A birthday to remember We're writing this retrospectively now! Over a month has passed since I celebrated my 31st birthday in Botswana. After going on our fantastic safari to Savuti, we came back to Maun to spend a couple of days with Mr James Gifford. It was great to see Giff in his element out in Botswana and we got to meet lots of the expat community. We also managed to go on a mokoro trip in the Eastern delta which isn't supposed to be as wildlife rich as other parts of the delta, but we still managed to see elephants [View Full Entry]

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Botswana Its been a bit of an uneventful couple of weeks here so I'll keep this brief and let the photos do the talking. From leaving Swakopmund our truck headed through northern Namibia to Botswana. En route we bush camped at Splitzkoppe (no power, no toilet, no running water, just us and the bush) which is dubbed the Matterhorn of Africa (not sure why), game drove through Etosha National Park (saw countless Impala, Zebra and Giraffe, as well as a Lion unskillfully hunting some Springbok - but then that might be because our truck was in the way), and then to [View Full Entry]

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Next stop Botswana... a country where the focus is on high end, low volume tourism... but it can be done on a budget, with your own tent, campfire cooking and a bit of hitching! To be honest wasn't so keen on Botswana, in fact I didnt feel like i was in "real Africa" anymore, however... first off we went to Chobe National park, we did a morning game drive, which was rubbish! set off at 6am in the freezing cold (yep Africa gets cold too!) and evidently it was too cold for the animals too! we saw absolutely nothing for 2 [View Full Entry]

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We have had limited access to internet since we have arrived in Botswana. The experiences are incredible. Just this afternoon while sitting by the pool we could hear elephants in the distance bellowing. On the horizon we could see a whole herd walking single file. We went in for lunch and the poor waitresses (porters) spend the whole time shooing the monkeys away. They are always trying to make up with some morsel of our food. I tried to shoo one off yesterday and she challenged me and stole my napkin. I sure wasn't expecting that! Today while walking down to [View Full Entry]

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Living the high life! From the salt pan, we headed to Maun and surprised Giff at his office (as all the people at Planet Baobob knew him, they culd give us directions). It was great to see him but he had to work for a couple of days so we decided to see if we could get a last minute deal to one of the posh safari lodges. Amazingly (mainly because Andy agreed to it!!), we could and we booked ourselves in for two nights. You can only get there by flying in, in a really small (12 seater including pilot) [View Full Entry]

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Botswana - Francistown and Nata After being really surprised by Joburg, we were really looking forward to Botswana. We stopped over in a place called Rustenburg to get to Botswana, which wasn't all that nice, so we went to the pics to see Keanu Reeves and Forest Whittaker. We then did a really long drive the next day across the border and up to Francistown, which was about 600km. Immediately, Botswana feels very different to South Africa. For a start it is a lot hotter, but also feels a lot more haphazard and African, if that makes sense. We stayed the [View Full Entry]

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Disaster strikes! Driving in Africa is a bit different to UK as there are so many more obstacles. We usually work it that we have a driver and a "spotter" so that one of us can look out for the goats, cows, people, donkeys etc that get in the way. There are also quite a fews potholes which you have to avoid. The way that it usually works is when I'm driving Andy tells me I can go faster and when Andy's driving I tell him to go slower! Our trip to Chobe started well. Andy was the driver and me [View Full Entry]

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Planet Baobab From Vic Falls we did a big 6 hour drive to a place called Gweta in Botswana. We had to go back along the previously ill fated pot holed road, but a little less bravado on my part meant that we got there without crashing into any 4ft holes! We were staying at a place called Planet Baobab for a couple of nights to do a trip out to the Magkadikadi salt pans. This place was really cool and we stayed in a mud hut surrounded by the massive Baobab trees, which are thousands of years old. It is [View Full Entry]

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Crossed the border today to Botswana. Our destination is Maun. We got to a veterinary checkpoint hours later within the country for decontamination to protect their livestock from foot and mouth disease, all our shoes have to be soaked in this solution thing. we arrived late at Sitatunga Croc Farm and Campsite where we got the talk about the possible excursions we can do here, most of us signed up for the 2 nights stay in the Okavango Delta. Anna's birthday as well tonight and she got wasted very quickly after downing shots at the bar, we had a few more [View Full Entry]

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I cannot believe how long it has been since I last entered a blog - so much has happen and I’ve seen so much its hard to know where to start! The lack of blog entries and photos has mostly been due to being on the move a lot or just not having internet, and usually when we do it is sooooooo slow (i.e. 15mins to get into Hotmail - that sort of thing!). Anyway, the only reason I’ve been able to put the following blogs on is because one of the guys on the trip kindly lent me his laptop [View Full Entry]

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