea how fast that they could run and jump from tree to tree. Obviously, they are nocturnal.

The next morning a few of us from the tour went on our last game drive at the nearby private park. The park itself was pretty small and didn’t have any big game there, but they did have a white rhino – one of them. So our main goal that morning was to find it (one of the big five).

We saw the regular animals – impala, baboons, vervet monkeys, giraffe, buffalo, wildebeest, but no rhino.

We entered into this what looked like an abandoned town with vacant buildings/houses everywhere. And guess what we saw there? The rhino! I guess it likes to hang out in this area in the morning time. It was cool to see the rhino, but it wasn’t moving. So we left to check out a lookout area near the river. When we got back, the rhino was up and walking about in the same area.

Then we left him and found a herd of zebra.

Next to the zebras another car came by and didn’t follow rule number one when you are driving in a game park – don’t get out of your car!

After the game drive, we said our goodbyes again and we headed off on our own ways. I got picked up and brought to my last lodge (one that I had booked myself because I was staying 1 extra day). So, I’ll write about that in my last blog entry about my African adventures!

Chobe National Park, Botswana

We crossed back into Botswana just a little bit to check out one of their national parks called Chobe.

Once again after we crossed the border we had to drive through the park for about 5 minutes to get to our lodge. We didn’t see very much at all. When we got to the other side of the park, the guy at the exit gate told us that some people had seen a lone female lion sitting under a bush next to a kill of hers.

Our tour guide literally screeched our tires as we turned around to try and find this lioness. We had seen 3 male lions before, so I was very excited to see a female lion.

On the way to find the lion, a herd of elephants crossed the road in front of us. Most of the elephants crossed the road before we could drive passed, but one little elephant didn’t make it. It was awesome to see the elephants that made it across wait for the other one to cross. Finally the little one felt comfortable to run across the road to reunite itself with the herd.

Then before we even saw the lion we saw a huge group of vultures sitting in a tree. A sign that maybe there was an animal carcass around the area. It was true, we found the cleaned carcass and then we found the lioness! She was just sitting their calmly in the shade under a bush. We stay to watch her for about 15 minutes or so, she was so beautiful. We thought though that she wouldn’t have been able to kill that 1 animal (a kudu I think) all by herself, but there were no other lions around next to her.

We went back to our lodge to settle in, but we left shortly thereafter to go on an official game drive through the park.

We got into a real safari truck (one with bleacher-like seat in the back of a pick-up truck) and made our way into the park. We first saw some giraffe, but then we saw an animal that I hadn’t seen yet – a yellow mongoose!

We didn’t see many animals at first (because it was the middle of the day), but then we headed towards the water. Good tactic too, because animals will come out to drink some water during the heat of the day. We first saw a family of warthogs. I didn’t realize that they can’t reach their mouths down enough to eat the grass below without kneeling down first – very intriguing.

Then we saw more elephants in the distance – the most we ever saw together in one moment.

We got closer and closer to them. As we inched closer to the elephants, we saw some Egyptian geese in the water and some lounging hippos.

It was so cool to be so close to so many elephants, but they sure don’t feel comfortable when people are near to them. The mom and the dad elephants really made it clear that they didn’t like us near them and their babies.

One of the big male elephant started to move one of his front legs back like a toro would before it charges, and that is exactly what it did – the dad elephant started running towards us at full speed. The problem was though that we were driving on deep, thick sand so our truck wasn’t able to quickly get away as fast as we would have liked. I was in the last row of seats and as the elephant was getting closer and closer to us, we were screaming “go! Go! He’s still coming!!!” it was an exhilarating experience!

There was a species of antelope that lives in this area (an island really) that is endemic. I can’t though remember their name – though maybe these ones are just impala.

We went a little further and ran into a group of buffalo just standing around, boy do they for sure stare at you.

We then moved away from the water and went into the bush. It was beautiful, but we didn’t see one living thing. Well I think we saw one lone giraffe.

Then before we went back to our lodge (which wasn’t a good lodge, we waited like 2 hours for our food that night), we told the driver to go back and see if that female lion was still there sitting on the side of the road. Luck would have it that it was still there. I guess it was very hot and tired to move. I got a better picture of the carcass up close. Also, the vultures were still flying around in the sky.

We left the lion and went driving down the road back to the lodge when a sable went jumping across right in front of us. I think this animal looks so cool.

That late afternoon, we went to a nearby lodge to take a boat ride down the chobe river.

It was basically where we just were before, but now we were actually in the water, thus getting us closer to some of the animals. At the lodge, I saw a couple of vervet monkeys just sitting in a tree.

The area was teaming with animals, they were everywhere! There were so many birds, so many hippos, so many of everything.

This bird is called the snake bird because when it swims all you can see is its neck which looks like a snake’s body.

