Ambling Through Northern Botswana

Terri on the edge of Ntwetwe pan

 

Livingstone, Zambia

Stanley camped at Tabonina 

We have left behind Botswana and entered the third country of our trip, Zambia. We are camped in the gardens of the lovely Tabonina Bis guesthouse, under huge shade trees, catching up on admin as we have good internet connections and will be in town for a couple of weeks, working with the community-based elementary school that Terri has been developing for the past 15 years, Olive Tree Learning Centre. So it's a good time to catch up on blogging.

White-backed ducks

When I last wrote, we had just arrived in Drifters Camp, outside Maun. (By the way, in addition to the Google Map embedded in this post, you can check our position in real time using the cool Polarsteps app, which is a neat way of allowing people to follow our journey; you can just use the website, rather than having to sign up for the app.) We spent a couple of leisurely days at Drifters, watching the abundant birdlife in the Boteti River, swimming in the pool, doing workouts using our gymnastic rings (which we suspended from some massive tree branches), writing blog posts and editing and uploading YouTube videos for our channel. (Have you checked out our YouTube channel, Stanley's Travels, yet? If not, please click here!!)

Golden-tailed woodpecker

Pachyderm water bandits

It was hard to drag ourselves away from the genteel surroundings of Drifters and head back out on the road on October 12th. It was a short and easy drive (a welcome change from grinding through the Kgalagadi sands!) to Planet Baobab, 175 km east near the town of Gweta. The road led past scrub-covered Kalahari sands, with wandering cows, donkeys and horses a constant menace as they ambled unconcernedly out onto the pavement, oblivious to speeding cars. (I heard a Botswanan refer to the Flat Five instead of the iconic Big Five game species; the Flat Five are the animals most often hit by passing cars: horses, donkeys, cows, dogs and chickens.) Sadly we saw one dead African wild dog (or painted dog, Lycaon pictus, one of the rarest of African carnivores) lying on the pavement that morning. We also passed dozens of elephants, attracted to the road by the water flowing along a municipal water supply buried in the sand. It's covered by heavy concrete slabs, but elephants are strong and determined, and for a long stretch to the west of the village of Joani every cover had been flung aside so that elephants could stick their trunks in for a drink. At one spot a herd of zebras, the first we had seen on this trip, waited patiently for the elephants to be done so that they could drink water from the boggy waterhole that the elephants had constructed in the sand beside the water main. Elsewhere ostriches clustered in groups of three or four beside the road.

Zebras waiting for elephants to move on

We got to Planet Baobab around noon and settled in. It's a beautifully constructed lodge and campsite, with lots of enormous baobab trees and even more tiny young saplings scattered around. There's a huge swimming pool in which we lolled during the heat of the day, while the campsites are large and have power. A flock of noisy spurfowl of two species (crested francolin and red-billed spurfowl) kept us amused as we grilled up steaks and drank a fine bottle of Hartenberg Shiraz which we had bought during our wine estate visit back in Cape Town.

A mischievous yellow-billed hornbill at Planet Baobab

Planet Baobab

We would have been glad to spend longer at Planet Baobab, but the nearby Makgadikgadi Pans were calling us. We didn't venture into the Pans back in 2016, so we were keen to get out there to see it for ourselves. We drove south through deep sands with Maree at the wheel, our 4WD low-range engaged, and our tires heavily deflated, past dense bush and cattle grazing on the sparse, scorched grassland. Our first stop was at Green's Baobab, an iconic big baobab used as a waypoint by generations of travellers, including (probably) David Livingstone. A number of these voyagers have left their initials and dates inscribed into the thick bark of this ancient tree, with the earliest that we saw dating back to 1859.

Green's Baobab

Graffiti from 1859 on Green's Baobab

A few hundred metres away is a muddy waterhole where a zeable herd of elephants were heading off just as we arrived, to be replaced by some scrawny cattle. There were supposed to be some old San hunting hides nearby and even some Neolithic tools scattered around, but it was hot and the presence of the elephants dissuaded us from exploring too far afield. We then drove south to the remains of an even older and mightier tree, Chapman's Baobab, said to be thousands of years old, but which fell over in 2016. Even lying on the ground it was an impressive size, but it would have been nicer to see it standing erect.

