Botswana

We bid a teary farewell to Zimbabwe’s magnificent Victoria Falls and made our way to Botswana border, only an hour drive away. Unlike the time when we timidly entered Zimbabwe, the only thing that we worried about Botswana were supposedly high accommodation prices. In fact, once we left Zimbabwe, the ‘hard’ countries were now behind us. Botswana is considered a middle-income country, with stable civilian leadership (current president is an Oxford-educated economist) and progressive social policies. It is one of the few, if not the only place in Africa that used its mineral riches responsibly and towards the economic development of the country -- diamonds constitute 32% of the GDP.

Our first stop is Chobe National Park. We get up insanely early for a morning drive, reluctantly getting out of our warm sleeping bags. It’s so cold out, my fingers go numb. We get in the park, accessible only with 4WD, shortly after sun rise. It was a quiet morning, yet when we returned to the Chobe riverfront in the late afternoon we were greeted by all sorts of activities. Animals were converging on the river from everywhere -- herds of elephants and buffaloes, giraffes, monkeys… everything and everyone were out for an evening drink.

We were feeling particularly adventurous and so decided to get to our next destination by crossing the entire park from north to south. So we kicked into 4WD mode and slugged for 2 days in deep sand. We got bogged down once and as we excavated ourselves we were apprehensive of animals lurking in the bush. We finally got to Maun, which looked like an overlanding capital of the world. I have never seen so many fully kitted out 4x4 trucks in one place. We had a serious case of vehicle envy. Maun is also a launching pad for exploring the Okavango Delta -- an enormous expanse of water, the world’s largest inland delta. Every year 11,000,000,000,000 litres of water flow into Okavango. The only way to appreciate this natural phenomenon is from the air, so we splurge on a tiny 3-seater plane and take it to the sky. The views did not disappoint (see picture collage in the gallery).

After a couple days of relaxing in Maun we are off to our last country -- Namibia.