Dear all,

Apologies for the lack of photos, we don’t have time as we are racing to get to our next Tusk project at Mokolodi, just outside the Botswanan capital Gabarone, that will be familiar to all those that have read the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency books as it was Mma Ramotswe’s hangout.

Thank you for increased use of the message board, it has entertained us hugely and I am waiting to hear what my sister has to say about morphing lurchers!

Anyway, we have had a great time in Botswana apart from visiting what we though was going to be the Kalahari desert and was called ‘The Central Kalahari Game Reserve’, but which turned out to be bush similar to that we have been camping in all the way from London. What was worse was that we hardly saw a single animal. Anyway soon we will be heading to the proper desert but first we are going to the aforementioned Tusk project as we have just been given the all clear from them.

As well as crossing the treacherous salt pans in central Bots where many cars have sunk to their peril we also had an interesting time in Chobe National Park. Just to give you an idea of a day in the life of intrepid adventurers below is my journal entry from the day we crossed into Botswana. The night was probably our most exciting in Africa so far and I hope we don’t have too many that are more exciting, so enjoy.

We will attempt to put photos up when we get to Mokolodi, but keep the message board filled and we will be in touch again soon.

Saturday, 4th November

We woke reasonably early in order to give us time to pack away our thing, fill up with water and get to Chobe National Park in reasonable time. We were soon on our way out of the campsite and onto the main road to the border and our third country from last: Botswana. We had enjoyed our stay in Livingstone enormously and were sad to say goodbye to the magnificent falls and white water rapids than ran beneath, but we were also looking forward, as were our wallets, to getting back into the wild away from such luxuries as hot showers, swimming pools and well stocked bars.

Just as we left Livingstone we were stopped at what looked like a police check and a rather arrogant young man informed us that we were required to pay a levy which we would have to show when we got to the border. After arguing with him for a short time and realising that we were getting nowhere, we handed over the required sum of 10,000 Qwacha (£1.50) and continued on our way.

Fuel was becoming an issue and the light which had been on shortly after leaving Livingstone shone more brightly as we headed towards the border, which appeared to be further than we had first calculated. However, we arrived safely, although we must have been running on fumes, and parked in order to start the now familiar, but increasingly efficient, routine of getting our Carnet and passports stamped. This did not take long once we had acquired a pen from a friendly German man in the queue behind us and we then went outside in order to change our final few Zambian Kwacha into Botswanan Pula. This was done successfully, although I am quite sure we were once again ripped off by the black-market sellers who work so closely together that it is impossible to get one to offer a lower price. The Zambia/Botswana border shares something with that of the Egypt/Sudan border, which is that it can only be crossed by boat. The only difference is that you pay about £5 as opposed to £150 and the ferry ride lasts about ten minutes rather than two days. The most important bonus, however, is the fact that you are able to travel with your car and the boarding ramps look sturdy and able to hold far greater weight than our laden Land Rover.

Having paid our dues, we boarded the ferry, but not before hiding our bacon. This might seem an odd thing to do, but the Botswanans seem to have a thing about meat that is not from their own country. We had seen big signs everywhere on the Zambian side telling us of all the banned meat substances and not wanting to part with our quality meat goods from the ‘Real Meat Company’, we relocated the bacon packets from the fridge into the emergency rucksack.

We were into Botswana before we had time to blink. Rolling off the other side, we went to park outside immigration so as to complete the second half of the usual routine. Once this was complete we had to make sure that we weren’t carrying any strange diseases into the country by standing on a disinfecting sponge and then driving Geoffrey through what looked like a sheep dip. While all this was most amusing, it had to be done on the remaining engine fumes as we had still not found a petrol station. What was worse, we had seen a sign saying that it was 15km to the nearest town called Kasane. Just when we were planning what we were going to do if we ran out of fuel, we rounded the corner to find a petrol station. Breathing a sigh of relief we used up our remaining Pula and then headed to Kasane in order to fill up properly and also do some shopping to replenish our enforced lack of meat.

Kasane was a surprisingly civilised place with many Land Rovers full of wazungu (white men) buzzing around with jerry cans and roof tents similar to ours. We were feeling more and more like just another traveller doing the overland route of Southern Africa, however, we had come further than these happy campers and it said so on the side of our Land Rover. It is strange how you look down on people who are pretty much doing exactly the same as you just because they haven’t driven as far, but when you do a trip like this to feel adventurous and kid yourself that it is pioneering; you have to do something to differentiate yourself. Having said that our eyes widened a the sight of large t-bone steaks, fresh veg laid out in rows like being back in Britain and check outs that made beeping noises. We did a thorough shop and then headed to the petrol station. En route given our continued musical issues we searched high and low for an adaptor that might possibly let us play our beloved Ipods. We were out of luck though, as the only shop likely to sell such a thing, called Cosmos, had closed only thirty minutes before and wouldn’t be open again until Monday – something that was no use at all to us.

Feeling fully loaded and ready to re-embrace the bush, we drove the short distance to Chobe National Park. Chobe is meant to be one of the great National Parks of Africa, right on the Chobe River, close to the Okavanga Delta and offering the chance to see a huge amount of wildlife in uniquely stunning surroundings. The problem for us was that this opportunity came at a price, which we were not willing to pay...well at least not if we could help it. Therefore the plan we had hatched was to explain at the gate that we were merely passing through the park in transit. This was not a problem and was totally legal, however, those passing through in transit tended to be heading to the large Safari base town of Maun. For us this would not do as it would mean only being able to go through half of the park in transit. We therefore invented a destination by randomly picking the name of a village on the map further down the road we wished to use. The village we chose was called Duma, so arriving at the gate we signed the book and explained our plan. The man said that it was fine to be in transit for the first section of the park, but that we would have to pay fees when we got to the gate where the normal transit route stopped. Feeling like we had little choice and also happy that he wasn’t asking for money directly we agreed to this and went on our way. The road through the park was exceptionally good, although it passed too far from the river to allow any serious game viewing. Having said that we did pass a small group of greater Kudu, which were the first we had seen so all was not in vain.

