Southern Africa 2025. Part Five: Botswana

 

26^th October 2025 (Day 15)

I ask Claire why she’s getting up at 04:55 but it appears that the clocks have gone forward and we’ve lost an hour’s sleep. It’s cold because Windhoek is at an elevation of 1,650 metres.

In his first briefing in Livingstone Tawanda told us that not all of us would make it to the end. I wondered whether this worrying news was backed up by statistics based on the age of the group but it turns out that Lesley only booked a 14-night trip and is flying home today. So, the Fellowship loses its first member, our Boromir.

White people make up 2% of Namibia’s population yet they own most of the land, property and businesses and they control tourism. In every restaurant the staff are black and the cashier is white. Windhoek’s white people live in large detached houses with exotic gardens and high walls topped with razor wire, while outside the homeless lie under trees. The Government posters that proclaim Namibia’s hastening to equality are feeble. It feels like apartheid.

It’s a long drive on a straight surfaced road that rises to over 2,000 metres. There’s not so much as a warthog to look at. Last stop in Namibia is Gobabis, a small town inhabited by San people after they were evicted from the bush. There are small boys begging in the dual carriageway and security guards with sticks to keep them away from the Spar. They don’t sell alcohol on Sundays.

It’s another 100km to Buitepost and we’re the only vehicle on the road apart from huge long-distance lorries. Pre-made sandwiches outside a petrol station, we give away the vegetables and fruit to the locals who hang around for that purpose, because they’re not allowed where we’re going. I discover a pineapple and melon in Tawanda and Jonas' secret cool box. "Hey, you forgot to get rid of these!" They don't thank me.

The pointless bureaucracy at the border only takes an hour, and we’re back in Botswana.

The comparison between Zambia and Botswana was perhaps more stark, but compared to Namibia Botswana seems greener. There are more trees and herds of goats, sheep, cattle and horses are found on the verges of decent roads. At a urine-reeking truck stop it’s no surprise nobody wants to go bushy-bushy, and we admire a brand-new super-tractor that’s being transported by a guy who looks like he’s fifteen years old.

There are no towns or settlements at all and the lodge is five km down a sand track. The hut is rather basic with a wood fire heating a tank for hot water and a toilet under the stars. It’s not the one in the picture below.

We’re given no time to settle in and then there’s a bush walk. The San people were relocated outside of the Kalahari to make room for farmers, and their culture is dying out. Ghanzi Trailblazers is trying to preserve the heritage.

The guide is Mr Robert who’s dressed in his safari gear. He gives us a long lecture on the San click languages and then we meet three middle-aged women and a young lad who wear dik-dik skins. It’s not a strenuous walk, a bit like the Chantries with snakes and poisonous ants. We stop often to eat a lot of roots, all of which taste bitter. Claire’s given a hat that Mr Robert’s made out apple leaves. They choose the wrong person to balance an arrow on his left index finger. It’s a bit chaotic - every now and then one of the San wanders off without a word as if they’re bored. We watch them eat a melon and I have absolutely no idea why.

It sounds like a football match is being played nearby but it's a bunch of loud Chinese tourists on another bush walk. Mr Robert says he hopes the arrow shot by the lad in a re-enactment of a zebra hunt hasn't hit one of the Chinese, his grin hinting at what he really thinks. The boy falls over as he pretends to chase the zebra and he loses his arrow. We also get a skit of a woman giving birth to the melon.

The bar opens at six thirty. Botswanan beer is cold and weak, but it’s tasting good right now. As if the influence of the Chinese in Africa was not obvious enough, the newly installed wi-fi has a speed of over 300 mbps. Dinner is be cooked over an open fire by Jonas. I’m not going to interfere.

A crack of thunder indicates that the rainy season is almost upon us. It’s buggy-buggy tonight.

27^th October 2025 (Day 16)

Difficult to get to sleep on account of no aircon, fan or wind. Also, the toilet’s broken, the flying beetles hit like large hailstones as you sit on it in the middle of the night and there’s a hole in the mosquito net. Still, no bites thanks to the DOOM.

There’s almost nothing between Gobabis in Namibia and Maun in Botswana, some 620km apart. Ghanzi is a collection of huts with signs to a landfill, an Islamic Centre and a petrol station. But the road is good and, other than Jonas needing to slow down to avoid a ruminant or ten, we cover the 350km in four hours.

Maun is a thriving village of 85,000 people, yet to be granted town or city status. It grew rapidly in the early noughties on completion of the road from Francistown to Windhoek as the gateway to the Okavango Delta, and the international airport now flies direct to as far as Addis Ababa. Everyone who lives here is employed in tourism in one way or the other, the shops are plush and there are no beggars. Botswana is one of the most stable economies and democracies in Africa, and the Pula is worth more than the rand. Everybody smiles.

