botswana aug 2010 trip report - the overland forum · 2010-10-24 · drinking savannah, they had...

Copyright ‐ Mike Wanliss ©

Trip report – Chobe Aug 2010 Our entourage was made up of the following vehicles and occupants... Mike & Mandi in Patty, the BIG Green Disco V8 Braam & Toni in Buffy, the shiny new Puma 90

We set off on our route a couple of days early as Braam and I had to see clients in the Tuli block, this gave the girls some time to relax and go for a game drive while we were on site. Route: Jhb – Limpopo River Lodge (2 nights, 12th & 13th Aug 2010) Limpopo River Lodge – Maun (1 day, 14th Aug 2010) Maun – Savuti Camp (2 nights, 14th & 15th Aug 2010) Savuti – Linyanti (2 nights, 16th & 17th Aug 2010) Linyanti – Ihaha (2 nights, 18th & 19th Aug 2010) Duration: 11 days Distance Travelled: 3641km Fuel used in the Disco: 734.59 litres Now a few days before the trip I’d planned to service the Disco and found that there were a few spark plugs that had been cross threaded and went in search of help to try resolve this problem. I ended up at Doc Van and he quickly sorted the plug issue and went about testing my MAF (air flow meter) which he found to be faulty. Luckily he had another one which I very happily took off his hands as this promised to improve my current fuel consumption by sometghing drastic! To cut a long and laborious story short and to spare you from all the technical blab my old MAF was instructing the computer to use twice the amount of fuel needed. I went from 3.5km/l to 7km/l at highway speeds with this basic change. Ecstatic was an understatement!


Below is a break down of my fuel costs:

Fuel Station Date Litres Amount Distance Km/l Terrain

Lanseria 12‐Aug‐10 87.53 R 715.16 N/A N/A N/A Lelema 12‐Aug‐10 59.75 R 492.97 369.6 6.18 Tar Sherwood 14‐Aug‐10 81.7 BWP 500.00 R 515.00 555.5 6.79 Dirt Letlakale 15‐Aug‐10 72.73 BWP 445.83 R 459.20 384.63 5.28 Tar Maun (Tank) 15‐Aug‐10 51.32 BWP 316.64 R 326.14 359.36 7.00 Tar Maun (Jerries) 15‐Aug‐10 100 BWP 617.00 R 635.51 N/A N/A N/A Kasane 21‐Aug‐10 83.69 BWP 517.20 R 532.72 736.96 4.87 Off‐Road Nata 21‐Aug‐10 59.8 BWP 366.00 R 376.98 304 5.08 Tar Sherwood 22‐Aug‐10 88.64 BWP 542.50 R 558.78 362.21 4.08 Tar Naboomspruit 22‐Aug‐10 49.43 R 406.78 354.12 7.16 Tar Home 22‐Aug‐10 N/A 214.62 N/A N/A

TOTALS 734.59 R 5 019.24 3641 5.81 Here is our traveled route from Martins Drift – Maun – Kasane – Martins Drift


Day 1: Thursday 12th August 2010 (588km) We set off just after breakfast, jumped onto the N14 and headed north. We were headed for the Martins Drift border post and then onto Limpopo River Lodge in the Tuli block which is relatively near to where Braam and I had a site meeting the following day. The border post was as you can expect from any African border post but we went through without any hassles what so ever. Once across the border we sailed straight past the Sherwood filling station not giving it a minute’s thought that we should have topped the tanks up... more about this later though. We took the turn off to the right which would take us to Limpopo River Lodge, it had been a fairly long day in the car so we couldn’t wait to get there to sit down and have a beer! We checked in at reception, paid our camping fees and headed down to the camp site. We had stayed here a number of years before so knew the drill pretty well. All the camp sites were empty so we could choose which site we preferred, I can’t for the life of me remember what the site number was but it was as you drive into the camp site nearest the ablutions. It was shady and easily had enough space for the 2 vehicles and tents respectively. Once the tents were pitched we sat around the fire and chatted for a while before heading off to bed after a longish day on the road.


