Through the Delta

The morning of our departure into the bush, we were getting our morning hot drinks when KT came into the dining area all excited, saying come check out this big guy. We walk over to where we can see the rest of the camp and right by the kitchen building there's an elephant wandering through. Then we see another one. I'm kicking myself for leaving my camera in the tent, but it's a good lesson that around here a good subject could walk by anytime. KT offers to escort me back to our tent the back way, while telling Katie to go wait at the dining room where she'd be safe. I get my camera and snap some shots of the elephants, and when the coast is clear, we return to the dining room where Katie's hiding behind a tree because one of them is just outside, passing by between the kitchen and the dining area.

The elephant turns around for one more pass through the camp, then heads over to the river for a dip.

After breakfast and getting our stuff together, we take off in a heavily loaded mokoro for some destination deeper in the delta. We go for about 1.5 hours, but we would have been none the wiser if our guide, Bale, had just paddled a few circles through the reeds and then set up camp behind the main camp. This place is a total maze of islands, river channels, and mostly still wetlands, and it's really amazing how well Bale can get around. Just when it would look like islands were closing in on us, the grasses getting thicker, and the water shallower, he'd find his way through somewhere and all of a sudden we'd be in open water again, continuing on our way. Any island we needed to get to, he figured out how to get there, and then rather than retracing our route, usually got us back to camp by some other route.

In the mokoro, we saw lots of different birds

and a couple types of wetlands antelopes which seek protection from lions in the water. When they get scared, they take off making all kinds of noise as they splash through the water.

At one point the splashing we heard was a crocodile jumping from its island into the water, but from our sitting position in the mokoro we couldn't see it. (Bale stands in the back to propel the mokoro with a pole.)

Our first camp had been set up by a different group, and they were headed back to the main camp when we arrived, so we used their tent and other camp equipment. We cooked our meals over an open fire of leadwood, a very dense wood which burns for a really long time. We actually only had to light the fire once per site since the coals continued smoldering through the night and throughout the day when we didn't need the flames to cook.

The first evening and following morning we went on game walks where we saw the usual suspects (zebras, giraffes, warthogs, various antelope),

but seeing them on foot was much more exciting than seeing them from a vehicle. Since we weren't confined to a road, we could move around them, getting closer and getting different vantage points. However, after those two walks, Bale thought we would have better luck finding more exciting animals at a different camp.
So, after returning from the morning walk, we made breakfast then packed up camp (taking with us all the camp equipment) and took off in the mokoro for about 2.5 hours until we found a suitable site for our 2nd camp. From there we again went for an evening and morning game walk. On the evening walk, we didn't see a whole lot of animals, but we did see lion tracks, which Bale estimated to be about 3 days old.

After that walk, as we were getting ready to make dinner, an elephant made its way right by our camp, probably coming within 50ft! It didn't pay much attention to us, just continued on its way to the river and crossed to another island.

The next morning, as we had our pre-walk tea, we heard lions. The sound they make when not roaring is kind of like a cat purring, only a purr you can hear from miles away. We got in the mokoro and took off in that direction. A little bit later, we heard them again, now much closer. We stopped at one island and walked around looking for them, but there was no trace. I was kind of feeling like we were on a quixotic quest, trying to find these lions in such a vast wilderness. Just as we were on our way back to the mokoro, we heard them again, and closer, but still on a different island. e We took off for that island. After landing at it, Bale said to get my camera ready. I'd heard this before, and thought he knew where to find them, but we walked around a bit with no luck. The island was big and the grass on it was tall. We didn't have much chance of finding them, and they hadn't made any noise for a while. So we had to give up the search and return to camp for breakfast.

By this time Katie was a bit overwhelmed by the experience of the African bush (aside from the elephants in camp and tracking lions by foot, there were never ending sounds), and I was pretty sure that our chances of finding lions were slim, so we decided to head back to the main camp. A relaxed afternoon was followed by a spectacular sunset

and watching hippos in a pool near the camp. Today was once again an early AM mokoro ride to yet another island, with viewings again of the usuals, but with my focus now not just on getting pictures of animals, but pictures of them actually doing stuff, which resulted in lots of blurry pictures and jumping antelopes cut off at the edge of the picture.

For the evening mokoro ride, we asked to try for some good hippo pictures, and it did not disappoint, with 5 of them in one pool, the closest within 50 ft.