We arrive in the camp site of the Island Safari Lodge for our ubiquitous processed cheese sandwiches which we scoff in five minutes because some of the Fellowship have a flight over the Okavango this afternoon, and this huge male kudu walks up to have a sniff. Then there’s an impala, an owl in the tree and some meerkats running!

“They’re not meerkats,” laughs Tawanda. “They’re velvet monkeys.” This is confirmed later when we go on a brief inappropriately-dressed riverside walk. Maree claimed she saw two meerkats by the side of the road earlier, but nobody else did. Also, she was trapped in her room by the kudu.

We’ve lucked out with our accommodation again. We’re the only ones in the Fellowship with a fridge, and one that works too. There are two rangers outside whose job is to scare away kudus and monkeys, I think, I dunno. So, with nothing better to do until the aeronauts return and tell us how brilliant the herds of wildebeest were, we declare an early beer o’clock at 5pm and become the room number all the staff know.

At 17:30 a 60mph wind blows up, the temperature drops ten degrees and we rush inside the restaurant. It’s not raining, I can only smell it, but within an hour the width of the river has doubled.

We eat in the restaurant. I have ribs, probably.

Strange things are happening tomorrow.

28^th to 29^th October 2025 (Days 17-18)

5:30 start. Something was munching the lilies outside our chalet last night. Could have been a kudu, could have been a hippo. My essential belongings are transferred into my little rucksack: four small bottles of frozen water, two cold beers and a large can of DOOM.

Tawanda and Jonas toss a coin and Jonas loses, so he’s coming with us. Everything we need is taken out of the Red Tank and packed into the trailer of a 14-seat 4WD that has no doors, so we need to climb in. It's a scene reminiscent of my mother and a banana boat in Greece c. 2000. The driver is called Bros as in 'when will I be famous'.

The road is surfaced but shrapnelled with pot-holes. Then we turn off and it gets much worse, one and a half hours of vertiginous sand blocks. It gets swampy and we cross thin wooden bridges. There’s a village where we stop so Maree, Susie and Jenny can go on a very expensive and short helicopter ride and others go to a school to distribute pens.

Then we meet the Bayiyi, also known as Polers for obvious reasons, although other Polers are available, our guides for the next two days. They look normal, no dik-dik skirts. They are, according to their name tags, Herold, M.D., K.P., Joyce, Kelly, Helena and Mr Three, a mixture of genders, ages and sizes. “We can only guarantee that you see hippos,” says head guide Herold, a herd of 20 elephants in the rushes behind him. Considering they’re not their real names, I’m wondering why he chose ‘Herold.’

I read that a mokoro punt in the Okavango Delta is up there for those annoying enough to have bucket lists. These unstable fibreglass troughs are not only going to transport us into the middle of nowhere, but the entire contents of the Tank including a huge canister of calogas, our big heavy metal table, our plancha and over 120 litres of water. Plus all the Bayiyi’s stuff because they’re coming with us. It’s overcast, hot and muggy. Watching them load the boats with the elephants munching the papyrus in the background is surreal.

We get K.P., the least pregnant and most fidgety of the Bayiyi women. The novelty of being in a canoe flotilla six inches from the water wears off very quickly as the mekoro are incredibly uncomfortable. Sitting cross-legged gives me cramp in my toes, putting my knees up hurts the sides of them and stretching my legs kills my back. And you’re not allowed to move or the whole toy boat goes tits-up and you become croc-food. Of all the tortures our arses have suffered on the trip, this is the worst.

Everyone’s told to be quiet as we pass the elephants, and again as we avoid two rafts of hippos. There’s a croc lying on the bank. K.P. seems to have an L-plate, rocks the boat and steers us into sandbanks. This slow ordeal lasts for an hour and a half.

Search for ‘Okavango Tented Camps’ on Google and you’ll find luxurious full-board accommodation, helicopter transfer included, starting at about US$750 per night. Instead, we help the Bayiyi unload the mekoro into a clearing which has seven small ready-pitched tents. They’re okay, about eight feet square with a rear section containing a chemical toilet, and you can stand in them. We’re given the first of many very slow briefings, summary: everything out there is trying to kill you.

After lunch we’re told there’s four hours to kill. It’s wild camping so there’s no wi-fi, 4G, electricity or running water apart from the Okavango River. It’s less wild when you consider that there’s another camp 100 metres away and helicopters fly overhead every ten minutes.

Having consumed the last cold beer, I attempt a sleep. It’s too hot. At 3pm I hear someone whisper the word ‘elephant.’ There’s a huge herd - maybe sixty in total, including several babies. They come in three groups, getting as close as 30m from camp. Okay, I admit it, that was pretty awesome.

