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Dan is ready to take a picture of something, then immediately mark it down in his checklist, about which he was quite serious. Hence the big table you see on this Web page.

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Though there were rarely other trucks around, this time there was, which is occasionally convenient for capturing how close we came to the wildlife. This leopard was one of the least shy we saw; he walked right up to the trucks and didn't seem to mind us at all.

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After visiting us, the leopard climbed up on a termite mound to get a good view of any passing impala that might make a nice dinner.

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This shows both the pretty sunset and the incredible ability of the Land Rovers to drive through deep water. Backpacks were held on laps for these moments, since the floor of the truck was briefly underwater.

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Driving through the water was fine as long as you didn't _stop_ in the water. Sadly, one of the other trucks did stop briefly, and got stuck, requiring us to go pull them out with a fire hose.

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As the sun sets, a female lion wakes up. This pride would walk so close to our truck that we could have touched them without stretching. That is, we _could_ have done that like you _could_ cross I-5 in traffic.

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Good evening, lions. Time to wake up.

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Another black-backed jackal was a highlight of our first morning in Duma Tau.

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Duma Tau offered many close-ups of hippos.

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...and our first wildebeest.

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And where there are wildebeest, there are - more often than not - zebra.

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Yes, yet another lilac-breasted roller. Can you ever have enough pictures of these guys?

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Our guide radios to another truck to let them know where they can find a pair of sleeping male lions. Unlike in East Africa, the next truck was quite far away, and this was just a heads-up; there would - by Botswanan policy - never be a whole bunch of trucks crowded around an animal.

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This lion was blind in one eye... it was interesting how well our guides knew the individual big cats (lions, leopards, and cheetahs); they were common, but just rare enough that the locals could get to know them individually.

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We saw a couple of kori bustards... weighing in at over 30 pounds, this is generally considered the world's heaviest flying bird.

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This nearby ostrich is clearly quite a bit bigger, but isn't flying anywhere any time soon.

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We probably took 1000 pictures of this cheetah alone. The lighting was great, and he let us get within about ten feet.

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Yep, more of the same cheetah. Yawning now. Had enough?

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Well, there's more...

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I call this one "cheetah looking to his left, number 410".

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The cheetah finally got up to hunt, after posing for - among the four people in our truck - probably 2000 pictures.

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Dan gets a nice picture of a big herd of zebra.

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Herds were often mixed; here an impala takes a drink near the zebra.

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And an elephant enjoys the same water. The Savuti Channel, which is where all this is happening, was probably the most dense area of wildlife we saw in Africa.

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Some vultures take a drink; as you'd expect, this meant there was an unlucky antelope nearby.

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A tawny eagle perches on a branch, also hanging out near the same recently-deceased antelope that attracted the vultures.

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A vervet monkey digs for bugs. Mmmm, bugs.

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A grey hornbill enjoys our leftovers

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The view of the elephants from our camp at Duma Tau was quite incredible. Literally thousands of elephants passed by in the course of an afternoon. The elephants in Botswana are constantly migrating, demolishing all the vegetation at one spot and moving on to the next.

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A baby elephant hides underneath Mom, about fifteen feet from the deck where we were standing.

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These two elephants get in a spat in the distance. This was quite loud, actually, and woke Merrie up from her nap. Dan was too busy taking hundreds of pictures of elephants to nap this afternoon.

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Part of the constant stream of elephants that would walk right by - and sometimes through - our camp.

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Dan and Merrie pose with the herd in the distance..

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Dan gets close to the elephants, but that's not what he's interested in. He's taking pictures of that hippo, who you almost never see out of the water during the day like this.

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Dan gets attacked by the terrifying hippopotamusicus woodenicus.

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Two hippos, in fact, would brave the hundred-degree heat. We're not really sure what this was about, but we were quite lucky to see it.

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This hippo grabs a few last bits of grass as he heads back into the water.

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The yellow-billed hornbill completes our hornbill trilogy.

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This looks like a baby, but is in fact a fully-grown steenbok.