We also finally saw an elephant shaking a palm tree, which we had heard so many times.
The rest of the evening was spent much the same as the night before, watching the sunset and hippos. After having a lot of cloudy weather here, it finally cleared up last night, and we were able to see the stars, which were really bright here. For our final excursion here this morning, we again took the mokoro to another island where we mostly just saw baboons. We then continued to the nearby village where many of the employees of lodges work. It's a very traditional place, with mud huts and thatch roofs.
We did see solar panels and a satelite dish as well, so it seems they're taking advantage of some modern conveniences. With all the grasses and reeds here, one of the main crafts is basketweaving, and we bought a couple baskets from a local artist.

Prior to our flight, we took a look at the Oddballs guestbook. The first page I opened to had an entry about a crocodile attacking the mokoro. A few pages later, another entry talked about a hippo attack. And just now (back here in Maun) Katie read a story about 2 polers having to stab a crocodile until it released a tourist, who has since apparently regained the use of his arms. Good thing we didn't read this stuff before!

On the flight back to Maun, we were once again in a tiny plane, but this time we had to share it. The most exciting view from the plane was of a herd of hippos all splashing into the water.

Back in Maun, we stopped at a little craft stand and bought some cloth paintings

before returning to the Old Bridge where we've just been taking care of business the rest of this afternoon. Tomorrow we go from here in the wetlands east to the vast dry lake bed, the Makgadikgadi Salt Pans.

Into the Delta

As I write this blog, I am in my tent and can hear an elephant just outside my tent. He's been at the camp all evening shaking palm nuts out of the trees. Hippos are grunting all around; lions occasionally growl. From time to time our tent platform shakes, but we're not sure why. The conversation at the fire tonight at one point was, "that's a hippo" or "that's a lion" or "that's an elephant crossing the water to come onto this island." It was too dark to see, but we were discussing the sounds we were hearing.

We arrived in Maun, Botswana on Friday (7/23) from Windhoek. There is no direct bus or anything, so we opted for a more expensive transport in a car instead of the other option of bus out of Windhoek to a town a few hours from the border where you then have to hitch over the border, then can catch another few buses. I wasn't too keen on that (this is obviously Katie writing right now). We got to Maun with relative ease, although our car did break down just before the border. We were in a newish VW with a computerized engine and it was kind of entertaining watching four car mechanics and anyone else who wandered by stare at the engine. I knew we weren't getting to Maun in the car we started in, especially when I knew more about how to jack a car up than the mechanics, and I've never actually even done that before. Luckily, another car with the transport company was returning from Maun, and the timing was great, so we switched cars. This delay of about 1.5 hours put us far enough behind schedule that with about 100km to go, it had gotten dark. The road and roadsides were covered with open range livestock, so we were reduced to crawling along making sure not to hit any animals; all animals in Botswana have the legal right-of-way. We made the last turn off the main road to our lodging and suddenly were on a car-width dirt track, with water on both sides. It continued like this for about 100 yards before we went up a small rise and into the Old Bridge Backpackers. It seemed like we had suddenly entered the Mississippi Delta, having driven from west Texas.

The Old Bridge Backpackers was one of the first backpackers places in Maun, the jumping off point for trips into the Okavango Delta. According to the "old timers" Maun really used to be quite the frontier; I still thought it was. The bar at The Old Bridge was full of a cast of characters from bush pilots, locals, and travelers from all over. We spent two nights and one day there, before we headed into the Delta.

The Okavango Delta is formed when the Okavango river, with its headwaters in Angola, reaches the flatlands of the Kalahari. Here in the dry Kalahari, the Okavango river ends, never reaching the sea, just evaporating and soaking into the soil. In the process it fans out into a maze of channels, forming a wetland that varies in size from about 9,000 square km at low water to about 16,000 during a normal flood; this year is the highest flood in close to 50 years and the area is about 19,000 sq km. As a result of the strain the high flood is putting on the wastewater system in Maun, the official policy in the bathrooms of the Old Bridge Backpackers is 'If it's yellow, let it mellow; if it's brown, flush it down.' I should note that we are actually in the dry season here; wet season is January-March or so, as it is at the source of the river. The water just takes that long to get from the source due to the flat terrain. The Okavango floods are exacerbated by the fact that the rainy season here was also particularly rainy this year.

