Wow, what an awesome weekend. A friend of ours works for a local luxury safari company. We got a last minute phone call on Friday night - there had been 4 people booked on a 2 night safari into Chobe National Park for the weekend and 3 of them had cancelled. Would we like to go - all expenses paid - to keep the one remaining person company?
Ummm....let me think about that for a nanosecond...hell YEAH I wanna go!!
We started off with a 2 hour boat cruise on the Chobe River into the park. From there we were picked up by safari truck and were taken to our plush campsite where we would be staying for the weekend. It was the first time I had ever camped so comfortably - 3 great meals a day cooked for us, wine, hot water showers, toilet (well, a toilet-like contraption built over a hole in the ground anyway), and anything you could possibly need was provided for you, even down to rain jackets, flashlights, insect repellent - even candy on the pillow. All we had to bring was clothes and a toothbrush. We had 2 several hour game drives each day, morning and evening. Saw the usual cool stuff, plus this trip also saw ostrich, a beautiful male lion, some male hippos fighting, and got reeeealllly up close and personal with some elephants. On the first day that we had arrived, we spotted a fresh elephant carcass near the river that had probably died the night before. It was amazing to watch over the course of a few days as the vultures, lion, jackal, etc devoured it down to near bones within 36 hours.
Lots of changes on the horizon for me. Jason is going home to Portland at the end of the month. Also, things have gotten weird here at the organization that I work for, and I am finding out that my beliefs and ethics regarding wildlife conservation and rehabilitation are quite different than theirs. So, I am leaving my job here at the end of the month, after 6 months rather than the full year that I had planned. This is kind of a bummer, because I have already bought a return ticket to Africa that I was to use after I went home to the US for a visit at the end of the month. But...while all of this has been happening, I have been talking with a veterinarian friend at the Lilongwe Wildlife Centre in Malawi. There is an opening there for a hand-rearer, so I am in the process of interviewing for that position. I really hope that it works out, not only so that my plane ticket does not go to waste, but I think that this place would suit my beliefs a lot better and it would be great to work alongside my friend again. Stay tuned...
PS - I will be in the states from the 26th of this month until at least April 13, so I wanna see you all while I am there! That's in only about 3 weeks....so excited!!!
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