Botswana, Part 2

Click here for Part 1

Fishing for a signal. En route to Maun

PART 2

Maun

Outskirts of Maun

Approaching the Delta

At dawn we got up and struck camp with the sun peeking over the horizon, the first of many incredible sunrises we would see in Botswana. We headed off soon after breakfast, having another long haul ahead of us that day. Heading due west, the road was once again straight and monotonous, but not as long as the previous day. Having gotten away at a decent hour also helped fight the distance wearing us down, although by the time we got to our destination we were all ready for a break from the road! At one point on the road to Maun, we passed through a brush fire that was jumping the road (they were everywhere and the haze was bad for the duration of the trip) and feeling the radiated heat from the flames made for some pretty hairy moments. Thankfully it was just grassland, if there had been bigger shrubs and trees, we may have been in a bit of trouble.

VIEW OKAVANGO PHOTO SET

First water we'd seen in a while. Okavango

So, dusty, tired, sweaty and smoke-ridden, we rolled into Maun. This little town is the nexus of Okavango Delta tourism, with an airport, many charter companies and tour operators pandering to the large volume of travelers passing through. We stopped in town to pick up supplies and I went looking for backup SD cards, worried that if something happened to the photos I had taken thus far, I would lose my mind. We then checked into the Delta Rain headquarters, where we would be staying for two nights. Once again it was blisteringly hot in the rooms, an odd mixture of brick building with a canvas roof, but there was running water, so we could get clean before heading off again. After some deliberation, we decided to all weigh in and book a chartered flight over the Delta so we headed off to Maun Airport. We arrived at the modest-yet-cool terminal building during a town-wide blackout, with hordes of South African school kids milling about, no running water and obviously no electricity. Going through security we were subject to a nightclub-type security screening of emptying pockets and camera bags, which was amusing but probably terrifying to First Worlders who have never seen this kind of thing!

Trop buffels

Across the tarmac we trekked, short rows of civilians following their hi-vis vested pilots to their respective planes. And this place was busy! It looked like a miniature version of the Berlin Airlift as we took off, taxiing in a close queue and taking off seconds after the previous aircraft had left the strip. First we crossed the south-eastern edge of the Delta, clearly marked by a buffalo fence and off we went in a long northwesterly box-pattern over the Delta to Chiefs Island, the one place that Rhinos can still be found. They are being reintroduced after poaching decimated their numbers to within an inch of extinction in Botswana.

Hazy horizon over the Delta

The smudged horizon attested to the ongoing veld fires and from the air we saw several burns in progress, but the desperately dry landscape soon gave way to streaks of silver as we began approaching the Delta proper. For forty minutes I was gawking and snapping away at the insane tapestries formed by the overlapping processes of water flow, animal migration and plant growth. It is hard to put into words the incidental complexity that occurs on the ground, but I love to see these occurrences in nature. I am, however, running the risk of appearing either insane or intellectual and I am neither. Although if you ever find yourself in the vicinity of the Okavango Delta, try getting airborne, it is really something else as it gives a sense of perspective into the unique landlocked ecosystem which was formed by a tectonic shift disrupting the flow of the Zambezi river.

Channels and game tracks

Soon we were back on terra firma and gushing like a bunch of schoolgirls, fatigue and discomfort a thing of the past. We were beginning to get the better sense of the place as the journey progressed and it was growing on us. It happened also to be Marianne's sixtieth birthday and the Delta flight must have been one hell of a gift, because none of us could have foreseen how impressive it would end up being. That evening we celebrated Marianne's birthday with a thorough introduction to the duty free Amarula that had followed us from Joburg airport.

Sand, grass and game tracks.