Day 2: Friday 13th August 2010 (160km) We were up quite early so that we could get to our site meeting by 10am, we took the Disco as she had a little more range due to the larger fuel tank. We arrived back at camp later in the day to find the two girls MIA, Buffy was there but there was no sign of the girls and we needed beer immediately ☺ luckily for them they had left the back window open where we could reach though and get ourselves refreshments! ICE COLD AMMOS! It wasn’t long before they came waltzing into camp a little under the weather after a day in the sun drinking Savannah, they had been bird watching. They really couldn’t have seen all that much because we heard them coming from some way away.

Just after dark two more groups arrived one of which chose the spot next door to us and the other headed right to the other end of the site. Now that the work had been done we could start relaxing and enjoying our holiday, we tried our best to make it a festive evening but the day had taken its toll and we headed to bed. It can’t have been too late because we could still hear the other campers.


Day 3: Saturday 14th August 2010 (505km) Now knowing we had a long day ahead of us we tried to get an early start so that we could get to Maun before dark. We set off along the gravel road back towards Sherwood so that we could fill the tanks again and head off. The road to Sherwood is a pretty good gravel road and you could quite easily cruise at around 80km/h on most stretches, there was the odd bump in the road that played havoc from time to time I might add. One of these bumps caused a little havoc for me mind you ...as we went over the bump I heard a tremendous crash and saw 2 empty jerry cans crashing to the ground in my rear view mirror, I quickly radioed Braam who was behind me to be careful as there were 2 jerries lying in the road... We turned around, picked them up and upon inspection of the FR jerry can holders one of the latches had snapped off completely! It was cable ties to the rescue and we were off again. Below is the accident scene ;)

Soon after that I realised that we might not make it back to Sherwood to fill up after chasing to and from site the day before. We had used a bit more fuel than expected. We pushed along steadily until Patty began to show signs of running low on petrol, I pushed her as far as I could (to her detriment later I might add) until she finally ran out of petrol ... 40km from the Sherwood filling station. Braam continued on and filled a jerry can for us while we waited; we topped her up and were back on the road towards the filling station to give her a full belly of juice. Once all the tanks were full again we set off on the tar towards Maun.


A little way down the road we could see a group of vultures on the side of the road, we slowly approached the scene and began piecing the events together. There had been an accident of sorts with 1 car involved, it looked as though they had lost control and rolled the vehicle only to hit a donkey that was minding his own business in the veld next to the road. The vehicle was being removed from the scene as we arrived there. Once all the vultures had dispersed we went to investigate.

This is what was left of the poor donkey after it had been visibly slaughtered by locals with only the scraps left for the scavengers.


We set off again only to begin having hassles with Patty, she started spluttering and doing some strange things. It seemed that that the dreaded Friday the 13th was happening a day late! After running through a few things on the side of the road we decided that we should probably look for a place to stay for the evening and try sort the problem in the morning. By this stage it was pretty late in the afternoon and went looking at Orapa only to find out that we weren’t going to come right there... we backtracked a little to the town of Letlakane after reading in the books we had with us that there was a guest house at the Engen. We found the Engen and positioned directly next door was a guesthouse called Granny’s ☺ brilliant! They informed us that we could eat at the restaurant next door which was also owned by Granny.

I can honestly say that the T‐bone steak and pap for we had for dinner was awesome!! We didn’t stick around too long after dinner as we were pretty tired, we headed back to our rooms to hit the sack. Once there we realised it might be a long night as there was a pretty loud party happening very close to our guest house, the DJ clearly loved the sound of his own voice too! Letlakane along with the rest of Southern Africa had clearly been caught up with soccer madness during the world cup in South Africa because every 3rd song he played was the song by “Shakira – Waka Waka its time for Africa” Only in Africa!! After some time lying in bed with many thoughts running through my head as to what could possibly be wrong with the old girl. I eventually came to the conclusion that the fuel pump was playing up as she would run fine at idle but as soon as I touch the pedal she would starve. Some way through all these thoughts I dosed off only to wake in the morning. In the end a good night’s rest was had!


