Botswana
Sunday 23-07 (410 km)
At 09.00 the two Land Rovers are on the road again, through the Okavango National Park, towards the border post at Bagani. The Namibian officials only stamp our passports and let us through to the Botswana side of the border. Here our passports are stamped again, we pay road tax and custom officers inspect Wa Bashasha and her contents. Chassis and engine numbers are actually checked on the car and Paul’s tool and spare part boxes and my medical supplies catch their particular attention. The atmosphere, however, is friendly and courteous and after an hour – because of the time difference it is already 11.30 hours – we are on our way to Maun. The tarmac road is narrow but in reasonable condition and we make good progress. At around 13.30 we stop and have a quick lunch along the road. It does not take long before we are detected by the women of a tiny village nearby. We communicate by international sign language and before leaving, present them with some of our last biscuits. Villages along the monotonous road (park savannah landscape) are tiny and primitive, but every 20 or 30 km we see a modern community centre with a school, administrative buildings and occasionally a clinic. People are generally well dressed and there is quite some donkey cart traffic. Occasionally we see people on horseback. Twice we run into a veterinary road block. We have to drive through a disinfectant dip and have to get out of the cars to have our shoes disinfected. By the time we arrive in Maun, it is getting dark, but we have no problems finding the campsite, Maun Rest Camp, along the river. The white owners are very friendly and we are allotted a spacey site with a braai, where we set up the roof tents before its is too dark. The owner is so kind to drive us to a small nearby restaurant where we have an excellent dinner and picks us up later to bring us back to the camp.
Monday 24-07 (90 km)
Since we plan to spent at least five days camping in the wilderness of Moreni and Chobe, in the morning we drive to Maun to buy supplies (fire wood, charcoal, meat, carrots, potatoes, wine and drinking water) and to try to get some money. The supplies are not a problem, but getting money is a different issue. The ATM points in town do not accept our cards and Barclays Bank is unwilling to accept our US$ traveller cheques. The staff there is very customer unfriendly and manages to seriously upset us. Marc is furious. Eventually, we succeed to change some of our traveller cheques at the First National Bank. By now we begin to realise that we will run into cash problems soon. Our cards are not accepted by ATM points, credit cards are accepted nowhere (except Visa cards, but those were stolen in Windhoek) and also traveller cheques are difficult to change. At our wits end we phone the Visa headquarters in Amsterdam again and to our surprise and relief they now promise to arrange new cards and to hand these to Roald before he flies to Blantyre in Malawi to join us. When I phone the ABN-AMRO to request them to issue new bank passes for the ATMs, they flatly refuse. We can only come and collect these passes ourselves when we are back in December!! I get fed up and break off the (costly) connection. Paul is fuming, but for the time being we let the matter rest. Since Maun has a garage with experience with old Land Rovers – Riley’s Garage – Paul has Wa Bashasha serviced while we complete our shopping.
Tuesday 25-07 (130 km)
Paul wakes up in a foul mood because of the ABN-AMRO troubles and decides to call them on the satellite phone to tell them that he wants to be called back via the satellite within 10 minutes. To his surprise within 10 minutes - it is shortly before 09.00 in Europe - the satellite phone rings for the first time and Paul is connected to the same woman I spoke to yesterday.
She informs him that our account manager is on holiday and that she is not authorised to do anything creative about our blocked bank passes. When Paul becomes angry he is - to his own surprise - suddenly also relayed to our account manager abroad and via the satellite the three of them work out an acceptable solution for our problems. Relieved that, at least in principle, we have solved some of our financial problems, we break up camp and head for the wilderness of the Moreni and Chobe National Parks. The first 50 km is still tarmac, but then we hit the worst tracks we had to navigate so far. Paul is forced to keep Wa Bashasha on almost full throttle in low gear to get through the deep dry sands and even then we sometimes sail from one side of the track to the other. Late in the afternoon, covered with sand and dust, we reach the Khwai camp in Moreni National Park, only to discover that the shock absorbers of Marc’s Land Rover Defender have sheared from the rear axle. We asses the damage – serious – and phone the Britz rental agency in Windhoek to ask them for advise. All they can tell us is that, one way or another, we have to get the car back to Maun for repairs (130 km). After this piece of useless information, they hang up on us and leave us in the wilderness. Paul decides to try to remove the sheared off shock absorbers and after an hour of hard work Paul and Marc manage to extract the damaged parts from the car. In the process, however, they discover that the left rear tyre and wheel rim are both irreparably damaged. We convene a crisis meeting and decide to stay in the camp overnight and try to drive the Defender back to Maun without shock absorbers and on his coiled springs only in the morning. We make a wood fire with the firewood we took from Maun, cook a beef stew, have dinner and then get the children into their roof tent. Our camp site is extremely dusty and dirty and I am not at all happy that the Vervet monkeys piss (and worse) on our table. Luckily Marc manages to find some really big dry tree stumps in the forest along the river with which we build a night fire. After dark we sit around it, trying to catch some warmth, and drink a South African chardonnay. When I look over my shoulder, I see hyenas walking around just outside the circle of light of our camp fire and too nearby, to my liking, elephants are foraging. We leave the fire burning all night but still sleep fitfully.
