Introduction

Our friends Gerry and Ronda joined us for our visit to Moremi and Chobe National Parks. This is part 2, If you didn’t read part 1 of this you can find it here. This time we’re continuing from Savuti through to Ihaha on the Chobe Riverfront.

As we’ve found before, having friends along makes the journey unique, interesting and special. It makes Jenny and I think about each day in a different way and it’s rewarding to share this thing that we find so singular with others. 

When we’re home we often get asked about our trips and even after many attempts we’re still not very good at explaining the essence of why we love traveling this way. Inevitably the conversation ends up fixed on some interesting but trivial detail, the safety of the roads, the heat, the border crossings or whatever; but we never really manage to convey the meat of the issue. 

When friends have made the leap of faith and joined us by the end of their trip they leave understanding what we failed to explain. They think they’re coming to see some elephants and go camping. The real drug is that making your own way in this part of the world is challenging and fun. The mandatory participation, where your actions are integral to the outcome of the experience, is what really makes traveling like this special.

From Savuti

We arrived at Savuti campsite in the early afternoon. I think we had finally tired out Gerry and Ronda and they decided to take the afternoon off to lounge around camp. We warned them that it’s safari, not vacation, but we still wore them out. Jenny and I headed off for a game drive on our own. We had no great results but it was still fun. In contrast to previous visits here we didn’t see any elephants, which I took to be common in Savuti. Perhaps they are off duty for the afternoon. 

Evening in camp was pleasant, the temperatures were perfect this time of year. It is warm during the day and cool enough in the evening that cooking over the fire was no hardship and nothing more than a sweatshirt required when it cooled off. This also makes for very comfortable sleeping. The mornings have been a little chilly, but it warms up quickly. We were here in November once and then the temperatures are absolutely sweltering 24 hours a day. 

The Savuti campsite is well known to have a particular flaw, that a generator is run into the evening. The hum of the engine does spoil the ambiance somewhat, but not so much that we worried about it. It eventually turned off sometime after 9 o’clock. Given the price of fuel and the difficulty of transporting it out here it is a little odd that they aren’t solar like the other camps.

In the morning we made a very early start to get some Savuti game driving in before we headed off to Thobolos Bush Lodge, a private camp outside the park. We would have stayed at Savuti another night but they were fully booked. 

After a lot of wandering through narrow bush tracks and some very deep sand we stopped to check out the San rock art that is well known at Savuti. It is a 100 meter scramble up some rocks and it feels good to stretch the legs a bit. There is also a nice view from this elevated spot. The rocks are pretty steep and you have to be careful, a fall here would be very dangerous, but we all managed and Ronda’s services (she is a nurse by profession) were not needed. After seeing the rock art we followed up with a coffee break at a wonderful huge baobab just around the corner. There were nice lion tracks in the sand here, but not lions.

After more game driving, including a minor confrontation with a lone bull elephant, we ended up at a place called Quarry Hill. I’ve read many reports of visits to Savuti and no one has ever mentioned this track, but on the map it looked like we could drive up to the top of one of the larger hills for a nice view in the otherwise mostly flat terrain. In contrast to the sandy tracks that makes up most of Savuti, this track was steep and very rocky.

Part way up I started to realize why I probably hadn’t heard of this before, because this track is really rough! It took low range and a few times Jenny got out and spotted for us to get the tire placement right. Our new tires were certainly getting broken in. Gerry was loving the technical driving and carefully we guided the vehicles to the top. The view was excellent and we had a nice break. 

On the way back down Jenny remarked at how calm I was considering that Etzold (the workshop we’d been to in Windhoek) had told us that our prop shaft should be fine as long as we don’t do any rock crawling or heavy 4×4 work. I had totally forgotten! Etzold had noted that the slip joint really needed to be rebuilt, but that as long as we weren’t too aggressive on the 4×4 it would be good for a while longer. Had we known the difficulty of this track I think we would have passed on it. 

The rest of our Savuti game drive did not produce spectacular sightings, but we did see quite a lot of kori bustards, zebras, giraffe, impala, lion tracks, wildebeest and a few of the other regulars.  Camp had three kinds of hornbill and a number of other nice birds.

Heading north the road from Savuti to the Chobe Riverfront is a bit of a grind, long stretches of deep sand on an undulating track that tosses the vehicle back and forth. Unless you are driving the perfect speed this results in dynamic rolls, each cycle of getting tossed about more extremethan the last. You have to slow to a crawl to stop the motion, then build up a modicum of speed once again. The difference between our vehicle with its modified suspension and the Bushlore vehicle with its stock suspension was very noticeable. We were having a much easier time of it.

At the Ghoha Gate we stopped to check out of the park. While Jenny and Ronda were inside Gerry was having one of his ad-hoc fitness moments, where he spontaneously busts out a dozen reps of whatever exercise comes to mind. Like a lot of the park gates this gate had the horns and bones of a few animals on display, no doubt that the rangers had found on patrol.

I encouraged Gerry to do a few squats with the elephant femur that was propped up against the building, which he did. He also did some curls with a “smaller” elephant bone and we were both having a good laugh with this, hoping we weren’t going to get into trouble with the ranger. Jenny said that the ranger saw what was happening and giggled, shook her head and just thought that we were idiots. 

The track north is through the Chobe Forest Reserve, more sand, corrugations and undulations lined primarily with mopane trees. Eventually we made it to the Thobolos Bush Lodge, a new destination for Jenny and I. 

Thobolos has a few big chalets that you can rent, a pool, a campsite and a central bar and dining area. The bar has a big shaded deck with a spectacular view over a pan and big watering hole. There is also a smaller viewing deck in the campsite.

After getting checked in we signed up for dinner and settled in on the viewing deck. It is a great spot, the kind of place you bring a book, binoculars and slowly sip a cold beer from the honor bar (as everyone knows, beers from an honor bar taste better) as you wait for animals to come to the watering hole. 

This was a really wonderful way to spend an afternoon. Warthogs were cavorting, jackals furtively coming to drink and leave, impala came and went. A huge herd of eland came as well, more than we’ve ever seen in Southern Africa. The birding was also very good and I could definitely see spending another day here.

Which we almost had to do, because Wheeze Honk Safaris made a major blunder in planning this safari for our friends. I guess you get what you pay for. Jenny and I joke about our non-existent safari company as Wheeze Honk Safaris, were we ever to start one. A ‘wheeze-honk’ being the sound a hippo makes. We shared this name with our friend who runs a very successful actual safari company and he told us “That is a terrible name.” Thanks Kent. 

Somehow we skipped a day in our bookings. We booked Thobolos and we booked the final day at Chobe Safari Lodge in Kasane, but we had skipped a day in the middle. Do we stay at Thobolos another day? Try our luck at getting a spot at Ihaha (we had been told it was fully booked), or go to Kasane early? 

We pondered all this over the nice set menu dinner at Thobolos. After reviewing all the options with the team we decided to try our luck at Ihaha. Ihaha is a wonderful campsite with an excellent view of the river, and it would, in our opinion, make the trip “flow” the best. Allowing for a leisurely exploration of the full length of the Chobe Riverfront track as opposed to the marathon of doing the whole thing in one day. This came with risk, if Ihaha was in fact full we’d have to continue onto Kasane a day early, which we judged to be the worst outcome. 

One factor I confess I did not mention to Gerry and Ronda (sorry!), or remind Jenny of, is the occasional nighttime pilfering that has happened at Ihaha Campsite. The river level was fairly high and I suspect that this already rare phenomenon is curtailed when the river is up, as it is too hard for the thieves to make their way to camp from across the river.

Morning came and after some dawn waterhole watching of a large herd of buffalo we hit the road. The drive out of the reserve and back into Chobe National Park is not unpleasant and we made good time. About 40kms of this is tarred and on one empty stretch Gerry put his driving skills to work, testing the 0-100 kph time of their heavily laden famously lazy Land Cruiser 4.2. The results were not pretty, 39 seconds to get to 95 kph and then there was a hill and 100 was not achieved.

At the Ngoma gate to Chobe National Park we checked in again and explained our predicament, that we intended to camp at Ihaha but had no booking. They understood the situation perfectly and advised us who to talk to at Ihaha, allowing that we pay only one day of park fees and if Ihaha did have space for us we could pay for the following day’s fee at the Ihaha park office. 

Off we went and the Chobe Riverfront was as lovely as ever. Large herds of zebra, impala and kudu were present. The numbers of kudu seemed particularly high. Birdlife in the river was great and Gerry and Ronda were getting the hang of some of the bird names. Giraffe also crossed the road in front of us and troops of baboons lurked in the shade. This western portion of the riverfront was devoid of any other cars, such a contrast to the busy eastern section that is full of day trippers from Kasane. A few handsome baobabs look down on the rocky track from up on the hills. The scenery here is very pleasant.

We didn’t dally too long, not wanting to lose our chance at a spot at Ihaha, and so we wound through the tracks but didn’t stop too often until we arrived at the campsite.

Arriving at Ihaha there was a feeling of suspense. Would we get a campsite at this lovely spot and enjoy an unfenced camp in the wilderness with the sunsetting over the river? Or would we get skunked and have to power on to Kasane? 

Jenny excels at this sort of thing and we all agreed, without consulting her, that it was best she go it alone and unhindered by any ballast that we might add to the situation. She went into the office while we dithered around in the shade, wondering what was happening. And lo, a campsite was available! Jenny reported that there had been some initial hesitation, but when she spoke the name advised at the gate this unlocked any hesitation and we were granted a spot. 

In fact we were assigned site No. 3, the same site I’d been given when I drove the opposite direction through here in May. It lacks shade, but makes up for it with the view. Happily we were also spared the two annoyances that are common at Ihaha, fearsome baboons and a plague of ants, who must have been off terrorizing some other campers.

It was hot and we put out our awnings and took a break in camp. Anticipating baboon trouble I cut up an old bicycle tire tube to repair my slingshot (aka a ‘catapult’ in Africa). With new rubber bands I was back in business, should any baboons approach I could now defend us. 

For months now the catapult had broken rubber bands and when baboons approached I would just brandish the broken catapult, shaking it at them and even that worked, for it seems any baboon brave enough to approach humans has previously been attacked by a catapult. This is much easier than actually firing at them, and my aim is not very good anyway.

Through the hot afternoon more and more elephants came down from the bush to slake their thirst at the river. They were all downriver quite a way, but there were a lot of elephants. We took a short evening drive to see them and they were really impressive. I counted them at more than 200, the biggest herd of elephants we’d ever seen. 

Returning to camp we were pretty pumped about our elephant experience, and even more so because they seemed to be working their way upriver, in our direction. Perhaps we could watch this mega herd from camp? 

The sunset was stunning and we lit a fire for our last evening in camp, chatting about the trip so far. Gerry and Ronda were starting to absorb what they had done, having driven and camped amongst wildlife, through the bush of Africa and they were getting pretty into it. 

As we went to bed that night the elephants were getting fairly close, within one or two hundred meters, but the herd was dispersing. It turned out it was dispersing right into camp. Outside the tent we could hear the rustling of branches and the chewing of leaves and we new the elephants were very close. Then there was a tremendous ruckus and an earsplitting trumpet, an elephant venting his anger right next to Gerry and Ronda’s vehicle. Apparently the two elephants nearest our campsite had had a disagreement. We were wide awake and no doubt Gerry and Ronda were too. After the elephants moved on we whispered across to them to check they were okay and they responded all was well. They were getting the full experience!

The morning brought us our last game drive. Jenny and I had been a little worried that we weren’t delivering the lions as we’d hoped, so we were working hard on seeing if we could track some down. The staff gave us a tip of where some lions had been the day before. We checked the area and found lion tracks headed east.

Following these tracks heightened our anticipation, but they just went on and on for kilometers. Eventually we arrived at the Serondela picnic site and the lion tracks were still going strong, the pride clearly having marched right through. This was a good reminder that just because you’re in a picnic site doesn’t mean you should drop your guard. Doubly so because we did drop our guard here and were raided by vervet monkeys. The vervets at Serondela must be among the most adept thieves in all of Africa, but at least we were not hit too hard after the initial attack. They had made for our trash and we lost an apple core. They continued to probe our defenses but we stayed on alert.

Here we got another tip that there were lions just a little further along the road and off we went. Finally we found them, where a few cars were pulled off the road and we could just see a couple lion ears and a pair of feet up in the air, lions lounging in the shade. 

It wasn’t much of a sighting and we chatted with the car next to us about how many they thought there were, settling on 3-5. We were about one vehicle length off the road, on a flat spot with no vegetation and lots of other vehicle tracks. So even though you’re not supposed to drive off road we felt that we were appropriate; not blocking the track for any vehicle wanting to pass and not driving on any vegetation or right into the bushes to annoy the lions. 

A park vehicle drove up and immediately three staff jumped out of their Cruiser and started admonishing the three vehicles there. We received a stern lecture on how it was against the rules to drive off the track, how we were guests in the country and subject to their laws and so on and so forth. 

Never mind that they could have easily done this lecturing from their vehicle, but they decided to get out on foot, next to lions, demonstrating that the ‘don’t get out of the car’ rule isn’t important for them to follow. Never mind that about one minute earlier two professionally guided vehicles were parked in the exact same spot. Alas, we were off track and that is technically against the rules, they were right. While being threatened with fines we meekly made our apologies and were allowed on our way. 

I have no doubt that they must be judicious in the stretch of park between Serondela and Kasane, this is a particularly busy area and rule flaunters are common. Still, in all of the parks that we’ve visited across Africa we make an effort to follow the rules and we’ve never once even seen a rule being enforced, so it smarted a bit to be lectured like a child. 

