The front fell off

Moremi Game Reserve is one of the two major game viewing areas in Botswana, the other being Chobe National Park. Moremi runs into the Okavango Delta, which is a flooded delta region that can only be accessed by very expensive luxury (as in $1000 per person per night) fly-in safari operators. We didn’t think we would get to either of these places, partly because we’d read that they are so busy you need to book campsites up to a year in advance. The rainy season can also make the roads impassable. It’s rainy season now, and many areas get washed out or flooded and it can be easy to get stuck. We have gear to get unstuck, but we weren’t keen on the idea of having to wait overnight for someone to pull us out or doing outside work when there could be a lion hiding under a tree. So far, we’ve had no trouble with accommodation and most places seem quite empty. We found out the roads weren’t too bad, so we headed off into the bush with our Toyota Hilux. We had an amazing drive into Moremi Game Reserve in northern Botswana. There were some pretty big puddles but nothing serious. As with many days, the weather was constantly changing from searing sun to torrential rains. On the drive in, we saw our first hippo, giraffes(!), zebras, and elephants, and loads of different antelope and fantastical birds. We drove straight through a herd of Cape buffalo, which look a bit like ladies with pigtails because of their curved horns. They have incredibly human faces, somehow.

We were planning to camp two nights at Third Bridge campsite inside Moremi. (I’m still amazed I even considered that idea, what with the elephants and lions and all.) It’s tricky to camp in these places, because you are not supposed to walk around after dark, which is at 7pm. We had heard that you shouldn’t even walk to the bathroom a couple of campsites away, but everyone seemed to be doing that, and it seems to be common practice in the camping areas. It’s a bit trickier with our rooftop tent, because the truck can’t really be driven with the tent set up. Anyway, as dusk approached, I wasn’t excited about the idea of waking up at 3am to the sound of elephants eating the tree next to us, and we actually slept in car (justifying it with our plan to leave by 5:30am for a game viewing drive). Our early morning drive, timed to correspond to prime animal activity at dawn and dusk, brought a few more giraffes and zebras, but not super close.

After talking to the very helpful ranger, B managed to wrangle us a stay in a safari tent the next night. This was amazing. These are huge (the size of a hotel room), permanent canvas tents on wooden platforms with en suite bathrooms and an attached outdoor shower. There were a few of these at the campsite that seemed to be out of use for the low season, but they let us stay, and it was great. There was a herd of impala grazing outside when we showed up, and we watched a herd of elephants go by as we sat on our deck in the afternoon. More elephants later when we took another drive around an island in the game reserve.

On the way out the next day, we drove through an amazing forested area (the vegetation changes a lot from place to place. There were a few pairs of impala bucks wrestling with their antlers right next to us. We saw the remains of a hippo that was still being picked over by vultures. The poor thing’s head was still intact, but otherwise it was down to a huge ribcage surrounded by scavengers. There was a sable antelope – these are one of the big ones. Amazing.

That’s when the front fell off and things started to go awry. We hit what seemed like a never ended series of huge water pools along the last stretch of road toward the exit gate. We were planning to head straight to Chobe National Park from Moremi. The challenge with these pools is that is was impossible to know how deep they were – and they were several truck lengths long – and impossible to know whether they were rutted and muddy at the bottom. The road is very sandy, so we figured they were fine. We flew over a bunch of them by flooring it and hydroplaning, but they seemed to be getting bigger. We didn’t want to find a bad one by getting stuck in the middle of it, so we turned back. We met a group of two other trucks going in, who decided to try it and offered to let us go along (in case anyone needed towing out of a hole). We considered it, but then noticed that the force of the water had already left the front grill and bumper of the truck hanging off. It had been loose in one place when we picked it up, but now it was really bad and we didn’t want to loose it entirely. We decided to take a different route – longer but apparently drier. It was drier, but not dry enough for our shaky front end, so we had to turn back again once we were almost out of the park. We stopped at the ranger station at the park exit and strapped on the front end with tie-downs and high-tailed it back to Maun.

We stayed at a place called Crocodile Camp, which was one of the first safari base camps in the area. (Maun used to be a frontier town for people entering the park. It’s still a hub for that, but now most people fly there and fly straight out in a bush plane.) After a few days in Maun, we managed to rest up a bit and get the front end sort of fixed at the local Land Rover garage. It involved a lot of glue, extra bolts, and cable ties. Most of the flimsy plastic connection points were broken off. But, we felt pasted back together enough to get to us through Chobe Park.