Spring Break: Kasane for now

As you might have gathered from the last few posts, traveling in this Texas-sized country requires a bit of time, especially if by land. After our long journey, we finally arrived at Thebe River Camping and got ourselves a few permanent tents. They included such modern luxuries as floors, a rug, and a futuristic lamp which got brighter the more you tapped its base.

The Chobe River, which runs next to the campsite, makes up the border between Namibia and Botswana and runs into the eponymous Chobe National Park. We spent the day walking around Kasane, which is a fairly spread out town, nothing more than a block or so from the main road. Our guidebooks pointed us to an ancient baobab tree from days of yore (below left), whose gargantuan interior was used as a prison by the local chief. One of the local men started talking to us, re-explaining the history of the tree and then pointing us to an even larger, living specimen located around back.

Made famous by Saint-Exupery's children's book, "Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince)", and perhaps Regina Spektor's "Baobabs", the baobab, native to Madagascar, Australia and southern Africa, can reach diameters of 36 feet and heights of nearly a nine-story building. Their enormous trunks can store 32,000 gallons of water in times of drought. African mythology tells of every animal being given a plant; the hyena characteristically took his, planted upside, leaving the roots (or so the baobab's branches appear) in the air.

In the late afternoon we boarded a boat (or embarked, if you will) and trolled into Chobe National Park, home of the largest elephant herds in Africa. Despite the almost painstakingly slow pace, the ultimate close-ups of elephants and bloats of hippos were worth the wait. As words are insufficient to describe the grace of these animals, I will just end the blog here and give you a sample of Botswana's unique flora and fauna. Until next time, "Be well, do good work and keep in touch."