On June 30 we drove to the Maun area for the start of an eighteen-day road trip, beginning with camping at Khazakini outside the Moremi game reserve, and an excursion into the reserve on July 2. On July 4 Jeff's brother Ron flew into Maun from the U.S. with his wife Michele and daughters Isabel and Sophia for an eight-day vacation.

The first night was spent in Maun, to give the travelers time to shake off a bit of jet lag. Thursday we were off to Nata for two days and nights. Among the highlights of the Nata stay were thousands of flamingoes in the Nata Sanctuary, a visit to our friend Thamane's cattle post and newly-constructed borehole, and a tour of the junior secondary school where Jeff taught as a Peace Corps volunteer in the early nineties.

On Saturday we took up residence at Elephant Sands Lodge, 53 kilometres from Nata. A guide from the Lodge took us on a late afternoon game drive; Ron spotted a lion roaming the bush along the tar road. The close-up views of elephants and giraffe at a water hole were spectacular. The water hole is filled in the dry season using a pump, which unfortunately was broken at the time of our visit. The guide explained that animals still came to the hole each evening to check for water.

We moved on to the Toro River Lodge in Kazangula on Sunday. The main activity for the day was a boat cruise into the Chobe Reserve, with abundant sightings of hippos, buffalo and a variety of antelope. Our plans to cross the Botswana-Zambia border, see Victoria Falls, and spend the night at Livingstone on Monday were delayed a couple of hours at the Kazangula Engen petrol station. When we parked the pickup at a fuel island with both diesel and petrol pumps, the attendant put ten liters of petrol into our diesel vehicle before he asked which fuel we needed. The tank had to be drained, purged and refilled before we could continue, but there seem to be no lasting negative effects from the error.

The border post on the Zambia side of the Chobe-Zambezi river was, as usual, astoundingly chaotic. We managed to get processed through immigration in about 90 minutes, though, and arrived at Victoria Falls by late morning.