alcoholic butterfly, spitting cobra and a laundry frog!

We had a lovely Christmas and hope you did too. We spent two nights at Mogothlo Safari Lodge. On Christmas Eve day we were the only guests in camp and the staff to client ratio was probably about 3:1 so I felt a bit like the queen. The lodge has eight large tents on elevated platforms with beds, showers, flush toilets, etc. It is situated on the Khwai River and has a nice area for self-drive game viewing.

We saw lots of hippos (a couple of them fighting), a large male elephant giving himself a mud bath and Paul enjoyed taking some time to photograph all things great and small(including some baby jacanas). 

   

 

Christmas morning Paul opened his presents. My present came early this year with the help of my landlords who managed to coordinate with Paul to get me a new camera – a Canon Powershot SX210. It is pretty slick and I’m enjoying the 14X zoom capabilities (my previous camera had only 3X) – most of the recent pictures you’ve seen are from me. Paul has already had a couple of workouts with his new TRX exercise system which looks much like he’s suspending himself from straps from the door and is liable to fall flat on his face at any moment (perhaps I should use the video feature on my new camera for that!). 

We spent Christmas dinner with a family up visiting from South Africa. The couple living in Botswana run a local camp ground and they were joined by her mother, sister and brother-in-law and a half dozen kids. We had a lovely dinner of gammon (ham) and a variety of side dishes. After dinner we were even joined by an alcoholic butterfly who shared some champagne with us. 

We returned to Maun on Sunday to be greeted by the largest snake I’ve ever seen in my life. We were putting things away and happen to look out the living room window and to see a six-foot long, two inch in diameter snake coming right toward the house. Upon seeing us, he retreated quickly and Paul got a photo of the tail end of him on his way back into the grass. We’ve identified him as a Mozambique Spitting Cobra. Considered probably the most dangerous snake second to the Mamba, his spit can blind you as he rears up 2/3rds of his body length to hit you in the eyes! Since then I’ve prohibited leaving the front door of the house open (for fear he could make his way into the house). Yikes!

The good news is that Happiness, our Zimbabwean house cleaner, killed a scorpion in the house when she came to clean on Sunday (I’m hoping it’s the same one I saw earlier). On a cuter note, on our daily ride to work we’re greeted by a brand new baby donkey and his mom (super cute) and yesterday, while hanging the laundry, I found a tiny frog in a clothes pin (or clothes “peg”, as they say here). I have no idea how he got up there on the clothes line but I’m sure glad I didn’t squish him while hanging our clothes!

 

For New Year’s Eve we head off to Meno A Kwena (“teeth of the crocodile”) for Paul to do a star show. Hope the skies are clear! I’ll write more when we return.