Day 4, Sunday 15th August 2010 (499km) After a good night’s rest and a clear head we decided to try find a spares shop, luckily there was one across the road, even more of a win because it was a Sunday. By this stage I had come to the conclusion that it was the fuel pump that was playing up as she would idle and run perfectly at idle RPM but as soon as I needed more juice she would starve. I deduced that the fuel pump was not able to maintain enough fuel pressure for the V8. We took a sample across the road and to my surprise they had a similar pirate part, the pump cost BWP300 which I thought wasn’t too bad. We fitted the new pump in a matter of minutes; made sure all was well, repacked the drawers and hit the road again. Right, it was now time to push a little as we were due in Savuti this evening and it was already 10am and we had some distance still to make up!! Fortunately we didn’t need to get too many supplies apart from some meat for 2 night’s braai’ing and some drinking water which we bought along route to Maun. At P44.00 per kg for fillet we purchased all of it along with a few kg’s of rump steak with was half that price ... unbelievable! We only stopped in Maun to fill both vehicles bellies and the jerry cans on the roof, as soon as this was done we set off for the park entrance. Now having read about not being allowed to collect wood anymore we stopped and bought enough wood for 6 nights from the locals before entering the park. Upon arrival at the park entrance we came across an &Beyond supplies truck that had a flat back wheel and they didn’t have a jack, we quickly helped them jack the truck up using the high lift jack, replaced the wheel and we were on our way again. Judging by the state of the tyre they had driven a fair distance on the flat ... there was nothing left of it!


Once we were done changing the truck tyre we packed up, put the high lift back on the roof and set off again in the direction of Savuti. By this stage we definitely weren’t going to make it to Savuti before dark. We hadn’t travelled too far down the road before we came across a decent pride of lions, the only reason we saw them was because Mandi nearly drove over one of the lioness’ front paws which was lying partially in the road... To be fair we weren’t really game viewing but attempting to get to our camp site. ☺ In any event we stopped and watched these majestic cats for a short while until they moved off into the distance, obviously setting off on their evening hunt. It was a pride of 6 adults and 6 cubs that we could see, there were two distinct sets of cubs.


We set off again and after chatting briefly over the radios we decided that it was time to start looking for a spot to camp for the night as we weren’t in the mood to travel for another couple of hours in the dark to Savuti. There was a fair amount of debate going on inside Patty as I was saying we should find somewhere soon before we lose too much light but Mandi was insistent that we get further from where we had just spotted the lions ☺ We soon agreed and pulled of the road and headed towards a small clearing where we began to set up camp. While the girls went about unpacking the vehicles and prepping for dinner Braam and I pitched the tents and started the fire. Now there is one thing I need to mention and that is simply about how well planned our meals were, Mandi had pre planned all our meals for the trip and pre cooked and frozen 90% of our meals. We ate anything from lasagne to pizza’s to roasted pork neck ... we ate like kings in fact and the best part about doing things this way was there was no need to slave over a fire / braai / potjie pot. Ingenious I tell you! This evening was one of those evenings where our fire was simply to heat the food. Shortly after eating we headed for our tents and some rest so that we could get an early start to the day.


Day 5, Monday 16th August 2010 (89km) We woke early to have some coffee and watch the sunrise as I had said to myself this was something I didn’t want to miss out on. It was fantastic to say the least...

Oh yes and another revelation was the use of 3 in 1 coffee sachets, previously we would have had a coffee plunger with us and had to labour with the plunger, milk and sugar. The sachets are very easy and take up far less space! We had decided to take the scenic route to the Savuti camp via the Savuti Marsh road and make a game drive of it seen as though we had the whole day now to get to camp and setup. What an unbelievable mornings driving it was, we had seen loads of game and an awesome amount of water in the marsh. Game included hundreds of elephants, Impala, Wildebeest, Warthog, Kudu, Tsesebe, Roan and a host of birds.


Below are some photos of the water we experienced...

The water in the marsh is sparkling clear and walking the crossing was a treat as it cooled me off.


There were a few of the crossing that were pretty deep but nothing that wasn’t passable bearing in mind that I didn’t have a snorkel fitted on the Disco. The water birds were everywhere, it was a fantastic sight to see the marsh like this, and it was a stark contrast to the previous times we had visited!


We soon headed back to camp for the afternoon and decided against going out for another drive that day.


We sat around camp and let the camp wildlife entertain us for the afternoon. We had far too many hornbills to even begin to count them, from the yellow billed to the grey headed to the Bradfield’s. There were also resident squirrels but that is to be expected I guess. A couple of little mongoose’s also decided it was time to visit while we sat and watched.


We had a pretty chilled evening to be honest, as expected the resident elephant made an appearance in the camp site that evening along with 2 honey badgers that definitely knew how to open the rubbish cages! The camp site was full with many safari groups but not noisy at all.


