Botswana - Khwai River Lodge.

We're now at the second of our three camps, the Khwai River Lodge. We were surprised with an upgrade to a suite, featuring our own private pool and an outdoor bathtub, both overlooking the river.

As it's low season, the camp is deserted; designed to house thirty people but the only other guests are a German couple who keep getting on our nerves because they smoke incessantly with no effort to blow the smoke away from the group, among other things - there's no need to point at every single impala you see; we've passed ten thousand of them this morning alone. (Yes, we're grumpy, judgmental bastards. We know.)

With lusher vegetation and more marsh, animals are less dense in this area than Savute, with the exception of hippos which are numerous.


We were optimistic about ending our lion drought here as there had been two great sitings in the previous 24 hours before we arrived (one group saw a pride make a kill, another group saw a pride in a feeding circle). Sadly, we've now managed 10+ hours of time on safari since getting to this camp and still have not seen any lions.

Here is what a lion would look like if we did see one:

We have two more outings to attempt to see lions before we move on to Eagle Island Lodge where we are very unlikely to see any. If we don't manage it, we will then plan to make the following trips next year:

* Antarctica, where we will fail to see penguins.
* New Zealand, where we will fail to see sheep.
* Australia, where we will fail to see kangaroos.