Blogs from Botswana, Africa - page 60

After our mokoro ride we took another light aircraft to Moremi Game Reserve. This ride was about 35 minutes and again, wasn’t sad when it was over. This area of the Okavango is a national park so there is a curfew at 7PM. We got to camp around 1230 and met Sam, our cook for the rest of the trip and John, our helper, had lunch, siesta and afternoon tea before heading out for our evening drive. More of the same animals and really cool looking birds and no cats. For dinner Sam cooked a wonderful meal…he sat down with us for 10 minutes to chat with us about the food…he is so funny and really seems to add to the experience. The evening came along with some storms…lots of rain pitter-pattering on the roof of ... read more

After having only left JHB at 1.30 with so many last minute things to do (300 of them to be exact) we headed off towards the Groblersbrug border post. On our way we got a Sanral pamphlet that indicated that the border closed at 6pm - that gave us exactly 5.5 hours to travel 480kms. Nail biting but we got there 15 minutes to 6pm. Apparently Sanral hasn't caught up with the times as the border actually closes at 10pm. But it added a bit of adrenalin to what was a rather standard trip. First night was a pleasant surprise. What was meant to be a quick stopover point was actually a very nice place called Stevensford game reserve. But having had a rather stressful embarkment we were only too happy to have an early night ... read more

Much of our time during the past several days in Botswana has been spent on buses. In sharp contrast to roads in South Africa, roads here are mercifully paved and devoid of all but the rarest pothole. Also in contrast to East Africa, the animals do not seem to stay within the game parks. This means that regular bus rides from A to B can turn into game drives. So far we've spotted several herds of elephants, water buffaloes, giraffes, and warthogsall from the public bus. Another fun thing to spot from the bus window are the huge termite mounds. These things are white, pointed, and quite simply massive. Our main activity in Botswana was visiting the Okavango Delta. Here, the water of the Okavango River spreads out across the Kalahari desert to form an intricate ... read more

Botswana Botswana was the next country on the agenda and we made the arduous trip across the border from Livingstone to Kasane. The hostel gave us a ride to the border where we jumped on the ferry across the river into Botswana (rather more of a floating log that carried about 2 trucks, and it was all so slow that the we were told that those trucks at the back of the queue could take as long as 2 days to get across!). There was no public transport really the other side so we’d been told to hitch the 10km into Kasane (persuaded that it was safe)….anyway we were a bit lame doing this and after no luck in an hour or so a “taxi” guy eventually came past and we jumped in and were delivered ... read more

Botswana is big. And flat. I'm not quite sure how Raz or Uzi stayed awake to be honest, driving for hour after hour in the stifling Botswanan heat with nothing more interesting than bushes to look at on either side of the road, which stretched for mile after mirage covered mile in a straight line off into the heat haze. In fact they could have fallen asleep for all we know... Sitting in the back of the Nissan with all of the windows down was like sitting infront of the biggest hairdrier man has ever known. Only you didn't end up with neatly styled hair. Needless to say it didn't make the drive any more comfortable. We didn't really have enough time to see Botswana properly. We were headed South down along the Eastern side of ... read more