Goodbye Botswana

We spent much more time in Botswana than planned because we were (unexpectedly) able to access Moremi and Savuti (Chobe) parks. We were sad to finally leave, but realized we were halfway through January and still had a lot of distance – and desert – to cover before reaching Cape Town.

Our first stop was Victoria Falls in Zambia. In hindsight, this would have been better/easier/cheaper had we signed on for an organized day tour from Kasane. The Zambia border entry was rainy, muddy, and chaotic. We got some “help” from a tout who turned out to be a sketchy moneychanger and possibly a fake insurance agent. We knew he was a tout, but figured the confusion of poorly signed bureaucracy was worth the few dollars we would have to pay him. We were also used to Botswana where nobody ever tried to cheat or hassle us, and when he first approached we thought he was just being nice to us. After an hour and half of me waiting with the truck and B wandering around from office to office, we got through the border. We paid visa fees, which we knew about, and also over a hundred dollars in other costs we didn’t know about, including liability insurance for the truck that was definitely overpriced and possibly fake. This all had to be done with Zambian kwacha, which had to be bought at a criminally high exchange rate from the tout/moneychanger/insurance agent because the bureau de change was conveniently closed. It was unclear to what extent the bureau, the police, and the insurance were all in cahoots with this guy, because the police told B to go with him for insurance.

Anyway, we got through and spend too much money on a mediocre room. We’ve had some trouble with camping on our roof because of frequent torrential downpours and electrical storms. The Falls – though maybe not worth all our hassle and expense – were amazing. There is a wall of water that plunges down into a narrow canyon perpendicular to the river flow, so the water sprays straight back up. Walking near the edge was like being in a heavy rainstorm, and there was so much spray we couldn’t see the entire falls at once. Apparently the locals, were too afraid to go anywhere near the “place of smoke,” which they considered sacred. David Livingstone (the first European to see the falls back in the mid 1800s) first approached them by canoe and stopped on a rock island just before the lip of the falls. No doubt an impressive, though risky, view.

Baobabs and other sundry delights

We finally managed to reach the Savuti camp area of Chobe National Park after an uneventful drive in from Maun. We didn’t see many animals on the way in, which was a surprise because Chobe is supposed to be more dense than Moremi. We did see a few elephant carcasses – apparently they get too dehydrated during the dry season, and when the water comes they drink too much too fast and die. Sad. Too avoid another unfenced campground fiasco, we pre-booked a swish lodge at Savuti. This was a tent structure similar to what we had before, but fully decked out with air conditioning, fine linens, and a bathtub, and a fancy dinner at the lodge. Way too much money, but a nice place.

The more we drove around Savuti, the more we saw. Savuti is a water channel that had been dry for years but water returned a few years ago. Animals come from all over in the dry season. We saw some rare wild dogs, huge roan antelope and tiny klipspringer, tons of baby impala, and got quite close to some giraffes and a large herd of zebra. We found a whole grove of ancient baobab trees. Many had evidence of a lot of elephant tusk damage, but they somehow seem to survive even when the elephants have dug into the bark by 30cm or so.

On the way out of Savuti, we hit some deep dry sand and had to fly through the road as fast as we could with partly deflated tires, hoping no elephants wandered onto the narrow track. We made it. And we saw a herd of elephants with babies once we were able to slow down. There were loads more elephants even once we reached the paved highway. And more baobabs.

We arrived in the town of Kasane at dark, wishing we had stayed longer in Savuti because we saw so much on the way out. We had been told it was a 2-hour drive, but it was closer to five. There seems to be a habit here of drastically under-estimating driving times on the back roads. We camped at a lodge in town the first night here and woke up to torrential rains, but also a mom and baby warthog and a giant family of tiny banded mongoose in our campsite. We were exhausted from all the driving, so decided to stay here a few nights to do nothing and rest up, but we moved to an indoor place for better sleep.

We took an afternoon boat cruise along the Chobe River, and saw some fantastic hippos and a crocodile. The next morning and afternoon we drove along the Chobe River from within the national park. We saw some rare birds- I think we saw a kori bustard, which is the world’s heaviest flying bird. We got very close to a hippo bathing in one of the huge puddles in the road, and saw some very young elephants. Amazing. Also amazing how quickly seeing things like elephants starts to feel normal (if not a bit scary). They are a road nuisance here like moose are in Newfoundland. It’s hard to imagine what this place is like in dry/high season when there are many times more animals, and thousands of elephants all over the place.

Oh, and I finally had my first African gin and tonic at the bar of a swish lodge in town overlooking the river. Perfect combo of some of my fave things: hotel lounges, Africa, a good G&T, and B.

Next up: Zambia and Victoria Falls.

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.

"In Africa, God is very big."

That's what the man in the gas station in South Africa said. I think I get what he meant. EVERYTHING here is big. The skies are huge. The animals are huge. Everything is big: gas tanks, bugs, potholes, speed limits (120km/h on 2-lane roads covered in cows, donkeys, and goats), and smiles. We've mostly been in Botswana so far, driving from Johannesburg to Maun via Gaborone. The people here seem very quiet and lovely. Life is pretty simple compared to many places we've travelled. Botswana operates formally in English (with many other languages) and is very safe and hassle free. And there are goats everywhere!!!! (I really, really like goats.)

We've crossed the Tropic of Capricorn, drove though clouds of butterflies, dodged much livestock, and seen crazy things that start to seem commonplace at an alarmingly fast rate. Our first excitement was at the Khama Rhino Sanctuary. We saw a real live rhino wandering around in the wild, and many other things (list to come) that are almost unbelievable. The next night we camped at a place owned by a lovely couple near the entrance of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. We were in our roof top tent when the biggest thunder and lightening storm we've ever seen started up. We retreated to the truck for a few hours on account of the metal framing of the tent. We almost got a speeding ticket driving towards Maun, Botswana, but B managed to sweet-talk our way out of it. (Even the police here seem nice!)

And life goes on....

It turns that life does in fact go on after the PhD. It also gets more interesting.  With newfound freedom (an unemployment) for B and I, we spent Christmas with his family in Ontario and then flew off to Johannesburg to spend just over a month driving around southern Africa looking at large animals, desert sand dunes, and who knows what else. We're in one of these:

I've decided to keep this blog going for at list a while longer to share stories from the trip. Internet has not been plentiful so far, but I'll update as much as I can.