Botswana

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Botswana is a very clean and organised place which is refreshing in Africa. You notice this as soon as reach the border post with its clean well maintained facilities and air conditioning. We had no hassles there. It is another big place with a tiny population-less than 2 million people-but they have a huge HIV problem with an estimated prevalence of about 30-40%! It is so dire that the life expectancy has fallen from about 70 to 32 years over the last decade! There are lots of HIV awareness posters and signs about so hopefully they can swing the tide. The other incredible thing about Botswana is its wildlife population. The whole North of the country is a huge conservation success story with animals ranging from Zim in the east through Chobe National Park and Okavango delta right across to the Namibian Caprivi strip in the north and west. The second you cross the Zambezi you start seeing signs of elephant. They are everywhere! Apparently there are somewhere between 70 and 150 thousand of them across the north of the country at any one time and they come right into the border post and the town called Kasane just beyond the border. It is amazing really.

We went almost immediately into Chobe National park which is only about 20 km from the border. The northern part of the park borders with Namibia along the Chobe River. Away from the river there is thick stands of mopane-very monotonous brown trees that seem to go on forever across very flat sandy countryside. The river front is very open and there are large flood plains. In terms of wildlife viewing you need not go further than the river front because stacks of game come down to drink all day and we saw probably close to a thousand elephant in different groups along the river over the course of the day. We also saw the biggest herd of buffalo I have ever seen in the evening on the plains. They just kept on pouring out of the bush and we think there were over 500-600 animals in total. We camped in the public campsite at Ihaha on the edge of the flood plains. We had a lively night because a troop of Babs that were displaced from the trees in a neighbouring camp by the concerted efforts of the guys in that camp to chase them off took sanctuary in the trees in our camp. We made a few efforts to get them out but without success. All was well until about 1am when a huge commotion started with lions growling nearby, babs barking and squealing in alarm and shitting all over the car and tent and a warthog squealing desperately in its death throes as it was killed by the lions that were making all the noise! The lions ate it about 100m away on the plain and the poor babs were terrified. We finally got back to sleep and the babs were out of the tree bright and early but there were no signs of the lions in the morning….just more elephant on the plains!

We drove south through very thick sand to a place called Savuti which is a seasonal marsh in the southern part of Chobe. The marsh was dry at this time of year but there is still a lot of game about because there are two artificial water holes that they fill from bore holes. These are the waterholes that the very famous Elephant-eating Lions that featured in the Planet Earth series-catch elephant at in the height of the dry season when the two savuti prides join together in a super pride of about 40 animals! We were falling over elephant all round Savuti but they were all huge old bulls. There were no females or babies, just herds of bulls at this time of year. We saw a leopard and had 3 lion walk through our campsite as we were getting up in the morning.

We moved on to a place called Moremi which is basically a National Park that encompasses the north eastern part of the Okavango delta. To get there we drove through yet more mopane woodland and thick sand and saw yet more elephants and widespread evidence of them. There are so many of them that they have destroyed vast swathes of woodland and the trees lie broken and dead, lending the scene the appearance of a heavily bomb-damaged second world war landscape. Never before have I been bored of seeing elephants. We camped for two nights in Moremi. Strangely there was much less game in Moremi than there was on the way to Moremi but we still saw a lot and we managed to get stuck in some Okavango mud which was fun. It is quite hard to get a proper feel for the landscape from ground level because it is so ridiculously flat but it is a patchwork of wetlands and small river channels with stands of mopane woodland on the higher ground. It is not beautiful landscape but it is interesting and picturesque.

We had more lions near camp on both nights and we saw more during the day. We were also lucky enough to see my first ever honey badger right beside the road in the early morning light. We have since seen about 5 more-some marauding about the campsites in Etosha turning over rubbish bins and then another 2 in a dry river bed in Namibia!

We moved on from Moremi to Maun which is the safari capital of Botswana. It is a dusty little town with some decent shops set along the Thalamakane river that is an off shoot of the Okavango. People come here to start their trips into the Okavango proper. There is not a great deal going on and when you do go out at night you find that there are bugger all females and what few there are have to deal with the advances of a testosterone crazed mixture of pilots, hunters, safari guides and when we were in town….Binks! Rich has a friend who is a pilot there and he took us under his wing which was kind. We camped in one of the backpackers for 2 nights before stocking up and moving on.

We had heard that there was a huge fish migration called the ‘Barbel Run’ going on in the pan handle of the Okavango delta and we were keen to try our luck. We were lucky enough to meet up with Anna Barnard a friend from home who is travelling with her boyfriend Shaun and 2 other friends on a similar route to ourselves and who were also trying their luck at fishing. They were on top form and it was awesome to see them. They have got a somewhat smarter camping/travelling set up than ourselves, driving in a much newer car and with a very nice camping trailer and all the kit. They put us to shame much to our amusement.

We managed to go out fishing after hiring a boat from the place we were staying in. It was well worth it and we had one of the best day’s fishing that any of us have ever had. The barbel run is basically a largescale movement of catfish out of the delta proper up into the Okavango river before it flows into the delta. They move upstream at this time of year as the Okavango waters retreat and they travel in vast shoals in their thousands. These shoals have to be seen to be believed. The only sight I have seen that is comparable is when you are out at sea and you see a tuna feeding frenzy. There were quite literally cat fish everywhere in a seething mass, all splashing on the surface and in the papyrus reeds. They eat all the small fish and insects as they go and travelling with them and feeing on them are big shoals of tiger fish which were what we were targeting. There are accompanied by huge flocks of egrets that walk about on the backs of the catfish snatching out any little fish that the catfish have missed. Some of the catfish are enormous and we caught a few big ones. The water is clear so we were using spinning rods and artificial lures. You cast just around the edges of the feeding frenzy where you hope the tigers will be lurking but you are constantly being hit by the catfish themselves. The biggest we got was 15lbs on a rapala lure and I caught 2 big ones on fly too! It wasn’t until later in the day that we found the tigers and when we did it was phenomenal. We stopped on a sand bank and used small fish as live bait. You would cast out into the current and let your bait drift round and for about 2 hours we were getting hit on every cast. These tigers were big-most were 3-4kgs and when they take the bait they go on these incredible surging runs with spectacular jumps and acrobatics. We also caught about 5 big ones on my fly rod which was a great experience. In all we had about 15-20 of them between us and we were a very satisfied bunch come the end of the day.

We left Botswana the next day, headed for Namibia. Botswana is a fantastic wildlife haven and was well worth the visit. It is very very very flat-I don’t think I saw a hill the whole time we were in the country which again makes for monotonous driving and it lacks diversity. The Okavango is so unique though and our day’s fishing will linger in the memory for many a year!

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