Terri on the Makgadikgadi Pan

The track across white infinity

By now the deep sands had gotten shallower, making for slightly easier 4WD driving. We drove east through pretty grassland until we arrived at a tiny hamlet with its cattle enclosure. From here we bumped southeast towards the Ntwetwe Pan and its wide-open spaces; our maps were pretty vague about where the open pan began, so we were relieved when we eventually reached a point where we saw white immensity lying to the south and east, with the track driving down onto the salty, cracked, hard surface of the dried-out lake bed. There was once an immense inland sea here, Lake Makgadikgadi, which covered an area larger than Switzerland until the end of the last Ice Age, but now there are three vestigial seasonal salt lakes remaining, Ntwetwe, Nxai and Suwa. Suwa fills with water most years as it's fed by the Nata River from Zimbabwe, but Ntwetwe seems to remain dry most years, resulting in a very hard surface for driving across. (Suwa, in contrast, is notorious for having very soft mud lurking below a thin surface crust, and many a vehicle has sunk into the pan.) We drove a few kilometres into the pan along a well-defined track and suddenly found an established campsite used by a local tourism operator. We cut across open pan, following our GPS, and found ourselves on the main track out in the big white. We zipped along at 60 km/h before finally popping back up onto the grasslands. After a longer-than-expected grassland section, we finally returned to the pan again and found a place to camp out in the middle of absolutely nowhere. It was an awe-inspiring feeling to spend the night with white on three sides (we could still see the grassland verge behind us), contemplating infinity and watching the stars wheel overhead.

Stanley on Ntwetwe Pan

A very simple landscape

Camping on Ntwetwe Pan

Milky Way

Early morning light
 

The next day we continued on our way southeast, reaching the edge of Ntwetwe Pan rather sooner than expected. (Did I mention that our maps were very, very approximate?) It was a longer-than-expected bumpy grind through grassland and savannah to reach one of the main veterinary fences of the country before turning south and crossing through the fence. From here it was an even bumpier and slower drive south until we got to the edge of Suwa Pan. We picked our way out onto the salty surface and followed tracks towards Kubu Island, relieved to be out on the smooth pan surface but mindful of the treacherous surface below and reluctant to venture out too far from the "shore". At one point I got out and took some photos and video of Terri driving across the pan; as she slowed down and turned back towards me, Stanley fishtailed dramatically as though on ice. Terri kept it under control, but was relieved to get back to the main track unscathed.

Stanley skirting Kubu Island

Kubu Island's baobabs and boulders

Kubu Island is a scenic spot of high land rising above the pan surface in a mass of huge granite boulders and immense baobab trees. It's a popular spot to camp, but it's expensive and can be crowded, so we headed further south and east to find a free spot to ourselves a few kilometres away from Kubu. It was another beautiful campsite, although much closer to the safety of "shore" than the night before, and it made for another memorable evening alone under the immense dome of the night sky.

Ruined walls on Kubu Island

Kubu Island

On the long road back north out of the pans

The following day we set off back to tarmac. We stopped by Kubu to take some photos of baobabs and of centuries-old stone walls, remnants of the Khami civilization who maintained a trading outpost here. From there we had three options to return to the main tarmac road: northwest across the grassland, northeast across the grassland next to the pan edge, and across the pan edge. We read the route descriptions and chose the second option, which turned out to be worse than expected: four hours of slow grinding through deep sand in low gear, rather than zipping along smooth pan. It was a relief to pop out, pump up our tires using our portable compressor, and drive east into the crossroads town of Nata. We bought fuel and turned south to visit the bird sanctuary on the edge of Suwa Pan, but were advised by the ticket sellers that the water in the pan was so far out that it was almost impossible to spot the flamingoes and pelicans, so we turned back into town and found a place to stay in funky Eselbe Camp, run by an interesting white Swazi guy named Rupert. We spent a fun evening eating, drinking and talking beside the fire with our fellow camp inhabitants, including a very amusing guy named Dwayne, another white Swazi who flies drones and light planes and regaled us with tales, some of which might actually have been true.