Day 6, Tuesday 17th August 2010 (107km) After another good night’s rest we got up and headed out for a drive to see what we could find this morning, we had heard there was a cheetah kill so we decided to go in search of that without any luck. We turned and headed north again towards the marsh where we had seen all the game the previous day and we were in luck again, they obviously liked this place! ;) Amongst all the common antelope we saw a decent herd of Roan which always puts a smile on one’s face! We saw many many many elephants and wildebeest and another good size herd of Tsesebe. I also got quite excited when we saw the size of the Kudu bulls strutting around!


Did I mention that we saw hundreds of elephants again today? ;)

The Roan just weren’t playing the game with us ... they just stayed out of sight and far away enough for us not to be able to get good shots of them!


After a good mornings viewing we headed back to camp to pack our things, grab a bite to eat and head for Linyanti. Just as we were packing up the next group of campers arrived that had booked the site we used. We said our farewells and off we headed. This is the river crossing right near the Savuti Camp site entrance.


Can you believe this is the Savuti River, a first in 30 or so years!


Mandi and I had been leading the way for a couple of days now and thought we should let Braam and Toni lead for a change so that they don’t continually eat the dust thrown up behind us. I think this may have been the second time they switched their GPS on and it clearly showed as we did a complete loop to end up back at the Savuti camp site after about 15min. They quickly honed out their navigation skills and we were now headed in the right direction ☺ We had decided against using the main road to get to Linyanti and rather stick to the Savuti River to the left and then head up along one of the concession boundaries. This route was very slow going simply because the track was overgrown and seldom used, the abundance of elephants also contributed to the state of the road as they seemed to have a habit of pushing trees over onto the track... perhaps they trying to tell us something? ☺ It wasn’t a long stretch we needed to travel but boy did it take a LOOOOOONG time! We stopped a few times when the road got close to the river to cool off as it was pretty warm by this time of the day! Once we reached the boundary road it opened up into something that could be used as a runway for a not so small aircraft! We were pretty happy to see this road though as we needed to make up a little bit of time to reach Linyanti before dark.

The road surface was very good and you could travel pretty fast along here.


We had made up quite a lot of time now that the road opened up, we arrived at the office, checked in and headed off to the deserted campsite, and it was fantastic! There was no one else there and we had it all to ourselves tonight.


We pitched our tents and sat down to some sundowners overlooking a swamp where the hippos were in chorus! Now this is definitely one of the wonderful sounds of Africa!

Not long after the sun set Braam and Toni decided they were going to make use of the ablutions and headed off to shower. We stayed in camp to get the fire started and get dinner on the go, shortly after that I heard some serious rustling noises in the reeds and a few meters away from our camp spot. I called Mandi and said she should listen as I thought it was an elephant moving through the water only to see this giant lump of Hippo pop out of the water and head up the embankment to do his evenings grazing ... what an awesome sight, since he was only 15 or so meters away from us. What made this even better is we got to try out the new red filter I had made back home for our spot light so as not to bother the poor guy by shining our light in his eyes, it worked a charm! While all of this was happening we were of course standing on the roof rack of the car ... I’m certainly not standing on the ground near any wild hippo thank you! Once he had moved off a second one came out of the water to join him. We waited a while before we climbed off of our safe perch, once we did this we thought we should warn the others that there was a hippo about and they should be on the lookout... Before we could get anywhere near the ablutions, in fact we were only just past the nose of Buffy we obviously caught the big guy by surprise because he let out a serious bloody curdling bark! Now you must understand that we couldn’t see him but he was pretty close. Mandi with a glass of red wine in her hands leaped onto the bonnet in one foul swoop spilling most of it in the process ☺ we searched the grounds but could see him anywhere and decided it was now safe to get down from the bonnet again. The others arrived back from the showers totally oblivious and the story telling began! We had dinner and headed off to bed for some rest after a very lekker day!


