The ride to Zib camp from the airstrip normally takes about 20 minutes. With all the water making many roads impassable, it took just over an hour! We had to go around so many places with detours. The scary part was that we saw almost no animals on this long bumpy drive. It was impossible for the camps to maintain the tracks through the bush when there were big puddles even on the dry roads.
We could see the island where the camp was located, but we were still twenty minutes away because you just can't get there from here anymore!
Zibalianja is a very small camp, only three guest tents--it's wonderful--I wish they were all this size. It is marketed by Wilderness Safaris, but not actually managed by them. It is owned by Derrick and Beverly Joubert, the famous wildlife photographers and authors. I found out that Derrick is the brother of my favorite artist in the whole world, Keith Joubert.
This is the normally dry channel around the camp island.
We're almost there!
Our tent was at the far end of the little island. It felt good to walk.
Here is our tent. You can see there is nothing but open marsh beyond. The bathrooms for these tents have no roof--there are no monkeys or baboons on the island, so it's okay to leave your stuff out. But because of all the water, the insects were unbelievable and we didn't put the lantern on in the bathroom at night. The furnishings in the tent were lovely--don't know how I managed to forget to take a picture.
I know, I know--get on with the animals already! We were very late arriving because of Botswana Air's problems, but there was time for a short drive that afternoon.
