Lots of police about

Had a good walk this morning, even though it is incredibly hot. By 8am we’ve built up a good sweat! There is a very impressive elderly couple that spend their workout hours litter picking. We can notice the daily difference they are making, we always have a good chortle as she does all the bending and picking up, he just holds the dog on the lead and sometimes a bin liner!

The only excitement today was some sort of incident going on, as we had a few police vehicles roaring about. About an hour later the sea police screamed in on their rib with three massive engines on it, that created an enormous wake. They met up with a plain vehicle and seemed to have a long chinwag and then sped off again. We are non the wiser but Bob (our 75 year old marina owner) had seen on the gov website that a boat had been spotted with migrants. A helicopter flew over and the police vehicles kept patrolling by, but we don’t know what was going on. The prevailing winds here are Easterlies which is not good for boating from Haiti, so when you get the change of wind that we have just had, everyone is on alert for refugee boats, apparently. They could also be trying to catch illegal boats out fishing. We definitely have one boat that has chugged up the canal/creek a couple of mornings, with 4 guys on it, back in the evening – suspiciously looking like they are out fishing. The lockdown makes that illegal at the moment and the crayfish season is over so the police are trying to prevent that too.

That gave us a little frisson of excitement to our rather boring day. We wondered if we were going to be told off at our 5pm swim – all 4 couples of us boaters, were swimming today as it is soo hot. Even the Americans got in, they had huge purple woggles to keep them afloat! We all kept our social distancing a little worried that with the police presence we might be told off, but they seemed suitably distracted on a much bigger issue. Our turtle is getting very brave and appeared to be joining in on our swim.

Went to bed feeling very glad to have heard briefly from Han and a time booked to chat to all the family tomorrow. She seems to be having a wild time, they saw a leopard take down an impala yesterday. They are tracking a leopard and her cubs, plus a pride of lions with cubs, all so exciting, in the lush bush of the Okavango delta. The area has had terrible droughts the last few years, and now they have had more rain than in decades.