Day 7, Wednesday 18th August 2010 (108km) The hippos woke me pretty early with all the noise they made as well as their entry technique back into the water... there was no doing this slowly or quietly, nothing compared to the way the exited just a few hours before. This was a race to get there before sun up and they were not holding back. The crashing of branches and water was incredible! We had also had also been paid a visit by the local troop of baboons which had helped themselves to anything they could possibly find in our camp site, including Toni’s 1 boot which they had removed from inside the fly sheet of the tent and carried a number of meters away. I’m not sure what they thought they were going to do with the boot mind you! Eating it was attempted as there was evidence of this but it obviously it’s more of an acquired taste because they left it alone... ;) The Linyanti campsites are far nicer than the Savuti camp sites, they are all under large trees which offer lovely shade and they over look the swamps which are a hive of activity all day. There were hippos moaning and grunting all day, elephants making their way through the reeds and loads of birds.

The elephant above came with a few meters of our camping spot while he was working his way around the open expanse of water. We watched him for at least 2 hours as he made his way around. Now because it was our first time in Linyanti we didn’t know that there weren’t any driving routes to do game viewing besides the main track but went to investigate at the office as the maps and T4A didn’t give us any detail...


This was confirmed at the office by the officials as well but we decided to take a drive along the main route anyway ... it was a long laborious drive where we saw very little game... It was time to booze cruise!

It was a similar road to the highway we had travelled the afternoon before... and had sections of very soft sand that patty really enjoyed as she has the grunt and I had deflated my tyres. Buffy however wasn’t having fun at all with her hard highway tyres. Braam was just too lazy to deflate, no other reason! After driving for a darn long time and seeing very little we decided we weren’t going to back track along the main track but would take a chance and cut through a concession area to get back to camp. We didn’t see a soul until we neared the Linyanti office again where we passed an official vehicle, we simply greeted them, had a brief chat and headed off again on our way.


Once we got back to camp we lazed around and slowly but surely the camp site began to fill up much to our disgust ... we wanted it all to our selves again!!! ;)


Later that afternoon one of the elephants decided he’d come pay us a visit in the camp site, they are incredible animals and it always surprises me how silently they move around!


Since there was no driving to be done the afternoon was spent lying around reading books etc. Here too we had a few visiting friends that were obviously quite used to people...

The afternoon quickly turned to evening and we sat by the fire recounting our experiences so far. Now tonight we were planning / hoping that the hippos would make an appearance again, Mandi had noted the time in which they arrived the night before and we waited in anticipation for this. This time we were far more prepared, with the light ready, vehicle positioned better etc ... we did hear the rustle and noise of the reeds moving as they worked their way closer to the water’s edge but alas...it we weren’t to be as fortunate! They didn’t come out the same place as the night before and we presume they exited elsewhere because there was a group of campers not far from where they would have climbed out. We went about our evening, had dinner and headed off to bed.


Day 8, Thursday 19th August 2010 (217km) We didn’t waste much time getting packed up and moving this morning and just before we were about to leave one of the fellow campers came across to us and asked for help. They were a group of young Italian guys that had 2 flat tyres on their rented vehicle. We took our ARB tyre repair kit and tool box along to see if we could help them. We quickly plugged the first hole in the tyre that was a tiny hole in the side wall from a branch in the soft sand. Pumped the tyre and all was well. The second tyre wasn’t repairable the side wall cut was simply too big so we had to leave that one as is. The other problem they had was the spare that sits under the car was jammed and it wouldn’t come down meaning they didn’t have a working spare wheel. We said goodbye and wished them luck and hit the road ourselves, we were now headed for Ihaha. There is basically only 1 route from Linyanti to Ihaha without going through the concession areas much of which we had travelled the day before so it was plain sailing with the odd patch of thick / deep sand. We passed a large group of saffers travelling in the opposite direction most of them being from Pongola judging by the number plates. Man oh man I’m happy I travel in a small group and have a light load... those vehicles were loaded to the hilt and towing huge off road trailers. This is just my opinion but why carry all that crap?!? With the sand ahead of then they were going to have a long day ☺ We stopped along the way from time to time to have a little fun...


