25 June 2011 Maun

 We arrived in Maun, after about 650 km, mainly on good tar, but one bad stretch under construction.  Leaving Kasane, we rode past a herd of elephant feeding on the edge of the main road!  What a privilege to game view from the bikes, on national roads!  The rest of the ride was good, with a stop in Nata for lunch – Wimpy – we are getting closer to home.  We passed through some well cultivated fields, with sunflower, sorghum and maize, then into bushveld, and eventually into Kalahari type open ares, near Makadigadi Pans.  When we got to Maun, we went to Audi Camp where Ralph was waiting to meet us.  It was wonderful to see him again.  Winandi had done some homework and told us that Island Safari Lodge was much nicer as it was on the river so Ralph and I went to have a look.  She was right but the only problem was the road leading to the camp, lots of nice soft sand.  Well, I managed to get here without falling off the bike!! After setting up our camp Ralph went and fetched Winandi and once again it was great to see her.  We have now spent four nights here and have seen Ralph on a regular basis, unfortunately Winandi has had to be at work all the time. She has just got a job as a pilot with one of the operators here in Maun and does not get any time off for the time that she is training.  She has to do 50 hours of training into the delta before she is allowed to fly there herself. 

We have spent a whole afternoon fixing and sorting our bikes, tyres and panniers.  Hopefully our last few weeks of our trip will be incident free.   Tomorrow we leave again, heading north, into the Caprivi Strip and Namibia, our second last country and border crossing.