Herold and M.D. lead the nature walk in the late afternoon. They both have a fondness for explaining things very slowly and repeating each other, M.D. being the slightly more concise. We see another raft of hippos, a lone male warthog and a big dazzle (real word) of zebra. Mainly it’s a study of animal poo and there’s plenty of that.

My first trip to the safari toilet is a disaster.

Sitting around the campfire, Jonas having concocted another stonking dinner, we drink our warm beer and I wonder why I’ve broken my promise that I will never, under no circumstances whatsoever, go camping again.

The next day our nature walk begins at 06:15, fifteen minutes late. It takes over three hours but could have been half that because of Herold’s lengthy explanations that he won’t do while walking. It’s not that he’s uninteresting, it’s just the delivery, even M.D. seems bored, although to be fair he’s probably heard it a thousand times before. Today is a study of animal tracks and bones.

In the distance a guy is fishing.

We see far away buffalo and towers (real word) of giraffes, the same hippos and zebras as last night and Willie the Warthog. There are new appearances from an institution of impala, a lone shunned gnu/wildebeest (the difference is P.R.) and something called a red lekwe that I've just looked up the spelling for.

There’s a symbiosis between the zebras, giraffes, impala and wildebeest, each having their own unique skills to avoid predators, and that’s why they herd together. They deliberately stay close to human camps because it’s safer. This in turn draws the predators closer to us. Last night, several of the Fellowship couldn’t sleep because of lion roars and a zebra running through the camp. Personally, I have slept through earthquakes.

Herold picks up a beer can. Bloody yobs, we’re thinking, partying all night among wild animals, playful loud music, chucking away their tinnies. “Hyaenas,” says Herold. Bloody hyaenas, we’re thinking, partying all night, playing loud music… Apparently, they drag away the bins from the camps at night.

After brunch there’s many more hours to kill before, joy, we get into another mokoro. It’s cloudy and humid with no breeze and the Fellowship is getting bored. Few have any phone battery life and power packs are being fought over, it’s too hot in the tents, everyone has way too much water and none of it is cold, and all the communal books have been read. My only lighter breaks and I have to use the embers of the fire to light cigarettes. My portable Vietnamese charger doesn’t work either. I let flies into our tent just so I can DOOM them for sport.

The Bayiyi women, who’ve erected a township next to ours, maintain a lit fire from before dawn to the late evening to boil the Okavango and cook mountains of pap, lie around and stare at us as if we’re mad. They open a pop-up shop of crafts where they have a captive audience.

But my cynicism is abated when, with most of the Fellowship off swimming, I stroll 20m from camp and, there at the edge of the grassland, are 15 zebras and a dozen impala, happily mingling. I grab a camp chair, binoculars and warm water, sit by the termite mound and watch them for an hour.

The dreaded sunset mokoro cruise starts at 5pm and, oh no, K.P. Is beckoning me. Maybe we have to stay with our original Poler, maybe it’s because I helped her unload the very heavy table. So, Mrs wobble-wobble wonky trolley steers us into the first of many sandbanks, but it’s not as bad as yesterday because the mokoro is not as full and I move position as much as I like, because I realise I’m not the problem.

Actually, it’s beautiful, almost silently gliding, or in our case crashing, through the papyrus reeds as egrets, ibis, lapwings and plovers fly around us. There’s an institution of impala by the bank, elephants further away and a croc lying on an island. Suddenly, the impala start running and the croc is no longer on the island. We go back.

After dinner the Bayiyi give us a song recital, complete with the wawawawawas I’d normally associate with Mali. A cynical curmudgeon might dismiss this as tourist crap or tip-bait but the Bayiyi, who were originally from Angola and migrated south, are really enjoying themselves. Even Mr Three, who’s at least seventy, is doing a jig.

It’s really lovely. In fact, I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.

30th October 2025 (Day 19)

It’s raining, not pouring, people are snoring. M.D. buckles down the hatches of every tent without asking, leaving us in the dark. We huddle around the heavy metal table under a canopy to drink flavoured hot Okavango water and eat boiled eggs. There’s a huge herd of elephants in the distance waving goodbye. The rain stops.

It took us three hours to get here from Maun and now we have the reverse journey. We have K.P. again, but we’re used to her wind boarding style now. There’s still that little bit of jeopardy to keep things interesting, such as the menacing guardian hippos of the lagoon. We say fond goodbyes to the Bayiyi and promise to like them on Facebook.

In contrast to the mokoro Bros’ 4WD seems the epitome of comfort. Distracted by impending catastrophe while crossing tiny wooden bridges on the way out, I hadn’t noticed how still and beautiful these lagoons are.