The only saddening part of this stretch of road was the amount of roadwork’s going on, the Chinese have arrived and are building what looks like a highway straight through the middle Chobe. Why I’m not entirely sure.... This annoyed me somewhat! Instead of heading to Ihaha directly we decided to go to Kasane because we had been rationing ourselves for a day now because we’d run out of beer, now this in my mind is a huge problem not worth dealing with! It had gotten so bad that I was drinking Savannah light for goodness sakes!! Disastrous! <RANT BUTTON ON> Once on the transit road we stopped at the boom as you do, we then went inside to sign the book. Well this is how it is normally when you don’t have an official being an asshole. For some or other reason this guy was in the mood to mess people around today, one of them being me. You could have sworn I was a criminal being interrogated by the FBI ... this lasted a few minutes until I lost it and told him to stop his shit and that he had no clue what he is talking about and doesn’t need anything of the sort from me. I also said he should stop taking frikkin chances! I have travelled this road enough to know what I should be doing. Shortly after that we walked out of his office and the boom was opened <RANT BUTTON OFF> Anyway we got to Kasane and filled the fridges again with all the necessities such as beer, some more beer, a few savannahs, a little more beer, some vodka and some more beer ☺ right... we now have 4 very happy campers! Now seen as though were we in town we thought we’d top the tanks up to make sure we didn’t need to come back to Kasane before we left on the coming Saturday, upon arrival we were informed that they had no petrol what so ever ... only diesel. This wasn’t a problem as we still had enough.


We then decided to game drive back to Ihaha using the river road all the way to camp. The game as usual along this stretch was unrelenting; I might add though that I have never seen so many elephants and buffalo in one place in my life. Unbelievable!!


We arrived at the Ihaha office only to find that our camp site was already occupied (or at least on the white board), the office didn’t have any answers as to why or how this had happened and simply said we should go and choose another one... Interesting way of doing things but hey, who are we to argue. We decided to have a look at the site which we had been booked on just to make sure this was in fact the case. It was and we briefly chatted to the couple there and they explained that theirs was also taken already. We proceeded to choose another site that was as shady as the original site and set up camp, soon after that the camp manager came around and said we should come up to the office to sign in once we were done. I went up and signed in. Now that the strange formalities were done we could go and relax! By this time it was again fairly late in the afternoon so we decided just to take it easy and enjoy the afternoon in camp. We had a very relaxing evening and sat around for hours talking at watching the various herds coming down to the water to drink. While we were sitting chatting, Toni spotted a Hyena walking past our camp site which we watched closely to check he wasn’t up to no good and made sure he was moving away from our camp. We shone a torch up towards the ablutions only to see if we could see where he had gone... we now saw a dozen or so eyes reflecting back at us .... this did cause a small amount of discomfort as we couldn’t see exactly what they were. The initial thoughts were more hyenas but that would simply have been crazy ☺. After closer inspection we realised that it was a large herd of buffalo which was making their way down to the water edge to have a drink. It was a seriously large herd that never seemed to let up, quite a lot of the herd then decided they wanted to cross the river to graze on the other side. They did this with ease in fact... nature is an amazing thing! I certainly don’t have the stones to climb into that water and swim across during the day never mind in the darkness of the night!! It was a fairly action packed evening with way more night sounds and animals than we had experienced thus far on the trip! While there was all the buffalo commotion Braam and Toni were trying their luck to get a better look at the buffalos Mandi and I were sat around chatting when we saw a large civet skirting around the camp, we quickly got out the red filter and began watching this fantastic nocturnal animal. He didn’t stick around long enough for the others to see unfortunately but he was an awesome sighting! We eventually packed everything away and headed off to bed. We had just been dozing off when Mandi shook me awake and said there was something else in the camp and that I should see what it is as it was making a racket. I tried to peer out the tent window without any luck... I needed to hang my head out to get a look. Once I got a good look at it I realised it was another new night animal ... this time it was an Aardwolf that had come to pay us a visit. Brilliant! I watched him for a short while and once he had finished scavenging he moved off into the darkness. It was now time to get some sleep!

Zzzzzzzzzzzz


Day 9, Friday 20th August 2010 (85km) We woke up pretty early knowing we had the entire day to get out and go for a decent game drive, we’d had a brief chat about which route we were going to take and decided due to the amount of game we had seen the previous day along the river we would do a similar track just using all the other loop roads as well. I must stress that Chobe definitely does not have a shortage of elephant and buffalo, around every corner and every tree or shrub you will find either a herd of elephants or a massive herd of buffalos...it is simply insane!


There almost seemed to be as many baby elephants as there were adults, they were everywhere!


As we worked our way along the river front we decided to try get away from all the safari vehicles as they are quite bullish and can be somewhat of an irritation having them fly by every few minutes. On T4A i had seen a set of tracks that headed up into the flood plain so we decided to follow those for a while... For the birders out there this is definitely the route you want to be driving, AWESOME!