Back to Terra Firma

On the Delta

One of many many roadside wrecks

Hawk food

The next morning was another ridiculously early start as we got going before seven. On the back of a big Merc truck, we set off with a party of very pleasant Peruvians to explore the Delta up close. It was a cool, bumpy ride of about ninety minutes through the neighborhoods of Maun, where everyone will greet you and waves, no matter what they may be doing. We gradually left the town behind and passed small transient settlements. Villages of tents where people and livestock move according to the seasonal movements of the water. We also began seeing the first signs of elephants and the toll they take on the environment. A few twisted trees attested to this and at first you look around as though they are lurking somewhere nearby, but soon we came to realise that this is a common occurrence. We passed one last big settlement and came to the border of the park, the buffalo fence we had seen from the air the previous day. We were entering the unknown in a sense, going into big game territory with no vehicle.

Peter, our guide, and Craig, our driver.

Heading off on the Delta

A short drive further we came to the waters' edge where about fifty Mokoro dugout canoes lay. We were introduced to Peter, who would be out guide or 'poler' for the day. Our little group set about getting situated in the somewhat wobbly craft and casting off, 2 per Mokoro. It was tricky to say the least, basically the two passengers sit on plastic classroom seats sans legs with the poler driving the boat from the stern. There were a number of variables, however, which made the cruise rather interesting. The boat Peter was driving ahead of us was absolutely steady, whereas our driver was a little less experienced and every time she brought her pole around (it's all very similar to a gondolier, but on a much less stable platform) the boat wobbled from side to side, bringing the gunwhales very close to the waterline, which worried me a bit. Another variable was the material of the hull. Our boats had fibreglass hulls, whereas the Swedes were in proper wooden dugouts. Christine's poler often had to stop in order to bail out the water that seeped in as a matter of course while Marianne and Thomas' boat was so low in the water (by design, not weight) that I held my breath on their behalf! Marianne in her characteristic deadpan fashion stated 'I want a bigger boat.' We were all in stitches.

Scorched Earth, interior of island in the delta.

Peter cooling off. 

Siesta time.

The perspective we had sitting at water level while gliding through reed beds was strange to say the least, because all we could see was small areas of water either side of the boat bordered by reeds a meter or two tall. Sometimes we might pass by dry land and a tree would be visible fifty metres from the boat, but overall is felt very restricted. For almost two hours we glided with no sense of orientation on to some destination. Of course they could have been going round in large circles and we would have been none the wiser! We arrived without incident at what seemed to be our destination and went ashore, doing our best to ignore the fresh-looking elephant droppings that seemed to be everywhere.

Heading back in the midday heat.

We unloaded our bags and food under a stand of trees, before going out on a short game walk. We were on a fair-sized island which unfortunately had burned in the past few days as a few tree stumps were still smouldering. This was apparently a common occurrence as Peter explained to us that locals would smoke out wild beehives in order to extract the honeycomb and might not bother putting out the fire completely when they were done. The fire might then get out of hand, leading to the devastating veld fires we saw. If caught, the offender was liable to end up in prison for 25yrs, such was the seriousness of the crime. We walked around the scorched interior of the island, maybe 1km across to the distant tree line. It was hot as all hell as the sun marched towards noon and the mercury towards 40C . We may not have had any spectacular big game sightings, but there was more than enough fauna to go around. A herd of zebra dozing a few hundred metres away, some secretary birds(which have always been a favourite of mine) on the hunt and many man-sized aardvark holes kept us on our toes. Our guide was a wellspring of knowledge and had spent his entire life in the Delta.

We headed back to our landing and had lunch before Peter, Shanna and I went for a swim close by. I would not have had the balls to do it on my own, but apparently hippos prefer deeper waters than the measly channels we were in and crocodiles only came here to hunt at night. Well, if the local says so and he's joining me, then I'll do it. Soon after we got back some member of our party started clock-watching and wanted to head back, but we were all forced to assume the siesta position for a bit longer. I agreed that standing upright driving a boat in this heat couldn't be easy.

Thomas: "This boat is like
 Budweiser, close to water"

So during the afternoon we slowly made our way back to where the truck was waiting for us and said our goodbyes to our guides before heading back to our lodging, sapped and sleepy. Another amazing day done, we got back and sacked out, tomorrow we would be hitting the road again.

