And a Shakey Start to Botswana….

I first visited Botswana in 2001 and enjoyed everything about it. James and I then spent nearly a month there together in 2018 when it catapulted itself to our favourite country, unexpectedly edging above Namibia. Back then it offered a completely remote experience where we saw almost no towns, roads or traffic in our whole trip. Just a whole load of sand and animals everywhere you looked.

It is also a very safe and friendly country with low crime rates and, having never suffered from apartheid, a united people no matter their colour or background.

It was, therefore, very strange that for the first two weeks of our journey into Botswana we found very little peace and felt rather unsettled.

Things started badly when, despite 15 days of antibiotics, James´ cellulitis came back with a vengeance the day we were due to leave Namibia. He could barely walk. From our campsite at the border we were a long way from any centre – it was 1.5 hours back to the closest Namibian town or 2.5 hours north to the closest Botswanan town when we were heading south.

We spoke to the owners of the campsite who helpfully gave us directions to a local public medical clinic and the name of the nurse there. The clinic was a small and basic affair, a long way from the private hospital we had got the original antibiotics from in Windhoek. But the nurse was helpful, he called a doctor to ensure he was prescribing the right thing (James is allergic to penicillin so getting this right was important!) and we left with a packet of non-penicillin antibiotics within 20 minutes for the princely sum of around €3. All good so far. The only downside was that rather than 1 tablet daily as before, he needed to take 8 of these new tablets every day – 2 every four hours for 7 days.

He started the course that afternoon. A few hours later he felt a bit ill. The next day his stomach was in a bad way and that night he launched himself out of bed just after midnight and only just made it out of the Landrover before violently throwing up. The next morning he lay in bed groaning until long past the time he should have taken his next set of tablets and even once up he sat in a chair staring at the ground trying to not heave again.

I thought he was going to stop the course and was very worried about the potential for his cellulitis developing antibiotic resistance. But eventually he forced down a banana, felt slightly better and pressed on with his tablets. It turns out bananas are a great cure for antibiotic sickness and he managed to complete the course and finally get rid of the cellulitis once and for all – but he hasn´t eaten a banana since!!

So with all this going on in the background, we entered Botswana with ease at the border and decided to camp up early to allow James to rest his foot and his stomach. The campsite at the Namibian border had recommended a similar campsite an hour into Botswana and we gratefully pulled up there in the early afternoon. It was fine, the owner was extremely friendly and she sold us wood and chicken. But it was a little run down and, like the campsite the previous night, was right on a busy main tar road. I was very surprised to find a tar road in Botswana from my previous recollection of the country and we were both a bit down having to spend the evening listening to heavy lorries and cars zooming past all night.

The campsite was also covered in large thorns, fallen from the trees above. At one point, in my flip flops, I trod down hard on one and joined James with a very sore foot for the next few hours.

We packed up quickly the next day and made straight for the small town of Kang. Kang was important to us for a few reasons – it had shops and we had very little food. It had a cash machine and we had no Botswanan Pula. It had a fuel station which sold SIM cards and data and we needed to get back online to make plans. But most importantly, it was close to the Kalahari Transfrontier Park.

The Botswanan side of the Transfrontier Park is remote, hard to travel and notoriously full of lions! People say this is Botswana at its best, where visitors can share space with wildlife up close with no borders or boundaries. In fact there is a famous video on You Tube somewhere of lions licking the outside of a tent whilst the occupiers film them from inside! This was at the top of our ´must do´ list.

We had had to do a lot of work and research on how to book the campsites (it is extremely difficult to book the government campsites in Botswana), how to reach the Park (there are a number of access roads but not all are passable, especially in the wet season) and how to plan for fuel (some access roads are so long and difficult that it would use up all our fuel getting there and back and we would have none left to drive around the Park). There are also no official maps of the Park, nothing showing where the trails are – or the campsites for that matter! There is little water and many of the campsites don´t have toilets or showers – you are pretty much wild camping out there.

I had managed to find an informal map done by a visitor who had helpfully posted it on an overland forum. I had also made contact with someone off the same forum who gave advice on recent road conditions and availability of fuel on the way into the Park. And when I checked into our campsite at Kang the lovely lady on reception walked me round to the tourist shop which was technically closed for Saturday afternoon and persuaded the people still inside to call the National Parks office and get us booked in. I was so excited when I found we could get a site for the following Monday for three nights and ran back to James with a big grin on my face waving our booking reference at him.

