Finally yesterday, after 4 months of frustration, paperwork and red tape, Jason and I were granted official residency in Botswana. What a relief to not have to worry about leaving the country to renew our visas anymore, or whether we would be let back in if we did leave!
We have decided that we are going to only stay for one year rather than two as we had thought we might. Though our experiences here so far have been quite incredible, I think that both of us are missing home too much to stay longer (wow, I never would have thought I would hear those words come out of my mouth!!). I’ve recently bought my return ticket home and arranged to spend 3 days in London on the way back, so if anyone has any recommendations of what to see on a whirlwind tour, please let me know! I will be officially back in the Bay Area on October 1, exactly one year to the day of which I left on this adventure.
I am also coming back to the Bay Area for a short visit soon, from March 26 – April 13. I am so excited to see my family, friends and pets!!
A couple of days ago was the official groundbreaking of the new CARACAL Biodiversity Center in town, to which the lab, office and collection of animals here at the Snake Park will be moving to in a few months. Theoretically, anyway – I suspect it will take much longer than that and will be pleasantly surprised if I even get to see it before I leave here. Either way, it’s still quite exciting as the plans for the new center have been over 7 years in the making.
Also earlier this week, we were pretty excited to be able to see our Puff Adder at the Snake Park give birth to about 30 live young. I’ve added some of the pictures to my album. There are so cute – perfect, deadly little duplicates of mom.
Two weekends ago we participated in the yearly waterbird count in Chobe National Park. This involved identifying, counting and recording every single bird that we saw along the Chobe River. It was a perfect day for it, not raining and not too sunny. I think by the end of the day we had counted roughly 2,400 birds, and we were nearly cross-eyed from staring into binoculars all day.
Last weekend we were invited to a night-time braai (barbeque) in Lesomo Valley. Also known as ‘Elephant Valley’, I think that this is one of my most favorite places – off the tourist trail and treasured by the locals. It is many of our consensus’ that the valley is much more beautiful than the national park. It was nearly dark as we arrived, and we were treated to yet another beautiful sunset through the clouds. Eventually it became pitch dark and a small thunderstorm rolled in. When lightning struck, elephants were visible all around us in the ghostly light. It is amazing that they are such huge animals yet so silent – one walked within 20 feet of our group with almost no one noticing. Eventually the sky cleared up and the most beautiful sky full of stars and the Milky Way appeared. Fireflies danced in the meadows. It is moments like these that I cherish, and this is probably one of the few places on earth to experience it.
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