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The toilet is dirty, the seat disappeared before men set foot on the moon, water or worse is spreading over the floor and the smell is reminiscent of our ill-fated holiday to Turkey (our first and hopefully last bout of amoebic dysentery). On the plus side the toilet does have a water supply, which is more than you can say for the shower!
People and magazine articles had pre-warned us regarding the state of the ablution facilities in Botswana's national parks, they were not exaggerating. Fortunately you are not paying around £30 per day to admire the plumbing, you are paying for a wildlife spectacle and a total lack of fences, which often means the wildlife spectacle is in your camp!
Thanks to the generosity of Isaac and Liesel who invited us to join them on their trip, we were about to do a 15 day figure of 8 loop 4x4 drive to explore Moremi Game Reserve on the eastern flank of the Okavango Delta, then Savuti, a semi arid area that used to be marshland, then the marsh edge of the Linyanti River before going north east to Chobe National Park on the border with Namibia. We would then head back south to Savuti and then back in to Moremi to explore the western end of that reserve at Xakanaxa and Third Bridge.
Armed with more permits than you would need to borrow the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London, we set off from Maun 2 days ahead of Isaac & Liesel, with 325 litres of petrol, 85 litres of water and excessive supplies of toilet paper. We were still 30 kms short of the South Gate entrance to Moremi when the Landrover gremlin struck, the bonnet cable came apart during a routine attempt to check the engine was still with us.
Driving 1600 kms on difficult roads with no access to the engine and no cell phone reception (mind you there is no breakdown rescue service even if you had reception!) is for poker players only, especially as I couldn't get the rear door open (the lock fills with sand and jams more regularly than a Paris Hilton court appearance). At moments like this you pause to reflect on the wisdom of buying Landrover, put it down to the British sentimentality for a vehicle that opened up Africa. Most Southern Africans not hung up with that misguided loyalty feeling, buy Toyotas!
Thanks to some great bush mechanics in Maun (the workshop was the shade under 2 trees), we were on the road again the next morning with a repaired cable and a rear door lock that works perfectly (at the time of writing!) Talking of the road, it is a misleading term for what we drove on during this trip. Most of the roads are sand tracks, and when the sand becomes thick the fun starts.
We ended up stuck 6 times, in two sections that are notorious and can halt even the most experienced safari drivers. In defence of Landrover at this point, we only got stuck pulling the trailer, 1500kgs of off road trailer is an awesome drag anchor in sand, and your speed is limited by the misguided desire to keep the trailer on terra firma (impossible given the ruts and deep holes).
The positive side of being stuck in sand is that it no longer frightens us. Whilst Angela collected elephant dung and wood (to pack under the wheels) I shovelled sand, so much sand that I can confidently claim I've shovelled more than Lawrence of Arabia rode over. Doing this in 38C and with the sun overhead is certainly character building.
Isaac and Liesel caught up with us at Savuti. On our first night camping together we were joined by a leopard that we first heard then picked out by spotlight. Tracking leopard by torchlight with beer and wine in hand is not in any safari textbook but it's a great way to bond with new friends, especially when you lose the leopard and wander if it is now tracking you! At Savuti we encountered 6 lions drinking at a waterhole and had an afternoon encounter with an elephant in camp that took a liking to the tree next to our tent.
From the dryness of Savuti we marvelled at the green lushness of the Linyanti River, in a perfect campsite that looked across the marshes to Namibia. This was the jewel in the crown in terms of settings, well worth the deep sand on the way in. Here we hung up our washing watched by a herd of 20 plus elephant with young, we watched individual elephants walk by the front of our site and we kept a watchful eye on a hippo mother and baby as they grazed by moonlight just 10 metres from our fireside.
The road northeast from Linyanti to Chobe was also tricky; they are not short of sand in Botswana! Somewhere on this road Angela contrived to lose my glasses whilst answering a call of nature (we travel slowly on these trips as Angela answers a call of nature every 30 minutes or so!) With a spare pair cleverly left in Howick, I became totally reliant on sunglasses, not brilliant for night driving and star gazing though!
By the time we reached the Chobe River front (much drier than on our previous visit in March) Isaac was nearly halfway through his 1000 joke repertoire. More worryingly he was down to his last of 6 bottles of Malibu, his last brandy and Liesel's last gin, re-provisioning was a must! Fortunately Kasane town on the eastern end of Chobe has plenty of alcohol even though fresh food is scarcer thanks to the close proximity of the Zimbabwe border.
Isaac needed diesel and we needed petrol otherwise the holiday would be over; fortunately we managed to get both. This was a nervous moment as a Zimbabwean truck had overheated in the Shell filling station the week before our arrival, burning it down and halving the number of re-fuelling outlets at a stroke!
Chobe was full of elephant as usual; herds came to view our campfire each of the 3 nights there. We managed to see lion, harder to see in Chobe than anywhere else on this trip, but sadly our closest animal encounter was a bad experience. Foolishly we left our rooftop tent up and baboons moved in as we ablated, I came back to see 5 of the hairy b*stards sat on the tent roof, the aluminium frame bent at a crazy angle, it had snapped under their weight.
Not content with property damage they had crapped and pissed over the tent and car as well! I chased the whole troop of around 40 baboons up the hillside away from the camp, throwing elephant dung, bricks, stones and wood at them for about 500 metres before I remembered I was in elephant and buffalo territory! Chobe was also memorable for a lunchtime braai where we cooked a whole chicken with the temperature hovering around 42C, a small tornado just as we were about to eat ensured we had sandblasted chicken and gave the food a lovely gritty texture!
To be continued…..
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