Baines Camp

It is the day after our anniversary, 18th August, and I am sitting in the communal room of Baine's Camp. If you want to know more about it, check on the internet.
Getting here was a nightmare trip -- this was the sequence: leave Olonana in the Masai Mara and fly to Nairobi, wait for a while and then take a commercial flight to Johannesberg. It's back into South Africa of course from Kenya, another country. Then it was overnight in the Intercontinental hotel at the airport. Pickup at 8 a.m. next day, then fly in a small commercial propjet to Maune, capital of Botswana. Maune is pronounced like a cat wanting food.
Maune is a country airport with customs in demountable plywood little cubicles. So we were met by an A&K rep, and introduced to our light aircraft pilot. Eight people. Now here's an interesting thing - Id been worried about overweight luggage because someone had said 17kg total including cameras. Both our soft bags weighed a little over that, but my cameras were 10kg on their own. Howeerr, the South Afrian pilot, named George, just loaded everything into the baggage carrier under the aircragft and off we went.
Fifteen minutes to Baine's Campp and then the fun really started. The drivers told us to keep our feet up beause there had been a lot of rain in countries north of here and everything is flooded. He wasn't kidding. It took an hour of up and down through the swamps. Picture shows the windscreen with water over the bonnet of the landcruiser.
There's another photo of us sitting down at the dining room table -- it was our anniversary, remember.
Then today we had this incredible elephant outing. The animals are "wild" in the sense that they wander freely, but the owner/manager/friend has them trained, though that's the wrong word.
Various of the photos are self explanatory, though there's one of Karen with her face screwed up. The idea was that I'd kiss her from one side, and the elephant from the other
Other thoughts:

• I wish we'd brought more cash. Most places happily take US$, UK pounts and wait for it, Oz dollars
• No problems. Mozzies? Yep, a few, but not as many as Brisbane in a summer evening. Here at the camp they don't take malaria tablets
• I left my computer charge cable -- thebit that plugs into the wall - in NZ, so I am now using a South African cable.

Karen just commented that this whole trip to Baine's Camp has been about the elephant experience and it's been perfect.
Tomorrow we go to Chief's Camp, a few minutes' flight time away. Look it up too, if you have a mind to.