The Long Road to Botswana
Now it’s time to drive east then head north to the start of the Caprivi Strip and our crossing into Botswana. Again, it’s too long a journey to make in one jump, so we have a single night at Roy’s Camp on our way north. The others have stayed there before and we have plenty of time to get there. This is our chance to take a short detour and go to see the Hoba Meteorite. It’s the largest meteorite on earth and was unearthed in a farmer’s field a few kilometres south of Grootfontein.
It is now something of a tourist attraction and well worth a look – even if it is just to be able to say that you’ve seen it. At first it doesn’t seem all that impressive – it just looks like a big flat boulder, fairly rectangular, about a metre tall and a fairly non-descript brown colour. When you stop to realize that this 50-tonne block of iron and nickel has survived a landing from space – and it’s the largest thing known to have done so – then it becomes a little more impressive.
Fred has us all pose for a staff photo which someone kindly takes from us then it is time to get back on the road to Roy’s Camp. Roy’s has been around for a long time and it tries to cultivate an air of rustic decrepitude. However, it has good plumbing, air conditioning and a wi-fi area with reasonable speeds. What it doesn’t have is much to look at. It has recently been fenced for security reasons and there’s not much to see apart from a few different birds. We just have a good dinner and head for bed. Its more than 400km to drive tomorrow and I’m doing the first stint.
The great thing about the drive north then east to Divundu is that the road is pretty good. The bad thing is that it is just one endless strait after another, with a small village or a gentle bend being a highlight. The initial plan had been for me to do about 200km then Fred was going to take over and do the second half across the border to Shakawe in Botswana. In the end, I drive the first 400km, all the way to Divundu, where we refuel before Fred takes over for the border crossing. He is the listed driver on the paperwork, so it is easier for him to be behind the wheel.
Remarkable though my fellow travellers find it, I’ve never made a land border crossing before, so the whole thing is a new experience for me. Fred takes us along the main road south alongside the Okavango River and down to the border crossing. We go into the office on the Namibia side and quickly get our passports stamped for exit. Next, we drive the 100m or so to the Botswana post and fill in another form for entry. Fred has to also do some paperwork for the vehicle, but everything is in order and the whole process takes only about 30 minutes in total.
Soon enough we are on our way south towards our next destination, driving in Botswana for the first time on roads that are much the same as the ones we have just left behind.
Drotsky’s Cabins – The Okavango Panhandle
Our next stop is Drotsky’s Cabins – somewhere that Fred has wanted to visit for some time and a place that seems to have very high ratings on the internet. I have to say that, from a first impression at least, the place seems very nice. The cabins are large, the beds comfortable and we have air conditioning. The main Lapa is a large stilted affair with a good bar and a nice dining room. If you duck and twist a bit you can even see the river from your veranda.
We were all set to spend three nights, including Christmas Day, in what seemed like a really comfortable place. We’re keen to get straight down to business though and head out onto the river with Ray, our boatman and bird guide to see what we can see before the sun goes down. We’ve asked him to do two boat trips, one in the evening and another the following morning so we can cover as much ground as possible.
The river is a real highlight. There are hundreds of birds and more Squacco Herons in one place than I’ve ever seen. We get almost 60 species in the two trips. Ray is really good and knows the river well. He’s adept at taking the unexpected turn into a tiny side channel among the reeds to reveal a secret garden filled with water-lilies and birds.
At dinner, the down side of Drotsky’s is revealed. Firstly, we are the only guests. Second, the food is Ok, but nothing special. Thirdly, and probably most annoying, the kitchens will be closed on Christmas Day and we will have to eat somewhere else. I cannot, for the life of me, understand why they didn’t just refuse the booking. We had already been moved back to this main lodge as they had decided to close the one we wanted for the holidays, so why not just say they were closed and be done with it? To add insult to injury, they were charging us almost £40 per day for our meals as we were booked in for what was described as self-catering. As Fred pointed out, you couldn’t cater for yourself with just a kettle!
Still, all we could do was make the most of what we had and get on with the relaxing for Christmas and looking for birds.
Christmas Day turns out to be a bit of a disaster. We head off for breakfast at Shakawe Safari Lodge – it’s about 10km away – but the place is just as pricey as the one we’ve come from and the food is just as average. Breakfast is a sorry affair and I feel quite guilty with myself for not really getting my money’s worth out of it. A pot of Yoghurt and a croissant really isn’t worth £10, but frankly the cooked breakfast didn’t look very appetising so I was glad that I dipped out of it.