The particular irony in all of this is that when the rangers got out of their vehicle to reprimand us, it freaked out the lions. Lions understand that people stay in their vehicles and that is the way the world is supposed to work. People outside vehicles gets their attention immediately, and while this finger wagging was happening the lions all got up and headed inland. 

It turned out that there were at least a dozen lions and we got to watch them at a respectful distance as they made their way about 500 meters inland. So without the help of the rangers Gerry and Ronda would have never got this nice sighting of a full pride. 

This all was good timing, seeing the lions was the perfect end to our game drive for the day. After we settled down from that experience we made our way slowly out to Sedudu Gate where we checked out of the park. 

It’s only a few kilometers to Kasane town from the gate and in no time we were at the Chobe Safari Lodge. The Chobe Safari Lodge is an enormous property on the river that has a large number of hotel rooms as well as a campsite. This was very practical for us, as Gerry and Ronda could have their vehicle collected by Bushlore right here at the hotel. 

After check in we cleaned ourselves up and had a beer by the pool while using the wifi to check in with family back home. For dinner we walked into town and ate at our favorite restaurant in Kasane, Pizza Plus Coffee and Curry. As indicated in the name, this inexpensive eatery has everything you could want, along with decent outdoor seating. It’s fairly popular, despite its modest outward appearance. Reservations are recommended if you want one of the few outdoor tables. 

Well, Wheeze Honk Safaris kept another pair of customers alive, we’re calling it a win. Tomorrow we were headed to Zimbabwe. We contrived a plan where we’d take Gerry and Ronda to Vic Falls for the day, then put them on a shuttle back to Kasane and we would continue onwards in Zimbabwe. Gerry and Ronda would fly to Cape Town for a few days in the big city to wrap up their African travels.

The Nitty Gritty

How to Plan a Safari with Friends

It is a tricky thing to plan a trip with or for others. It is only by our friends placing unusual trust in us that this has worked. Our system is, to paraphrase Jenny’s father, “You can pick the place or the dates but you can’t pick both.” 

We’ve found that most people don’t know what they want to see in Africa and we just come to an agreement of when they have time to visit and we take care of the rest. Jenny and I rough out an itinerary idea and then build a Google Sheets spreadsheet of the dates, costs, URL links of destinations and a brief description of the plan for each day, “Long drive,” “Game Drive,” “Boat trip,” etc. Ideally we do some of this planning over dinner in person to build up the Africa stoke and ironing out any issues. During these planning sessions Jenny tells them how amazing everything is all the time and I tell them that it’ll probably be miserably hot, we’ll get a lot of flat tires and not see any lions. By this method we set expectations.

To simplify everything, typically we front the costs and then we use the spreadsheet to divvy up the expenses, sharing food costs equally. We also have a no questions asked “No Suffering” policy. If we start to do something that a member of the party thinks isn’t going to be fun or makes them uncomfortable, anyone can speak up and say they don’t want to do it and we just come up with another plan, no problem. 

In this particular case we did not subject our “clients” to our typical laissez-faire approach to bookings and we had an agent, Ultimate Routes, navigate the frustrating process of Botswana bookings on our behalf. They were extremely responsive and good to work with. Were we to use an agent in the future I think we would go with Ultimate Routes again. My impression is the fees for agents are similar between other companies. The gap in our bookings was entirely our fault, not theirs. 

Campsite Notes

Savuti Campsite is run by SKL. Rates are $50 pppn for international plus the 270 Pula park fee. Rates for Botswana citizens, residents, and SADC are here. The wildlife viewing around Savuti is usually exceptionally good, so even though it is an expensive campsite and they run a generator in the evening we will not hesitate to stay here again. The ablutions here are very good and at the right time of day you might score a hot shower. Water here is from a borehole and is potable, or at least we found it to be. 

Thobolos Bush Lodge was a good stop. It is not wild, so if unfenced camping and wilderness is your thing then probably give it a pass. But if a break for the bush, a pool and an excellent viewing deck are desirable then I highly recommend it. I think we will be back. It is not cheap at $40 USD pppn, but at least no park fees are required here. The set menu dinner can accommodate any dietary requirements but I think vegetarianism was maybe too big a curveball for the kitchen. It wasn’t terrible, but might not have been worth the cost either.

Ihaha Camp is run by Kwalate Safaris and costs 275 Pula pppn for international visitors + park fees. Rates for citizens, residents, and SADC can be found here. Oddly the rates are not on their own website. I would also note that Ihaha was less than half occupied, even though it was reportedly fully booked. The source of this discrepancy is unknown, but we talked to the campsite manager and he said this often happens, which is why he has the discretion to allow for last minute bookings like the one we got. Nonetheless all was above board, we were given an official receipt, entered in the camp register and all the rest.

I almost didn’t mention the robberies at Ihaha because I think they are rare and the incidents can be overblown. But it has happened and it is a real, if minor, risk. I suppose we are all accepting similar risks at other places too that we just don’t know about. In any case none of these have been violent, but some have been brazen. The thieves are known to slit ground tents and to reach around inside to grasp whatever they can lay their hands on, wallets, passports or just dirty laundry. 

Some travelers gone to extreme measures to address this, such as not staying at Ihaha, which is a tragedy for such a nice spot. Others have rigged motion activated lights, a bridge too far for me personally. For our visit we proceed with our usual precautions, packing everything away at night, locking the vehicle and not leaving valuables out. I grant you these are hardly impervious security measures, but we judge them to be effective enough for most cases.I suppose we accept that theft is possible and we’re not going to ruin our trip stressing about it.  

If you were to find yourself in Kasane without bookings for Chobe or Moremi note that there is a small office run by Kwalate outside the Sedudu gate. Here they can call the various camps and make last minute bookings. Also Sedudu and Ngoma are the only gates that can accept a credit card. If southbound and paying here you may as well save yourself any heartache and pay all your park fees for your whole journey, then you won’t need to pay cash at the gate for Moremi. 

Kasane 

We love Kasane, this sleepy town on the edge of the bush and the border to Zimbabwe and Zambia. In addition to Chobe Safari Lodge campsite there are others, but it is hard to pick the best. Thebe River Safaris Campsite is also good. Senyati is the best experience, with their busy watering hole, but has the significant caveat that there is no restaurant and it is a good 10km out of town, so there are no quick jaunts to the store if staying here. 

Dedication

I want to dedicate this post to Stan Weakley, who sadly passed away recently. Stan was a fellow traveler and wrote an extensive blog, Slow Donkey, about his 2015 overland trip to East Africa with his wife Anne. He also wrote of numerous other trips and his enthusiasm for African travel was infectious. Stan and Anne’s travels inspired many to undertake trips of their own and he is greatly missed. Lala salama my friend. Stan’s reports can be found here and here.

To Maun

My last post (it was a while ago) finished in Windhoek, which lies at 1650 meters elevation and made for a chilly morning as we started our day in Urbancamp. Readying ourselves to begin the drive to Botswana we stopped at Deluxe Coffworks on the way out of town to spoil ourselves with delicious coffee and croissants. After all, we had just got the car cleaned so one must break it in by getting flakey pastry crumbs all over the place.

The road east to the border is easy going and the kilometers slipped passed our windows. The dry scrub land and rolling hills that got flatter and flatter as we headed to the border. The Buitepos border crossing is straightforward and we passed through quickly. This border isfrequently used by tourists and the authorities are unfazed by self drive foreigners like ourselves.

Just past the border into Botswana is a weigh bridge, normally used to verify the big lorries are not overladen. On a vehicle like ours overloading one’s vehicle is bad on all fronts, hard on the chassis, suspension, the canopy, fuel economy, and potentially dangerous as it affects stability and braking. Like anyone else we hesitate, cringe a bit and step on the scale once in a while and see how we’re doing. 

I received permission from a somewhat confused attendant who looked on while Jenny drove the Cruiser onto the scale. I went to the booth to check our weight. 3460 kgs. That is a heavy Cruiser and no amount of resisting dessert will solve the problem. More on vehicle weight in the Nitty Gritty.

Some sort of madness came over us on this day and instead of stopping to camp outside Ghanzi as planned we drove all the way to Maun. This gave us a couple low pressure days in Maun before our friends flew in to meet us. I made a “trailer” of our trip, to get you excited.

Maun

Gerry and Ronda are friends from California who had never been to Africa before. Against sound judgement they had entrusted us to plan the safari for them, we would be their “guides” in the loosest sense of the word. They rented a Land Cruiser Bushcamper from Bushlore and we would travel in tandem through the Moremi Game Reserve and Chobe National Park, finishing in Kasane. 

Although we’ve been to Moremi and Chobe before, the crème de la crème of Botswana’s wilderness, we had not been in the prime season. This time we’d be hitting the season just right and we were really looking forward to it.

Before Gerry and Ronda arrived we took a stab at fixing our passenger side window. For weeks (months?) this window had only responded to the command to go up under protest, and even then not consistently. Sometimes we physically push the glass around to get it unjammed. Happily we had obtained the long sought after part, the regulator mechanism, in Windhoek, from Auto Repairs Etzold. Incidentally they now source all their parts from Toyota Japan, as they were having too much trouble with parts availability from Toyota SA. 

Taking the door apart only takes a minute, and we are champs at this, having dismantled the door dozens of times before to try to fix either the window switch (on the driver side a few years ago), unjam the glass or find an unrelenting rattle a while back.

We carry a copy of the Haynes repair manual for the 70 series cruiser, which doesn’t cover our engine, but does cover every other aspect of the vehicle. This handy manual gave us easy to follow instructions on replacing the regulator, though frankly it is pretty simple and I think we could have managed it without the book. About 30 minutes later, voila! A buttery smooth fully functioning window. Luxury and a sense of accomplishment.

With our various looping around Botswana this was my fifth time in Maun since May. Though Maun has a certain dusty charm to it, I was getting a little tired of it and I was antsy to get into the bush. Town was positively bustling compared to when I drove through in May where hardly a tourist was about. Now it was peak tourist season and this being the first year of the pandemic that international travel was really practical people appeared to be making up for lost time.

We did enjoy the excellent food here, with delicious breakfast at the Duck, amazing healthy lunch bowls at the Dusty Donkey and an upmarket dinner at Marc’s. These cafes really stand out, offering a standard that is normally only found in parts of South Africa. Their fresh food and great menus would compete easily with hip cafes in California but are happily much less expensive.

Gerry and Ronda arrived as scheduled. The next day we picked up their vehicle from Bushlore, getting the full orientation on how to use the 4×4 and all the features of the camper. Including a water heater for showers! Gerry is a very experienced driver who has done a lot of amateur racing and he was excited to get off-road.

Provisioning is easy in Maun, and with two vehicles to share some of the load we went a bit crazy stocking up on all the goodies. In one episode we stopped at the butcher to get eggs, much better quality than at the supermarket. When we came out to the Cruiser our hands were full and Jenny set the carton of eggs on the spare tire to free up a hand to unlock the car. We loaded the rest of our stuff inside and just drove away. 

After pulling into traffic we shuddered over a few potholes and a look of panic flashed across Jenny’s face, followed by “Stop!” She remembered she’d left the eggs on the spare tire. To the annoyance of our the drivers behind us we halted in the busy Maun traffic and hopped out of the car to see if by some miracle the eggs had survived balancing on the spare tire. They had! When the driver behind us saw what I retrieved his face went from annoyance to astonishment and then a big smile. 

Before leaving town we took a scenic flight over the delta. I had asked the company a while back about flights and they said just call the day before we want to go. We did this, and they told us they were fully booked, leaving us with only the more expensive helicopter flight option. We discussed with the team and made the splurge.

This was fantastic. Their regular helicopters were all out in the Delta dropping off clients at exclusive lodges and this meant they took us up in the Okavango Air Rescue helicopter which has the doors taken off. Flying in a helo is a very different sensation than an airplane, a slightly wobbly floating feeling, and with the doors off we felt like a bird gazing down upon the wilderness.

From up high the delta looked wet. The pilot had been working here for several years and confirmed that this was about as wet as he’d ever seen it. Later in camp pondered this information soberly as we imagined our fate over the next days exploring the tracks in Moremi, notorious for water crossings. Every year many a vehicle is lost or damaged to a failed water crossing in Moremi.

The view from the air is stunning, it was really wonderful to see huge herds of buffalo grazing in the flood planes, and I particularly enjoyed seeing hippos congregating on shore, nestled together like a handful of grey peanuts. The Okavango is mostly inaccessible wetland and really the only way to see what makes up the majority of the delta is from the air. It really helped put the next days of safari in perspective, where really we would just be nibbling around the edges.

That night Gerry and Ronda got to try their hand at camping in the easy confines of Audi Camp, just north of Maun. Ronda confessed that they hadn’t been camping in decades and there was some trepidation about signing up for this adventure, so a ‘practice’ night before being in the bush was welcomed. 

In the morning they pronounced themselves very happy with their camping setup, it was much nicer than they had anticipated. It was time to head into the bush. 

Into Moremi

To orient the unfamiliar, the Okavango river comes into Botswana from the northwest, originating from a watershed in Angola, passing briefly through Namibia and eventually flowing into Botswana. It is the largest of the very few rivers in the world that never reaches lake nor ocean, instead spreading into the Kalahari desert to form an enormous wetland.

The Okavango Delta is unique in this sense and forms a habitat for large numbers of megafauna. A large part of the Delta is protected, called the Moremi Game Reserve, managed by the Botswana Department Wildlife and National Parks (DWNP). 

