Day 11
We prepared to leave Maun…..we paid the food, drink and laundry bill at The Safari Lodge Maun…the accommodation had been pre-paid…we were a little aghast at the laundry bill and made a mental note not to do it here again if we ever re-visited. The hotel had been great…we had, had a deluxe double which had a little patio overlooking the almost dried up river bed which was great for people watching and watching cars being washed in the tiny pockets of water which remained…the Botswana people are never short of enterprising ideas to solve environmental problems…
From Maun we drove back towards Kasane, we were stopping for two nights at Nata lodge, which sits on the Sua (Sowa) Pans . We had often thought of doing this, when we used to drive through to Chobe from Mafeking or Johannesburg in South Africa. It had quite a reputation as being a nice place, but we were always in a rush to get to our beloved Chobe.
Nata Lodge is in the same group of hotels as Chobe Safari Lodge, the group is known as “Under one Botswana Sky” …the three hotels which we are familiar with in this group all charge much the same for accommodation and activities.
The drive from Maun to Nata was uneventful, a few herds of elephant drinking out of water pipe access holes, a few herds of zebra on the road side, a stray Jackie strutting his stuff down the middle of the road….just the sort of thing you expect to see on one of the countries main tarred roads!!!
On arriving at Nata Lodge we booked in and went to our room. It was a wooden structure on stilts. Although quite dark inside it was similar in layout to the Chobe Safari lodge rooms- large bed, desk, arm chair, open bathroom area with sink and freestanding bath, separate toilet and separate shower. The only difference was that the shower was outside…which is great when the weather is fine but not so great when it rained cold, dirty/sandy rain. I guess it exfoliates your skin all over your body fairly cheaply and gives your hair a golden sand tint!!!!!!
We rested during the afternoon, rather frustrated that we couldn’t get WiFi in our accommodation neither the hotel,or our own router gave us a signal. We finally went to the bar area where we managed to get an intermittent signal. We had our evening meal in the open restaurant.
It was fairly full of a large tour groups, who seemed to be given preference over us lone travellers…….This continued over the two evenings and mornings we were there…we defiantly felt like second class citizens.. a never again experience, after all we paid more for our meals than tour groups did and we should have been given good attentive service.
Day 12
Today we relaxed, spending our time reorganising the packing, photos, writing blogs and finally going to the bar to upload using the weak internet…John walked the grounds photographing birds and we both became fascinated by a woodpecker in a nearby tree.
At 3.00 pm we climbed aboard a Safari vehicle, with 4 other couples. There were 2 other vehicles full of a big group of German tourists. We were going on to the Sua ( Sowa) pans where there is a resident large flock of Flamingos, along with some pelicans, and the usual wildebeest and zebras who live and transverse the pans.
We were allowed to alight from the vehicles and walk to the edge of the lake. Although the massive flamboyance of flamingos was a distance away it was a truly fabulous sight, a hue of pink. Some were flying in and out, pelicans were closer by observing us.
It was idyllic, or at least it would have been if it hadn’t been for the two other vehicles of very noisy tourists who set up a cocktail bar between the Safari vehicles and loudly proceeded to have copious amounts to drink.
They continued to party for well over an hour, even dancing…we asked our driver if we could please go but he said not until all our group was on the vehicle…so 3 other couples and us waited for one couple to finish their party…we returned to the lodge, passing more wildebeest as the sun went down …..
We were quite disgruntled, as this noisy, boozy crowd was well below the standard of Safari we expect…we were so disappointed.
Our disappointment continued at supper, when we were given a table in a very dark area, the service was so slow we had to keep asking..’can we place our order please’, ‘Excuse me please but where’s our food’, ‘could we see the dessert menu please’, ‘Excuse me, is our dessert coming before breakfast!’ ……there was another couple of independent travellers who also seemed to be invisible…….We returned to our room wondering why we had booked in here…this was defiantly a never again experience…