Banded mongoose (Terri's assailant)

The next day was October 16th and we were keen to head north to Elephant Sands, one of our favourite spots from our 2016 trip through Botswana. We set off betimes and were at the gate late in the morning. We picked a campsite overlooking the waterhole, popped up our roof and settled in. The key feature of Elephant Sands is its waterhole which attracts hundreds of elephants from the surrounding bush. When we arrived, there were a couple of dozen elephants milling around; a technical problem had stopped the flow of water, and all the thirsty pachyderms were tired of waiting. We spent the afternoon lounging by the pool, photographing and sketching elephants. We ventured in for a dip in the pool, but were slightly put off by all the floating detritus on the surface, particularly when we figured out that it was the dust of elephant dung, dried by the sun and blown by gusts into the pool. That evening we grilled up dinner and sat beside Stanley, watching elephants in the gloaming, before going to the waterhole to watch them, dimly illuminated by the restaurant lights; the energy in the crowd of elephants was mesmerizing as they occasionally vented frustration at the long lineup to drink, and we became keenly aware of how flimsy the low electric fence protecting us was.

Pachyderm detail

Ears shaped like Africa

More elephant skin

Baby learning to use his trunk

We spent the next day at Elephant Sands relaxing, sorting through photos, reading, working out (hanging the rings from a disused water tank tower), not swimming, chatting with our neighbours and (in the case of Terri) baking scones over an open fire using our cast-iron potjie. It was a relaxing day, with less aggravation among the pachyderms (the water supply wasn't cut off during the day) and fewer people staying in the campground. The only moment of adrenaline was in the morning when a passing banded mongoose attacked Terri's feet, leaving her bleeding from either a claw or a tooth.

Chobe sunset

Our final stop in Botswana was Kasane, the tourist town on the edge of Chobe National Park. We left reasonably early from Elephant Sands and stopped in at Sinyati Lodge, site of another famous waterhole that's great for photography. It seemed a bit expensive and our friends Rene and Catrien, who had camped next to us at Elephant Sands, told us that there had been almost no animals at the waterhole the night before, so we kept going to the Chobe Safari Lodge and its opulent campsite, where we set up shop for the next four days. That afternoon we lounged by the pool after booking a river cruise and a park entrance pass for the next day. As we lolled on our lounge beds, suddenly our friends Oskar and Heike appeared unexpectedly; we had first met them at African Overlanders near Cape Town, and then more recently at Drifters Camp. We had a fun evening grilling and chatting with them about their adventures.

A very happy Terri on the Chobe River

Our Chobe National Park day was a day of two halves. In the morning we set off on what ended up being a private speedboat tour of the Chobe Riverfront with our guide George, from Kalahari Tours, an outfit with whom Terri has taken ten student groups to see Chobe over the years. George was an exceptional birding guide, and we spotted a few dozen species during our trip along the placid waters of the Chobe River, with the highlight being watching juvenile yellow-billed storks on the rocks of some rapids downstream of the park. Crocodiles, hippos, impala, bushbucks and dozens of elephants made a fine accompaniment to the birdlife. The Riverfront sector of Chobe is one of the densest concentrations of game anywhere in Africa, comparable to the Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater, and the number of elephants is awe-inspiring, reminding us of how many elephants have been lost elsewhere in the continent. (Botswana is home to nearly half of all the 400,000 or so elephants remaining on the African continent.) We returned to shore happy with our David Attenborough morning.

African darter

Lilac-breasted roller

African darter

Never smile at a crocodile...