Leaving Maun

Cattle casually grazing outside out huts.

Ever-friendly locals

It was now our fifth day in Botswana with more hard driving ahead of us and after two nights in one place everyone was a bit wary of heading off again. But it had to be done, so we said our goodbyes at the Delta Rain base and headed into town for one more round of hefty supply shopping. This turned into quite a process as it became an affair run by committee, but Shanna and I hung back and watched the car with pleasure.

No escaping it. 

We were loitering with no kind of intent when I decided to walk down the road in search of a restroom at the local garage. And to build this up a bit, a number of days prior, upon leaving Kasane, I saw a couple walking along the side of the road who I believed were dead ringers for friends of ours who had recently gotten married and moved to Sydney (A South African guy and Aussie girl, go figure!). We were saying we'd have to mail them when we got home, because this would keep bugging me and lo and behold, walking to the service station I round a corner and there's Laura! It was the weirdest of encounters with me naturally shouting 'I fuckin' knew it was you!' A few minutes later her husband Peter also emerged and we went off to surprise Shanna who was minding the vehicle. A good little reunion followed as they told us of their adventures driving through Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia and how in Botswana, now that the roads were improving, their car was giving up the ghost somewhat.

Drawing a small crowd

Our little chinwag came to an and when the shopping expedition returned and about half a metric ton of fresh and frozen everything had to by packed according to preservation requirements. Where we were heading, there was no electricity, no ice and lots of high temperatures and abusive road surfaces and the day was wearing on, so standing in the parking lot trying to make everything fit was not a point of particular enthusiasm. Eventually we wrestled all the chicken, meat, dairy and fresh fruit into their respective comfort zones and prepared once again to set out. It felt as though we had done very little and it was getting on to midday already, but finally we were hitting the road. Leaving town my concentration began to flag, looking at donkeys and cows huddling in the shade of roadside trees. Before long we left the main road and the world became one hard jarring vibration complimented by the midday heat and thick dust clouds kicked up by the odd oncoming convoy of Gauteng registered four-by-fours who didn't seems to warrant other road users worth considering. 

...and the resulting pages.

And we're outta there!

Botswana, Part 1

Leaving Cape Town well before dawn

Departure

Flying out of Joburg, the pilot announced that we were leaving South African airspace and below us now lay Zimbabwe, but you couldn't see a thing owing to the haze from the veld fires at this time of year. The past few days had been the usual blur of intense concentration and organisation that precedes any significant trip, so I always find getting on a plane and setting off to be a most relaxing point of no return, because if you forgot something, there's really nothing to be done about it now. For me, air travel from Joburg has always been on to more distant ports of call like Europe, so heading a bit deeper into my home continent was pretty exciting and something I'm very keen to do more of.  

All aboard

Not our arrivals hall. JHB

Livingstone

I hate being shuttled around big airports or walking through hermetically sealed air bridges like cattle, so stepping down onto the tarmac and walking over to the terminal building at Livingstone in Zambia gave me a sense of grounding, which I love. I had left Cape Town in the cool of early spring and it now felt, six hours later, as though we had flown ahead four months into the dead of the Cape summer, hot and dry. We did the passport dance of queues and stamps and momentary confusion before figuring out where we had to go next.

Zoned out and taking it in. The author is elsewhere

In an attempt to procure some currency, we used an ATM with no idea of conversion rates for the Kwacha, Zambia's currency. So we played it safe and withdrew the lowest possible amount, K10,000, after which lady at the bureau de change politely informed us that it had the value equivalent to R13(about two US Dollars). The confusion lasted until we got to Botswana, where the math got easier.

So about ten minutes in country we caught a cab to our hotel and for a few hours behaved like the worst kind of tourist. Passed out poolside, drank mojitos at the pool bar and walking around in a daze due to the heat, general fatigue and malaria meds. When the worst of the day's heat began to subside, we walked down the road to the Zambezi Waterfront to meet the rest of our tour party, consisting of our Botswanan guide, Shaba, and the three Swedes Thomas, Marianne and Christine.

