Tag: Botswana

Botswana – Day 5 & 6 – Exploring the Pans…the magnificence of nature at its best – the zebra migration.

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Day 5 This was a rest day for us, we spent the day catching up, with our blog and Facebook and emails…some times it’s important to put an extra day in your trip so as not to get so tired that you can’t appreciate the activities you’ve planned.  The laundry got done and the WhatsApp home to family was made. We drove around the village/town of Gweta a bit and took some pictures of its quirkiness…In the evening we said farewell to Cynthia and Jooste they were moving on, their trip was in its final stages as they returned to Windhoek, Namibia. There was singing and dancing by the staff after supper…their harmonisation is always a wonderful sound. An early night was required due to the next days early start.

Day 6. I don’t know how to start the days description, apart from wow, wow and wow…..

We knew we had  a 73 Km drive to Makgadikgadi Pans National Parks gate…so wrapped up with double fleeces a headscarf around my ears and a mask across my nose…( finally found a use for a covid mask!! ) looking more like a bandit than a Safari goer, we set off at 6.20am with the Chief driving us ….( yes!!  I was awake but only just).

It was cold on the open vehicle and we both had trouble with running eyes and noses from the wind….I put it down my bleary eyesight that I thought I saw a man squatting low in the grass just next to the main A3 road….my first thought was ‘shame he must have been caught short’ but as he started to stand up, he still didn’t seem to pull his trousers up I thought ‘dirty devil he could have gone behind a bush’’…”As we got closer and our eyesight could focus  I realised it wasn’t a man at all  but a huge black maned lion. It crossed the road and walked down the other side of the road, turned around and came back…we spent an enjoyable 10 minutes watching him parade up and back before he disappeared into the bush.  What a great start to the day… 

Arriving at the gate The Chief got us a far more acceptable breakfast which replenished us ready for the next part of the day….nothing could have prepared us for the state of the road…if Tuesday in Ntwetwe Pans, was bad this was horrendous..we shake rattled and rolled along for an hour seeing jackals, steenbok, ostrich, a few zebra, an odd wildebeest, and a ground squirrel. Then suddenly we caught sight of the Boteti River and it’s surrounding plains. It was literally heaving with zebra, as far as the eye could see.

What an amazing sight….There were a few pockets of wildebeest’s and a large pod of hippos in the water. A couple of elephants parted the zebra as they headed to the water…The noise was wonderful snorting,farting and braying. Chief was an expert about getting us within a few feet of the herds and driving us through them…they didn’t seem to even notice us..they stared, snorted and continued doing what they do. After about an hour we followed the river which was dry all apart from some pockets of small lake like oasis. We saw kudu, a pair of blue cranes, more ostrich and finally asked a friendly wildebeest if we could share the shade of his tree to have lunch…he agreed by moving off but his chum stayed put less than 10 feet away. 
After a very pleasant lunch we drove back to the original larger expanse of water. The herds had amassed even more, we would guess well over 1000 head of Zebra. There was a medium sized herd of elephant which continued to be joined by other small herds. They delighted us with their ‘meet and greet’ antics.

The hippos we’re basking in the sun, having vacated the water for the Elephants, their young were wandering around. The wildebeest and their young entertained us by skipping around chasing each other and the zebra continued to snort and bray…..all too soon it was time to head back to the lodge some 2 hours away. On the way out of the park we saw a pair of giraffe, another jackal, a slender mongoose and we visited a solar powered watering hole which was also swarming with zebra and a huge elephant throwing mud around. 

Back on the tarred road we mused over the spectacular scenes we had just witnessed. We came to see the zebra migration and wow did we see it. 

The Chief, had turned out to be a fantastic guide and driver, very friendly and extremely talented, a real asset to Gweta Lodge….Thanks Chief for a totally awesome time.

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Our Special Celebratory Trip to Botswana 2023 Day 2 to Day 4

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Our trip to Botswana in May 2023 was to celebrate Johns 70th birthday and my 60th which had been two years prior to this during the pandemic lockdown. 

Day2 – We flew into Kasane and hired a non 4×4 but high clearance vehicle( for pot hole avoidance). Although I am a reasonably experienced 4×4 driver, I don’t like driving the sand roads in Botswana……they are deep and very soft in the dry season and like driving on a skid pad which sucks you in, in the wet season…. we rented in advance from Avis a Toyota Urban Cruiser…it was a good price and the customer assistant, Ben was a delightfully helpful young man. 

We had booked into Chobe Safari lodge on line with booking.com We had bed, breakfast and evening meal  with a river view in a Safari Room for £175  or Botswana Pula 2300 per night for two people  ….it’s quite luxurious and there are lots of places cheaper in Chobe their sister hotel Chobe Bush Lodge on the same site is considerably cheaper but no river view….booking.com was cheaper than booking direct it was also the cheapest we’ve paid at that lodge for around 9/10 years…so it’s worth investigating.

You wouldn’t drive yourself in Chobe unless you were an extremely experienced 4×4 driver ( a few years ago I thought I was but had to be dug out, an embarrassing moment) Game drives through the activities desk at the hotel are US$45 / P 360 per person and River cruise is US $42/P350 per person, We  just managed to get from the car hire to the lodge in time for the afternoon Safari drive. It was a full jeep load and a driver who wanted to show us everything…hence a fairly fast bumpy drive but lots of excitment as we saw our first wildlife of our trip. 

