Blogs from North-West, Botswana, Africa - page 36

We are now truely in the middle of nature itself. Take a truck and drive it a few thousand KM's, then get a small 5 seater cessna plane and land on a dirt track runway, transfer to a 4WD for half an hour and finally get in a traditional dugout Mekoro canoe (OK made of fibre glass) for a trip across the Okavango delta waterways to our remote (and it is!) Pom Pom Island... Anyway once we had kicked the elephant out of our "bush camp" and been shown the amenities we went for a swim... It was a lovely place and one of the highlights of an alreday fantastic trip...... read more

We stopped at a wholesaler to spend our left over Zim dollars & stocked up the bar with red label Smirnoff vodka for less than US$2 a bottle & then set off for another border crossing into Botswana. When we got to the Katane campsite they said there was space & we drove down to pitch our tents. Unfortunately the only space was next to the Chobe river on paths made by crocs & hippos. As soon as the tents were up we rushed to the jetty passing grazing warthogs & playful banded mongooses & took a boat trip down the river. Chobe National Park isn't short of animals, from sun-basking crocodiles & mud-wallowing hippos to herds of elephants & buffalos, in every direction there was always something flying, swimming, feeding or peeing (as one elephant ... read more

Botswana is a genuine African success story, dear reader. It's a big, dry country that sits astride the Kalahari desert; the biggest continuous area of sand in the world. This country of less than two million people is home to a stable democracy, abundant resources and the breathtaking natural scenery of the Okavango Delta, without a doubt one of the most sublime places on Earth. As we continue the adventures from the previous journal, Botswana features as the next destination on our great African safari. The Chameleon tours team crossed the border from Namibia in the safari truck to be greeted at an extremely remote and desolate border by laid back customs officials, who chatted amiably while all our team's paperwork was completed. We climbed back aboard as the safari guide Chico drove us into Botswana ... read more

From Victoria Falls we headed into Botswana and the Okavango Delta. We went on a three night Mokoro (canoe) trip into part of the delta. It wasnt quite how we imagined it would be. We were poled to a camp on an "island" and did morning and afternoon walks from there. The water was really low, the rains have only just begun in Angola and the water hasnt reached the delta yet. We saw the usual giraffe, impala, jackel, badgers and elephants, some up quite close, and remember that we were on foot. We also went to a hippo pool one evening and watched 13 or so hippo watching us. We are hoping that we finally got that big toothy grin hippo photo! Not sure why this email was so short, we had a good time ... read more

This blog has been long coming; it should be dated somewhere in 1996 or so when I was still at the University in my final year, but my dates fail me as I try to recollect my thoughts while going down memory lane. I do remember most of my time down in Botswana and my revisit years later in 2002. I shall tell you more as time goes by and the dates will come back to me. What you need to know is that the adventurer in me was being awoken at this time and I took advantage of a daring road trip from Uganda through Kenya to Tanzania. After a week of rest and touring Dar-es Salaam, my friends and I started off again on the road for South Africa; one of my friends was ... read more