White-faced ducks and a photobombing darter

I'm all eyes (and ears and nostrils)

Mud shower

That afternoon, after a delicious lunch back at the campsite, we dropped Stanley's roof and set off into Chobe. We had visited several times before (or in Terri's case, nearly a dozen times), but we were surprised at what we found. The tracks were in terrible condition, requiring low-range 4WD and lowered tire pressures, while the excellent signage that we remembered from the past was a distant memory, with many signs fallen over or faded to illegibility. We drove around, slighly disoriented (our Garmin GPS unit wasn't functioning at all well!) while the skies darkened ominously and distant booms of thunder echoed across the landscape. We saw lots of impala, lechwe and elephants, and even a couple of puku, but overall there was little game except along the riverfront, and the tracks there were deeply rutted and hard driving, something that we didn't remember from previous visits. Eventually, as the skies turned completely black, we found the main track and headed back towards the entrance gate. Luckily we ran into a safari vehicle that had found a magnificent male lion, so we stopped and gazed at him for a while before bolting towards the exit. The rain caught us two kilometres short in a blinding downpour that luckily only lasted a few minutes, and we squelched back to town and a meal in the Indian restaurant next to our campsite.

African openbill

We spent the next two days relaxing in our camp, enjoying the facilities, swimming, reading, playing chess (for me) with a German tourist on a giant board by the pool, editing videos and planning for the next stage of our journey. Stanley's electrical system developed an annoying fault that cost us the use of our interior LED lights; Oskar and I spent a couple of hours diagnosing the problem without fully resolving it; it's either a software fault in the solar controller, or else a short circuit in the circuit running from the solar controller to the storage batteries, but we couldn't locate any short circuits. I think we will take Stanley in for an electrical checkup here in Livingstone!

Giant kingfisher

October 22nd found us checking out of Kasane, buying water (we had completely drained our water supply and not found anywhere with good, fresh, non-salty water for days), fuel (much cheaper in Botswana than in Zambia) and food before heading to a garage in nearby Kazungula to figure out why we had an annoying rattle in our engine. Frank, a burly Zambian mechanic running Mario's Garage, diagnosed it instantly as a broken bearing on a tensioning wheel for our air conditioner, and within an hour he had fixed it for 400 pula (about US$ 30), including a new bearing, which seemed like a pretty good deal. We headed to the new Kazungula Bridge and drove across, past a long lineup of waiting transport trucks. It was a relatively quick and efficient process checking out of Botswana and into Zambia, featuring our first use of our Carnet de Passage en Douanes. By 2:30 we were driving east towards Livingstone, and by nightfall we had new SIM cards in our phones and were camped in the spacious, leafy surroundings of Tabonina Bis Guesthouse.

It was a slighly bittersweet experience to visit Botswana in 2022. Both Terri and I felt as though the country and its institutions, including its prized wildlife parks, have deteriorated over the past 5 years, perhaps because of the effects of covid-19, perhaps as a result of political changes and infighting between the current president Mokgweetsi Masisi, and his predecessor Ian Khama. Whatever the cause, things just didn't seem to work as well as they did in 2016: the internet, cellular data, roads, the tracks into and through wildlife reserves, the facilities within national parks, the general mood on the streets. I hope that Botswana does manage to regain its mojo, as I have always looked at it as one of the best-run countries on the continent, with a good education system and a large, prosperous middle class. Fingers crossed for the future.

Goliath heron

African darter

We should be here for a couple of weeks (at least) while Terri does some administration at Olive Tree Learning Centre, and then it will be time to head north towards Lusaka and the Tanzanian border beyond, probably via stops at Kasanka National Park, Mutinondo Wilderness and lovely Kapishya Hot Springs.

Elephants swarming Chobe Riverfront

Pied kingfisher

We have just learned in the past few days that Ethiopia, a key country in the Cape Town-Cairo route up the east side of Africa, has introduced some frankly insane rules regarding bringing our own car into the country; travellers have been asked to post bonds of US$ 80,000 or more (in cash!!) to guarantee that the vehicles will leave Ethiopia without being sold. This is exactly what the Carnet de Passage en Douanes system is designed for, so it's annoying that Ethiopia doesn't simply join the carnet system. This may mean (if the rules aren't amended) that we might not make it through Ethiopia, and that we might have to drive south again and ship the car from Cape Town to Europe so that we can drive south again along the west coast of Africa. Stay tuned for updates!!

Our farewell-to-Chobe lion