Being in Botswana

After four weeks of silence during my traveling I finally report back from South Africa. As I rarely had any internet access on my holidays I wasn’t yet able to give you a short update but therefore you will get an even more detailed report now with lots of pictures. Today I’m going to start with the first part of our trip: our stay in Botswana and our short side trip to Zimbabwe.

The first stop in Botswana for Stella, Louisa, Magnus and me was Elephant Sands, a lodge about 1000 kilometres north of Johannesburg in an area with many national parks. Even on our way we already got fascinated by Botswana’s many animals that were so close to the streets – sometimes also blocking them – that we always had some elephants, giraffes or ostriches to watch during the long way. Surprisingly there were also hundreds of donkeys running around everywhere. Arriving at elephant sands it even got better because the lodge fully does justice to the nobility of its name. An artificial waterhole right in the middle of the lodge makes sure that lots of elephants are coming to the place at any time of the day as it is their only source of water in the surroundings. No matter if we were swimming in the pool, standing under the open air shower or lying in our tent we could be sure that the next elephant was not far away which could also be a little bit scaring for the night in our small tent. Also when we were walking around on the premises we had to be careful not to accidently come too close to the giants so that they might feel offended. I’ve never seen so many elephants at one place and so close to me before and we might have spent hours just sitting there watching them.

The next day we went further to the north all the way up to Kasane which is close to the border square of Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Namibia. From here we already left Botswana again – but only for one day to go to the famous Victoria Falls at the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe. The waterfall on the Zambesi river belongs to the world’s three biggest falls alongside the Niagara Falls and the Iguazu Falls and is one of the seven natural wonders of the world.

Arriving at the falls we unfortunately had bad luck with the weather. Besides the fact that the spray and mist of the water made us wet anyway, it also started raining so that we quickly were dripping wet and also the view wasn’t as clear as we knew it from pictures. But still the falls and the surrounding jungle were amazing!

Back in Botswana our next planned stop were the Makgadikgadi Pans, the biggest salt pans in the world. But here our plans unfortunately didn’t work out as the rainy season had just ended and the pans were still very difficult to drive on and the chances to get stuck very high. So we had to skip that plan and went on right to the Okavango Delta - a very fertile and beautiful inland delta and home to many different animals.

Here we did a guided three day mokoro trip far away from any civilization. A mokoro is a type of canoe which is pushed through the shallow water by standing in the stern and using a long pole. It's the best way to get around in the delta and also used as a means of transport especially for the many fishers in the area.

Our trip was accompanied by two guides that would show the four of us around. We started early in the morning of the first day and with the mokoros our guides drove us deep into the delta where we pitched our tents. After a break during the midday heat and arranging our campsite – a toilet hole had to be digged and the fire lighted – we started our first game walk of about an hour until the sunset. Walking around the grassland near our campsite we could soon see lots of zebras and gnus. Our guide taught us a lot about the animals and how to read their traces. When we came back to our campsite we cooked over the fire and then it was already time to sleep as we would start our next game walk before sunrise. In the night we could also hear many animals pass by our campsite like gnus and even hippos. On the next day we did a long walk of about five hours and this time we also saw elephants, giraffes, warthogs, hippos, vultures and the cadaver of a buffalo. In the afternoon we had some time to try to drive the mokoros ourselves. At first it was a lot more difficult than it looked like but after some practising it worked quite well and was a lot of fun. After a short sunset cruise and another short game walk in the next morning it was already the end of our mokoro tour and even though the experience was great we were all really looking forward to a shower!

And then after ten animal-rich days it was already time to move on to Namibia, but about that I will write in my next post… 

If you already want to see some more pictures you can find them all in my gallery!


» part 2 of my holiday report - Next stop Namibia