Our morning today started with a flight over the delta in a very small plane where Tom and I were the only passengers and I got to sit up front next to the pilot.

It was a short, but very cool, flight. I saw elephants, Tom saw elephants and hippos.

Just before we landed at the camp's rolling dirt airstrip, baboons cleared the runway for us.

We are at Oddballs camp, which is like a little paradise in the middle of nowhere. It is a beautiful camp where everyone is super friendly, and they feed you extremely well. We had a hot breakfast shortly after arriving, then we relaxed and read for a bit, then we had a hot lunch, then we went for our first mokoro ride. A mokoro is traditional canoe carved out of a tree trunk propelled by a poler who pushes against the bottom of the river with a stick.

After all those meals, I wanted to help, but just sat there as our guide pushed us though the water and tall grasses. We couldn't follow the main channel of the river here as there is too great a hippo risk. Instead we made our way through increasingly narrow channels through the high marsh grasses and eventually right over the march grasses.

We were covered in all sorts of exotic insects, but this gives you the benefit of seeing any underwater hippo disturbing the grasses. We were making our way to the "Hippo Pool," a place known to be a favorite spot of the hippos. Sure enough, they were there,

but I was a bit nervous (still Katie here, Tom doesn't seem to get nervous) because I know that hippos are very very territorial. However, I learned from our guide that hippos can't climb (shocking), so if I was to be chased by a hippo, simply climb a termite mound or a tree, and all will be fine. Hmmm. Aside from a few nerves, our first mokoro trip was really beautiful and interesting.

After arriving back at camp, relaxing a bit more and enjoying a cold beer as we watched the sun go down,

we had another really good meal. We were joined for dinner by the camp manager (KT) and a French couple celebrating their fifth wedding anniversary. We shared some travel and animal stories, and tried to get the scary lion stories out of KT.

Tomorrow (7/26) we head out for three nights of camping in the bush. Tom couldn't be more thrilled. I honestly am a bit nervous. Our guide knows the bush really well and his grandfather was an actual bushman, so I am putting my faith in him. Hopefully I wont get attacked by a hippo or eaten by a lion and will live to write a blog about how cool it was... ;)

Last Days in Namibia

The morning was cool, and a strong wind was blowing from the north. Powder was blowing over the ridgetop, replenishing the fresh supply in the bowl, and hiding the previous day's tracks. We climbed up the bowl and traversed the ridge to the high point, clipped into our skis and dropped in, carving turns down the dune.


We had found Ski Namibia, run by Henrik May, the world sand skiing speed record holder, and probably sand skiing's biggest advocate. We had been planning on going sandboarding until we found the dune skiing brochure in our hotel, and we were glad we'd be able to take on the dunes on two planks; Tom was particularly excited they even had telemark skiing available (Henrik also seemed excited to have a fellow telemark skier with him). He took us out to the biggest dune in the dune field near Swakopmund, known to him as the Matterhorn of Namibia. The dune had three sides, one on which we took a couple practice runs, then two others which were steeper and had drier sand (more like fresh powder). Of course walking up sand dunes is a far cry from lift service and we had taken about 10 runs by the time we were getting tired.

Swakopmund was the adrenaline portion of our tour, after the wildlife part which went up until we left Etosha, and the cultural part, which was Monday afternoon and Tuesday.

Monday morning, as you may remember, we were still hoping to find a lion, so it was an extra early start to the game drive ~ 5:30am! We were in the truck and on our way as soon as the sun was up, and D was making a beeline for where he thought there might be a lion. All the usual suspects were out and about - antelopes, zebras - but no larger animals, and so far, no lions. We reached a waterhole that was completely quiet, and headed back towards camp following a different route and not feeling very optimistic. "Lion on the left!" We heard from the back of the truck. Somehow one of our fellow travelers had spotted a lion far across the plain, and it was about to walk into the bushes. We got some long distance pictures of it before it disappeared.
Pressure off, we had seen a lion, even if it was at quite a distance.

When we got back to camp, we walked past the waterhole for one last check on its activity. Not a whole lot, just a few zebras. But from the forest farther away, there was a line of zebras heading our way. Dozens of them. And soon enough, they had all arrived, drinking water and turning the waterhole into a sea of black and white stripes.