Most of the Delta is only accessible by boat or air. Deep into the wetland there are numerous luxury safari lodges where guests must fly in. At the eastern edge of this wetland is an area that is accessible by road, just, and that is were we intend to visit. North of Moremi Game Reserve is Chobe National Park, which includes the Savuti area as well as the riverfront along the Chobe river. The north shore of the Chobe river is Namibia and Zambia.

These areas represent the most trod territory for self drive safaris of anywhere we’ve been on this entire trip. It is common for South Africans to make a sojourn up for a holiday and there are also many 4×4 rental companies catering primarily to Europeans. Itineraries often include some variation of what we’re doing. 

There are only seven public camps (as in, not fancy lodges) within these parks, and each of those has about 10 sites. These are frequently booked months or even more than a year in advance. Even though people drive through here all the time it is still serious wilderness. The camps are unfenced, cars get stuck in water crossings, tires are sacrificed, baboons steal food from camp, and over the years a few unfortunate people have had dangerous or even fatal encounters with wildlife. 

As the tar ran out we stopped to air down the tires. Gerry and Ronda were feeling the anticipation. As an introduction they got their first “African massage” as we drove over the violent corrugations of the B334, huge clouds of white dust being kicked up by our tires. It is not a comfortable stretch of road.

After making the turn the road improves and we started to see some animals. It is wonderful to watch your friends get their first glimpse of wildlife, first a few impala, a lone zebra, and finally a couple elephants. Each time we stopped and our friends had huge smiles on their faces. And we hadn’t even gotten to the park yet. Bushlore had provided handheld radios so we could chat between the vehicles and point out sightings.

At the gate we checked in with ease. We had paid all our park fees at the Maun DWNP office, no messing around with payment was necessary. Our first night was booked at Xakanaxa, about as deep into Moremi as one can go by road. On the way we lucked out and saw a sable antelope with their magnificent scimitar horns, a rare sighting in Botswana. 

Moremi came into its own with wonderful scenes of zebra, impala, elephant and baboon all cavorting about. Gerry and Ronda were amazed and soaking it all in. It added a lot of fun for us that they were getting such a kick out of it. You know your safari friends are easy to please when they didn’t want to move on from the first set of baboons we saw. We are jaded, normally considering baboons as trouble, with their camp raids stealing whatever they can get their hands on and having a tendency to shit in inconvenient places (camp table top, fire pit, hood of the car).

Moremi was indeed wet, much wetter than we’d seen it on our previous visit, but that had been in November after a long dry spell. Now the water was so heigh that many game viewing tracks were inaccessible, including out to the popular dead tree island area. A guide told us “No! Don’t even think about it. We are not going out there either and you will certainly get stuck.” 

Often the advice for water crossings is, “Don’t.” Simply take another track around. But with many tracks already unnavigable our area of exploration was curtailed enough and we did allow a few water crossings that we judged safe. We evaluated them by either seeing fresh tire tracks and wet sand at either end, a sign that the crossing had just been passed by someone else, or we got out to walk the crossing. The first water crossing was a success and it put a grin on Gerry’s face that lasted at least ten minutes.

As for walking water crossings, this must be done with particular care that there are no animals about. I read a story online recently of a fellow that did this and lost a leg to a crocodile in a shallow crossing. This is probably why technically you’re not supposed to get out of your car in the reserve, except at designated spots like picnic sights, gates and campsites. In practice it seems the park staff more tolerant, when it is appropriate, than in other parks.

We checked in at Xakanaxa midday to find our spot. As is so common, there was a double booking for our spot. Both parties had legitimate bookings from Kwalate Safaris. The staff here are pros at untangling this sort of thing which happens all the time. They offered us to either camp right next to the ablutions or in an unofficial spot that is between campsite 8 and 9. We chose the latter, dubbing it Site 8 ½.

This was fairly close to site 9 and we chatted with the campers there, fearing we were intruding. On the contrary they had never camped in an unfenced campsite before and were more comfortable having neighbors close by.

After some lounge time and organizing a boat trip into the Delta for the following day we spent the rest of the afternoon on a proper game drive. It didn’t yield anything extraordinary but was still great fun. All the usual suspects were out, impala, zebra, elephant, buffalo, waterbuck, lechwe, baboons and giraffe, and we got one or two more water crossings while we wandered our way through the maze of tracks south of camp. 

Feeling generous we returned to camp early, so that our friends could settle into camp un-rushed before it got dark. We were rewarded with a spectacular sunset over the wetlands. 

In the morning we got cracking pre-dawn for a proper morning game drive. Gerry, serious about his coffee, brought a hand coffee grinder and Aeropress and was hand grinding coffee by headlamp in the pre dawn darkness. That is dedication! 

It was another fun game drive and we worked the area south of camp towards third bridge, making it as far as fourth bridge before turning around. Again a number of loops were completely swamped. What a contrast to when to our visit in November. It was really special to see the seasonal difference. A guide gave us a tip about a lion sighting, but after much driving around in mopane scrub it proved fruitless.

In the afternoon we made a long boat trip into the Delta. I had some vague recollection of someone saying that it’s not worth going for just two hours, because you just get to the interesting part when you have to turn around. Perhaps this is true, but I also think the boat operators calibrate their speed so that they don’t burn too much fuel, so the extra hours of boating may not directly translate into that much more into the delta. In our case I think we went for three hours and this was more than enough time in the boat for us.

Regardless we saw a good pod of hippos, a very fat nile crocodile and a fairly animated elephant that was not happy about our presence. Jenny and I did a boat trip from Xakanaxa in November and we both thought we saw quite a bit more on that trip, particularly bird life. It comes down to luck I suppose? 

The Xakanaxa campsite is wonderful. The sites are all stretched along the water and there is almost always good birdlife. Elephants had been wandering through camp but thankfully left us alone. The camps out towards the end are definitely far enough from the ablutions that one wonders whether walking for a shower at dusk is really that wise. For the most part we take care of that stuff during daylight. 

From Xakanaxa we were off to Khwai Magotho camp. This is 70 kilometers away, which doesn’t sound like a long drive but considering it is almost all sandy tracks in the park, barring a little bit of corrugated gravel through Khwai village. On the way towards the Khwai gate we saw a huge amount of tracks on the road, including what must have been a large pride of lions. Gerry and Ronda were starting to appreciate our excitement over tracks a bit and we doubled back a couple times looking for the pride. No luck, and I was starting to get a little stressed about delivering the big game for our friends.

Dombo HIppo Pools made for a great stop to make a second coffee and do a little bird watching and pick out a few hippos and crocs in the distance from the rickety hide. And here we heard about some wild dogs. 

Off we went, following the typical guidance of “They’re a few kilometers up where the track branches sitting by a tree…” Famous last words, for the track branches a dozen times and there are trees everywhere, but miraculously we did find them. A half dozen or so wild dogs sleeping in the shade. They perked up enough at our arrival that we could get a good look at them, but they clearly weren’t going to be up for hours, sleeping through the midday heat. It was great to be able to show our friends these endangered animals.

Onward we went to Khwai Magotho. We had never been to this particular spot before, which is a community run concession on the north bank of the Khwai river, with the national park on the south bank. We zigged and zagged our way through narrow tracks and made a couple small water crossings to drive along the riverfront to the campsite. 

The campsites are all spread out over quite a large area, none particularly close to another. It wasn’t clear to us where we were supposed to check in, but we ran into one of the camp staff making his rounds. He directed not only to our camp but also to a pair of leopards.

This was a welcome surprise and off we went in search of leopards. Reportedly they were on an impala kill, so they weren’t likely to have moved. After a bit of hunting around we found them, deep inside a thicket. We had actually already driven by this same spot on our way in, but the cats were deeply camouflaged and without the tip off we had missed them.

When we showed up there was one other car looking at them, but after we settled in quite a crowd developed and there was much jockeying for position in tight quarters. The leopards didn’t seem to take offense, but eventually we felt it too crowded and left.

Khwai Mogotho has a different feel than the national park that is just on the opposite bank of the river. The difference is mostly because on the Mogotho side the campsites are dispersed throughout the concession. This is nice in one way, in that the camps are spaced a hundred meters apart or more, but odd in the sense that when we drove around I sort of felt like we were always driving close to someone’s campsite, an unavoidable intrusion given the layout of the roads.

We were initially assigned campsite 12, quite away back from the river. This spot, like most at Mogotho, is quite far from the ablutions. We did walk during the day a few times, but it felt like a stretch and at other times we drove. During the night it was definitely unsafeto walk.

After the first night we managed to get an unoccupied space right on the river and we spent two nights there enjoying a wonderful view. Elephants grazed on the bank, waterbuck tiptoed through the shallows and life in the bush was excellent. 

One day I baked bread on the fire in the dutch oven. We don’t do this often because the timing requires the bread to proof for a few hours in the afternoon and doesn’t like to be jostled about in the vehicle. This time I left the bread proofing in the shade, in the dutch oven with a wet towel draped over it to keep it from getting too warm. To protect it from baboons or other scavengers I strapped the lid through the handles and synched it down tight so animals would, hopefully, not be able to get the pot open. Such are the struggles of the bush baker. This worked very well and we were rewarded with fresh bread with dinner.

Another interesting sighting at Khwai was a dead elephant in the river. The classic line from The Endless Summer, “You should’ve been here yesterday,” applies. Apparently a pride of 12 lions was feeding on the elephant carcass, but crocodiles from the river were also interested and a fight between crocs and lions ensued. Sadly we missed this NatGeo episode, though we did see crocodiles still grappling with the puzzle of how to get their jaws around the massive prize of an elephant carcass. 

From Mogotho we moved north to Savuti. We only managed to get a single night booking here, so it would be a stepping stone on our way north. Just past the Mababe gate, where we officially passed into Chobe National Park, we took the marsh road north and stopped at a watering hole. Just as we were about to move on we spotted a lion, perfectly camouflaged by her sandy coat. She kept looking up, out at something and lo, we spotted a large male in the distance that was guarding another elephant carcass. 

Full grown elephants are too big for lions to kill so in this case, and that of the one at the river, I feel confident that these elephants died by other means and the lions were feeding opportunistically. A few moments later a hyena came loping out of the bush and made a few furtive approaches towards the elephant, but each time the male lion ran him off. Watching different species interact, particularly predators, makes for a special sighting.

Moving north, worried about time, we joined the faster sand ridge road which was indeed very sandy. With the tires deflated we churned north well enough. Part way along we found a car with a trailer of provisions for one of the camps that was bogged in the sand. We stopped to help them out, rigging up a simple tow strap. Jerry and Ronda got the full experience of helping out a fellow traveler, as many have helped us, and we managed to pull them out without drama.

At the Savuti campsite we checked in and found our spot, settling in for an afternoon break from the long drive from Khwai. 

After so many months on the road traveling alone it was a real pleasure to travel in tandem with Gerry and Ronda. Of course we meet and talk to people all the time, but in almost all of those interactions it’s the first time we’ve met those people and will also probably be the last. Traveling with friends has a certain depth and we enjoyed our evenings around the fire that much more as we rehashed the day’s experiences. Part II of Friend safari is next. Savuti, Thobolos, Ihaha, Kasane and Victoria Falls.

The Nitty Gritty

Maun Provisioning Notes:

Even though we’ve been to Maun several times we still haven’t settled on the best spot for provisioning. There is a new mall with a shiny new Spar on the north end of town, but even though it is bigger than the old Spar in town it wasn’t as well stocked. We’ve also tried the Shopright, which we find good in other towns but the Maun edition is lackluster. Maun is oddly lacking in the fresh produce and fruit department, especially when compared to Namibia where the stock has much more variety and higher quality. If pressed I would say the old Spar is the place to go.

Also Meat Boys, by the Riley’s Garage, has meat (of course) but also higher quality eggs than the supermarket, as well as a few other hard to find odds and ends such as rice noodles, curry paste and good biltong. 

Meat Boys will also deep freeze whatever you want ahead of time if you call ahead. This is nice because you can even have it portioned per meal, so you don’t have to thaw too much of any one thing. For this trip we were traveling with one of the rarest species in Africa, vegetarians, so this particular service was not required.

A note on weight and GVM

The max GVM on our license disc is 3200 kgs, so the stop at the weigh bridge confirmed what we already knew, we were officially overloaded. On the brighter side the makers of our upgraded suspension, Old Man Emu (OME), sell a GVM upgrade for this vehicle that would put us back in the green. We don’t have the official GVM upgrade (not available on used vehicles or, as far as I know, in South Africa), but as near as I can tell our upgrade has all the same components, it just doesn’t come with the official certificate. This doesn’t mean that our weight isn’t hard on the vehicle, but it does mean that we are far safer than we would be if we were overloaded and still on the stock suspension.

Khwai Mogotho vs. Khwai Nortgate

Confusingly there are two Khwai camps. One is called “Khwai North Gate” and likes on the south bank of the Khwai river, inside the Moremi Game Reserve. The second is Khwai Mogotho” which lies on the north bank of the river and in a concession held by the community in the Khwai Development Trust. 

Camping at North Gate is more expensive, not only in price, but because you’re inside the reserve still you pay for camping as well as reserve fees. The North Gate campsite is more compact, with the reserve extending around the camp. When you leave camp here you are in the wilderness with camps and lodges few and far between, constrained to very limited areas.

At Mogotho the campsites are spread apart so far that you almost feel you’ve never left the camp site. In truth I suppose that maybe 30% of the area has campsites here and there, but this is some of the prime wildlife viewing area, meaning there are vehicles game driving back and forth most of the time, either past your camp or we felt we were intruding a bit on others by driving close to their campsite so often. It is however a congenial atmosphere and everyone seems good natured about it. 

Tour operators are allowed to set up substantially sized mobile safari camps and this too can be a little obtrusive, with supply and staff vehicles going to and fro adding to the traffic. At our originally assigned campsite the noise of staff setting up a large mobile safari camp went long after dark.

