Botswana

Botswana

We first saw Botswana through visors fogged up by torrential rain. As we rode from Gaberone, the capital, to Francistown there was lightening on both sides, loud thunder claps overhead and clouds so dark it felt like early evening rather than midday! We've never been so wet - might just as well have jumped into a tub of water.

We were also introduced to a new road hazard - the elephant (for a full list of road hazards see the section below). Our second day on the road was hot and sunny and we only stayed cool by staying on the move but the sight of our first roadside elephant was enough to warrant stopping! Sitting on a motorbike looking at an elephant only a few metres away is slightly surreal and surprisingly scary. 80-brake horsepower is no match for one angry elephant power! Fortunately he seemed more intent on scratching his butt on a tree than taking his irritation out on a stray motorbike.

We reached Maun on the edge of the Okavango Delta having successfully avoided several elephants, a few baboons, an impala and endless cattle, dogs, goats and donkeys - an impressive obstacle course.

Our tent saw daylight for the first time. Once we had made our claim to a suitable patch in the campsite we headed for the bar and the pool for a wonderfully unproductive afternoon.

We decided to chill out at the camp for a couple of days enjoying the hot afternoons and cool thunderstorms at night. The close proximity of shady trees, a swimming pool and iced drinks made the extreme heat and humidity almost enjoyable! But all that changed when we booked onto a two-day mokoro trip into the Delta.

The Okavango Delta

Although the Delta is undoubtedly a beautiful and fascinating place, December is not the time to go there! The mokoro (a dugout canoe) provides absolutely no shelter from the sun and after a couple of hours becomes pretty uncomfortable to sit in. We were "poled" through the thick, tall reeds - another seasonal annoyance. Once the rains start, the Delta becomes overgrown and the narrow hippo trails along which the mokoros are poled become difficult to pass. The reeds are so high that you can't see anything beyond them and their sharp edges 'paper-cut' your arms and knees. The occasional opening into wider pools was something to look forward to. In these areas lilies sat over the water surface, an impressive selection of bird life became visible along the edge of the reeds and the odd hippo grunted and flicked its ears at us.

We pulled onto an island to set up camp. Because we were out of season, it was only the two of us and our guide. We had wanted to experience real isolation and this was it!

The real highlight of our day was standing on the edge of the island watching the sun go down across the Delta. As the sun dropped so did the temperature and the reeds around us lit up with the flickering lights of hundreds of fireflies. It was like being it in the middle of a huge Christmas decoration. But things took a bit of a down turn when we discovered that the tent we had hired was, in fact, only half a tent! Two missing poles made the whole thing a wobbly mess and after a couple of failed attempts to make it stand, we decided to give up and sleep in the open - big mistake!

We spent a sleepless night being eaten alive by mosquitoes and crawled over by an assortment of bugs - including a long pepperoni-sized (it's a bit of an animal) millipede! So the next morning when we set off for a two-hour bushwalk we were not in a particularly good frame of mind.

Our guide took us through the vegetation, which ranged from wild asparagus and sour plums to basil and sage - none of which we had expected to find growing in the African bush! It was more like walking through somebody's vegetable garden.

The bird life was as impressive as the day before - Fish Eagles in every other tree top, the enormous Palace Fish Owl, the long tailed Grey Loure and small flocks of heron and storks took turns to fly out of the trees and tall grass. We could hear whoops, tweeting and cooing from every direction. The most amusing however being the Black Collared Barbit, which has a call that sounds, surprisingly like "fuck off, fuck off!" - you need to hear it to believe it.

But the larger four-legged wildlife remained pretty illusive. Our guide excitedly pointed out the footprints of warthogs, impala, hippo, elephant and even buffalo but apart from a small family of baboons and a slightly unnerving close shave with a python, the larger wildlife stayed hidden.

As we took the 50-minute flight back to Maun, our pilot kept the plane at 500ft so we could look out for wildlife across the Delta. And there, below us, we saw the herds of impala, the grazing hippos, the giraffes, water buffalo and elephants which had so carefully avoided us for the last two days!

Road Hazards

Riding a motorbike is fun - most of the time, but like all things in life there are exceptions. Distances in Africa can make journeys arduous and the continuous 'livestock' problem means you have to keep your wits about you. Most families in the countryside keep animals of some description and the attitude seems to be why build a fence to stop them roaming when you have a perfectly good road nearby. Now there's nothing more likely to turn a pleasant ride in the countryside into an unpleasant hospital visit than untethered animals. For my own amusement and for helping to channel concentration on tedious roads I've broken the threat levels into five 'CattCons' (cattle conditions).

CattCon 1:
Any animal a good braking distance from the verge of road

CattCon 2:
Relatively predictable animals on the verge of the road - for example the roadside elephants

CattCon 3:
Unpredictable but relatively slow-moving animals on the verge of the road - cattle and donkeys

CattCon 4:
Unpredictable, fast-moving animals on the verge of the road - baboons, impala and dogs

And finally the most serious, red light flashing, alarm bell ringing danger known to motorcyclists:-

CattCon 5:
Unpredictable, fast-moving and particularly stupid animals on the verge of the road - goats!

The winning combination if hospital food is your gourmet choice.

Photographs

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