Botswana - Chobe Game Reserve

Tuesday 24^th February

 Yesterday we spent all day exploring Chobe game reserve, one of Botswana’s largest national parks. It is about 10,700 square kilometres in size and forms the northern border of the Kalahari Desert. It was originally inhabited by the Bushmen and is now home to the largest elephant population in Africa and you almost run into either a single elephant or a herd at every turn. We came across one herd right in front of us where a large male elephant was blocking us from driving on until a female with her tiny calf had safely crossed no more than five meters away.

There are very few ‘self-drives’ here and most of the organised tours go into the park early in the morning or late afternoon so when we entered at around 9am we didn’t come across a single other vehicle all day.

We stayed close to the Chobe River, which forms the Park’s northern boundary, for most of the day and apart from numerous elephant we came across a flock of vultures devouring what looked like a small elephant. The stench was unbearable!

At some point we headed inwards into a ‘valley’ where the bush was very dense and it felt like complete wilderness. Here we came across a recently killed buffalo with vultures still circling in the sky waiting their turn.

We enjoyed the day enormously but with temperatures in the late thirties I found it also exhausting.

We got back to camp feeling a bit like to guys in the picture below and I was glad it was Heather’s turn to cook supper and no, we didn’t have fish!

Last night in our camp in Botswana, leaving for Namibia tomorrow

Botswana

Friday 21^st February, Botswana

It is almost two years to the day since we finished our last trip. Having arrived from the UK last Sunday we spent the first few days getting ready. How much easier it has been to plan and pack for a six week trip rather than a ten months one; no winter clothes to pack and only two guidebooks instead of nine! 

We were pleased to find that our truck had not suffered from being left out in the open since we last used it and apart from a family of rats having made a nest in our solar panel sleeve, things were pretty much how we left them. Don had stuffed about 20 packets of moth balls into varies nooks and crannies of the truck and getting used to the smell took a bit of getting used to.

So we set off from our base at Ingogo two days ago, heading firstly north towards a town called Lichtenberg. Don and Ian spent most of their childhood there and hadn’t been back since the family relocated to Natal 50 odd years ago. Between the two of them they remembered the name of the street and the number of the house and we actually managed to find it.  The basic building was still standing but had been added on to and is now enclosed by a six foot wall.

We spent our first night in our rooftop tent for over a year and even though we camped in the vicinity of a cement factory it felt great to be sleeping ‘out in the open’ again. From Lichtenberg we headed northwest across what is locally referred to as bushveld country towards the Botswana border and had a reasonably uneventful border crossing. The biggest challenge of the day was the temperature, hitting 41 degrees by early afternoon.

Last night we stayed in a nice little camp near Gaberone, the capitol of Botswana. It was our first night in the real bush and we were greeted by a large resident elephant as we drove in. Unlike game reserves in South Africa, here the animals are pretty much free to roam without boundaries and it is not uncommon to see them crossing the road (even the highway) in front of you.

Right now we are on the main south to north road, hoping to reach a camp near the northern Botswana border by the end of today, so pretty much driving all day. We have made the collective decision to drive through Botswana towards Namibia without too many stop overs. Mostly because we want to spend as much time as possible in Namibia and explore Botswana another time.

Monday 23^rd  

Having spent two days driving on good tarred roads we were in need of a ‘road less travelled’ and took a detour on a remote dirt track which snakes along the Zimbabwian border to the east and close to the Hwange game reserve (which is in Zimbabwe). 

It took us six hours to cover 110 km and for the first time on this trip it felt like we were ‘on the road’ proper. It being so close to the border we were warned of possible poaching activities but apart from some anti-poaching soldiers suddenly jumping out of the bush in front of us waving their guns (a heart-stopping moment on my part!) we saw no-one along the entire route; just beautiful countryside and the odd elephant here and there. Most of the time we were driving through grass as tall as our bonnet and had to stop every now and then to clear grass seeds  and stalks that were trapped in the radiator.

the scull of an elephant by the side of the road

We spent the night in a nice little camp on the Chobe River where warthogs wander around your truck, monkeys steal anything they can and hippo are on the river bank right up in front of you. Across the Chobe River you look at the Caprivi Strip which is a narrow stretch of land jutting out eastwards from Namibia, which separates Botswana from Zambia. With Zimbabwe 60 km to the east, this part of southern Africa is a junction point for four countries.

view from our camp towards the Caprivi Strip

Tomorrow Don and I will take a drive into Chobe game reserve while Ian and Heather will do some fishing.