Our African Adventure
So after deciding that we
also saw that we did not have a lot of time before Christmas were to dawn on
us.
So we booked
our plain tickets and left fairly early to Johannesburg and collected our
car at the rental. To tell you the truth, even my MUM thought it was awesome;
we had to do a little bit of provisioning at the beginning as we
wouldn't be dining at restaurants every night... We got taught by the rental
guy how to use all of the tents/equipment: there was a gigantic amount of things
to be learnt, How to set the fridge, do the pegs on the tents, use the cooker
and all of the equipment.
It really was quite a
fascinating thing watching and learning how to do all of the new stuff! After
provisioning and Dad getting through all the laborious paperwork we hit the
narrow road to Botswana and were driving for the rest of the day until about
01500hrs when we had finally arrived in the border… We all knew that if we
wanted to sightsee in Botswana, Namibia and SA we were to do quite a few miles,
and that some of these days were to be spent driving 12hrs!
One thing we did notice about the border was that there
were a ridiculous amount of trucks shipping stuff in. I guess that Botswana is
landlocked and that it has no means of delivery by sea so they have to send in
tons of goods (or bads) by road.
As soon as we entered the country of Botswana I felt a
complete different atmosphere than in South Africa: they had so much more signs
indicating that they should keep their environment clean and never littering
things that were put up literally every 1000m! Even the people at the security
posts were so kind and had time for everything and everyone… Even though I had
only been in Botswana 1 minute I was loving every single bit of it!
So, camping the first night was (I can tell you
this) was the worst camping experience!! Even I didn’t know weather it
was just about us not knowing how to camp or weather it was just that we were
in the wrong place at the wrong time: the heat was like you were baking in an
oven, and then we have hell knocking on our doorstep. Yep. That’s it, we were
in for a night with our small friends: mosquitoes are still alive in Botswana.
So we kinda had to replay the 6th on the
7th as we had to cover quite a few miles if we wanted to get
anywhere. Luckily, we found quite a fancy lodge at the end of the day in the
middle of utterly nowhere! It was really cool except for one thing: the night
was also replayed! I won’t go into the details actually.
Luckily (with the people from the camping lodge we
were staying in) we got to fit in a tour of the traditional village nearby, and
got to see and learn about the 4-metre high termite nests! Our guide was a
super kind man (I really don’t think that there in 1 unkind Botswanan
in the whole of this vast country!!) who explained everything very well!
We got to see one of the massive termite nests and
our guide explained to us why they were like this and that actually, all you
can see is 1/3 of the actual thing!
The village was very interesting except the
traditional landscape of the Botswanan
village was spoiled a bit by the coke cans littered around the place (there
were only a few. But it was still quite sad to see).
As we had to move on, we finished the tour off and
then drove all of the way to a place called Francistown where we stopped to do
some provisioning (clearly, our fridge and boot is NOT big enough!!!)
As
we were desperate to wait until they had space in the national park to sleep we
slept three nights in a lodge just outside the awesome national park called
“Chobe Safari Lodge”. It was a really fun place and had so many fun things to
do!!
In
those three days, we managed to go on a hippo river-tour, a visit to the town
and also a little walk around a nature thingy!
2 comments - Our African Adventure
Una vez mas,felicidades por el estupendo relato que has hecho de vuestra aventura por el desierto.Da gusto leerlo para hacernos una idea del periplo. Sigue contándonos vuestras experiencias. OS queremos!
me encanto leer tu blog! que interesante todo lo que cuentas. Deseamos que sigan super bien el viaje y los esperamos en Londres pronto.
Un abrazo a todos,
Nico, Sofia, Tom, Ceci y Jeremy