We eventually arrived at the dreaded gate where we thought we would have to pay. Again we got out, put on our usual charm and unravelled the planned story including a map this time of how we were trying to get to Duma. The woman at the gate bought the story without flinching, but warned us that we might be asked to pay at the gate we would leave the park at. Thanking her and jumping back in the car before we were asked any more questions we were soon on the road through the park and still without having to pay a bean. Our real plan was to meander through the park until the evening by which point we would have left the park and entered what is known as the ‘Game Management Area’ that surrounds the park. Although not technically allowed, we aimed to camp in this area as in reality it was no different to camping in the actual park in terms of the surrounding wildlife.

Everthing was going smoothly; we saw elephant and in fact nearly crashed into a herd that shot out of the trees at one point. We also saw a tortoise as well as many antelope. We didn’t get up to the edge of the river as we were slightly pushed for time, but it didn’t seem to matter as far as game viewing was concerned.

We reached the park edge gate to find that there was no one at home, the person in charge of manning it had obviously decided it was safe to bunk off early. So having had a scout round to make sure nobody might be lurking ready to catch us later, we continued on our way and heading towards where we aimed to camp. We found the turning in the road using the GPS against the Botswana map we had and headed down the track. We had not seen a single other vehicle since the second gate we had passed through and we felt confident of finding somewhere secluded to camp without any one ever knowing of our location.

We soon reached a small area where the road split in two before meeting up on the other side of a large tree. Through the reasonably dense bush it was possible to make out a clearing some sixty metres of the road. Deciding that this looked like a good camping spot we pulled off the road and navigated our way around various bits of scrub until we got the clearing. There looked to be a dry watering hole at one end with elephant tracks, but deciding that it was too good a spot to pass up on, we camped as far away from the tracks as possible while I walked back to the road, taking a spade with me for protection, to make sure we were sufficiently out of view.

After walking back and giving Henry the thumbs up, we set up camp, collected some wood and set about preparing supper. Having driven through dense bush for at least the previous hour and having seen elephants and other game not far back, we felt truly in the wild and excited about being back once again in the bush.

Whilst sitting having dinner we heard animal noises in the distance including the low grumbling of an elephant that could be mistaken for a loins growl as well as some other screeching noises that sounded like something being attacked. Henry occasionally shone the torch around, but this never revealed anything threateningly close to where we were camping. We had just finished eating, however, when Henry glanced back over his shoulder whilst wearing his head torch that he had forgotten to switch off. He jumped up gasping, ‘S**t what’s that?’ He dived head first into the front of the car and emerged with the Maglite. This he shone where he had just been looking while I made my way round towards the front of the car. ‘S**t it’s a f***ing leopard!’ Were Henry’s exact words as I appeared beside him and immediately ducked slightly into the opened car door. ‘It’s a baby leopard!’ These words both reassured me and in the same instant sent a shiver down me as I begging the question, ‘Where is the mother then?’ As I inspected the ground beneath the tree not more than ten metres from the front of the car, my eyes began to adjust to what we were looking at. To me the leopard may not have been particularly big, but it was certainly no baby. It stood up from where it had been sitting and turned sideways on to confirm that it was indeed a fully grown leopard. We both made noises to shoo it away instinctively, which it begrudgingly did, although not looking particularly frightened, probably more because of the high powered torch that was boring into its eyes. As soon as it skulked off and we were out of any immediate danger, I began to regret that it had gone. Such a rare an beautiful creature and we had been lucky enough to have had one all to ourselves in the middle of the bush. Henry and I had been scouring trees in every game park in Africa and had failed to find one, yet here we were, not even in the game reserve and not even looking for the thing and it had been sitting in the shadows not more than ten metres behind Henry’s chair. With this excitement and adrenaline was pumping and we packed away our things faster than I can remember us ever doing before. Once everything was safely stowed in the car, we sat and went over the bizarre visitation. What exactly had this leopard been doing, after all they were shy creatures that avoided contact with humans and certainly wouldn’t venture into a campsite out of curiosity. My theory, which I still stick to is that the leopard was unaware of my presence and thought that it was looking at a lone human sitting with his back to it. Perhaps this leopard was sizing up the possibility of pouncing from a hidden position and making Henry into dinner. The fact that Henry happened to look behind him and happened to have still had the head torch turned on which caught the reflective eyes meant that we never found out the intentions of this particular leopard, but we went to bed feeling that we had witnessed something truly remarkable and felt both scared and very excited by it.

We were woken about an hour after falling asleep by the crashing of undergrowth. Having had a leopard in the camp, it now sounded like we had more visitors. The moon was full and once our eyes had adjusted, the moonlight bathing the small clearing allowed us to see perhaps seven large elephants trooping past not more than twenty metres from where we were sleeping as if it were daylight. Thankfully we had spotted the elephant tracks when we had been setting up camp otherwise we may have found our car bowled over while we slept on the roof just as we had seen many trees uprooted while driving through the forest.

Apart from being woken up one final time by the distant, but loud calls of hyena, we passed the rest of the night without incident. It took a great deal of time to fall asleep though after such excitement and near danger.