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.