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A hyena finishes a delicious drink in the channel and ponders what to do next.

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The elephants were a constant presence at Duma Tau.

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More giraffes, enjoying the setting sun and the plentiful acacia trees.

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Our night drives at Duma Tau did not disappoint; here a genet comes out for the night.

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The warthogs were surprisingly cute, always running with their tails in the air, occasionally stopping to kneel down and dig for food with their tusks.

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I promise, this is the last lilac-breasted roller.

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The hammerkops made humungolous nests, but we mostly saw them quietly enjoying the water.

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The impala were generally pretty skittish, and always looked extra-alert when we got close.

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A nile monitor swims by.

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A lappet-faced vulture enjoys the nearby remains of a zebra.

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This Verraux's owl is in fact the only owl we saw in Botswana.

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A young male impala shows off his tiny horns, which have not yet developed the characteristic bend.

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Another great close-up of an elephant. It had been what, 20 pictures with no elephants?

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A leopard tortoise ambles by the truck.

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Okay, ONE MORE lilac-breasted roller.

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Merrie gets ready to head out on our boat trip at Duma Tau.

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Dan helps our guide launch the boat.

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An elephant emerges from under the water. We saw lots of elephants crossing the water at Duma Tau, sometimes with only their trunks sticking out to breathe. This is taken from a boat, just a few feet away.

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A line of elephants crosses the water in front of our boat. The babies try their best to stay above, but occasionally find themselves swimming and being pulled along by mom's tail.

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Merrie sips some cold water on our boat while the sun sets.

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Dan and Merrie pose with the setting sun. Incidentally, had we fallen into the water here, we probably had about 20 seconds before being devoured by crocodiles.

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Another night drive gave us a honey badger (ratel), who - while totally vicious - was really cute.

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Finally, the prototypical shot of a male kudu with his giant horns.

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A cheetah takes a nap after killing an impala, before finishing the eating part of the job. This is incredible to me; this would be like Dan making a pizza, then taking a nap before eating it.

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A wildebeest looks on, unsure about exactly _how_ tired that cheetah is. But in fact he's way too big for a cheetah and probably has nothing to worry about.

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This links to a very graphic image of the impala which had just been killed by this cheetah, so I figured I wouldn't put the image right here in our album.

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A zebra heads for a drink nearby.

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Once again, one of our fellow trucks gets stuck in the water. Once again, a pride of lions (not shown here) is maybe 100 yards away, but shows no interest.

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Another great shot of a southern ground hornbill.

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The last of four or five leopards we would see on our trip, once again just napping and letting us get close for pictures.

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Hello, leopard.

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The steenboks were so cute they deserved two pictures in this album.

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The deadly African bread snake. This makes me hungry. I've been labeling photos for two hours and could totally go for some bread. Mmmm, bread.

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Dan beats the drum that tells everyone it's time to have lunch. This is fun because Dan gets to hit something with a stick and make noise, which is always good times, but also because it means he can go eat that bread. Mmmm, bread. Did I mention I'm hungry?

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We're ready to head out to the airport, but this elephant - standing between us and our luggage - has other ideas.

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We wait in the camp's main tent while the elephant stops by for some attention.

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Merrie reads her book, enjoying a last quiet afternoon in Africa, before we head out.

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And this is the entirety of the Duma Tau airport. Ironically we wouldn't even use those stairs.

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This safari journal - which I'd recommend to anyone going to Africa - is how we kept track of everything we saw and everything we did. Dan had very complex notation in the checklist portion of the book to indicate when we saw things, which animals had babies with them, etc. This is actually our second copy of this book; we used the same book in East Africa four years ago.

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Our plane comes to take us to Maun, Bostwana, where we would get on a slightly larger plane to head to Johannesburg, South Africa. From there we would part ways for a bit, Dan heading back through Frankfurt and Merrie through London. Some 30+ hours later, we would arrive back in Seattle, and pick up Zoe from her friend's house. Missing Zoe was the only thing we didn't like about Botswana.