Our time in the park was just about up as we packed up camp and headed towards the park gate. Just a couple miles shy of the exit, D decided to make a stop at one last waterhole. "Get your cameras ready" were once again his words. Not far from the road there's a lioness, facing directly away from us. And near the waterhole a herd of zebras. And one of them was limping around with his front legs both injured. It looked like we were about to witness a hunt! Soon enough the lion starts towards the injured zebra.

In a burst of adrenaline, the injured zebra runs away from the waterhole and joins the group, the lion chasing all of them. But now the injured one is camouflaged in the herd, and the lion loses track of it. The lion wanted the injured one because it would make for an easier snack. For a while, we lose sight of everything as they go behind a small hill, but soon enough all are back in view, except the injured zebra. Now the lion is lying and waiting again, as zebras move back and forth - but she can't find the injured zebra. The lion's motivation seems to have disappeared, and we tire of watching, ready to move on to our next destination; plus we have learned that lions will patiently stalk their prey for two hours. But wait, Etosha has one more treat for us! A trio of lions, two female and one male are catching some rays right next to the road. They're all being pretty lazy, but give us a chance to get some lion-in-the-grass pictures.

Watching the lions lazing in the grass, or confidently approaching a waterhole, you really can tell they rule the land here. And so the wildlife portion of our northern Namibia trip ended on a high note. Next up, the cultural portion.

After a stop for restocking and lunch in a town called Outjo, we headed Northwest to near a town called Kamanjab. Here we would spend the night next to a Himba village. The Himba are a nomadic tribe found in northern Namibia easily recognized a for the red hue of their hair and skin caused by ochre paste they spread on themselves, and for their lack of clothing - the classic National Geographic naked natives.
The town we were visiting was a bit unusual as it was a Himba orphanage town,
and not so much of an actively nomadic community. We did learn quite a bit about their culture, such as their fascination with hair extensions which used to be made from animal hair but has since been replaced by artificial extensions. We also learned that the women never shower, bathe, or even wash with water at all, but instead go through a daily two hour cleaning ritual in their huts using incense smoke and their ochre lotion.

The following day was our big rock art day. First stop was an area called Twyfelfontein, meaning Doubtful Spring for the low volume freshwater spring there. In the area there were 2500 separate rock engravings dating back 6000 years,

as well as one rock painting dating back 2000 years. After our stop there, we continued south to the Brandberg, a massif containing Namibia's highest peak

at about 2500 meters as well as the White Lady painting, dating back at least 2000 years.
The name is a reflection of the confusion which long surrounded the meaning of the drawing, with the initial theory being that a European woman had made her way to Namibia (maybe this was before the painting had been dated) since the color of the figure is white from the chest down. However, it was later determined that the painting was of a male shaman dancing in a trancelike state, and the white was due to dust that had stuck to the sweat on his body while he's been dancing. This was backed up by the presence of drawings of human-animal hybrids since it was though that in their trance states, shamans became partially animal.

We then made our way to Swakopmund stopping at Cape Cross, home to a huge colony of cape seals. The beach and rocks were covered with them, and the water was full of them.

The sound they made was a sort of cross between a sheep's baa and throwing up, and the smell was awful, so we didn't stick around to observe them as long as we would have, say, a lion. A bit farther down the coast we reached Swakopmund and went quad biking in the dunes with a few people from our group. That was a fun activity too. And, to Tom's amazement, Katie kept up speed and was just as fast as Tom (although it must be said that Tom was limited by the power of the quadbike and the requirement to stay behind the guide)! That night we had our last group dinner and then our dune skiing adventure this morning.

Now after one more night in Windhoek, we are off to Botswana tomorrow (Friday). It's been great traveling though Namibia with lots to see and do, although often with a great distance between things. The landscapes from dunes and mountains to vast grasslands; the culture from ancient rock carvings to the German influences to present day nomadic tribes; and the wildlife from the small rock hyraxes to enormous elephants and timid jackals to confident lions have all been spectacular.

