The first time away from Claire & Rhys was my recent 10 day trip to Botswana.

The trip involved a lot of preparation especially because of my soy allergy. I had to sort out what and how to pack all my own food for 10 days, what I would eat on the flights (airlines do not cater to allergies!?!), and how to prepare Jimmy and the kids for my absence. It all worked out okay and I managed to survive just fine. Jimmy and the kids did great – they survived and thrived while I was away 🙂 In fact Jimmy told them I was looking for elephants so of course I had to return with some sort of elephant toy.

The trip there took 23 hours in flights, 7 hours in lay-overs, 3 hours driving (2 hrs on a highway with goats/cattle aimlessly wondering across & 1 hour on a bumpy sand road) to get to the work site South of Maun, Botswana. I was so exhausted by the end of the journey. I stuck out like a sore thumb and people were commenting on how I was definitely not from Africa! Now there are a lot of Caucasians in Botswana so I guess my pale skin tone sold me out – I never knew I was so obviously pale.

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The first few nights I worked out of our remote exploration site. We had intense meetings everyday that lasted from early morning to late night. Luckily, everyone liked to wind down prior to dinner so we went out in the late afternoon for a safari. The weather was really wet my entire trip that is why the vegetation is so green in the photos below and why I didn’t see a lot of animals. When it is hot and dry they congregate at the pans to drinking water. All the pans we visited had zero animals. The second day I was on site though we heard of two elephants that were 2 km away. We all jumped into Land Cruisers and tried to track them down. We ended up catching a glimpse of one elephant that was on the other side of a veterinary fence. The brush was dense and it was well camouflaged. Pretty neat to see such a beautiful large animal in the wild.

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Work Site:

Sleeping quarters:

Insects are huge in Botswana!

While I was at camp I celebrated my 34th birthday. Jimmy sent me the sweetest video of Claire & Rhys saying ‘Happy Birthday Mama’. It made my day. The night of my birthday the camp hosted a braai for me which is Afrikaans for “barbecue” or “grill”. We all had many beer and stayed up way too late around a camp fire. It was very memorable.

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I had an opportunity to stay two nights at a nearby game reserve – Bokamoso Safaris. It is a hunting lodge that has 60,000 hectares of land and is owned by a Spaniard. They buy game to populate the area and charge hunters large amounts of money to come hunt. I wasn’t super keen on that idea and would much preferred staying at an eco-lodge where they ‘hunted’ with cameras. However, it was a nice place with luxurious ‘cabins’ and there was only our group staying there so no hunting happened during my stay. I saw many animals running around the water hole – Kudu, Wildebeast, Warthogs, Impala, and many bird species.We were hosting a few days of meetings- more intense work but the surroundings were so beautiful and the people attending the meetings were very nice.

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Bokamoso:

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After two days at Bokamoso we returned to camp for a few more days of work. No more meetings rather, I had time to sit with all the on site geologists to run through all their procedures and finally get to know all the people I communicate with regularly from my Vancouver office. It was great. I also had an opportunity to run out to a nearby drilling site. Environmental regulations are very tight in this country which is good. Old drilling sites are barely recognizable as time passes because they undergo a thorough cleaning.

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To start our journey back to Canada we left site via helicopter which was a nice reprive from the 3 hour drive. The flights, lay-overs etc on the way back home were equally as long as the journey to Botswana. However, it was much sweeter knowing I would be home soon to my family. Once I got home I stood at our front door excited to have the kids and Jimmy in my arms….I was greeted by this awesome sign and when I opened the door the kids came running yelling ‘ mama – balloon’ over and over. They love balloons and are still talking about them 🙂 Ahh so good to be back!

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