Let’s talk about the absolutely UNFILTERED JOY that accompanies the news “we have a short drive today” when you’re on an Acacia tour.

It is AMAZING.

Granted, when you sign up for an overland tour, you’re WELL AWARE that there is going to be a ton of driving. That’s just kind of a given when you’re traveling, you know, 1/3 of a gigantic continent in 19 days. However, it’s still an incredibly joyous occasion to hear that not only will you be arriving at your destination in only a few hours, but you’ll ALSO have an included wildlife cruise to enjoy upon your arrival.

YES!

Therefor when we woke up in the morning (granted, a few of us a bit more worse for the wear than others…), we “fucked” the truck quickly and set off, but not before seeing the evidence of elephants having been mere meters from our camp while we slept. Surreal.

As usual our bus trip was hot but nap-inducing for Silia and me, so it wasn’t too horrendous. During our nap we traveled to Kasane and Thebe River Lodge, which was to be our final campground in Bostwana. Thebe River Lodge is actually situated near the Chobe River, which is known for its amazing wildlife viewing…. which I assume is why Acacia includes a boat cruise for us here. When we arrived at camp we completed our usual tasks and then had a little time to relax before the cruise pickup at 4pm.

This was a nice large boat, so we were able to have the whole squad together for this cruise. It was ABSOLUTELY amazing, because not only was it during sunset, but we were able to check off #4 from our big 5 list — buffalo! They were just chilling in herds across the riverbank, as if they were the most common animals in the world to come across. We were so thrilled simply by that and THEN we saw insane amounts of hippos as well! Silia was in her element, I swear. Haha! We also were able to see lots of antelope and also quite a few crocodiles, including young crocs! This was definitely our most wildlife-heavy cruise and completely worth the time, even though we were all STARVING (the cruise was about 3 hours, we had a pretty early lunch, and no one had brought snacks. Whoops!).

When we got back to shore, we were whisked back to camp where luckily Maja had dinner ready. We chowed down and listened to our debrief about heading to   VICTORIA FALLS the next day… You *might* say we were a little excited…