Next stop Botswana.....all I knew before the trip was that Botswana produced lots of diamonds but have since learned that there's a lot more to it!

We take a ferry to cross the border from Zambia to Botswana and it's blistering hot - better get used to it as it's likely to only get worse as we head towards Namibia! The border crossing is apparently one of the world's worst for cargo - there are literally miles and miles of trucks along the road waiting to cross and apparently some of them can wait up to two months! Seriously - you wonder what they are bringing over that's worth that!

Our first stop in Botswana is Chobe National Park - famed for an abundance of elephants which we duly see! We stay at the Thebe Safari Lodge where we spend time just chilling out by the pool (it's still really hot) and eating Chantelle's (our tour guide) amazing food. She's an great cook so we're well set for the rest of the trip! From Thebe we visit Chobe where along with numerous elephants we see buffalo, impala and kudu (both types of antelope) and a puff adder snake!

We take a boat trip down the Chobe river from which we get amazing views and see more cool wildlife - becoming something of an ornithologist at this stage - never really interested me before but they're pretty beautiful here! On the boat trip we get up close and personal with some crocs, lizards and hippos! We are still on the river at sunset and it's one of the best I've seen yet - really spectacular! Botswana also has some pretty intense tropical storms and I love them!

Another highlight of Botswana is the Okavango Delta. The delta is formed where the Okavango River empties onto a swamp in an endorheic basin in the Kalahari Desert, where most of the water is lost to evaporation and transpiration instead of draining into the sea - got that from Wiki! We travel through the delta in a boat called a makoro - it's a flat bottomed boat usually made of wood but which is more recently made of fiberglass for environmental reasons. We have a poler who steers us through the rivers and reeds, avoiding the hippos. Apparently hippos kill more humans in Africa than any of the other wild animal! We spend the night bush-camping on a little island in the eastern Delta near the Boro River. We cook over a campfire and eat our dins off an upside-down makoro - it's great! I've created a monster though and introduced the group to the card game 'Spit/Speed' - the laughing and shouting never ends as we all get way too competitive!

We take walk around the delta with two guides who don't really know their arses from their elbows, as we later discover! The feed us with a whole load of crap info but at least we get to see some cool zebras and another puff-adder snake! When we return to mainland we take a scenic flight over the delta which is amazing - see troops of animals - elephants, hippo, giraffe etc!

Next stop, Ghanzi - another hotspot! Here we camp by an old quarry which is now filled with water - its a really lovely place! We just hang out, go for a swim, enjoy Chantelle's cooking and a beer! We also take a tour of a Bushman village. The Bushmen are part of the Basarwa tribe (called San tribe in Namibia and South Africa) and basically live off the land. You will see from the photos that they wear basic animal hide as clothing, use plants for food and medicine and store their water in ostrich eggs! They speak a really interesting language called Khoisan which is full of clicking noises made with the tongue. Really interesting to listen to! Unfortunately, as it turns out, the village we visit isn't an authentic village and the Bushmen we meet are actually from an area further south - they only spend time in Ghanzi for the tourists....just what you want to hear, eh?! The sunset at Ghanzi is....again....stunning! Loving the red African sun!
After Ghanzi it's on to Namibia but am really bowled over by Botswana - its a beautiful country and there's so much to see!