The Longest Day

​This was a travel day, beginning with an hour-long bus ride to Kasane, the nearest city.

Kasane was a study in contrasts. A beautiful modern shopping center with large supermarket was across the street from a row of shacks where poor folks were selling handcrafts and produce.

The airport was not large, but also beautiful and brand new. We flew again in 12-passenger Cessna Caravans, but these were more like scheduled flights. We had people other than members of our group on board, and we stopped at another gravel airstrip in the bush to let them off and pick up another passenger.

We are in the Okavango Delta region which is very swampy. The airstrip we were supposed to use was flooded, so we had to land at another and be driven overland.

We had a stop for lunch beside one stream of the river and were taken on a “dugout canoe” (though it was fiberglass) through the reeds to look at some hippos.

But after that it was just a very long, hot slog over unimproved roads. We arrived at our new camp exhausted, but had a nice meal before showers and bed.