We would certainly stay at Mogotho again, particularly given the cost savings of the park fees, but I don’t think it gets a 100% unequivocal endorsement. DWNP recently changed the fee rules so that you have to pay on the day you exit a park and the day you enter. This means most are paying twice when traveling the popular route from Moremi to Savuti campsite in Chobe National Park. Breaking the trip at Mogotho for at least one night is an excellent way to avoid double payment on one day and spend an extra day in the bush.

Fess: 

Khwai North Gate: International is $50 pppn for camping + 270 Pula pppd meaning a single night at Khwai North Gate is $50 + 540P (~$45 USD depending on exchange rate) = $95 USD pppn to stay at North Gate, since you have to pay the park fee for the both dates. Rates for SADC and Botswana residents are cheaper and can be found here and official DWNP fees are here.

Khwai Mogotho on the other hand is much less expensive, at 360 pppn (350 + levy), with no other fees, working out to $27 pppn, and no other fees. Quite a savings! 

There are some good maps and info about the Khwai Development Trust here.

The Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR) is different than many other parks. Enormous. Dry. Hot. And with that deceiving empty feeling characteristic of deserts, yet actually full of life and activity to the careful observer. Jenny and I have often remarked that we wouldn’t recommend a visit to the CKGR to most first time safari goers, for it lacks the immediate drama of a waterhole at Etosha or the wetlands of Moremi. Yet is is so intriguing and expansive and we have loved our two previous visits. Here, when you do get good wildlife sightings they are frequently all yours, accompanied by the feeling of accomplishment that you found them yourself, not just by spotting a group of safari Land Cruisers already huddled around a somewhat harassed lion.

In any case, from the Boteti River Camp we set off to the Kalahari. It’s a quick drive to Rakops, about 45 minutes on good tar, where we topped up fuel. We’d filled the jerry cans in Maun in case Rakops was out of fuel, but this we hear is happening less and less often.

Loaded to the brim for a week in the bush we turned off the tar onto the long sandy approach road to the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR). In 2018 we drove the same road and I remember it to be slow going, but either the road is now in better shape or our standards had changed, it seemed pretty good this time around.

On the way in we met a vehicle heading out and stopped to ask about their visit. They told us, bragging somewhat, that they had camped right at the Sunday Pan waterhole, which is of course totally illegal. We find it very frustrating that in these wonderful parks where visitors are given a long leash and little oversight that some feel this means it’s okay to break the rules. I fear that the relatively free ranging privilege of unfenced camping in the wilderness areas such as the Central Kalahari are jeopardized by this irresponsible behavior. Not to mention that in the parched Kalahari, making camp next to one of the few water sources, where animals might not approach due to an unusual presence of humans, is also very poor form. And for the love of god if you must break the rules (which you shouldn’t) don’t brag about it, keep your mouth shut and do not encourage others.

At the gate we checked into the park, producing our bookings and prepaid permits we’d obtained in Maun, so no payment was needed here. Our bookings were for two nights in the Passarge Valley (No. 1), two nights at Letihau, and three nights in Deception Valley at the Kori Camps. If we had our druthers we’d juggle this around a bit, but the sites that we wanted were not available, and any sites in the CKGR are good enough for us.

There is also a sightings board at the gate, where people exiting the park put pins to note when and where they saw various predators. I was disappointed to see that it didn’t seem to have been updated in the last week, that or there had been no sightings. Generally it seems people are less good at updating these sightings boards than they used to be. 

The approach road finally dropped us into the scenic Deception Valley, which was happily covered in golden grass and looked lovely. On our last visit, November 2019, at the end of a dry season it had been a parched brown dustbowl. 

Our booking was for Passage No. 1 and we had some distance to make so we didn’t dally too much on our way to camp. Still we saw decent wildlife on the drive, including many bat eared foxes. Their big ears are like ground penetrating radar dishes, specialized at seeking out underground insect meals. Also oryx, springbok, kori bustard, secretary birds, jackals, many a goshawk, batluer eagle, ostrich, and the diminutive Bambi like steenbok. We also saw lion prints in the sandy two spoor track.

Passarge No. 1 is on the eastern end of the Passarge valley, a couple hundred meters up from the pan. There isn’t much view here, but otherwise it is a wonderful camp in the bush, our closest neighbors over ten kilometers away. 

Again we were disappointed by the behavior of our fellow campers, for we found quite a lot of toilet paper scattered in the bush around camp. There is a long drop here, though admittedly rustic. The next day I picked up all the toilet paper (gross) and deposited it in the long drop. On top of this people had been hacking off branches for firewood of a nearby tree, another unsustainable transgression. Particularly an alive tree, which will only yield smokey green wood. C’mon people, let’s get it together!

A note on how to poop in the woods: It is true, sometimes either there is no long drop or the one at a camp is not suitable for humans and you need to use the bush for your business. If this is the case: a) dig a hole, ideally 30 cm, but as deep as you can reasonably get; b) do whatever you need to do; c) burn the toilet paper in the hole. This is a key step. We use a butane lighter stick thing, it is easy. This prevents animals from digging it up later, which I think happens quite a bit; d) bury and leave no trace. See, that wasn’t that hard.

Evening in camp was wonderful. Jenny made a spicy chicken curry for dinner and we sat around the fire savoring the solitary bush experience, with bright glittering stars overhead. In the distance we could hear the yipping wail of black backed jackals heading out on their evening business. 

A few people have asked us what kind of food we eat, so (spoiler alert) this is was the dinner menu for our week in the Kalahari:

Night 1: Spicy chicken curry – cooked in the dutch oven on the stove.

Night 2: Chicken grilled on the fire with baked potatoes cooked in foil on the coals. Potatoes with all the fixins’, green onion, cheese, butter, bacon bits, yogurt in the place of sour cream. Decadent.

Night 3: Chicken fajitas (we need to cook the chicken). Chicken, peppers and onions sauteed on the stove with cilantro, chili, cheese and all wrapped up in a tortilla. We found tortillas!

Night 4: Chicken vegtable soup made from scratch. Amazing, especially in the cold weather. Chop up whatever vegetables that need to get eaten, sautee with chicken, add water, chicken bouillon, herbs, simmer.

Night 5: Cheese quesadillas and popcorn. We cook the popcorn on the stove. Just heat enough oil to cover the bottom of the pan, pop 2 kernels to know the oil is hot, add popcorn, pop and done. Melt butter in the same pan, add salt.

Night 6: Beef fillet on the fire and hobo packs (diced up potatoes and spices with oil, wrapped in foil and cooked on/in the fire). The beef in Botswana is crazy cheap and high quality, it’s hard to pass up.

Night 7: Veggie pasta and sauce, easy.

The next day was spent in relative calm. Given all the time we’d spent in parks over the last months, and that the dry Kalahari doesn’t support the same density of animals as other parks we had decided to let ourselves off the hook for intense pre-dawn game drives and other devoted game viewing, instead taking a more relaxed approach. 

During some midday lounge time in camp the bees discovered us and we were inundated with bees seeking out water. This drove us to decamp to the unoccupied Passage No. 2 for the afternoon. Fortunately the bees knock off for the day at sunset, leaving us the evening to ourselves.  

The Passarge Valley is wonderfully beautiful, but didn’t seem to be where the action was as far as wildlife, though we did see some giraffe and spend some time birding at the Sunday Pan waterhole. 

From Passarge we had two nights at Letihau, an undeveloped bush camp. Here we did make an early morning sally on the wildlife. Just setting out we had hardly settled in our seats when we saw a rare brown hyena. We’d never seen one before, and usually sightings are limited to photos from nighttime game cams some people set up in camp, or in the shadows at dusk near a waterhole. Here was a wonderful brown hyena at daybreak trotting down the road. She (?) paused, took a look at us, and adjusted her route to give us a wide berth, but otherwise continued on her way.

With this victory under our belts we headed to the Letihau waterhole, and what did we find but two more brown hyena. These two we managed to spent a half hour or so with. Brown hyena are totally different than the more common spotted variety. Though they share the sloping back and smaller hindquarters of other hyena, they look less mangy and had very long brown hair that waved loosely as they walked, almost like it had just been blow dried.

Later we narrowly missed a cheetah sighting, reported to us by a guided mobile safari. To our disappointment a self driver and one of the two mobile safari vehicles drove far off road to follow the cheetah. The second mobile safari guide seemed very annoyed that his compatriot was breaking the rules so we did not report them, figuring he was going to get a talking to from the more senior guide. We saw this group again later in the day and their off roading didn’t even get them a sighting, the cheetah had disappeared in the bush. 

This is the third time we’ve personally seen or heard of cheetah being seen in this area of the CKGR, a favorite spot I suppose, and we keep our eyes peeled when passing this spot.

The Letihau campsite is totally undeveloped, just a piece of Africa that is designated by the parks department as a campsite. This clump of trees sits a couple hundred meters south of the good grazing on the pan. There are really two spots to camp here, so in the event of the dreaded (and not uncommon) double booking there is no cause for alarm, the two spots are on opposite sides and out of view of one another. Our closest neighbor here was over 20 kilometers away, what a wonderful spot to camp in the bush. In 2018 we had a male lion walk right through this camp, his roars reverberating in our chests as we hid in the tent. 

In the evening we parked near a huge herd of springbok grazing east of the waterhole. They are interesting antelope and it was wonderful to sit in the cab and drink a beer at sunset as the herd slowly worked its way towards us grazing along the pan. Once they arrived at our location they parted slowly around us and we could watch their social interactions and listen to their funny pig like oinking at close quarters.

The morning brought another day for moving camp, heading up to Deception Valley, where Mark and Delia Owens spent seven years living and studying wildlife. Their story is wonderfully told in the excellent book, The Cry of the Kalahari. Their observations of wildlife here revealed unknown secrets of the lives of brown hyena, as well as disproving some previously accepted facts about lion behavior. Most previous lion research had been done in the Serengeti and those lessons had been assumed to apply to all lions, but the Owens’ showed that the different environment has lead Kalahari lions to develop different behaviors and social structures. 

They went on to write two more books about their conservation work in Zambia, of which I preferred the second, The Secrets of the Savannah. Delia has recently returned to writing, winning many awards and staying on the bestseller list for a long time with Where the Crawdad Sings. I confess I couldn’t get into this book, but it seems I’m in the minority. My mother, a much better literary critic than I, thought it excellent. 

We love all the grasses of the Kalahari, such different textures and colors

Remarkably we saw yet another brown hyena this morning, trotting through the golden grass of the pan. It was another great sighting and we began to question whether we had been very unlucky on prior visits, or were very lucky this time.  

It was early and we had “first tracks,” meaning no other vehicles had yet driven the road. This meant the road was full of animal tracks from the night before. Here we deployed our Tracks and Signs field guide, which helps us decode hyena tracks from lion from whatever else. The lesson of the day is that there were lions about, and with the spoor heading in the same direction as us. 

This always puts us on high alert, and a few times we’ve even managed to use this to spot lions. We followed the tracks, for lions are lazy, often using the road, and we scanned the bush as we drove along. This went on for several kilometers. These lions clearly had somewhere to be. Sometimes we’d lose the tracks for a while, and then they’d return to the road, plodding onwards. Finally we lost them in the maze of tracks at the southern end of Deception Valley, but even so it felt good to know that they were around. 

The rest of the day didn’t offer up anything unique in the way of sightings, though we did make a cast out to Sunday Pan, which had good numbers of oryx and wildebeest, as well as a bumper crop of kori bustards, who seemed to have been breeding very well. They were all over the place. 

This was our third visit to the CKGR and by far the busiest, coinciding withSouth African school holidays. We saw about ten private vehicles a day, as well as at least one mobile safari operator.. The park is enormous and these numbers aren’t a burden; it didn’t feel crowded. This is what comes of having 33 campsites (I counted on the T4A map) in a park bigger than the country of Costa Rica.

In spite of seeing lion tracks daily we had so far not seen any lions, nor had anyone else. Our luck changed on the second day at Deception Valley. It had been almost frigidin the mornings and evenings, and after a morning of long underwear and coffee we decided to make a lazy game drive. Out in the middle of the pan we spotted a lioness striding through tall grass, and then a male as well. They were striding and stopping through the grass in a northwesterly direction, away from us. We took a chance and drove the couple kilometers back to the road that flanks the western edge of the pan by the campsites.

Here we took a guess at where the lions were headed and it paid off. The lioness came right at us and walked right in front of the Cruiser. The male also crossed the road, and it was only then that the cars that had been watching from the pan realized we were in the prime spot, racing up to join us. 

The lions waltzed through the Kori No. 4 campsite, marking the trees as they went, and then eventually disappearing into the bush behind the campsites. This was a good reminder to us to not get too lackadaisical about the unfenced camping. Later some campers settled into Kori 4 and we told them that two beautiful lions had been there a couple hours before and might still be behind camp. 

Wonderful camp birds in the CKGR (swallow tailed bee eater, black faced waxbill (?), crimson breasted shrike, violet eared waxbill)

Evenings in the CKGR continued to be crisp and we rationed our firewood to make it last the whole time. The next day we resolved to have a ‘camp day’ and just relax, do some birding and not stress over sighting wildlife. The morning was cool and overcast, to the point where it almost looked like rain. Rain would’ve been extraordinarily unlikely though, for the rainy season was firmly at and end a while ago. 

However rain it did. Little pattering drops and a cool breeze at first, and then it came down harder. We huddled under our awning in denial, but eventually conceded, deciding to head out for a game drive instead of being cold and damp. The rain left watery pools here and there in the pan and large numbers of oryx and springbok came out to drink under the dramatic skies.