We saw a whole group of baboons playing around in the trees near the water. One baboon was getting a drink of water.

Next to the baboons, there were water monitors and crocodiles.

Then we stopped in many locations to check out the hippos. We all wanted to get the stereotypical photo of a hippo yawning. Hippos are so interesting. They just seem so flabby and big, yet can swimming wonderfully in the water and can get their bodies up from out of the water on to the land.

We saw many pied kingfishers. I was hoping that African would have different kinds of kingfishers, but we only saw the pied kind.

We saw some storks – which are really huge in person, and another snake bird drying its wings.

We saw more of those endemic antelopes.

I don’t remember the name of this bird, but it was cool.

I think this bird is called the African bird if you can believe me.

Then we drove out boat way across the river to check out all the elephants again.

We got stuck in the weeds, so we had to ask another boat driver to help us out. There were so many boats out doing the same thing as us. It was kinda gross actually to see all these tour boats out in this amazing wetlands area.

There was this little girl on the other boat that caught my attention.

I think this bird is a kind of ibis.

We saw one more menacing crocodile that almost jumped into our boats which scared us (well the ones in the front of the boat.

The sun was going down and I decided to take a picture of myself in my safari hat.

The sunset was really amazing. I got some great shots, even one with the sun, a boat, and a yawning hippo.

We got back to the resort and as we passed through the reception area to get to our truck I noticed a really cool chandelier made out of ostrich eggs.

Next up, Zambia!!!

Caprivi Strip, Namibia

We left to make our way closer to the border between Namibia and Zambia in a narrow strip of land called the caprivi strip.Half way along our journey we stopped to have a special unplanned lunch stop at a lodge that was situated on an island. We stopped our truck and waited for a pontoon-like boat to pick us up to bring us to the lodge. The boat ride was about a 10 minute ride.

The boat was awesome because it went through a nature reserve, thus there were many different animal and plant species to enjoy.

The lodge was great and the food was too I think (I didn’t eat anything because I was feeling a little bit under the weather).

We got a little bit lost as we tried to find our next sleeping destination, but we finally found it. This lodge was situated on the Zambezi river, meaning that Zambian land was on the other side of the river.

The lodge we stayed at was very nice. The owner was this little (slightly older) lady and she was very friendly to all of us. The woman and her daughter made an awesome home-cooked meal for us for dinner. They had a nicely designed and decorated eating area as well. Before dinner we got the chance to view some Olympic coverage on their satellite tv.

The area around the lodge had some cool plants and animals there were roaming around the grounds.

Next up involved going on our last chance to see animals in the wild – chobe national park – going back into Botswana.

Ngepi Camp, Namibia

We didn’t have that far to drive that I can remember. We had to cross the border once again into Namibia. I think I got like 4 Namibian stamps in the passport now.

We did though have to drive awhile to find another place where there were bushman paintings. It turned out that it wasn’t worth the 2 hour journey; we didn’t seem to be very impressed with bushman paintings.

Before we did our “leisurely” walk to find the painting, we ate a bag lunch in the park’s parking lot. There were many goats walking around doing strange things. For example, they were licking the wheels of all the trucks. I guess when we drove through that foot and mouth diseases solution, some calcium formed on the car. The goats apparently liked to eat that from off our trucks.

The bushman painting trek started off very calm.

We saw many paintings that were very old (the red colored ones), then we saw a few that were white (either older or earlier than the red ones…I can’t remember at this point). Our tour guide was like this 20 year old man who wasn’t very engaging when he was speaking to us.

Then the terrain started to get worse. We basically had to climb up the side of the mountain (and it was very hot that day) and then all the way back down. I guess that wouldn’t have been a problem, if our tour guide had warned us and got us prepared for a more rigorous trek. To make a long story short, we were all pretty upset at our tour guide for not warning us. Oh well, we all made it through just fine I guess.

Then after we crossed the border into Namibia, we had to go through a national park (for like 5 minutes). We were all on the lookout for animals. I was the one who spotted a little herd of elephants in the distance. We also found this majestic animal called the sable. I have a better picture of this animal that I’ll post in a future entry in my blog.

Just as we exited the park, we saw a lineup of animal skulls. Can you guess the animal whose skull is the largest? Elephant! Kind of ironic that there would be a number of animal skulls just outside of this animal reserve.

The ngepi camp lodge was known for greatness and cool things. They had a swimming pool that was actually in the river. We it sounded cool before we got there, but when we saw it in person I didn’t want to jump into it.

The camp also had these amazing tree houses. Well some of them were in the trees, but the other ones were out over the river! There was a dock that led to the cabin. The cabin though only had 3 walls, the 4 wall wasn’t there leaving you exposed to the river. Of course the bed had a mosquito net, but sleeping in this bed at night (it was a full moon that night) and then waking up to the sun on your face was amazing. You could hear all the sounds of nature too, like the calls of hippos just below you in the river!