Along this route was also saw a number of Letchwe, they too were always just too far away to get a decent shot of There were also increasing number of Impala and Sable in this area, these are awesome antelope!


Due to the high water levels in the Chobe River a lot of the tracks were either flooded or not passable so we had to change our route a number of times in this section of the park. I have also never seen so many water monitors in one day’s drive before, there were loads of them! They grow the crocodiles LARGE up here too ;) he was more the 100m away!

By now it was time to start heading back to camp as we were getting a little hungry, it must have been almost 2pm already! We went up to the main track and made a beeline for the camp. Once at camp we made whipped together a snack and relaxed while regaling about the morning’s sightings and happenings. We headed back out again late in the afternoon to go in search of the lions we had been informed about by the officials at the gate on our return, they were apparently along the river’s edge lying under the trees. Now seen as though we had travelled the river route every time now we decided to take one of the other more inland routes, here again we saw elephant herd after elephant herd and by now we were so sick of seeing elephants and buffalos that we simply passed them by ...


Unless of course there were cuties to look at for the girls! ☺

We soldiered on and didn’t see much more along that route so we headed back down toward the water again to see if we could find the lions we were after. Once back down on the plains the sight was simply magnificent! We sat for a while just trying to take in the sheer beauty of what we were seeing...


It is very difficult to explain just how many elephants and buffalos were on the plains but here are a few pictures that attempt to show the numbers.


The panorama above just doesn’t do it justice!


We came across this giraffe that had his fair share of ox peckers going about their chores while sitting on his neck.


We also saw another bachelor herd of big Kudu bulls ☺


We were slowly making our way back towards the campsite when we found the lions ☺ they were doing what lion’s do best... chilling! Although there was one lioness casting an eye over the plains to see what she could eat ;)


We could only see the group of 5 lioness’ and weren’t sure whether there was a male around or not but they did have pretty full bellies! We watched them for a few minutes but moved off to let the tour operators have a closer look before we got pushed off the sighting ☺. I will let the next few photos do the talking now...


After having a brilliant afternoon’s drive we set off back to camp to relax and enjoy our last evening in the park. We had pizzas on the menu tonight (pre cooked and frozen) which was very exciting indeed, we started the fire and while that was going we headed off to the showers to clean up a little as we’d been told that the showers were hot today as they’d fixed the donkey. The lights still weren’t working but that didn’t bother us in the slightest... Now that we were all clean we sat around the fire discussing what our plans were for the following day and where we would head as we hadn’t planned any further than this. The only thing that counted against us was that we needed to be back in Johannesburg on Sunday evening at the latest...bear in mind we were still over 1000km away, meaning we didn’t have too much time to play with unfortunately! We, after some debate decided to pack up camp as early as possible and head for Kasane the following morning. We all went to be with full bellies, extremely happy with what we’d seen and experienced in the past 6 days in the park. Again Mandi and I decided to try wait up with our red filter light in hand a little longer to see what nocturnal animals came to visit us tonight... Not long after we got into the tent the Civet made an appearance again much to our delight. He skulked around all over the campsite looking for whatever morsel he could pick up, when he didn’t find much he looked visibly pissed and headed off into the darkness again. We soon nodded off but didn’t have a very good sleep because of a hyena that sounded like he was right outside the tent, I’m sure he sat laughing the entire night in the same spot!! We can’t really complain though can we... LOL!


Day 10, Saturday 21st August 2010 (532km) Day 10 had come way too fast for my liking, it felt like we were just getting into the swing of things and beginning to relax and it was time to start heading back to the hustle of Jo’burg... We had packed up and were ready to leave campsite #6 at Ihaha by shortly before 8am, we stopped at the gate to sign out and we were on our way. We had said we would head straight out in the morning along the main route but being in front I knowingly took a ‘wrong’ turn and headed along the river front for one last time ☺ once again and as expected we saw the hundreds upon thousands of buffalo and elephant! We didn’t stick to the river road the entire way back but instead headed up to the main track after a few km’s, by now we definitely weren’t stopping for any elephants or buffalo! We soon came up behind a rental vehicle that was stuck in some thick sand, they were attempting to dig their way out as they were alone. I stopped and offered our assistance and moved Patty in front of the double cab, connected the strap and after a few attempts decided rather to bring Buffy around as she had a winch and the sand was simply too soft to gain any traction and momentum what so ever! While I was trying to recover the double cab I heard something snap on my vehicle but it was at that point I’d decided to rather let Braam have a go so didn’t think too much of it... haha silly me! More about that shortly though...