Several other campers confirmed our thoughts that this weatherwas very unseasonable, but no doubt welcome to the animals of the Kalahari. When the water does dry up here, many of the animals manage to get all their moisture from their food, surviving without water. Even Kalahari lions are unique in being able to survive periods without water, getting water by eating wild melons that grow here. 

After seven nights in the very special Central Kalahari we had to take our leave. Originally we had wanted to camp at Piper Pan, but it had been booked. Instead on this last day we decided to make an epic all day drive to Ghanzi, in the west, via Piper. 

To make the big drive we set out at dawn and the winter sun cast low golden light on all the flaxen yellow grass, everything was aglow as we rolled westward through Deception and later along the dry pans of the dormant Letihau river bed. All our earnest scanning for predators had beenunnecessary. We came upon two beautiful lionesses sitting in the road ahead. After a while they meandered into the grass and began cavorting and wrestling in perfect light as I fumbled with my camera. What a great way to finish our time here.

The rest of the drive was pleasant and scenic though fairly uneventful. Mercifully the road to Piper Pan was in far better shape than when we’d driven it a few years ago. At Piper we chatted with some campers who had huge lion tracks right through their camp, and they’d heard their roaring and calling in the night. 

After checking out of the park at the Xade gate we still had to drive 140 kilometers before hitting tar, half of which is very deep sand. By the end of the day we were exhausted, I’m not sure our “exit via Piper” plan was a good one. We camped that night at the Palm Afrique Lodge and Campsite. 

They offer a buffet dinner that turned out to be delicious. Dinner was well attended by the other guests and to retain some warmth the doors and windows were kept firmly shut, to also better contain the covid. On the surface Botswana takes covid more seriously than any other country we’ve recently visited, but in reality the precautions are all just window dressing. Masks are more often worn below noses, doors and windows kept closed to keep out the dust and retain the air conditioning, and to compensate for all this, hand sanitizer is assiduously applied.

To Namibia 

That night with the tent zipped up we stayed toasty warm despite the near freezing temperatures overnight. The friendly manager told us that the next week was forecast to be even more frosty, so we were getting out just in time. 

In the morning we made our departure, anxious to make tracks towards our long awaited visit to remote Kaokoland in Namibia’s far northwest. It’s a long haul, over 1200 kilometers, just to get to Opuwo, which would be our jumping off point to head to the Marienfluss valley. 

Botswana’s A2 took us to the Buitepos border post. Even though this border is a thoroughfare between the two countries it is a relatively easy crossing point that we’ve used before. Well, usually it is. After clearing out of Botswana in under 10 minutes we entered the Namibia side. Here an official made a vague hand gesture at us, which we took to be waving us onward to the parking outside immigration.

When we started filling out our arrival cards he stormed in and lectured us sternly that we must follow direction, that we were meant to stop past the gate. Taken aback we tried to apologize, but before we’d hardly opened our mouths he rattled off stern instructions to return to the gate, where we were to have our covid vaccination records checked. 

Jenny was first and he threatened to detain us for an hour for disobeying the “instructions” (a casually waved hand) of an official. We called his bluff, paying homage to his superiority and accepting our “detainment.” This mollified him enough to let us proceed to the health check. It was nothing really, but still it was the first time we’d really ever had any trouble with any Namibian official and it left a bad taste, though it was soon forgotten. We were back in marvelous Namibia.

The Nitty Gritty

The Central Kalahari Game Reserve

Boteti River Camp to Passarge No. 2 via Rakops – 211km, 5h 47m 

Campsites – We haven’t camped or been to all the campsites in the CKGR, but of the ones we have been to, here are our thoughts: We like Kori No. 1, Passarge No. 2, Letihau and Piper No 1. I’m not sure which Sunday site is the best, but I’d take any of them with pleasure.

Passarge No 1 and 3 are at the east and west end of the Passarge Valley, respectively, and a bit too far from the pan. No. 2 is ideally situated and has a decent view of the pan. 

All the Kori sites are good, though No. 4 is a bit close to the road and smaller, No. 2 a little close to the road (not too bad) and No. 3 has no view of the pan. No. 1 strikes the best balance in our opinion, but we would happily take any of them. 

There is an unmarked site at Kori, I suspect a staff site or old Kori camp. Another couple had a double booking at No. 2 and we recommended they either join us at the very large Kori No. 3 or use this unmarked site, which they did. A good backup option in a pinch.

The Deception sites are all in the bush, but I suspect that you could always get a spot there if the rest of the campsites were booked. They’re still managed by the DWNP, meaning they are less expensive. We noticed no difference in campsite quality/maintenance in sites managed by Bigfoot vs DWNP. 

Letihau has no facilities at all, but is bigger and better situated than Lekhubu, which is quite small. 

T4A has incorrectly mapped two sites, “New Kori Camp 2” and “New Kori Camp 3.” These are the turns for those sites, not the sites themselves, and in any case these sites are for mobile operators, not for self drivers.

There is an unmapped road running along the eastern flank of Deception Valley which makes for a nice drive. It runs south from the Matswere road and joins the main road opposite Kori No. 3. 

Another unmapped road runs north and then northwest from Letihau, I suspect all the way to Tau Pan. It had been driven recently and perhaps is used by the lodge there. We drove part of it and it was in good condition. 

The Sunday Pan, Piper Pan, Letihau and Passarge waterholes were all functional on our visit.

Deception Valley (Kori No. 3) to Ghanzi (Palm Afrique) was 349 kilometers, 12h 6m. All but maybe 10 km of this is dirt or sand. We did have a lovely morning and good animal sightings doing this, but I probably wouldn’t do this again. Either I’d head out via another gate or camp at the Xade gate campsite, though that looked like nothing special. 

Ghanzi – We stayed at the Palm Afrique, which also has chalets, a buffet dinner, a bar and conference facilities. Standard issue slow Wi-Fi. The campsite is not atmospheric, but it was a great stopover spot and the manger and staff were really friendly. 

Border Crossing:

Border procedures are wont to change, so all border crossing procedures for all the countries on our journey can be distilled into two steps. 

Step 1: Bring all your documents, a good attitude, and follow the instructions of the officials while ignoring all runners, touts or “agents”. 

Step 2: Bring your own pen. (this may be the most important step)

For this particular border:

Botswana side – Fill out a departure card, say good morning to the immigration officer and slide your passports across. They’ll stamp you out and hand you a gate pass, stamping the immigration box. Ask customs what they need to clear your vehicle. For us without a word they stamped the gate pass and waved us out. Done.

Namibia side – 

Step 1 – Health: Don’t forget to stop at the health inspection, lest you face the wroth of annoyed border guards. Our US covid vaccination cards were accepted here, we did not need the Panbios/Trusted Travel QR code. 

Step 2 – Immigration: Fill out a passenger arrival card. In all countries we just pick the name of a place we know we’re going to stay (even if we don’t have a reservation) and put that down as the address, though we never provide the full street number, etc. Just “Urban Camp, Windhoek” will do it. When we’re really on top of it we take a few extra forms when entering a country, so that when we leave we can have them already filled out (they’re the same form).

Step 3 – Customs: Fill out their register. They may ask you if you have anything to declare, and if you don’t just say “no” and they’ll usually wave you on. 

Step 4 – Walk out of the building and go to the roads authority next-door to pay the road tax, something a bit over 300 Namibian dollars ($337 comes to mind?). Cash only, but change is given. Don’t forget that rand (ZAR) is 1:1 with the Namibian dollar (NAD) and is accepted throughout Namibia. 

Insurance in Namibia is paid in the fuel tax, so no 3rd party insurance needs to brought. That insurance only provides the legal bare minimum of coverage. Any additional coverage, if desired, has to be arranged separately, it cannot be bought at the border.

Baines’ Baobabs

I’d arrived at Baines’ Baobabs, an impressive stand of huge baobab trees “discovered” by Thomas Baines in the 1800s. These lie within the Nxai Pan National Park at the edge of a salt pan. There are three campsites in the area, each with its own baobab or two and each a kilometer or more from the nearest neighbor. This makes for a very exclusive camping experience. Jenny and I visited here in 2018 and loved it.

When I checked in at the gate they told me that my booking for Baines’ No. 2 was already occupied, but happily Baines’ No. 1 was available, my original preference. I enjoyed a very atmospheric night at Baines’ No. 1, perched at the edge of the salt pan with dark skies and the bright glittering smear of the milky way overhead. 

From Baines’ I made my way to my next stop, the Makgadigadi Pans National Park Tree Island Campsite. I entered the park from the north entrance and immediately encountered deep sand. With the tire pressure dropped I made my way to the Boteti riverfront for a brief game drive before diving east into the heart of the Kalahari. 

To my surprise the Makgadigadi’s famous Zebra migration seemed to beunderway. I found thousands of zebras at the river. Normally this peaks, I think, in May. I suppose this year’s good rains had allowed the zebras to delay their migration from the pans to the river. 

The Tree Island Campsite is far from the normal game viewing area, a long drive down a sandy track to a lonely patch of shade trees that occupy a modest rise at the edge of the Makgadigadi salt pans. 

The drive was far more interesting than I imagined. I saw elephant, giraffe, oryx, wildebeest and zebras. The initial stretch is dense scrub, not all that special, but it gives way to sparse trees and eventually to beautiful grassy plaines. 

Tree island campsite has three sites adjacent to each other. One site was occupied, but luckily the best site, No. 1, was available, lying at the edge of the trees adjacent to the pan. It is a lonely spot out here, but that is the magic of it. Reportedly when the zebras are in the area (the same ones now occupying the Boteti river some 40 km to the west) lions take up residence in the shade of these tress. Wouldn’t they be interesting to share this camp with?

From Tree Island Campsite I made my way out of the park to the east. My former impression is that there isn’t much going on in the Makgadigadi away from the Boteti riverfront, by I found the drive to be very scenic and enjoyable. 

When I’d checked in they’d told me that the eastern gate to the park, Xirexara, was closed. But it was the direction I wanted to explore and I figured if I couldn’t leave by that gate I’d backtrack and exit out the northeast gate at Makkolwane. 

Just before arriving at Xirexara I found a pan full of wildebeest and zebra, very scenic and nobody for miles and miles and miles. The Xirexara gate appears as all the other gates, with staff structures and an impressive thatched roof structure over the road, but all was abandoned. The eastern edge of the park is unfenced, presumably to allow wildlife to freely migrate. There was also no gate across the road, so I just drove out of the park without checking out like you usually would at the other gates.

Immediately to the south is the CT11 private tourist concession, no entry allowed. I spent the rest of the day navigating rarely driven tracks that occasionally faded to nothing, finding myself feeling very alone in the bush. I’d backtrack and try again, and by the end of the day I’d managed to visit the impressive Green’s Baobab and finally washed up at the Planet Baobab campsite near Gweta.

I spent two nights here, getting ready to head for Kubu Island. The Gweta Fuel station had fuel, not always the case, and this topped me off so I could roam unhindered by fuel endurance concerns. 

How to get to Kubu was in question. The easiest route to Kubu from the south, near Orapa, far from here. The other route is from Nata, a long drive from here on potholed tar, followed by a stretch of road that goes along the edge of the very enormous Sua Pan. This route was just more driving. 

My final option was a road that goes more or less directly from Gweta to Kubu, across the Ntwetwe Pan (many pans make up the Makgadigadi Salt Pans, but Sua and Ntwetwe are the largest). This direct route looked the most interesting, least traveled and but most risky. Risky because the road crosses the surface of the pan in parts, and if the pan hasn’t fully dried from the rains the seemingly hard surface will collapse, swallowing the vehicle in a mire of mud. Not something I wanted to experience, particularly alone. 

I asked around to everyone I could and was told to err on the side of caution and take the Nata route, but I was told this all by people who hadn’t actually traveled the Gweta route this season. A lone report from a week previously said people had made the drive and it had been scary in a few sections.

This to me meant that it was doable, and had likely dried more in the intervening time. In chatting with my camp neighbors at Planet Baobab they agreed to follow me by a day. If I got into real trouble they’d come across me and help me out. If the road was good I’d text them from the sat phone so they’d know the status of the route.

With this plan made I set out for Kubu. From Gweta made the turn into the sandy tracks at Gweta. Not far along I met a guided safari car coming out of the bush. The guide told me the road was good all the way, “You cannot get stuck, if you stay on the road.” 

On the GPS there is a single track heading almost the full 100 kilometers to Kubu. Instead I found a maze of tracks. I was met with dozens of wyes, each a decision to be made and none of which followed the road on the GPS. I took my best guess at each, trying to follow the fresh tracks of the safari car that had come out or the largest track.

Along the way the branch of a mopane tree slapped the passenger side mirror and the glass popped out of the mirror. I had to stop the car and walk back on the track for some time to find it. I reinstalled it but it was now loose, and the second time it was slapped out I drove over it and shattered the glass. No more passenger mirror. Over the next few days this was surprisingly more inconvenient than you’d think, particularly as I was alone. 

The remainder of the drive to Kubu was fantastic. Mopane forest and sandy tracks gave way to a narrow patch of relatively green land at the edge of the pan. Here was a cattle station of sorts, taking advantage of a lake that wasn’t on any map. In fact the road as mapped went right through the lake, so I followed faint bush tracks around it.

This first 40 kilometers of the road had been a maze, but after leaving cattle station I was back on the GPS track and heading out across Ntwetwe Pan. It was a stunning drive, rolling through grassy plaines, through mopane bush and across the immense wide salt pans. Driving on the pans is a lot of fun.

