Exploring Africa - Northern Botswana

Exploring Africa is not an easy task, most think that a simple safari is all that it takes… well think again. On my last visit to the wonderful majestic national parks of Botswana I found out the hard way that just too much confidence can be the end to a perfect day. I had planned everything down to the tee- diesel, food, camping equipment, unbreakable truck, parks guide- who we call city, huge amounts of enthusiasm and of course four super excited super ready tourists…

So on we go, as deep into the park that will allow for the first day and what a day, everywhere you looked there stood an animal- from Buffalo to thousands of elephant amazing eagles and birds and the plains game that you would only expect to see in the Serengeti. I could not have dreamed of the better start to the tour- must be every guides dream, I know that its mine. Oh… and we saw lion in the first afternoon, need I say more?
The scenes on the Chobe waterfront that day must have been some of the best game viewing that I have seen to date in any reserve, national or private. You sometimes hear that touring in the peak of the rainy season is never the best idea as you ‘wont see too much game and the bush is too thick’, well I have heard it often and believed it until that day. The weather was perfect and everything just seemed so right- I thought that the river must have something to do with it but it has been raining so much the last month or so that the entire bush is full of water everywhere you go. So why are all of the animals in this place at the same time it could be that they are all ‘bouncing’ off of the river and decided to linger longer??

Well we arrived at the camp after seven and set up camp in the dark… not a good idea for a couple of ‘normal’ tourists who can’t stop asking questions, thank goodness City is with me to take the brunt for a few days. So the tents are up and the complaints start pulling in about the bugs and mosquito’s, a few of the clients are already setting up mosquito ‘bombs’, I think they actually tried to kill every living mosquito in a ten km radius. Now after the tenth day of this I had expected them to relax and to live with them- completely the opposite… it only got worse! The typical client would get used to it and move on and accept the bugs but still the complaints move in about all of the added extras to the tour that they should have known about, i.e. the bugs.

After an early morning start we move into a long game drive safari in the Chobe national Park for. This was definitely not on the same par as the previous day as we saw close on nothing… City and I decide to move on and explore the deeper and more intimate Savuti National park, otherwise known as the Savuti Marsh. On the way between the two parks, there are a couple of very interesting villages where you can find anything from tinned pilchards and pap to a market goat or bull. This road is paradise for a 4wd lover as the sand can be as deep as the tires and the heat and roads are some of the most unforgiving that I know of so be sure to be ready for this one if you are planning a journey through here. The golden rule is though… this is the one that I forgot with all of my confidence is that there is no recovery service and only perhaps three cars per day in the quiet season!

So don’t brake down… just as I did about half way between the last town and the Savuti main gate. The clients thought I was playing a joke on them when I said that the truck wouldn’t start and had to start walking back towards the village probably about 20km away- ok it wasn’t as far as I first said. The truck had a loose connection between the alternator and the starter and the battery, which in turn managed to run both batteries flat and deemed the starter motor useless. What an exciting afternoon- long walk ahead of me, pissed off clients, probably 40 degrees centigrade, haven’t eaten and much more…. But this is just some of the reasons why I love my job and think that it is the most awesome thing ever. Who else will be able to do this and love it other than someone that has needed to do this for his whole life…? Well I think that it will be a story that can be told with a huge smile on my face. To cut a long story short we managed to fix it all and got to Savuti in the late afternoon for the last game drive of the day- other than birds we saw nothing!!! Pressure starting to build.....