The Great White North

Last Friday we started our week-long group safari through northern Namibia. We are part of a group of seven, plus a guide and his assistant. Our group consists of two other Americans (although they're not together), a Dutch daughter and father, and a girl from Portugal; our guide Daheya (D) and his assistant Matthew are both native Namibians. Everything about the trip has been really great...we have nice meals made for us, our tents are like mini-mansions, and we have seen tons of animals.
Our first day we drove to Okonjima to visit the organization AfriCat. They promote conservations of large cats, and educate farmers and children about them. Farmers typically want to shoot cheetahs and leopards if they're on their property, but in reality, if they do, more predators that eat livestock move in. As an alternative AfriCat will take the large cats and release them somewhere else, or raise cubs if the moms are shot. They currently have over 80 cats on their property, and we were lucky enough to be able to visit a few. We went on a game drive there, first stopping to watch a leopard feeding on some big chunks of donkey. This leopard was raised by humans since he was about 5 days old and was a pet for about 10 years until he showed signs of aggression.


In another enclosure we went looking for cheetahs. These cheetahs, which were unable to be released back into the wild, are 14 years old now, and the typical cheetah only lives about 8 years. These guys hardly seemed ferocious, but we're told this isn't normal...


We then headed up further north to the enormous Etosha National Park. Etosha means 'Great White Place' and most of the park's 20,000 square kilometers (Delaware is about 6,500 square km) is taken up by the Etosha Pan, a vast dry lake bed, but the wildlife is found in the grasslands and forests around it. Shortly after entering the park, we saw several giraffes. We all thought it was sooo cool, and we stopped to watch each one. We reached camp and had some time to relax before our game drive. In the late afternoon, we headed out to see some animals. Top on eveyone's list was lions. We drove to one waterhole where we saw some giraffes and various antelopes.

We moved on and saw a few herds of wildebeest.


Shortly after that, we saw the outline of an elephant kind of hiding behind a tree. Again, we stopped for about 20 minutes to try to get a better look. The drive was getting on and we were feeling like we hadn't seen that much - we were already tiring of giraffes, and had seen no predators or good views of elephants. D was driving down a road with thick scrub forest on either side, hardly ideal for seeing animals. Then we slowed - what had he seen? Just a road to the right. We turn right, and continue down a road through the scrub. What was going on? Then, "Get your cameras ready." For what? On what side of the road? Ahead of us there a couple elephants on the road. We had no idea what was to come. "You're going to see something no group has seen here before." Well, that may have been an exaggeration, but suddenly there was an ENTIRE herd of elephants.

There were at least 50 of them. Basically just the head male elephant, the women, and the babies are in the herds. The other male elephants head out on their own and just enter the groups to procreate. Anyhow, we saw lots of baby elephants, protective mothers, and the male leader was huge. D estimated him to be about 70 years old. They were stomping, trumpeting, and occasionally looking menacingly towards us, in which case D would start the truck to be ready for an escape. There was also a little baby elephant that couldn't climb out of the waterhole, so we watched about five mother elephants trying to help him out. It was dramatic, but we finally saw the baby get out safely. We all felt so fortunate to have come upon such a cool scene, and we were glad to have a guide that knew what he was doing, but I know who would have lost if the elephants decided to stampede us...
We've seen many groups of zebra;
almost every type of antelope-like creature that exists in dry parts of southern Africa; rhino; and lots of birds, including eagles. Every night in our campsites we have lots of jackal. I've realized that jackals really aren't that scary, they're just opportunistic animals trying to steal a little dinner.
We saw a lot of ostriches when we were driving through the south, and there up here in the north as well. They're not the most exotic creatures, so we were never that awed by them, until today...we saw ostrich sex! First, the female fluffs her feathers, then the male chases the female, who runs away. Then the male does this dance where he opens up his wings and bops from side to side.
Finally, overcome by the dance, the female sits down, then male sits on top of her. They do their thing for a few minutes, then the male gets up and walks away, leaving the female still sitting in the grass.
The waterhole at the camp where we're staying tonight is quite active, and there were several elephants and a few rhinos there at sunset.


They were replaced by 10+ giraffes,
and later on the rhinos and elephants returned. Reports from members of our group were of a 15 minute elephant fight around midnight!
We've seen other animals antics also - impalas playing,
wildebeest crashing around, and elephants challenging each other.
But we haven't seen any lions yet, although we heard some at AfriCat and around our campsite last night. We'll be waking up early tomorrow morning for one last drive to look for lions before we head out of the park- maybe we'll see our lion then...

We Haven't Seen Another Car Since the Tropic of Capricorn

Make sure to see our first post from Southern Namibia here.