Arriving at Kubu Island felt like victory. I could find no staff, so I just wandered around and picked a campsite, one of a dozen loosely scattered around the southwest quadrant of the island. Through the afternoon more travelers trickled in until the campsite was about ¾ full.

Kubu Island is a unique place. The Makgadigadi Salt Pans are toward the eastern edge of the Kalahari, and for the most part are very flat. The landscape alternates from salt pan to thin mopane forest to grass plains depending on where you are, but the elevation changes little. Kubu (which if I’m not mistaken means “Island” in the local Setswana language. So really we’re saying “Island Island”) is an island of rock in this desert, about one kilometer long and half a kilometer wide, boasting a hefty stand of baobabs scattered across it. The island is dry most of the year, though the pans do fill with water in the rainy season.

Normally baobabs trees are fairly rare, standing alone here and there across Botswana, but Kubu has the right conditions to support dozens and dozens of these wonderful and impressive trees. The island lies at the edge of the pan, and standing among the baobabs and looking out across the salt pan is surreal. An environment so unique to my experience that it was easy to spend two nights here wandering around and appreciating the place.

I love their bark. It is as wrinkled and cracked as the supple leather of an old boot, the roots look like a nest of eels at times. Other times the leather looks like melted wax.

I sent my text message via the sat phone to Dave and Lauren, who I’d met at Planet Baobab. They followed the next day and we enjoyed beers around the fire. During the rest of my time there it felt fantastic to stretch my legs and wander all over the island, photographing the trees and the stars and enjoying sunsets and sunrises. I couldn’t wait to come here with Jenny.

After two nights I headed back to Maun, making the drive back via the same scenic Gweta road. This drive began with the car not starting. All the way out here at Kubu I can tell you it was a little disconcerting. It was the battery, purchased new only eight months ago. I managed to jump start myself off the auxiliary battery, but only just, as it apparently doesn’t deliver the same cold cranking amps. The problem was the heavy load of the glow plugs would drop the battery voltage enough that the auxiliary battery didn’t have enough oomph to start the Cruiser. I solved this by just starting right away, not waiting for the glow plug light on the dash to go out. 

I assumed that after I’d driven a while the battery would be charged, but half way back to the tar, very much in the middle of nowhere, the car wouldn’t start again. I managed to jump myself again.

In Maun I went straight to Midas and bought a new start battery and an aftermarket mirror to replace the one I’d lost. The mirror broke immediately upon installation. Top tip: don’t buy non Toyota parts. Fortunately Toyota Maun had the right mirror in stock, for literally TEN TIMES the price of the aftermarket one, but with the key feature that it didn’t shatter immediately when installed. 

Aliboats also made the repair on the canopy. They didn’t have time to take the canopy off entirely, which would be the proper way to repair this, however their TIG welding was top quality and I was much more optimistic about it than the first repair.

After these logistics bouncing around Maun it was almost time to rendezvous with Jenny. Her flight was laying over in Cape Town, so we hatched a plan to visit our friends there. I stored the car in Maun, at Audi Camp, hopped on a flight.

It was fantastic to be back together again. Traveling alone in Africa had been a fulfilling experience, engaging and rewarding, but not really fun. Not in the same way as it is when traveling with Jenny anyway. 

A week in Cape Town with friends was also wonderful, and we lucked out on the weather, getting a week of summer in the dead of winter. I won’t dwell on Cape Town, other than to say it is a stunningly beautiful city. Not in the way that, say, Paris is, for Cape Town has many slums, townships and problems. Its geography though, the ocean, with the city strewn around the base of rugged mountains is stunningly beautiful, even many a poor township still has a million dollar view.  

Our friends plied us with delicious food and wine and we enjoyed touristing around town, visiting Cape Point, wine tasting, going to markets and wandering along the wonderful beaches of their suburb in Kommetjie. 

Even in these comfortable and scenic surrounds we began to long for the bush. Jenny in particular, who had been away from the Cruiser for a full month by the time our plane landed in Maun.

The Nitty Gritty

Baines’ Baobabs

Any campsite at Baines’ is a good one. If I had to rank them in order of preference I’d say 1, 2, 3, with No. 2 being almost as good as one. No. 1 has a view of Baines’ Baobab’s themselves across the pan, but is less likely to be accessible if it has recently rained. No. 2 has two baobabs and is bigger, might be better for a group. All three sites have a basic long drop and bucket shower, BYOW (bring your own water). Other campers have reported mice or bee infestations, though I had neither. 

The road into Nxai Pan National Park is interminable, kilometers of deep sand and corrugations, but it is worth it, but drop your tire pressures at the gate. Once you make the turn to Baines’ it’s good.

Makgadigadi Pans National Park

Khumaga is the campsite near the Khumaga gate and adjacent to the Boteti river. A fine enough spot, but expensive. We enjoyed it on our 2018 visit.

Tree Island – Site No. 1 is the best. It has good shade, a bit of a view of the pan, and a sunset view. Ablutions are basic, long drop and bucket shower, bring your own water.

Njuca Hills isn’t as good as Tree Island. Officially there are two sites here (I think?) but I saw at least one reserve (overflow)site and one extra un-numbered site. Site No. 2 is the best of the bunch, westward facing. All of the Njuca sites seemed a little shabbier than Tree Island.

Kubu Island

Reservations are possible (book here), but to confirm a reservation you need to pay ahead, only possible by bank transfer. As far as I can tell you can’t reserve a specific campsite, only that they will save you one. I don’t think reservations are necessary here unless you want to visit during school holidays. 

Site No. 6 has the best view of the pan, but no shade. The awning was invaluable. Several of the other sites are good too. The second night I was there only three sites were full, and (spoiler alert) Jenny and I went back for two more nights and it was almost empty. 

Camp staff will walk around in the evening to take payment and issue a receipt. You can just drive up, pick a spot and they’ll show up in due course. We tried to go to the camp office to register and pay midday, and they just told to pick a spot and the mobile officer will come when they’re ready. 

Into the Delta, Moremi without Bookings

Jenny had flown back to the States for an undetermined period of time, but our hope was about three weeks. Her mother was going through the most difficult part of cancer treatment, thus the ambiguity. I was going to continue on solo, with the plan to rendezvous with Jenny in either Windhoek or Maun. Jenny’s mother is fiercely independent and had already expressed her desire that Jenny’s visit not last too long, that she should return to finish our Africa adventure.

As I’d be alone I didn’t plan to tackle anything too remote. Any safety fears were the mundane over the exotic, like breaking my ankle coming down the ladder and thus being unable to drive.

For other risks, such as breakdown or getting stuck, I had the same strategy as when Jenny is with me, to attempt self rescue or just wait for someone to come along. There was always the sat phone as a last resort.

To kick things off I made the fourhour drive to the Moorings campsite, half way between Lusaka and Livingstone. I was the only guest at this modest but perfectly decent campsite. The previously terrible section of road on this route, near Mazabuka, has been repaired. I suspect was not good for business at the Moorings, where many people used to break the journey to/from Lusaka.

The next day to Livingstone was another uneventful drive on good tar without much traffic. 

Livingstone

There are a few good campsites in Livingstone, namely the Maramba River Lodge, Victoria Falls Waterfront and Taita Falcon Lodge. On iOverlander I noted a campsite we hadn’t heard of before, called Overland Missions Rapid 14. The rapids downstream of the bridge are numbered, and this place is situated with a view of rapid 14, thus the name.

I WhatsApp’d ahead and they said no problem, they had a spot for me. Arriving at the property the first thing I saw was a large and perfectly groomed football pitch and a swimming pool. Not at all what I imagined. 

A woman introduced herself, I could tell she was American. She brought me through a huge landscaped area full of bungalows to a central building. My guide showed me around and told me about the place.

This is the main operations base for Overland Missions, a church group that conducts mission work throughout “central Africa” (by which I understood to mean Zambia and Angola, but I’m not sure). More than an operations base it looked like a pleasant holiday retreat, with manicured lawns, tidy bungalows and a stunning view from the main building of the Zambezi river’s rapid 14 in the canyon below. 

I generally take a dim view of mission work, but these people were so unerringly friendly and upbeat that they were very hard to dislike. I was shown a cliff top bush camp at rapid 13, around 1km up river from the base. They had plans of building some training center for local chiefs here, but until that work progressed they said it made a great campsite.

And did it ever! I was the only one there, with a stunning view of rapid 13 below. I couldn’t believe how pleasant it was. I spent the rest of the day mesmerized by the river canyon below.

I found that if I balanced my phone on top of the snorkel I could get enough cell service to receive WhatsApp messages. By this inconvenient arrangement I was able to check in with Jenny. 

Rapid 14 is also where the Zambezi rafting companies put in when the river is running too high to start below the falls. There is a steep and rugged path down the river gorge where Overland Missions is in the process of installing steps. 

I made the hike down to the river, and after returning my legs were burning from the more than 350 steps down and up again. I didn’t complain though, the guys putting in the steps were mixing cement at the top and then carrying the concrete down in buckets by hand, very impressive. I chatted a bit with the masons doing the work, who seemed like good upbeat fellows, in part I’m sure because they were charged with troweling cement into forms and not with the backbreaking work of hiking the buckets of cement down the gorge. 

On my way back to camp I met the boss of the Overland Missions operation, who had seen the Cruiser and wanted to talk 4x4s. He showed me his quite fancy V8 Range Rover and one of the nicest 4×4 trailers I’ve ever seen. On the way to his vehicle wewalked in front of his house, which had folding glass doors facing a panorama of the river gorge below. As an example, these flashy digs and vehicle are far nicer conditions than what even the most coddled humanitarian field workers live under. I will leave it at that.

In the afternoon I visited the Zambia side of the Victoria Falls. The rains this season had been plentiful and the river was very full with the falls running in full force. I paid my entrance fee, got my rain jacket and made the hike around the falls. 

By the time I approached the footbridge across the spray was intense and falling like heavy rain. So much that I couldn’t even really see the other end of the bridge. Even with my jacket I was soaked through in short order and crossing the bridge felt like traversing the deck of a ship in storm.

Everyone that braved the journey was laughing at the ridiculousness of the spray and the power of the falls, it was good fun. I made this video, all shot and edited on my phone. The iPhone SE 2 is purportedly waterproof to 1m and I certainly put it to the test! 

The next day I hit the road for Kasane, Botswana. I’d been in contact with a shop called Aliboats that could, hopefully, repair the crack in our canopy. It’s an easy drive on good tar to the border crossing at Kazangula. This stretch of road was rife with chameleons, I drove past or over a few and stopped to shoo one off the road so he didn’t get squished. 

Kasane via Kazangula

At Kazangula, what used to be a very African experience with a vehicle ferry has been recently replaced with a modern bridge across the river and brand new border facilities. The border crossing was easy an uneventful. My covid vaccination card was checked, but no testing was required.

In Kasane I spent three nights at the Thebe Safari Lodge campsite. Thebe is pretty nice, inexpensive and has a restaurant on site, well attended by locals as well as travelers. The only drawback, which seems to be consistent throughout all the places in Kasane, is that even though the whole town is along the banks of the mighty Chobe River, none of the properties really focus on the river. I suppose this is because the river is prone to flooding and drought, and thus the river bank moves a lot.

Kasane is sort of a funky town, haphazardly developed to support the tourist industry that thrives between Maun and Victoria Falls. Wildlife lives amongst town, warthogs are busy crossing traffic and the mechanic we visited here in 2018 complained that the elephants always knock down his gates to get at their favorite trees. 

The other great place we’ve stayed at before is Senyati Safari Camp, but it had two demerits for me for this particular visit. It is about 10 km out of town and I needed to take care of a few chores and I didn’t want to be running back and forth. Also, they have no restaurant and I was feeling a bit lazy on the cooking front.

FinallyI managed to get a temporary repair made on the canopy cracks at Aliboats. Their welder wasn’t the best I’ve ever seen, but he is the best in Kasane for sure (as in, the only). We’ll see how it holds up.

Kasane has suffered during covid, with many shops in the mall vacant and even the touts hawking souvenirs did not have their usual verve in selling their wares to the few tourists that were here. Still, it was just about more tourists than we’d seen on our entire trip so far.

From Kasane I was headed Maun, where Jenny and I planned our rendezvous. To get to Maun there are only two real choices, a long and indirect route on the tar via Nata, or a shorter route through the Chobe and Moremi National Parks. All but 40 kilometers of this is gravel, deep sand and game viewing tracks. I wasn’t in a rush, so I hatched a plan to take a few days to go via the more interesting Chobe/Moremi route.

A Last Minute Visit to Chobe and Moremi

Normally these highly popular parks cannot be visited without reservations made many months in advance. It wasn’t peak season and I was flexible, after calling around I secured one night each at Ihaha, Khwai North Gate and Southgate campsites.

The Chobe Riverfront drive, on the way to Ihaha, is always a slam dunk for wildlife viewing, and so it proved again. Even though I was finding game spotting while driving much harder alone, I had great sightings, lions, elephant, buffalo, impala, kudu, baboons, hippo, warthog, giraffe, and leopard.

Ihaha campsite is wonderfully situated along the Chobe River. Two honey badgers made a pass through camp but upon seeing me left, presumably to wait until I went to bed to see if I’d left anything behind. I also tried my hand at some night photography. After spotting a crocodile in the shallows about 20 meters away, which I had my back turned while photographing, I decided to call it a night.

The second day I had to drive all the way to Khwai, as I’d been unable to secure a campsite at Savuti which would have broken the trip into a more reasonable distance. Traveling solo I’d been trying hard to keep the driving timeto no more than five-ish hours. Today would be a long one, 239 kilometers, of which 200 would be deep sand, narrow tracks and some gravel road. 

