July 4

July 4
JOLENE:
Yesterday – July 4. Roger & all the kids got up at 5:30 am to view the sunrise over the falls, but I didn’t feel the need to see another sunrise at that point. I had seen two beautiful ones camping in the middle of nowhere that the kids didn’t see, so now it was their turn. Besides I was quite sore from the walk out of the gorge after white water rafting. Yes, I went along, which I was NOT planning to do. And it was great fun except for the Erin scare. My boat didn’t flip – Renae & I had our own personal boat with 3 guides on it until she moved into the other boat with the others when she felt comfortable enough with it. I’m not one for death defying events, so to go on this was a stretch, but I did enjoy it a lot. But we had to walk straight down a gorge and then straight up again at the end – I think it was 750 meters – not sure what that translates to, but it was never ending.

Anyway after they got back, we packed everything up again and had one last time at the curio shops. It’s an amazing place really, and quite out of my comfort zone with all the people selling things & trying to give me a ‘cheap price’. They are so desperate for money it’s really sad. Renae was our best bargainer, at least of the kids. Roger isn’t too bad either, but I’m quite uncomfortable with it. We all got things, and then we had to find a place to lug them around the rest of the trip, which, with all our stuff, was quite a challenge, but everything found a spot. We left there around noon and headed back to Botswana and Kasane right over the border. It took us awhile to find a camping place – it’s full of South Africans whose kids are on school vacation right now. Erin & Travis cooked a supper of rice, lentils and vegetable curry while Roger, Nicole & I went grocery shopping and stocked up for the next 5-6 days since there will be no stores from tomorrow till when we hit Maun about Tuesday of next week. It takes a lot of food & planning for 7 people.
Jolene

LISA

Renae and I were laboriously wrapping the souvenirs in newspaper and taking great pains to properly protect our precious goodies from the harsh conditions awaiting it on the roof of Tau. We were not, as one might assume from the above post, lazily sitting around waiting for people to feed us.