The bathrooms at the camp were all unique and different as well. Most of them just looked out into the wilderness, no walls!!!

Early the next morning, some of us went on a short game drive in that same nearby animal park/reserve. We didn’t see that many animals really, but you got to take every chance you get to see the animals. We saw a lone giraffe. We saw some buffalo. We saw some impala. We also saw a family of baboons and a small group of zebra.

We got to a point in the park where we stopped and got out to get a better view of the surrounding area. It was next to a large wetlands. We could see some hippo in the distance and many types of birds.

Our tour guide told us more about the bao bao tree. I guess there were many stories about this big one in the park. This one was a female one and it was attached to the male version of the tree just some yards away (by their roots). I guess I never really think of plants being male or female.

As we were driving out of the park, our driver stopped really suddenly and pointed out an animal that none of us would have seen on our own. It is called a bushbuck.

next, we went to the narrow piece of namibia (just north of botswana) called the caprivi strip.

okavanga delta, botswana

Through Botswana we had to stop our truck, everyone get out, and step into this solution with all of our shoes. These stops were meant to try and stop the spread of foot and mouth disease.

We were on our way to another national park – the Okavango delta. This area is known for its high numbers of hippos and crocodiles. This area also has other animals too like elephant and buffalo as well as a number of bird species.

We arrived at a location where we were to be picked-up by a boat to bring us to our house boat in the delta. We were to stay in the delta for 2 days. Our boat actually was late like 1-2 hours it seemed, so we had to sit around and wait in this area below. We saw an abandoned mokoro boat there as well – this boat is what the native people use to get around in the delta’s more swampy areas. There were some donkeys hanging around the bank of the river as well. At one point there were three boys riding past us on donkeys. It was very beautiful there, but we were itching to get deeper into the delta.

Finally our boat arrived and we were off to our house boats. We were hoping that along the way we would see some animals and luckily we did. We saw a whole family of hippos hiding in the tall plants. We also saw a pretty big crocodile just lying on the side of the bank. The plant that you see the most in the delta is called the papyrus plant.

We also saw some cool looking birds. I don’t remember the names of all of them, but I do remember the eagle was called a fish eagle.

The scenery was just amazing, and it really seemed like we were going deep into nature, secluded from civilization.

After 2 hours or so, we arrived at our house boat. It was just in time too because the sun was just about to go down. I quickly walked around the boat to get a few photos before it was completely dark. I was the only one to get a shot of a nearby hippo “ yawning” in the distance. I have a better picture of a hippo yawning that I’ll post in a future blog entry.

The next morning we drove our boat a short distance to find a place where we were going to go on our own mokoro boats to explore the delta. We saw some people fishing along the way in their own mokoro boat (most of them now are not made of wood anymore).

We actually had to dock our boat at one location (an island in the delta), then a big truck drove us to another location to find where all the mokoro boats were. There were many people just hanging around there so I took some pictures of them.

It was 2 people plus a driver on each mokoro boat. there was even a woman mokoro driver which I thought was awesome.

In a short while all the drivers told us to be quiet because they had spotted an elephant in the distance. We all carefully stood up on our mokoro boats to take a look.

The mokoros were built well because you can get through thick tall grasses with ease. Unfortunately that meant going through huge spider webs and other gross things.

Then in a few more moments we almost ran right into some hippos. We all stopped and watched them for like 10 minutes. The drivers were really scared of them and were very cautious about getting anywhere near them.

We got back to the starting point and all got back onto the huge truck. Some of the tour group members wanted to go on an airplane ride over the delta, but I decided not to do it. The people who didn’t go on the airplane went to explore the nearby town on the island. I saw that eastern grey bill bird again (the one that I talked about in my previous entry), so beautiful. In the town danny (the driver) and I found a place to get a haircut. So being that one of my traveling goals is to get my haircut in the countries that I visit, this was a perfect opportunity to get my haircut in Botswana. This place was basically a shack. The guy had never cut a white person’s hair before, so I just told him to buzz off all my hair…actually danny told him because the guy didn’t speak English. His mirror was a broken shard of mirror glass too, but it was very fun. The stylist was very nice (though he didn’t talk very much), and the whole thing only cost like 1 euro. So you can’t beat that price.

We met up with the rest of the group and did some more waiting at the bank for our boat to get off the island. There were some children hanging out down there. We also spotted a vervet monkey in one of the nearby trees.

Our boat came and we made our way to our second house boat. This time we took our house boat for a ride as we drifted down the river of the delta. We thought that we were going to see some animals on this ride, but we didn’t. The changing scenery though was amazing to look at during the cruise.

As the sun went down the photo opportunities went up. Here are all my shots from that evening.

next up, more bushmen painting and a really cool lodge back in namibia.