Botswana

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After a really good sleep, exhausted after the activities at Victoria Falls, we heading towards the Botswana border.

It was quite a short drive for once which was a nice change. This was one of the most hectic and interesting borders we have seen. Leaving the truck we all had to walk about 5 minutes to the immigration office to get our visas. At each border we have to fill out entry and exit cards which ask for basically the same details each time. I now know all my passport details off by heart I have to repeat them that often. Once we had our visas we had to walk to the riverfront and hop on a passenger ferry for the five minute journey over the river, to then hop back on the truck again.

All of this walking was not at all good for my now very fragile knee. One of the nurses on the truck has kindly lent me a knee support bandage which is helping, though I do currently have a very pronounced limp!

Once we left the border it wasn't long until we were all out of the truck again, spare shoes in hand so that we could be disinfected. We had been warned that the Botswana is very paranoid about Foot and Mouth disease and that we would face check points like this throughout our time there. Each time we will need to walk through disinfectant in our shoes on our feet and then also take a spare pair to be disinfected, whilst the truck drives through its out disinfectant to clean its wheels.

We reached our shopping stop where we could get our left over Zambian money changed into Botswana Pula. Only to discover that none of the banks or Bureau de Change would change this. The prospect of being stuck with lots of money we couldn't use, and possibly couldn't change until we got to Cape Town was not making me very happy to say the least. In the end we were told of a guy around a corner who would do it for us unofficially. Making sure to take someone along who had already got some local currency from a bank we went and had a chat to him. Compared the notes to make sure he wasn't giving us anything dodgy, and did our deal! All sorted!

We arrived at our campsite for the night, Thebe Safari Camp. Most people went on a river game drive on the Chobe River but as I could barely put any weight on my knee I decided to stay behind and put my feet up in the bar. Worryingly, my infected mossie bite that was healing very nicely now also seems to be reinfected after being exposed for the day in the Zambezi River yesterday. Fingers crossed it will be OK.

I helped cook group tonight with their meal. They made Macaroni Cheese but were not sure how to make the cheese sauce. In the end I made it for them and it was lovely (if I do say so myself). Now I can say I can make cheese sauce for 26 people no problem!

We are moving on tomorrow to the campsite where we will be based for our trip into the Okavango Delta. This is a part of the trip I have really been looking forward to so I can't wait.

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