Saying goodbye to Orapa and our drivers
Gavin Kelleher 8/8/2017 Blog August 8th Today we left from Makumutu Lodge in Orapa. After waking up at around 7am we started packing our tents up to load them back onto the vehicles for our drive back to Maun. Having made friends with the workers there it was sad to leave them behind. Around 9-9:30am we departed Makumutu Lodge and started our 3 to 4-hour long drive. On the road towards Maun we drove right into a dust storm. There wasn’t a whole lot of wind in the storm however there was dust everywhere. Vision was obscured in every direction, dust got in our eyes and mouth. We were only in the dust storm for 10 to 20 minutes but those minutes where very interesting as most of us had never experienced a dust storm. At about 12:00pm we pulled of onto a dirt downwards path leading to the Boteti river to eat lunch. The Boteti river just started flowing again 5 years ago, after a 20-year dry spell. We stood around and made sandwiches, had apples, refilled fluids and had a nice break from driving. At 1:10pm we got back on the road and continued our drive back to the Okavango River Lodge (where we stayed the first 2 nights) in Maun. When we arrived at the river lodge around 4:00 we had to unfortunately say goodbye to our 2 drivers, Ok and Master, they were only going to be with us for a week. We were very fortunate to have them and we all want to thank them. After Ok and Master left the group dispersed to bring our back packs/luggage to our respective tents. We were allowed a 2-hour break before we had a review class for the first exam tomorrow. In the class, we talked about 4 main topics, Wildlife Conservation, Land Usage, Survey Techniques and Rhino Conservation. Class ended around 7pm and we all ordered dinner then sat down to eat together. When we were, all finished eat some of us went to bed and others stayed up to talk. We are all looking forward to our break day tomorrow August 9th before heading into the Okavango Delta on August 10th.