As much as we'd seen and done over the last few days, the highlight of our southern Namibia jaunt was still to come. The dunes at Sossusvlei are a vast expanse of sculpted red sand interspersed with dry lake beds. Like everything else in Namibia, they are far away from anything else, so first we had most of a day's drive to get there.

The roads on the way there were mostly straight lines through golden grasslands ringed by dry, rocky mountains. Usually the only turns were to make our way through those mountains and into the next valley. Once again, the landscapes were vast. Our one stop on the way was at Duwisib Castle, built by a wealthy German man and his wife from New Jersey early in the 20th century. It was a full on European style castle (although with local red stones) far away from anything else - very out of place seeming.

The Baron (as he liked to be called) re-enlisted in the German army at the start of WWI and was killed 2 weeks later; the Baroness (as she liked to be called) never returned to Namibia, or even placed a claim on the property.

As we approached Sesriem, the gateway to Sossusvlei, the landscape hadn't really changed, but somehow became more spectacular. We entered a nature preserve, and one after another, we saw warning signs for different kinds of animals. Springbok,

oryx,
zebra


- the signs were good predictors of the next animals we would see, so we were excited when one showed a giraffe, but it wasn't meant to be.

Sesriem is more on the tourist track than the other sites we'd been to so far, and we had our first encounter with the bane of the independent traveler, the Overlander. Overlanding is a popular way of travelling in Africa, in high-clearance, heavy duty buses, basically converted semis. Trips last from 2 weeks to a year, including journeys from Capetown to Spain or Egypt. We were sitting down to dinner when one such truck pulled up to the group site next to ours, blasting techno, flashing disco lights inside and bugle calls as the overlanders unloaded. Our worst fears didn't come true though. After a group cheer when they all got off the truck, they changed the music and settled into camp. We were actually glad for some music that wasn't our one CD.

After sunset and dinner, we called it a night early as we had an early wakeup to be at the gate when it opened at 6 so we see the sun coming up on the dunes. The next morning we set off in the dark for the 40 mile drive into the heart of the dunes. As the sun brightened the landscape, we could see huge dunes on either side of the flat valley. They were gradually closing in on us, and we reached the end of the paved road, and the start of the 4WD sandy track for the last 3 miles. As a warning to non-4WD users, a small hatchback sat stuck in the sand within 50 ft of the end of the pavement. We made it without incident, fortunate to be following some drivers who seemed to know the way through the different tracks.

We went straight for one of the dunes and climbed the ridge to the top, our pace slow in the sand. We could see we were in a sea of sand.

Having taken in the views, we took the quick way down - straight down the face, with the sand breaking our big steps, and we were down in a fraction of the time it took to get up.
Next stop was Deadvlei. Vlei means dry lake bed, and the dunes are scattered with them. Deadvlei is unique for all the dead trees which are still standing. It's a landscape of great color contrasts - the white of the lake bed, the orange dunes, blue sky, and the nearly black trees.

Instead of taking the direct route back, we walked through the neighboring vlei, and over untracked (except by a few animal prints) back the car. This route also took us across a steep sand slope, where we had to step up with every step to stay on course, and we ended the traverse completely winded. Once back on the beaten path, we found we had temporarily misplaced the car. But a little more wandering around the sand and we found it.

We drove back to Sesriem slowly, taking in the views of dunes which had been dark on our way in. Later in the afternoon we took a look around Sesriem Canyon, narrow gorge carved into the plain. Nothing like the Utah canyons, it was still interesting, particularly the alternating layers of rockier and smoother dirt in the walls. Near a water hole, there was also an eagle nest, but no birds to be found.

Our ambitious plans the next morning (today, Friday) to get up at 5:30 again to climb another dune were thwarted by the comfort of our sleeping bag, and we got our first good sleep-in of the week. The return to Windhoek took us through the familiar desert terrain. On the way, we went through a little outpost called Solitaire, where the bakery is known for good pies, so we got some apple pie for dessert tonight (to be eaten once I finish writing). As the bakery was the only bakery in miles (probably the only one outside Windhoek), it had quite a monopoly, giving Katie ideas of where to open KatieCakes someday... Shortly after Solitaire, we returned to the tropics passing the tropic of Capricorn and began the climb up to the plateau Windhoek sits on.

A bit of business taken care of and we're off to the north tomorrow. Probably about another week until our next update...