Wednesday 26-07 (130 km)
In the early morning, a leopard passes through the Khwai camp and elephants are all around us. When I have to go to the small ablution block, I have to wait until the elephants are at an acceptable distance. Paul tries to get Britz in Windhoek on the phone to find out where in Maun the Defender is to be repaired. He only manages after three attempts and learns that the car will be repaired at Riley’s. Shortly after 08.00 we are limping back in convoy to Maun and it takes us almost six hours to cover the 130 km. At Riley’s, no-one has heard from Britz and Marc is informed that they cannot weld anyhow. After some chaos (Britz Windhoek does not, as usual, pick up the telephone) Marc manages to reach Britz in Kasane and hears that he has to bring the Defender to the official Land Rover dealer. There he is promised that the car will be ready at 17.00. They keep their promise and luckily our old campsite in Maun is still vacant. After this adventurous day we dine out. During dinner we decide not to risk our cars again and not to pass through Chobe on our way to Kasane. Together with Barbara, I work out an alternative route: via Nata over tarmac to Kasane. In Nata there is the Nata Lodge Campsite and we decide to try our luck there before driving to the Chobe Safari Lodge in Kasane.
Thursday 27-07 (320 km)
The road is good and we reach Nata without problems somewhere in the early afternoon. The campsite is a dirty sand an dust bowl with few trees and no shade. At some walking distance there are clean and adequate ablution blocks. We have forgotten to buy firewood and Marc drives back to Nata to find some. He is successful and after pitching tents and building a fire for cooking, we feel disgruntled and dirty. The evening is uneventful and it is too cold to sit around the fire for long. The roof tent is equally cold and notwithstanding our sleeping bags we spend the night shivering on top of the car.
Friday 28-07 (320 km)
Driving to the north towards Kasane, the Botswana roads get increasingly worse and apparently there is hardly any maintenance done. Road pick-nick places still exist here and there, but they are either vandalised or extremely dirty. Occasionally, the road becomes very wide and well sealed over some 1000 metres and we think that these stretches are meant as auxiliary airfields. When we drive along the Zimbabwean border, many people live in primitive huts along the road, selling grass and reeds for roofing purposes, and we would not be surprised if these were refugees from the benevolent Mugabe regime. The last two hours we drive through uninhabited wilderness until, all of a sudden, we pass an enormous sorghum and sunflower project. Entering Kasane is like entering a tourist trade fair: on the road almost exclusively safari vehicles, along the road lodges and travelling agents and on the pavement tourists, tourists and even more tourists. When we enter the campsite of Chobe Safari Lodge and find it overcrowded and extremely dirty, Paul’s spirit is at low ebb. We pitch up tents along a dirty track, cook, eat and then go to bed.
Saturday 29-07 (15 km)
In the morning light, the campsite looks even more dirty than the previous evening and Barbara and I try to negotiate an early change to 2 rondavels along the river. The rondavels were booked from the Netherlands for 7 persons but have only 4 beds. Hence, we need three extra mattresses. It takes the better part of the morning to get this affected and even Barbara loses her patience. Still we are lucky to have the huts. Although lacking maintenance, they are situated over-viewing the magnificent river and that is what we do from our private small verandas. In the afternoon Barbara and her family set off for a game drive in the Chobe National Park whilst Paul and I clean up the Land Rover and reorganise the stowage of the luggage. The 7 of us and all the luggage will have to be squeezed in Wa Bashasha when we leave for Livingstone in Zambia and without some reorganisation this cannot be done. In the course of the day and particularly during dinner we learn for the first time what mass tourism exactly entails. Some 200 people from all over the world are flown and driven in to spend one or two nights in the Chobe Safari Lodge. They are packed into safari vehicles for a game drive or two and in the afternoon a fleet of small boats packed with them swarms out over the river. In the evening more than 200 people are having a buffet dinner at the same time. Individual travellers, like we, have difficulty in obtaining a table and we watch the show with growing amazement and irritation. The food is very expensive, of mediocre quality and the staff completely un-personal. Later that night we decide that the Chobe Safari Lodge is a big sham and has become the victim of international tour operators.
Sunday 30-07 (0 km)
We have a rest day in the Chobe Safari Lodge and prepare for our trip to Livingstone in Zambia next day. It will be for the first time that we have to squeeze into Wa Bashasha with 7 persons and all their luggage.
© 2005-2006 Paul and Meta Lapperre - Website by MvS