He had dug himself in quite nicely to be honest and his tyres with rock hard so we went about dropping the tyre pressure before attempting to winch him out. Once we were all set we began recovery the Nissan rental, it took a fair amount to get the vehicle onto solid ground again. In the meantime there the group of onlookers grew extensively.

Now that the recovery was finished everyone went on their merry way while we were still rewinding the winch cable, we finished that, had a brief bit of banter and decided to move off as well. We walked over to the car, I tried starting Patty, but there was a problem... battery light was on, she had no power and was idling like a diesel. Hmmmm, now what?? I opened the bonnet had a brief look around and noticed the fan belt had come off, initially I thought “oh ok, this isn’t bad I can simply pop it back on and off we go” until I looked a little closer that was! The tensioner pulley for the fan belt had run a bearing and had basically fallen off, or was about to in any case!


At least it was a Land Rover pulling another Land Rover ;)

There wasn’t anything we could do to fix it there unfortunately so we hooked up the strap and began towing to Kasane. It was easy going from there onwards to get to town, once in town we stopped at the Engen we had stopped at a few days earlier to fill up with petrol. Braam filled Buffy up while I dismantled the tensioner pulley, once I had it off I went across the road to the spares shop to see if they perhaps had a bearing for me. We were in luck and after a few trips back and forth to get the correct size bearing we were all fixed up and had the fan belt on and we were filling up with juice so that we could hit the road again. We hadn’t lost too much time as we’d been in town for less than 2 hours, done the necessary repairs, and satisfied the girls’ bellies with petrol and diesel as well as ours and the other girls’ bellies with KFC! We were now on our way towards Nata, once there were would make a decision as to where we would stay for the evening. It was plain sailing to Nata albeit pretty hot! There were some road works along the way but nothing that we weren’t used to...we do live in Jo’burg after all! We reached Nata quite early so decided to push further and managed to get to Francistown where we stayed at a guest house called Woodlands just outside of town. We had a very good night’s rest in their cabins which were very clean with fantastic ablutions, they do have camp sites too and the whole place is self catering. Our last night in Bots was the coldest night we had experienced, it was freezing! We were happy we stayed indoors ;)


Day 11, Sunday 22nd August 2010 (729km) There’s not much to say about the last day as we spent it in the vehicle most of the day, the drive included a compulsory drivers briefing shortly before we reached Martins Drift border post where it was explained why we should “Drive to live” and not drink and drive.

Soon after that we were crossing the Limpopo back into South Africa.


Summary: The trip itself was an extremely successful trip albeit too damn short! But as with everything in life, reality bites and you need to make some money to continue doing trips like this. The Botswana parks are still awesome parks to visit and the facilities are improving making it more accessible. This unfortunately means we won’t rush back in a hurry especially in peak season, I for one and I know I can speak for the others prefer the lonely, less travelled route / parks. Apart from the minor breakages I suffered on Patty and the TC cables on Buffy we didn’t have any other hassles, no punctures, nada, nothing ☺ The only complaint I have is when people attempt to take you for a ride, we are visitors to Botswana after all and make up a large percentage of the country’s GDP by visiting and paying our fees only to have a small few trying to pull the piss and possibly ruin it for others! Africa is my home and I love it!

Things that worked well:

• I cut my roof rack shorter so that we could open the sunroof and stand with our midriff out of the roof. It made the photography far easier!

• I installed a false ceiling in the rear of Patty to house the self inflating mattresses, sleeping bags and pillows, it worked a treat!

• I fitted a new storage compartment behind my centre console with a false floor where the safe resides.

• Having nothing on the roof besides 6 empty jerry cans.

Things that didn’t work so well:

• I am tired of carrying jerry cans but no one has a 100l fuel aux tank for me! I do drive a V8 after all and NO I don’t want a diesel...!

• I need to install the National Luna battery management system to my dual battery setup. • Buffy doesn’t have enough space with her jump seats still fitted!

That is that, till next time... Mike, Mandi, Bram & Toni

botswana aug 2010 trip report - the overland forum · 2010-10-24 · drinking savannah, they had...

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