We spend the rest of the day looking for birds, particularly taking a hour to traipse through dense woodlands in search of a Narina Trogon who leads us on a merry chase from tree to tree without ever showing itself.
Dinner – Christmas Dinner – means another drive down to Shakawe Lodge. We arrive after 7pm and get some drinks. We treat ourselves to a G&T while we wait for dinner. Apparently, it is to be a buffet, but it takes an age to arrive with a couple of power failures thrown in for good measure.
When it finally appears and the others head off to make a selection, I hang back to see what it looks like. This is the fatal mistake, as one look puts me right of the idea of food. At that moment, I get bitten by another mosquito and ask Chris for the car keys to make a hasty retreat to the relative safety of the vehicle. With hindsight, I would never have forgiven myself if I had paid for dinner in that place. There’s always a trade-off between price, quality and location and I understand this very well. However, here the balance of the trade-off was way out of order. The location wasn’t anything special, the food wasn’t either and the price was far too much for both the other factors. With further hindsight, I should have ordered a pizza. They were being stone-baked outside and were probably better than anything the restaurant could produce.
I sat in the car for a while until the others had finished and we all headed back to our own lodge, ready to be away early in the morning for the longish drive to Maun. Getting to the Lapa at 7am, ready for an early start we were dismayed – and more than a little annoyed – to discover that the kitchens were still closed and there was no breakfast. This was something that everyone seemed to have forgotten to tell us during the previous couple of days and frankly was the final straw.
We just sort of looked at each other, packed the car, paid the bill and left as quickly as we could. By the time that we reached the main road it was pouring with rain and this continued all morning as Chris drove south on a road that at times was more pothole than tar. I didn’t envy him a bit, the visibility ranged from bad to non-existent and the road really was pretty poor.
Thalamalakane River Lodge
By late morning we had cleared the rainstorm and the road did improve a bit as we turned towards the east and the town of Maun – the safari capital of Botswana. Our lodge was situated to the west of the town, on the banks of the river from which it gets its name. The chalets were small but comfortable and the level of service and organisation was a world away from Drotsky’s.
We got quickly settled and went up to the restaurant where it was not problem to get a lunch to make up for the breakfast we had been unable to have earlier. There were even hippo and crocodiles to be seen in the river as we had a relaxing afternoon on our verandas. We didn’t see much in our half day stay, but as it was only to break a long journey, we didn’t expect to. The beds were comfortable and the food was excellent so really, we were all more than happy with our short stay.
Elephant Sands
The lodge at Elephant Sands came recommended to us and that recommendation was backed up by some amazing YouTube videos of the elephants at the waterhole that is the centre of the site. We had to temper our expectations with the fact that we were arriving in the wet season and many of the elephants would have dispersed into the forest.
So, there was an elephant at the waterhole within an hour of our arrival at the site, standing close to us in the bar as he took a long drink from the waterhole. That evening, there is a big crowd in for dinner and the buffet is a noisy and somewhat disorganised affair. The food is fine, but the pushing and shoving – however minor – is just a bit of a nuisance.
When another elephant is spotted by the waterhole there is a mass-exodus as everyone rushes out to peer into the darkness. There isn’t much to see though, as the cloud have been building threateningly all afternoon and it is totally dark. The guide to one of the parties having dinner has been playing up the unfenced and unlit nature of the camp, with tales of the lions being seen nearby in the afternoon. This has the desired effect, as some of his American guests are reluctant to walk back to their chalets and tents. Most of them had driven the couple of hundred metres to dinner anyway.
We walk back to our chalets as it starts to rain and we are treated to a magnificent thunderstorm that lasts for several hours into the night. By morning, the only signs of the previous night’s rain are the couple of extra puddles by the side of the road.
We are taken out early the following morning for a game drive that proves to be pretty disappointing. We see very little and what little we do see is quick to move away from the vehicle into the undergrowth. Even the few birds we see don’t want to hang around. When we return to the lodge, Fred finds that the owners are back on site and after a talk with one of them is told that we are free to drive ourselves around the concession and see what we can see. They even give us a map with a suggested route around the farm.
This drive of our own is much more fruitful. We see new birds just 100m from the camp and there seem to be a few animals about as well. At the far end of the route there are a series of small waterholes and we finally encounter some elephants here. They are really nice and we get the opportunity to take some good photos of them drinking and splashing.
With the manager back on site, dinner is a little more organised and less of a rush. This is helped by the fact that a large group are quite late to arrive in the dining room. We walked to and from dinner in the rain, timing our forays to be at the quiet times, between the storm cells. Once again the rain continued for a part of the night, bringing much needed water to the parched forests.