It was too long to drive really, and by the time I rolled into Khwai I was exhausted. But the Cruiser had managed the deep sand fine and I still got to see some nice wildlife along the way, though I met people that told me I’d missed a leopard and two cubs by minutes. Good thing, Jenny would have killed me if I saw leopard cubs without her! 

In front of my Khwai campsite (No. 3) there was an elephant browsing in the river about 20 meters away, wonderful. It was getting into winter here and got very cold at night. The morning was a few degrees above freezing I’d guess, and my fingers ached with cold after packing up camp. I was grateful for my closed vehicle when I saw the lodge guests bundled up in an open safari car. 

The neighboring campers struck up a conversation with me and turned out to be from Melkbosstrand. They were horrified to hear that at one point Jenny and I had camped at Ouskip, perhaps the closest approximation of an American trailer park in Africa. They gave me their card and insisted that we come and stay with them, so they could wine and dine us and redeem Melkbosstrand’s reputation. 

In the morning I found fresh enormous lion tracks right through camp. A guided vehicle and I followed the tracks for some time but we never found the lions. 

We did however find water and mud. Botswana had received good rains and the delta was wet. It is a whole different thing to contemplate water crossings when you’re alone. Of course the most common advice for a water crossing is that you should walk it first, to see how deep it is, test the firmness of the bottom, and determine viability of the crossing.

This piece of advice is lacking in two important ways. First, this is the Okavango River Delta, brimming with crocodiles and hippos and all the rest of it. You hardly want to be half way through a water crossing when a hippo shows up on the other side and decides he doesn’t want to share with you. The second problem is that it was really cold, and wildlife notwithstanding I wasn’t going to wade through frigid water just after sunrise, crocodiles or no. 

After a few successful crossings of water and deep mud, where fresh tire tracks had convinced me it was likely I could cross, I stopped at a longish crossing. It didn’t look good, and there were fresh hippo tracks around so I didn’t feel like being out of the vehicle for long. 

I drove around for a while looking for another route and couldn’t find one. I fell back to my father’s strategy when confronted with a problem with no obvious solution, which is to make a coffee and think about it. Jenny makes fun of me for this all the time. 

When I had just finished this ritual a solution presented itself, sort of. The sound of another vehicle came and I rushed to get back to the original crossing point, so that we might help each other across if one of us got stuck.

By the time I arrived they had already attempted the crossing and gotten stuck. It was a young German couple in a rented Hilux. They were very happy to see me and we made a plan to get them out. Unfortunately rear recovery points had not been equipped by the rental company (Britz), so I couldn’t haul them out from this side of the water.

This meant I had to try to make the crossing around them and haul them out from the front. Fortunately, one of them was already committed, wading around in the water to asses the situation, and she walked the path for me. It was hard packed sand, and they had the bad luck to pick the path with mud. I crossed with ease and was able to pull them out with no drama, for which they were very grateful. 

Many a vehicle are damaged every season in the Okavango Delta due to misjudged water crossings. I know at least one of the big 4×4 rental companieskeeps their own team up here during the busy season to haul people out. 

I arrived at South Gate with enough time for a short game drive and managed to see the usual ungulates, a honey badger, and a mating pair of lions. The plains around Black Pools were scenic, and the road was lined with fragrant sage.

The South Gate campsite was nearly empty, just two other campsites had guests. I got the excellent site No. 7. After dark fell lions started roaring not so far away and kept it up almost all night. Oh how Jenny would love this! 

In the morning the roaring was so loud that I thought for sure they were in camp. I did a thorough inspection with my big flashlight and couldn’t find them. I got up and packed up camp faster than ever before, nothing like the roar of lions reverberating in your chest to give one a sense of urgency.

Maun

The other campers were also up, sweeping around to find the lions, and I drove a short loop through the campsite but couldn’t find them. Later, when I checked out of the park, the staff said the lions had been in the adjacent staff camp. My short time in the Delta was fruitful, but it was time to head to Maun. The canopy repair had failed, so I was hoping to get a better repair done. 

I camped at Audi Camp in Maun. Aliboats has a larger branch here in Maun that was better equipped for a repair, but theycouldn’t fit me in until the next week. To fill that time I schemed a few day loop down to Kubu Island, a Botswana staple that I hadn’t been to, and I’d come back to Maun for the repair. 

Jenny’s trip home was going well. It was a huge morale boost for her mother, who was now over the hump in her chemotherapy treatmens. This was fantastic news on multiple fronts. Of course it was the biggest relief to hear her Mother was doing okay (or as okay as one can be with a cancer diagnosis), and that Jenny was returning, and that we know had clarity to our plans. 

A morning of phone calls and a stop at the Department of Wildlife and National Parks (DWNP) got me bookings for Baine’s Baobabs, Makgadigadi National Park’s Tree Island Campsite, Planet Baobab and Kubu Island. Stopping by the DWNP office to make bookings directly was much more straightforward than the arduous and frustrating process of making bookings remotely. 

Botswana was taking covid precautions more seriously than anywhere we’d been since October. Masking in public places was being almost entirely complied with, though more chins were protected than mouths and noses. Hand sanitizing was ruthlessly applied at the door to every place of business and by the end of the day my hands were covered in a disgusting sticky film, but were no doubt free of covid. 

Fully fueled, watered and provisioned I set forth, and in a few hours arrived at my first booking, at Nxai Pan National Park’s Baines’ Baobabs. 

The Nitty Gritty

Livingstone

Overland Missions Rapid 14 Campsite – From some iOverlander reviews I get the impression that this campsite might be seasonal. I would urge anyone that wants to visit to contact them ahead via WhatsApp. Sadly the campsite that I got at rapid 13 will be displaced by a training center, I don’t know where they will put people then. That said, it was a very interesting experience to camp there, I recommend it. 

They encouraged the use of their pool and they have nice ablutions at the base, some distance from the rapid 13 campsite. I just peed in the bushes and took a bush shower with my own water out of expedience.

Royal Livingstone Hotel – I stopped here to have a coffee and enjoy the view from their deck at the edge of the river. You can’t help but compare this fancy hotel with the Victoria Falls Hotel in Zimbabwe, both occupying a lofty price point. For me the Royal Livingstone was much more corporate feeling and didn’t offer nearly the same experience. I personally will go back to the Vic Falls Hotel for food and drink with a large dose of history, but I probably will not go to the Royal Livingstone again. 

Kazangula Border Crossing

I was literally the only customer in a huge hall that included both Zambian and Botswanan officials, and still exiting Zambia ended up taking quite a while. They couldn’t believe I’d been issued a 3-year multiple entry visa, which is only given to US citizens (some sort of reciprocal arrangement I’m guessing). After I showed them that a 3-year visa is offered on their own website, and they called a supervisor, the finally stamped me out.

Kasane/Kazangula Mechanic

I tried to get our front diff gasket repaired here, which has had a very minor but consistent leak for some time. Every time we ask someone to fix it they tell me it’s okay and then haven’t touched it, which is annoying.

I went back to Mario’s Garage, that had been so good to us in 2018. Sadly I discovered that Mario had passed away. The garage is still working under new management, and Frank the new owner, seemed good. Sadly he couldn’t find a diff gasket in all of Kasane, so that job will have to wait, again. We keep some diff oil and I check it and top it up every once in a while. It only consumes oil when we’re in 4×4.

Aliboats in Kasane can do aluminum MIG welding, but not very well. Later the manager in Maun told me that they’d had to lay off most of their staff in Kasane due to covid, so perhaps the work quality will improve in time. 

Maun Camping

I camped at Audi Camp for 110 pula ($10 USD) per night. Ablutions here are pretty great, with high flow hot showers, solar hot water. Toilets do not flush particularly well, but hey, it’s Africa.

They have a restaurant with well executed but uninspiring food. They did have beer from the local brewing company on tap that was excellent.

The campsite itself is totally adequate but sort of uninteresting. A huge sandy lot with dust blowing through in the wind. The solid concrete walls that ring the property are topped with razor wire, with does detract from the atmosphere. 

Maun Food 

There are several excellent cafes in Maun, a rarity in lots of African travel. The Okavango Brewing company has great beer, great G&Ts and almost as great pizza. The Dusty Donkey serves excellent breakfast and lunches, as does the Duck. There are other cafe’s in a similar vein that we haven’t tried, such as Marc’s Eatery. All these seem well frequented by locals.

The confusing Botswana Campsite Booking situation

Decoding how to book campsites in Botswana seems at times to require some sort of codex. Most of us throw up our hands in surrender and hire one of the many booking companies to take care of it. Botswana Footprints, NDM, or Ultimate Routes, to name a few.

We have tried hiring booking agents and booked things ourselves. If you’re in Botswana I don’t think it’s hard to manage on your own. If you’re outside Botswana then maybe save yourself the stress and pay an agent their fee (usually about $50 USD, though more if it is a lengthy or complex itinerary). 

Park fees are all paid to the DWNP, but campsite fees are paid to whomever runs that particular campsite, as the operation of most campsites within the national parks are leased out to private companies. This is confusing because, for example, Moremi National Park has campsites run by multiple operators, meaning you might pay three separate entities to visit a single park. On top of this you can only pay your park fees to DWNP by credit card in Gabaronne, Maun or the Sedudu and Ngoma gates to Chobe National Park (possibly also the Ghanzi DWNP office, unconfirmed). At all other gates you must pay park fees in cash. The only accepted currency is Pula, whereas in the past USD used to be accepted. 

Botswana Campsite Rosetta Stone – which sites are run by which companies

Ihaha – Kwalate 

Savuti – SKL (which incidentally stands for Savuti, Khwai, Linyanti)

Khwai – SKL

Linyanti – SKL

Xakanaxa – Kwalate

Third Bridge – Xomae

South Gate – Kwalate 

Nxai Pan South Camp – Xomae

Baine’s Baobabs – Xomae

Khumaga – SKL

Tree Island & Njuca Hills – DWNP (no website that I could find)

Central Kalahari Game Reserve Campsites, (*see exceptions below) – Bigfoot Tours

Central Kalahari Game Reserve Kori, Deception, Xade, Phokoje, Bape  DWNP

Mabua – Intertourism Group

As a rule, all the privatized sites are more expensive than any DWNP site.

If you are in Maun, all of the offices for the companies above are within a kilometer or so of each other. Just walk in and book in person. Alternatively I had good luck booking on the phone. The DWNP booking office in Maun was also efficient and helpful in person. 

Chobe and Moremi Without Bookings

Conventional wisdom is that you can’t visit Chobe or Moremi without bookings. I suppose in pre-covid times that might have been true. What is still true is that you can’t rock up and expect to camp where you want for however long you want. However, I didn’t have trouble finding someplace to camp in one of the most wildlife rich places on earth, providing you are flexible. I certainly wound’t encourage anyone on a two week holiday to wing it and expect to visit Moremi without disruption. But for those on extended trips I think it’s more practical than many might believe. 

Ihaha has 10 (more?) campsites and when I visited only three were occupied, even though I was told on the phone it was fully booked. Khwai also has 10 sites, and only four were occupied. South Gate had three of ten sites occupied. I talked to the camp staff at each camp and they all said that they could accomodate me for additional days, even though they were technically fully booked. This discrepancy, empty campsites that are fully booked, I attribute to no-shows and block bookings by third parties that have gone unsold. I suppose taking up the staff on their offer of staying longer would open up the possibility of the dreaded double booking, and I certainly don’t want to poach anyone’s campsite, but clearly they have an idea of when the campsite will be full, or not. 

Khwai North Gate – Sites 2, 3 and 4 seemed the prime sites to me, right along the river.

South Gate – Sites 7, 8, 9 and 10 are the most private. Six is not bad. Sites 1-5 are not as good. Ablutions here were spotlessly clean, very good all around.

Planet Baobab near Gweta

A great stopover campsite when traveling between Nxai Pan, Magadigadi, Kubu or beyond. The fillet steak from the restaurant was excellent. Campsites have power. Showers and dishwashing station have scalding hot water. 

After exiting the gate there is a short stretch of tarmac and then a left into Nxai Pan.  The road into Nxai Pan main park area is not good.  It’s widened to three tracks wide in most places, with people looking for fresh sand that isn’t heavily corrugated, but this has failed to find any improvement.  So for most of the 30+ kilometers in to the park we suffered along the corrugations, though not too bad I suppose in the end.

The watering hole just before the gate was full of elephant, so we had a great introduction to Nxai Pan watching a group of bulls playing in the watering hole.  

After checking in at the gate we saw there is a small but well stocked “tuck shop” at the gate selling beer, snacks and a few other sundries, impressive for such a small store.  We were running short on beer, as we’d showed up before the bottle shops were open in Rakops, so we picked up two very expensive six packs.  The do have a corner on the market I suppose.

We started by checking out our campsite, No. 2, at South Camp. It was perfectly fine, but again we realized how spoiled we were in the CKGR with wide open spaces all alone, whereas this campground we were still in semi-close proximity to our neighbors.  

The ablutions (note: toilet/showers/restrooms are referred to as ablutions, at least at camp sites anyway) were the same as at Khumaga, probably because they are run by the same 3rd party, but with one significant difference.  It seems elephant are a problem here, because the ablution block is fortified like a P.O.W. camp.  It has a chain link fence, electrified, surrounded, on both sides of the fence by a more than two meters wide swath of rebar spikes in concrete, so that elephants can’t step close to the fence.  There was a narrow path, maybe eight inches wide, for people to walk between the spikes to the gate.  Don’t trip!  

Things is a good reminder of an important issue with elephants and wild game in general.  We are prone to romanticizing them, and though they do deserve all of our appreciation and more, I think we should all also appreciate the difficulty that lies in living near these great animals and the clash when they collide with humans.