At the rendezvous we have to unload the 4WD then wait for Tawanda who’s late with the Red Tank he’s not licensed to drive. Several of us need to get stuff from our big cases so there’s a re-pack on the double as it’s pushy-pushy and there’s 320km to go.

70km from Maun there’s a shoe checkpoint. They know you’ve been to the Okavango so two pairs each need disinfecting. We’re given five minutes for lunch.

Jonas Hamilton does his best but Eastern Botswanan cattle seem more prone to wander onto the roads than Western ones. Then we’re in an unannounced National Park (Nxai) which you can cross for free, but you have to pay if you stop. Whether this includes crashing into one of the zillion zilly zebras is unclear.

It seemed at first that Botswanan roads were superior to those in Namibia. I take it all back. The one here is a starry-starry night colander of pot holes. In places it’s like the archaeological remains of a road and it’s easier to drive in the rough.

We reach Nata Lodge at 4:10, over nine hours of unfathomably uncomfortable arse torture. “We check in and meet here in twenty minutes,” says Tawanda to loud groans, because we signed up for this and we will go on safari, whether we like it or not. The manageress gives us the slowest welcome imaginable, we’re required to fill in a long form and order dinner in advance. Then we go to our safari tents which are better than they sound, scramble to find things we need, dump our stuff and it’s back to the Tank.

“We eat at seven-thirty,” says Towanda. Somebody asks what time we’ll get back. “Seven-fifteen.” It’s pointed out with a whimper that we haven’t showered for three days. I lead the rebellion. “You can eat at seven-thirty,” say I, “But as this meal is not included in the price of the tour, we shall be taking our repast at eight-thirty.” The faith of the Fellowship has been tested, but they’re following me.

The Makgadikgadi is part of the largest salt pan system in the world. The Nata Bird Sanctuary is the gateway to this, a huge flat expanse of scrubland. There are many implausibilities (real word) of wildebeest but we’ve seen enough of these and when Towanda points out a zebra we scoff - are you serious? A couple of the Fellowship get excited over a grey crested crane in the distance, but all the birds are either small or very far away.

We see the salt pan in the distance. It looks endless, like a sea. Oh, it is a sea, or rather an enormous salt lake. The rains have come early. We have a rest at the shaded viewpoint and there are a few storks, pelicans and flamingos, but it’s been overcast for three days and no one has any interest in watching the sunset.

We’re back at the Lodge at six-thirty and end up eating at eight. I have ribs, probably. The four essential humours are restored: proper toilet, shower, wi-fi and cold beer.

31st October 2025 (Day 20)

Another 320km to cover today. The first 200 of these are by the edge of a concessionaire game reserve. In two and a half hours of leaning on the window, listening to Radiohead on a resurrected iPod, I spot one small deer, maybe a bushbuck or dik-dik. Must have shot the rest.

The bush ends and we’re into thousands of square km of agricultural land, the black clay growing sorghum, but not at the moment.

Bushy-bushy in the farming hub of Pandamatenga, Claire needs change so buys lighters, which we’ve exhausted, but only has rand. She’s sent to the tills in the aisles. A long queue of truckers are buying single bottles of coke and paying for them with chip and pin.

We get to our lodge in Kasane and they’ve saved the best for last. A private gated village with a pool on the banks of the Chobe River. Huge permanent tents on stilts and, best of all, a large communal kitchen/living room area with a normal fridge and chest freezer, because it’s 38c again and 50% humidity. Tawanda, who is not someone who likes to repeat something he’s not said in the first place, gives us half an hour after lunch.

We’re whisked off to a safari river cruise and given the smallest boat without a toilet. We have a cool box full of beer but, unfortunately, it’s at the front with the teetotallers and I’m at the back.

The pilot/guide O.T. is very good and fast. This is Chobe National Park, the one we took a short cut through on our way to Namibia, and it doesn’t disappoint. In fact, there are grumbles among the Fellowship that we should have had another day here for a game drive.

We get so close to the crocs and hippos we can almost touch them. There are many exotic and beautiful birds that I can’t be bothered to learn the names of. There are elephants-shmelephants in the hills, impalas-shimpalas on the banks, a troop (real word) of shagging baboons and a huge bully of buffaloes in a field that don’t look arsed about anything. Finally, so close that Jinni’s telescopic lens can pick them up quite clearly, a pride of lazy lions!

It’s the last night of the tour. The Fellowship has almost completed its mission to Mount DOOM, but we’re feeling sad that it has to end. I have ribs, definitely, because I took a photo of them.

The wireless speaker is put into use. The last of the alcohol is consumed and we dance by the light of the Chobe fireflies.