Our sleep was brilliant last night, despite being woken up very early in the morning by the owner of the house needing her handbag from the room that we were staying in. We had initially set an alarm on the phone but it died in the middle of the night so we simply slept until it seemed light enough to be the correct time. We both thought we had slept in too late but found out when we woke up it was only 8:30. Jenny had a shower while I packed some of the car; she found out when she got out of the shower that there was no towel, so she dried off by standing in front of the fan in our room haha. While I was doing some of the packing Jenny managed to connect to the Internet and caught wind of the Australian par call to Kate Middleton's hospital. We loaded the audio of the call and had a good laugh at the whole thing. When we finished, we packed the last of our things, thanked Tati for letting us stay and departed for Simons house.
Simon was already at work at the pans so we thanked his wife for her hospitality and set off for the pans to say goodbye to Simon ourselves. The road to the pans has been under construction for a while so the alternative route is a very portly maintained dirt track. The site was a bit further from town than we thought located 14km down the dirt road. On the way there we saw quite a few buck and buffalo. When we arrived the first thing we saw were the massive piles of salt, probably 20 metres high, sitting next to the factory. It became apparent when we got there that we stood very little chance of finding Simon in the midst of is industrial site so we waved to the factory in homes he was watching (haha) and continued back towards Sua Pan and the main road.
Once we had driven for a little while towards Kasane we realised that we need some breakfast and thought about stopping at the Wimpy in Nara. We decided against this and instead waited until we stopped a place called Elephant Sands that we remembered Simons wife mentioning. The entrance didn't look to promising; the road was blocked with rocks and the condition of the road leading to the lodge was appalling. Luckily we were in a 4x4 because the dry sand of this road would have been impassable in anything else. There were several places along the road where I thought we were going to get stuck but Jenny reassured me and we continued until we found the lodge.
When we arrived we were glad that we had continued along the entrance road because there were 20 or so elephants drinking from a watering hole 10 metres in front of the lodge. Jenny and I cautiously took a seat right near the edge of the veranda and watched as elephants seemed to arrive from all directions. By the time they stopped coming there must have been about 60 of them; big, small, young and old, drinking and bathing themselves within spitting distance. What a sight! After about half an hour we wandered up to the bar and found out that they served lunch. We ordered two ham and cheese sandwiches and continued watching the elephants while we waited. The elephant experience was so amazing that we didn't want to leave once we finished our food. But eventually we Realised we needed to get going and departed along the same bad road we arrived on.
A short while later we arrived in Kasane ( 2 km after crossing the 14,000 km point on our adventure) and headed straight for the computer shop that Karen and Tiennie Riekert own. We said our hellos and they gave us an Internet code so that we could update the many back-logged blog posts. We waited for them to finish work and they suggested that we all go for some drinks down by the river at the Chobe River Lodge. They told us where to go but we realised we needed to draw some money before we went for drinks. This confused both of them because they watched us pull out of the car park and head the wrong direction. Eventually we all ended up at the lodge and we walked along the river until we arrived at the Camper Bar which sits just on the banks of the river and has a fantastic view of the boat cruises and the sunset. We enjoyed 2/3 rounds of drinks with them before I sneakily paid and suggested that we take them out for dinner as a thank you for hosting us.
Karen suggested a restaurant called The Old House and we quickly agreed because they know much more about Kasane than we possibly could. When we arrived we quickly found ourselves seated at the Riekert's favourite table, a good thing too because Tiennie knew exactly how to turn off the very bright overhead light. We enjoyed a very nice meal (Rumo steak for Jenny and a Rump steak with a fried egg for me) while chatting about everything everyone had been up to since we last saw them at our wedding in October. When we finished we took care of the bill and proceeded back to Tiennie and Karens house, where I unpacked the car and we all went to sleep after a very nice first evening in Kasane.
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