Botswana - Day 19

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We were rather sorry to leave this lovely campsite but, as always, we were looking forward to new experiences. We were off early with the intention of getting to the border before any of the buses from Harare got there in the hopes that we would avoid the mass of humanity queuing to get their passports (or whatever) stamped.

We seemed to achieve this objective and were through the border formalities with remarkable rapidity. And it was nice to get into Botswana with nothing more costly than a stamp in the passport and 20 quid’s worth of third party car insurance. Our first impression of Botswana was that nothing had really changed form Zimbabwe. Lots of low scrubland, with good tarmac roads which were well signed, and we made excellent progress towards Francistown. - I suppose it took us about an hour. Again, first impressions were that the place was the original small town - but this changed with acquaintance once we found our way around.

Being a Sunday we did not expect anything to be open but at least half the shops were. We bought ourselves local SIMs for our phones, which have proved useful between us when moving independently around the town. We were sitting in our car parked about thirty yards behind Ian when we could not understand the delay he had with getting moving. It transpired that when he returned to his car he unlocked it remotely while Chris got into the passenger seat. He then tried to relock the car but it would not respond - the only reason possible was that a door was open. He walked round to the back of the car to find a young black with the door open who was fishing around in the contents. Ian grabbed him but he broke away and scarpered without getting anything. There were two young girls sitting on a bench nearby, who had witnessed the whole act, and when Ian asked them why they had not shouted a warning, they replied that they hadn’t because they were frightened of the robbers.

This was an early and salutary warning to us and since then we use remote unlocking or central unlocking as little as we can. Rather we unlock doors individually and otherwise keep them locked all the time. Apparently a lot of the robbers are from Zimbabwe - and the town is full of them - who have absold solutely nothing and need to steal to live. What a situation!

After a brief excursion into a supermarket which was crammed with locals we then found other superstores which were far better and less crowded - and more of the essentials we needed. We toured the town particularly to locate the whereabouts of the Toyota agent for Ian. Then on to the Marang Hotel which our guide book recommended as the only campsite available. It was quite a nice venue, with shady trees to park the cars under but it was a little crowded and very dusty. The shower and loo facilities were really quite nice - and there was electric power in site - for a fee. It failed to work the first night, despite the duty electricians valiant efforts, and on the second night it did work - once he had laid an entirely new cable across the compound! We had a rather indifferent meal in the hotel but the wine was drinkable and not too expensive. In spite of noise and light pollution at our campsite, we all slept like logs!

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Photos

Waiting for power
Waiting for power to become available

Gent power
Only source of power is from the Gents...