hip, hip, hooray

Monday is a holiday in Botswana. Holiday weekends in Botswana bring on two complicated things. One is a travel frenzy. The other is a massive overriding sense of guilt and shame if one does not travel. You're in Africa, for christ's sake! What are you waiting for? Go somewhere!

I've been looking around at where I can go with the time I've got. My schedule's a bit complicated as I'm in Pretoria for the next few days, and I really can't leave until Saturday morning as I don't want to drive back to Gabs in the dark. I've also got a birthday party to attend in Mochudi around noon on Saturday, which I'll be able to attend if I really get on the road early on Saturday. But I don't think I can go straight from the birthday party up to any of the spots I've got in mind. All this means is that I get a one-night trip out of a three-day weekend.

All this has put the out-of-doors on my mind. At dinner, a friend was talking about having camped one night in the middle of hippo territory. Before I could stop myself, I said that if I ever opened a game lodge, I would put it right in the middle of hippopotamus territory and call it:

(you guessed it) hippo campus.