It was that night when James was violently sick with his antibiotics. We didn´t move off the campsite all day Sunday and it looked as though our bookings were going to have to be cancelled the next day. But bananas came to our rescue and by Monday morning James was still feeling queasy but was determined enough to stick to the plans.

The Kang campsite was behind a conference centre, in the town, again on a busy main road. We had been crammed in to a small pitch with camp facilities designed by someone who had clearly never camped in their lives and we also discovered that Botswana had loadshedding – not as frequent or disruptive as South Africa but still we had a very, very loud generator going all day on Sunday making it hard to even hear each other talk.

But we were kept company by a very sweet new friend

And managed to take our minds off things one way or another….

But when we finally left the campsite on Monday morning we were very pleased to be on our way to the Kalahari. We stopped at the last town before the long road into the Park and filled both fuel tanks to the brim then started on our trek into the unknown.

The road quickly turned from gravel…

Into deep sand….

The sounds of the town and the tar road receded and peace and quiet descended on us for the first time in days.

The sand got so deep we had to deflate the tyres and when we tried to stop for a lunch break Henry sank

We drove for well over three hours before finally reaching the entrance gate by which time all phone signal was long gone along with any other signs of human existence. The ranger at the gate signed us in and said he would check on us at some point during our stay to make sure we were ok. We headed straight for our first campsite.

On the way we took a short detour to a small waterhole where we found some vultures

And a beautiful eagle of a type we had never seen before

His colouring was so unusual

We found out from the Ranger later that he was a Bateleur Eagle.

We watched him for a few minutes until eventually he fluffed up his wings

And was off

When we arrived at the campsite we were impressed to find that it was actually one of the few that had running water. All the pitches have nice A-frame structures which mark where the site actually is and there was a relatively clean long-drop toilet.

But that was it, and it was wonderful!

We settled in to soak up the atmosphere and admire the view and before long James had a few visitors.

In fact the whole campsite was full of these tiny and curious butterflies

Having had a long drive to get there we decided not to go anywhere around the Park that day but instead just relaxed and watched the world go by.

Doing very little as the sun slowly sank around us

We went to bed early but James woke with a start at around 3am hearing something large wandering around outside. He peered out of his window and came face to face with a large Brown Hyaena. He nudged me, whispering for me to wake up. I was alert within a split second, looking out of the window to see what he had found. In the light of the moon we both sat up in bed watching as our new friend plodded around our campsite, sniffing at the ground and the air and looking intently at Henry. Then I heard another noise on the other side of me and sure enough a second Hyaena appeared. They met up, gazed around for a few minutes then quietly padded off into the bush.

What a great sighting! We happily settled back into bed but just as I was falling asleep I heard a new sound – snuffling, grunting and digging. This time the sound was coming from my side of Henry, under the trees and therefore, sadly, in the darkness where the moonlight couldn´t reach. I was convinced it was an Aardvark, a creature I have never been lucky enough to see, but no matter how long I stared out of my window or what angle I held my head, I could only hear it, it was too dark to see anything at all.

Eventually I fell asleep but the next morning I looked round for evidence of what it had been and found tracks across the sand as well as a destroyed ants nest. The Ranger popped round later that day and confirmed from the photo that we had indeed very likely been only feet away from an elusive Aardvark….

We drove around the Park for a few hours the next day and found lots of exciting creatures.

There were so many tortoises ambling across the road we had to keep a careful eye out to make sure we didn´t run any of them over

The scenery was lovely and it was hard to believe we were in the middle of the Kalahari desert, usually one of the driest in the world!

After two nights at our first campsite we moved to a new one deeper into the Park. This one is where most of the up-close lion sightings are reported but sadly we saw nothing whilst we were there – despite me diligently leaving bits of raw chicken lying strategically around the place!

We did find fresh leopard tracks straight through our campsite in the morning and tried to follow them as we headed out but to no avail. I think it was just too wet for animal spotting – the grasses were too long, providing good cover, and water could be found everywhere so the animals didn´t need to congregate at the waterholes.

So we spent the afternoon back on our campsite where I photographed the small but very loveable ground squirrels going about their business

Foraging for food

Including the cornflakes James put out for them which turned out to be a big prize!

Which they didn´t want to share with anyone!