Day 3 The next day we drove to Gweta. There are only a few tar roads in Northern Botswana so it’s quite straight forward to find one’s way. From Kasane take the road to Francis Town and turn right at Nata to Maun. It’s extremely straight forward  the road towards Francis Town is in good condition…but then I can remember back to when it was a dirt road before becoming a one strip tarred road and now by Botswana Standards it’s practically a motorway…two lane tar all the way !!! After a 5 hour drive on mostly good tar roads, interspersed with a few areas where it was better to drive in the bush at the side of the road than risk falling into a pothole…I think we emerged with all, 4 tyres intact but we’d know when we woke up the next day….at least you get a spare tyre in Botswana….. we arrived at Gweta Lodge for a 4 night stay…….Gweta lodge can only be described as quirky…it’s neither palatial or primitive…..it had electricity and even weak WiFi in the bar area….the en-suite room has mosquito nets over the beds (which is just as well as the door and it’s frame are miles apart) and air conditioning. They were in the process of building luxury rooms…none of which were available when we booked. Somewhere like Gweta lodge in the Salt pan area is about £65  or P1030 per night for the room for 2  ….The lodge had so much going for it but it just lacked management and the workers lacked direction, which meant the rooms and facilities were not shown in the best light. The cleaners did an adhoc job with no structure or routine and no checklist …so some areas of the room looked as if they had never been cleaned, and you may or may not get towels, soap, loo roll etc without having to go to reception and ask…. That evening we had a braii/ barbecue and met a nice Dutch couple, Cynthia and Jooste.  Cynthia Goedhart owns the Facebook page – “Travelling Namibia & Botswana: ideas ~ advice ~ experiences ~ inspiration! “…….with over 42.9K members it is one of the most popular Facebook African travel sites and well worth taking a look if you are travelling in this area. 

Day 4  We got up early as we were off to Ntwetwe Pans, part of the Makgadikgadi  Pans, ( about the size of Switzerland) for a full day of discovery. We had booked a safari from the lodge into Ntwetwe pans to see the furthest north meerkats. It was great not having to worry about the driving and having the whole Safari vehicle to ourselves. 

We were collected by ‘Chief’ in the Safari jeep. He was a charismatic young man, who originally didn’t take onboard the fact that we had years and years of experience of African Safari  and being in the African bush……he soon learnt the error of his ways when our spotting eyes and knowledge challenged his own less considerable skill, and he realised he was going to have to work for his money, ( US$1000 for the day meant we weren’t going to let him off lightly !!!!), rather than just joy ride!!!! We drove for about 1.15 hrs along what looked like animal tracks through marrula  scrub land….our wildlife viewing consisted of donkeys, horses, cows, we saw absolutely no other vehicle or persons even though we passed several cattle corrals with nothing but some barking dogs guarding them. Finally we got to an area of flat plains behind which was the gleaming white of the salt pans. We turned to drive along the plains and The Chief told us to look out for a man and tell him if we saw one.……we didn’t but he did and soon we were greeted by Como….who was sat on a slightly raised area of the plains. We then sat for a while until a family of meerkats began to pop up…really cute. Evidently there were 14 in the colony although we only saw 6 …delightful, busy, inquisitive little creatures. We had breakfast, if that’s what you call it, while watching the meerkats. Thankfully their antics distracted us from the curled up cheese sandwich, hard boiled egg and bread roll and the metallic tasting coffee. 

After an hour we headed on to the pan where we surprised a pair of jackals.

Our 2 minute drive on the pan was over in a flash and we were soon back on the animal tracks  heading for the famous Chapmans baobab tree. An hour later we pulled up at an area strewn with fibrous tree remains and a heritage national monument sign…the famous huge Chapmans Baobab had collapsed in  2016…yes we had taken an excursion to view a once was but no longer is magnificent tree !!!!!!!! John was polite and descended the vehicle and took a picture of the sign telling us about the tree which isn’t there any more. I am afraid the effort of climbing off and on the vehicle didn’t warrant the ‘nothing left of the tree’ view so I stayed put. 

Sensing our disappointment The Chief told us we were carrying on to see another baobab…I couldn’t contain my delight!!

On the way to our next tree viewing we visited the only 2 pans which still have a small amount of water in. To our surprise both had huge herds of wildebeest which had yet to follow the zebra migration. There was also a large number of vultures spread winged cooling off….it was a magnificent sight and what with the earlier sightings of meerkats it made our day a happy one. 
On the way to our next tree viewing we visited the only 2 pans which still have a small amount of water in. To our surprise both had huge herds of wildebeest which had yet to follow the zebra migration. There was also a large number of vultures spread winged cooling off….it was a magnificent sight and what with the earlier sightings of meerkats it made our day a happy one. 

We continued on to the the next baobab, which was actually still standing.

After a bite of lunch which fared more favourably than the breakfast we were once again subjected to the bone shaking high speed journey back to the lodge. The speed of the return was such that we had no choice but to hang on for dear life and pray. 

A lovely experience with the highlights being the meerkats and the wildebeest.

We enjoyed our evening meal chatting once again to Cynthia and Jooste.