I'll admit I didn't see the reed frog until I looked at the "answer key" photo. You have some beautiful delta pictures.

I talked to Richard, our guide, via email and he was surprised to hear anything about the canceling the Untamed Lands Mobile. He wrote that he couldn't see WS not doing this mobile. He did say he would check on this and would get back to me, but it may be a week or so since he is headed out for another mobile safari.

Since it has been a while since my last update, we had just arrived to Lechwe Island Camp out on the Selinda Spillway and saw two very fat and lazy male lions relaxing from a recent buffalo kill.

More Photos can be found here:
Day 8 (May 14th) - http://scwphotography.smugmug.com/ga...42/1/162692590
Day 9 (May 15th) - http://scwphotography.smugmug.com/ga...9306#163589646

May 14th
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During the night, we heard those two lions grunting and roaring off in the distance. One of our group had hoped to hear lions roaring, but he slept right through all that noise. Not sure how, cause they were very loud.

We woke in the morning to a layer of fog over the spillway in front of us. It was quite serene. This was one of my favorite camp locations. Very beautiful surroundings.

We got a late start on the safari drive due to a dead battery. Richard robbed a battery off one of the support vehicles at camp and a short while later, we were off on our morning drive.

It didn't seem like we saw much on this drive, some impala, kudu, tsessebe, steenbok, and ostrich. Plus a whole lot of birds from vultures, to a steppe eagle, to a african fish eagle to storks and even a brown snake eagle.

On the way back to camp, the elephants appeared... everywhere. A group drinking by the spillway, a breeding herd with what looked like 4 babies walking down to and across the spillway, and another breeding herd near our camp. We only had seen a few elephants up to this point, but this day pretty much opened the floodgates for elephant sightings the rest of the trip.

After a nice long siesta of naps and card games, our afternoon activity was a canoe trip down the spillway. Depsite having to paddle ourselves, this was a enjoyable outing. We didn't see much wildlife during the trip except for a lone elephant which peaked out of the trees at us. We passed the Discovery Camp and admired their much larger tents before finding a nice sundowner spot along the bank of the spillway.

When we got back to camp, there was no staff. There were mysteriously gone. Richard indicated that we were gonna head over to the Discovery Camp for dinner and if we wanted we could stay in their lso we climbed in the truck and drove a very short distance to a nearby watering hole where we discoverd the staff had set up a large fire with a BBQ dinner for us. How cool! Chicken, beef, pork, and sausage along with some great side dishes and we were wonderfully full.

May 15th
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I had discovered Gin & tonics last night at dinner and was a wee bit tipsy on heading to bed. So it didn't help any when shortly after retiring to our tent, those lions started their grunting and roaring. At first they seemed pretty far away... kinda where they were the previous night. However, the next series of roars about 15 minuted later seemed to come from our camp. Man, they sounded like they were one tent over and we could hear movement near our tent. Eeek!

And they continued to roar and grunt all night long, eventually moving away. But I was pretty much frozen in my cot. The Botswana common house spider... scary. Those lions roaring near our tent... petrifying. Again, I don't think being a bit intoxicated helped matters.

Today was the looonnnnnggggg drive to Savute. We got up very early and headed out. We didn't really expect to see much since this was really an all day transfer, but we were so wrong.

Almost immediately, we spotted a herd of buffalo, the 3rd of the Big 5 for us. Some more kudu soon followed along with steenbok and impala. We also finally got our closeup of the ever present Lilac-Breasted Roller.

Then we heard Richard say "leopard". Eeee! There in the middle of the road in front of us was a 2 year old female leopard. Just sitting in the road. She moved off the road and we followed for a short while, but she was very shy and quickly disappeared into the brush. This would be our only leopard sighting for the trip, but we were all so excited just to see one.

As we approached the Selinda/Zib/Duma Tau area, animals started appearing everywhere. Tons of elephants, red lechwe, warthogs, and our first hippos. I see why this area is popular.

As for the elephants, they were really amazing to watch. First, almost every single breeding heard we saw had at least one if not more babies. We saw some that were 2-4 weeks old (very cute) and it was amazing how protective the heard was with the babies, often encircling them when we approached. And the ear flapping and trumpeting when they were upset... what a great sound (as long as your not too close)!

We stopped for lunch at the Duma Tau hide overlooking the Zib lagoon. That is a nice spot. Great bird watching and we had elephants nearby and hippos slowly making their way towards us. The best sight though ... was two baboons picking through elephant dung looking for seeds and other yummies. Awesome and gross!

We continued on towards Savute and Chobe NP. I am not sure how we went into the park, but the road.... it was horrid. Deep and very sandy. So bad in fact that we diverted off the side to an "alternate" road that was more bushes and trees than road. We were all pretty much in the center of the truck by the end due to all the whiplashing branches. There is really no way to describe all this. We took some videos and I hope to get those posted soon (I am having "issues" with YouTube).

Upon reaching Chobe/Savute, we were filthy and extremely dusty so the first order of business was to hit the showers. Our camp site at Chobe was a bit small like at Nxai Pan, but both those sites are National Park sites. The site was also very sandy... so sandy that we sunk down about 5 inches when sat in our chairs around the bush tv.

And.... when we arrived at Savute we were meet with a package. Our battery chargers were flown back to Maun from Xigera in time for our Savute camp staff to get them before heading to Savute. YAY! I must say that WS did a great job in getting us those battery chargers back. I honestly never expected to see them again.