We had had three very relaxing and peaceful days in the Kalahari but seen very little in terms of wildlife and nothing at all but footprints on the cat front. It was time to leave and we reluctantly headed back to our noisy campsite in Kang. When we arrived they were pleased to see us and welcomed us back. But I was keen to move on quickly and find somewhere more like the Botswana we had known in 2018.

I looked at our options, hoping to get us booked into the Khutse Game Reserve. But I found that this reserve was as basic as the Kalahari but rather than costing €10 a night would cost us €80! For no water, no toilets, no showers…many people who had stayed in the past had expressed more than a little annoyance at this – it was the difference between a Government run campsite and a private one, same facilities, eight times the price!

So we decided to give it a miss and head straight for the capital city of Gaborone. I found two campsites on the outskirts of the city and contacted both, booking the one that seemed closest to the 4×4 shops, camping shops and restaurants that we wanted to visit. The next morning we were busy packing up when the campsite contacted us and told us not to come. They sent some photos and a video of Gabarone and the road into their farm.

I quickly called the other campsite and asked how they were doing – they were on the other side of the city and slightly further out. But they called back half an hour later to say they had tried to drive out to their campsite and got their vehicle stuck in the flooding so also advised us not to go.

It was Friday morning and the experts were saying that Gabarone would be under water until Sunday. We had two nights to spend somewhere and I really didn´t want to spend it where we were – a perfectly safe and friendly campsite with good wifi but just too noisy and cramped.

So we headed half an hour in the wrong direction to a campsite out of town and slightly more rural.

It was lovely. More expensive, poor wifi but quiet and with beautiful views.

The whole ground was covered in Devil´s Claw flowers, looking for all the world like an English meadow covered in buttercups.

And they had a very interesting bar

We had been in Botswana for a week now and actually enjoyed very little of it. The Kalahari had been beautiful and remote but there had been disappointingly little in the way of animals. And all the other campsites had been noisy and urban. This campsite was better, with only distant rumblings of traffic, but we were getting a little bored. We had not done much at all other than drive or sit around campsites for days. When I admitted to James that I wasn´t enjoying myself at the moment he looked a little relieved and said he felt the same – we had not found the Botswana we remembered.

So on Sunday we text the campsite we had originally booked to say we were on our way and headed south towards Gaborone. It was a very long drive and we arrived at the campsite gate at just before 5pm. The gates were closed and I noticed they hadn´t replied to my text from the morning. A sign on the gate gave a number to call to gain access so I did. No reply. We waited, I called again, and again, and again. Still nothing. The light was starting to fade and it was raining.

Frustrated I called the other campsite on the other side of town. They answered, thank goodness, and said we could come but warned that they closed their gates at 6pm and we were 45 minutes away. We set off in a bit of a panic, not helped by the fact that Google sent us down a sandy track that got narrower and narrower with deeper and deeper puddles as we went. It probably would have been fine if we weren´t in such a hurry but stress levels started to rise. When Google and the sat nav diverged in their route advice we took what looked to be the better option and soon regretted it as the trail got more and more difficult. I could see from the map that we were very close to the main road so we pressed on and eventually popped out onto tar and James put his foot down.

We arrived at the gates of the new campsite at 5:53pm and I rushed into reception breathless and full of apologies for being so late. The campsite was in a nature reserve and the reception area all seemed very professional and quite smart. But when it came to pay it turned out the reservation website was wrong and we had to pay double the advertised charge.

None of the staff were able to give us directions to the camping area which was 3km from reception through winding trails and there wasn´t even a map so, as darkness fell, we found ourselves driving aimlessly round small, rough and overgrown tracks trying to find our pitch. After going round in ever decreasing circles for half an hour or more we finally found the most run-down, dirty, dark and miserable campsite we had seen in a long time. There was no running water and we had to push our way through bushes to find the toilet which was shared with some unwelcome neighbours.

We had booked in for two nights but weren´t sure how long we were actually going to need to stay as we had a few things we wanted to get done in Gaborone. I hoped we would get them done quickly!

We weren´t sure what to expect from Gaborone. Cities in South Africa are convenient, well stocked and easy to travel, albeit full of crime. Windhoek and Swakopmund in Namibia are clean, safe and you can get pretty much whatever you need. Botswana is a richer country than Namibia but so far had surprised us by appearing far less affluent whilst at the same time more expensive to travel around. When we drove into the city on our first morning we were very surprised.