When you see what it takes to protect something as simple as an ablution block, think of what it takes to protect a farm, or your home.  Also around the park were numerous useless cement block signs because they were knocked over.  I wonder how often the park staff righted those blocks before giving up?  

When checking into the park we saw a compensation sheet for locals, compensation for livestock lost to lion kills, for pula/hectare of crops lost to elephant damage.  Seeing this and the fortifications around some areas certainly gives us a moment of pause to consider the confrontation between wild animals and man.  I don’t know what the solutions are, and with Botswana having a relatively low population density I imagine it is less of a problem here than in some other places.  

I did read about a project where farmers had bee hives spaced around the perimeter of their fields.  Apparently elephants hate bees (a funny image) and would avoid those crops, and the farmers would also end up with honey to use or sell.  Of course there is a scalability problem, and perhaps the elephants would eventually overcome their fear, but I thought it was an interesting idea.

Nxai Pan was beautiful, similar the smaller pans in the CKGR, but larger.  We heard lions that night in South Camp, but no sightings of cats that night or the morning after.  We didn’t see a lot of other people here, maybe 6 other vehicles that were camped in South Camp and a couple safari company vehicles.  

The roads in Nxai Pan were decent in places, but it must have been very wet earlier in the season as you could see a lot of deeply rutted sections in the road.  In many of the places people had driven along side these for a clear path, widening the road.  Then those must have become rutted and they would drive again wider still, resulting in a maze of rutted tracks 50’ wide.  I wonder at the ecological impact of this and if there is a better way?  It’s also curious that we didn’t see this elsewhere in our admittedly limited explorations, so why here?  I did notice that the safari operators use very large old international trucks instead of the standard land cruiser or land rover vehicles, perhaps those heavier vehicles are part of the problem? 

When we provisioned in Gabaronne we had assumed that we would be able to re-provision between the CKGR and the Makgadikdadi.  We had stretched our stores longer than we thought, and so had not made much effort to shop before coming here.  

Now provisions were running low and so dinner was getting weird.  Then Jenny said “What if we had broccoli and I made french fries?”  I responded with a long silence, as I took a moment to appreciate Jenny.  I love broccoli.  I love French fries, and it has never occurred to me that we could make them on their own.  She took this silence as disapproval, and started to change tack, but I quickly assured her that would be fantastic.  So we had broccoli and French fries for dinner and heard the call of lions again, and again appreciated our situation.  

Baine’s Baobabs

After a night at South Camp we had reserved a night at Baine’s Baobabs site No. 1.  This is something like 30km south east, along side a salt pan.  At the gate they told us that camp No. 1 was inaccessible and that we were being reassigned to No. 2.  

After the turnoff towards Baine’s from the main road the terrain changes quickly and widens out in to broad savannah.  We saw elephants, orxy, impala and zebra, but not in much density, presumably due to minimal water.  

There are two approach roads to Baine’s, and at they gate they had told us which one to take, but in the slew of instructions provided we forgot that one, and foolishly didn’t write it down.  We took the southern road, but after we arrived at the pan we sort of started to think that we were supposed to take the northern road.  Our route took us across the pan in a few stretches, and this is very soon after the wet season so the pan surface is mostly not drivable.  

This is not a pan like those encountered in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.  Those are meadows, fertile with grass for grazing animals.  This is a salt pan.  At the edges there was a dry crust, and but we walked out into the middle and it quickly becomes muddy, and you can see where a few people had tried to drive off the track and started immediately to dig deep ruts with their tires.  

We weighed driving back and taking the northern road, but what we had traveled so far hadn’t been in great condition and I didn’t really want to drive it again.  It did appear that others had driven here, and we planned to stick to their tracks and proceed cautiously.  So we crept along and proceeded with no problems.  

In a few sections that looked concerning I put it in low range and was ready to either gun it to maintain momentum or back out quickly.  Jenny walked a few sections and used a steel rod (from our tent rain fly) to probe the surface.  

In the end we made in with no problems, and perhaps we were being overly cautious, but getting stuck and waiting for rescue in the pans seemed like it would be awful.  

Baine’s Baobabs is really impressive. Sometimes referred to as a Tree Island, as clumps of baobabs occur elsewhere, or clumps of trees along an open pan.  Here four very mighty trees and several smaller ones, standing along the edge of the salt pan.  The contrast is so stark and impressive it is hard to describe.  For me a baobab tree always evokes a sensation of respect, wisdom, patience, but these were massive, the largest I have seen, and their mightiness and their grandeur was overwhelming.  We sat and took in their presence.  Thinking about how long they have stood here and being able to share a few moments of their perhaps 1,000 years in this spot was a great privilege.  

Looking in the pan near the trees you could see a few elephant tracks in the mud of the pan.  They had struck out into the pan, but then when the mud became too deep you could see they took a wide arc and circled back.  I wonder why they go into the pan?  Are they attracted to the salt, or where they headed to the island across the pan and had to turn back?  

After taking in the trees for a while we decided to check out our campsite.  It’s about a 20 minute drive along the edge of the pan to get to camp No. 2, and 10 more minutes to No. 3.

Campsite No. 2 is fantastic.  At first I had been slightly disappointed that we were camping “so far” from the Baine’s Baobabs.  But this site is situated between two large baobabs, with a long drop toilet and bucket shower stall (BYO water) about 50 meters off to the side.  This was another fantastic solitary campsite, no one around anywhere and we were really appreciating it.    

There wasn’t much evidence of wildlife in the area, so we spent a slow afternoon in camp making lunch and hanging around camp enjoying the trees and the setting.  We returned to Baine’s Baobabs in the afternoon to hang around for sunset.  A couple vehicles and a safari group came and went, but much to our surprise no one stayed longer than 30 minutes and we had the trees all to ourselves most of the time.  

After sunset we returned to camp and enjoyed pasta and roasted vegetables for dinner.  There had been some cloud cover, but with perfect timing the clouds cleared at sunset and we had a wonderful view of the milky way and the stars and we again marveled at how fortunate we are to be here in this place.

Sunday Pan, Central Kalahari Game Reserve to Makgadikgadi National park.

The primary activity of any safari is the game drive.  This is normally undertaken in the early hours of the day or the late afternoon, when animals are most active and you have the best chance of seeing game, and hopefully predators on the hunt.  Occasionally we talk ourselves into maximizing game viewing with an all day game drive, but after the day heats up, the wind dies and the game becomes sedate while conserving energy in the heat of the sun this usually results in road weariness and some “Why are we doing this?” irritability sometime after lunch.

In the CKGR game is more sparse than in other parks, but so are people and so though sightings are less frequent they are often made alone.  This makes each sighting something to savor and quite special.

For us we try, and emphasis on try, to be on the road before sunrise.  Sunrise now is about 0640, so we’ve been aiming, without success, to get on the road about 0615.  But usually we’re not too far after this.

Jenny does not like to get up in the morning, and it becomes a tug of war between our very cozy tent and her bladder.  When it is dark and cold outside it is doubly hard to coax her out of the tent.  But the potential of sighting lions and other wildlife is much better in the early morning.  So usually I get up and start the kettle, and when I am making tea or coffee Jenny gets up and and on her way out of the tent prepares it for folding up.

One positive of the roof top tent is that you don’t need to take all the bedding out when you put it away, but of course you do need to fold it up every time you drive off, and so our bedding must be folded just so to make the tent collapse and fold cleanly.  About a half hour after I get up we’ll have the tent packaged up, coffee and tea made and have the land cruiser started and we’ll be shortly on our way.

Then the drive begins.  And a game drive is sort of an odd exercise in fatalism, luck and vigilance.  Of course we have no idea where the wildlife might be, and inevitably you must pick almost immediately from leaving your campsite, left or right?  North or South?  One direction could be a cheetah kill, the other maybe just a lazy kudu munching grass in the distance, and you have no idea when you make your choice.  If you arrive at a pan or a water hole should you wait to see what shows up, or should you keep going?  We must surrender yourself to chance, we just don’t get to know,   But of course everyone else is in the same predicament, and in a relatively empty park like this it means that often when passing one of the half dozen cars you see in a day that you’ll each slow and roll down your window and chat about what you have seen, or haven’t.

We found that on more than one occasion we were giving tips to professional safari guides on where we had sighted predators, when normally they would have the home court advantage.  But with such a large park (over 50,000 sq km) even the pros have to cast around to find game to make their clients happy.

Over those days we saw the usual suspects, drought resistant oryx (gemsbok), springbok, black backed jackal, bat eared foxes, large herds of giraffe (25 in one group), hartebeest, wildebeest and ostrich.  A few kudu, some small “boks” (klipsringer, dik dik, steenbok?  I don’t know how to tell them apart).  A lone warthog.  Numerous birds of prey, as well as the usual kori bustards and secretary birds.

Predators are all over the CKGR, but still their territory is wide and sightings are not guaranteed.  On the first full day we had no cat sightings, though there was a report of a cheetah two camp sights away that came to investigate their site for 20 minutes or so.

On the second day we saw two cheetah hunting giraffe, much larger prey than they would normally go after, but there was a calf (foal?) with them, so perhaps the two of them would go after it?  In that case an annoying safari guide got too close and ruined the hunt.

The next day we saw three cheetah, but from very far away.  After a failed hunting attempt on some oryx we were able to watch them from a great distance, but they never came close to the road.  This is also a inevitability of game driving, the action may not be accessible to you.  Offroad driving is not permitted, so you must stick to the two spoor tracks.  And of course the cheetah, or whomever, do not always have the courtesy to hunt by the road.  But the roads are through the pans, and the pans are where the prey species are, so it is not as improbable as it may sound.

Later that same day we came across a pride of 10 lions in the last hour of daylight and it was magnificent to watch them making their way across the pan.  With all the eagle eyed spotting and searching we practice none of that was required for this sighting, Jenny just said “Lions” and there they were, less than 100 meters off the road.  We watch them till sunset, and when we left them, in the usual way of any cat, they had plopped down for a break with no apparent haste to get on to anything else.

On the morning of our last full day in the CKGR our alarm went off at 5:30 AM to wake us for our regular early morning drive.  Just a minute later we heard a lion’s roar.  It’s hard to say how far, we’re certainly not veterans of the bush and sound carries well in the silence, but it seemed much louder than what we heard on the first night.  Later we read in our guidebook that the call of a lion can carry five miles, but this one seemed much much closer.

In the moment hearing the roar of a lion was certainly a fast way to wake up.  Instantly our senses were heightened, straining to hear another roar.  We were no longer at our customary position at the top of the food chain, and it was exciting to think that we might find lions at first light, or even they might walk through our camp while we were in the tent.

We heard them again, closer again this time, and were now unsure what to do.  It was loud, they were close, and it certainly imprudent to proceed with our customary routine of getting up and making coffee and tea and folding up to tent.  So we waited.

It was curious, the anticipation and uncertainty of wondering just where such a powerful  animal was in proximity to us.  Our pulses picked up a bit, we became quiet, hyper aware of every noise and movement, and there was a sense of anticipation and uncertainty and a tiny bit of fear.  I have read many accounts of time spent in the wild in Africa, stories of camps in the bush and lions in their midst, but what no one has mentioned is how this feeling is similar to arousal.  There is the same wondering of what will happen next, the heightened awareness and excitement and anticipation.  Leaving the tent seemed unwise, and unburdened of the need to get up so early we followed our, uh, instincts, and waited for the next roar.

Not long after we heard the lion again, this time closer still, but looking out in the low light we couldn’t see anything.  We congratulated ourselves on not trying to break camp earlier and waited again.  At about 6:20 the lion’s call faded a bit and we decided to break camp as fast as possible.

In less than 10 minutes the tent was stowed and we were in the safety of the vehicle and on the road, looking for a morning lion sighting.  We found tracks on the road, less than a 100 yards from our camp.

Conveniently the lion had walked in the road and left tracks that even our modest tracking skills could read, so we followed him west about 5 kilometers, periodically stopping to check the tracks and in the end found a large lone male sleeping in the road.  So I guess we didn’t really need our superior tracking skills in the end, but it was really great to see who was responsible for what we had heard in camp.

He ended up not being very active, moving from the sun in the road to the shade of a bush, but we were every close and all alone with the lion.

It was a great start to the day, and we proceeded to drive a long circuit through the park to our final camp, Sunday No. 3, at Sunday Pan.  The park from west of our Letiahau camp to the Passarge watering hole didn’t seem as interesting to to us, but the Passarge Valley was amazing.  In the future we hope to camp closer so we can experience the Passarge area in the early morning or late evening, but for the time being we were satisfied with our drive to see what the park had to offer.

We did see some people flaunting the rules, camping in undesignated spaces, driving off road and harassing animals, and camping in sites without reservations.  We really hope that this sort of behavior doesn’t ruin things for others in the long term.  We didn’t see a single park ranger or staff member in six days in the park and there is minimal infrastructure.  This is how we prefer it, but certainly the only way a park can survive like this is if individuals act responsibly so as to not spoil it for all.

In the end we were very impressed with the Central Kalahari Game Reserve and look forward to coming back.  It is spectacularly isolated and remote, and with the lack of crowds and having wildlife that feels truly wild we were deeply impressed with our visit.

To the Central Kalahari Game Reserve

• Firewood in Rakops was on the right side of the road as you drive into town towards the fuel station when approaching from the south. 25P/bundle, good quality.
• Firewood was available at Matswere gate, 20P/bundle, good quality.
• We averaged 25kph on our way into the park. Not sure if we’re just slow or the road is normally in better condition, though it’s condition seemed reasonable enough to us. I have a hard time imagining anyone towing a trailer progressing much faster than us.