Rather than a sleak, modern capital city what we found was a rather run down town. We spent two hours or more driving round simply trying to find a launderette – everywhere Google said there was one didn´t exist, on a couple of occasions even the road itself didn´t exist. We seemed to be travelling round the poorest and most run down areas but couldn´t find anything else.

We gave up and headed to the nearest camping shop. It existed at least but wasn´t the sort of shop that sold anything we needed. There was a 4×4 Megaworld, which we eventually found down an industrial backstreet, but it was so small they also didn´t have anything we needed.

The main thing we were trying to source was a new water pump. Ours had been a submersible one that fitted neatly inside our water containers and pumped the water out to the shower points or through the filters to the sink and tap for drinking water. After 2 years of hard graft it had finally given up – actually in the middle of the Kalahari where there was no other water available. But we had nothing to fear, super-James had made sure we were carrying a spare in the roof box and the morning after it died he had got the new pump, his soldering iron and a few other tools, connectors and wires and swapped the old, defunct pump for the shiny new pump. 3 days later our water pressure was worryingly low and we found that the water containers were full of oily black particles. 2 days after that the new pump had died altogether. We had been carrying a faulty pump around with us for 2 years and now had no way to provide our own clean water supply.

This was a major problem, if we can´t make clean water we cannot carry on travelling as we do and we had no plans to visit the UK again any time soon to pick up a new pump. We had not expected to find a pump as good or as convenient as our old one here in Botswana but had hoped to find something we could use, at least in the short term, in the capital city. These hopes were rapidly fading.

The guys at 4×4 Megaworld were very sympathetic and helpful and gave us a list of four places that might sell pumps. We were not particularly optimistic at this point but nevertheless we headed to the first one. James asked the lady who greeted us at the door and she smiled and said yes they sell water pumps. She took us to the relevant shelf and pointed to two pumps, neither of which were what we needed. But just as we were about to thank her and leave James´ eyes fell on a third pump on the next shelf down. He picked it up and checked it over with a look of astonishment on his face. He tapped on his phone for a few minutes researching information on the internet then announced that this was one of the top rated pumps available! Not submersible, he would have to completely rewire our system and find some way to mount it externally, but in fact ten times better than our old pump and a remarkable find in an otherwise rather bleak city.

With our new pump tucked under our arms we headed to a fast food place for a surprisingly nice lunch and our waitress directed us to a nearby laundrette. When we arrived it was in a run down part of town but it existed, the lady running it was professional and friendly and she promised to have our clothes ready for us in 24 hours for a very reasonable price. Our day had turned out not to be so bad after all.

Another frustration with our campsite, however, was that the gates closed at 6pm and even if you´re a resident you cannot get in later than that. It was now 5pm and so we had to head back. We discovered that Gaborone is just like any other city in one respect – rush hour traffic! And for the second time we arrived breathless and stressed just a few minutes before the gates closed.

The next day was spent driving endlessly around the city trying to find wiring, connectors, plumbing parts. One place after another shook their heads but all suggested somewhere else and eventually, piece by piece, we got what we needed. We stopped for lunch at a wonderful Lebanese restaurant which was in a part of town that was actually quite upmarket, one of the few highlights of our time here.

We also went to see the one tourist highlight of the city, the Three Dikgosi Monument – meaning the three tribal chiefs

Late that afternoon we were back at the campsite and James made a start on the re-wiring.  By that night he was well on the way with having our water supply up and running but there was a long way to go yet.

All the next day James worked on wiring, plumbing, fixing the large and heavy pump to the inside of the water cupboard.

By lunchtime the pump was in but it was so powerful the pressure threatened to burst the pipes. By mid-afternoon he had found a solution to that and by the time the sun was sinking everything was in and working like a dream. We had water again! And now it was  fitted, our new system was far superior to the old one. James smiled a broad smile for the first time in days and we cracked open a bottle of wine to celebrate.

Not only did we have water again but with everything back up and running we could finally leave Gaborone and, more to the point, our dark, damp and dirty campsite.

I was determined to find the peace and tranquility that we knew was somewhere here in Botswana. We had failed to find it so far but now we were through the capital city I had high hopes that we would start to get out into the more beautiful and remote areas at last. I had put more plans in place and early the next morning we left the campsite in our rear view mirror heading east. We were going into the Tuli Wilderness……we were on our way!