Already trouble was afoot as Shaba explained to us the importance of sticking to our schedule which was immediately followed by Marianne informing us that only one of their three pieces of main luggage had arrived from Stockholm and we had to leave at 08:00 the next morning to cross the border into Botswana. Fun times ahead! So with that bit of logistical stress we headed off back to our hotel with an arrangement to proceed as planned the following morning. Shaba would make some calls.

Kazangula

Vehicle wrangling at Kazangula, Zambian side.

Up bright and early, we had breakfast and figured out that taking malaria meds on an empty stomach was not a good idea. At 08:00, as planned, we loaded our gear aboard the Land Rover Defender 130 that would serve as our home for the next two weeks. I was thrilled at the prospect of being in an open vehicle for the duration, there's much less disconnection between you and your surroundings that way, I feel. I suspect some members of our party did not share this enthusiasm, but I relish spartan discomfort.

Dog tired. Kazangula border post, Zambia

Load Master getting his ferry squared away

Off we trundled out of Livingstone and down the road heading west for some time. The road surface eventually faded into dust with dozens of forty-foot trucks lining the road. We had arrived at the apparent shambles that is the Kazangula border post. Ahead of us was a gate wide enough to allow a single vehicle through in the middle of which stood a lone traffic cone controlling movement. People queued, hustled and loitered around the cluster of low administrative buildings where we had to go through the usual passport ritual. All this went surprisingly smooth considering the complete lack of signage and direction, so the next challenge was to get through waiting for our ferry without having any wood sculptures sold to us. The hawkers come thick and fast on this side of the border, but they tended to leave me alone upon discovering that I was from South Africa and not Europe, then it was all Bafana Bafana chat.

Botswanan side of Kazangula crossing.

Our ferry arrived and we snuck our relatively small vehicle aboard ahead of the truck. The ferries can only accommodate a single forty foot truck at a time, so those guys may have to wait in the queue for days to get across. Luckily a smaller vehicle can squeeze in without upsetting the order of things.

Our ferry's bridge flying the Botswanan colours.

Less chaos south of the border.

Crossing to the Botswanan side of the Zambezi was a whole different ballgame. There was space and a sense of order. Firstly the slipway was a large paved surface with a second in the process of being constructed alongside. On the Zambian side there was no slip, just a sandy riverbank. Going through passport control was a similarly easy affair, with in and outgoing channels being clearly indicated. After this we had to step over a pesticide-soaked welcome mat in the interest of disease control and we were in Botswana. Of course a hundred metres down the road I felt like I was back in South Africa as we pulled into an Engen petrol station, but so be it! South African franchises are becoming a very common site throughout Africa.

Our party had a good chuckle at a billboard proclaiming that the elephant had right of way on the roads. We would soon find out that this was not exactly something cute just intended to shine the tourists on.

One of many elephants on Sedudu Island, Chobe park.

Them's good eating, Chobe.

Kasane

Our next stop, just inside Botswana, was Kasane. We booked into our bed and breakfast and after a quick lunch we had about an hour to organise ourselves before heading off to see some game.

Little big family.

We boarded a barge on the Chobe river for a leisurely cruise around Sedudu island. On casting off we nearly destroyed a ski-boat who's skipper had been dumb enough to use the barge as one of two moorings, the other mooring being the jetty! That aside we got going. The island we were visiting lies at the far eastern end of the Caprivi strip and was the subject of a territorial dispute over a century ago between what is today Namibia and Botswana. The matter was taken to the Hague and eventually it was deemed to belong to Botswana, as the deepest channel lay to the Namibian side of the island and that is what demarcates international territories. This interesting little nugget was shared by our guide as we set off around the island.

Small pod of people-killers.

It was a good break being confined to a slow-moving vessel, as we had nothing to do but look at the wealth of game around. Herds of buffalo, impala, elephant and countless other animals were going about their business and soon any gripes about heat or discomfort were forgotten. We were generally quite a distance from the game, but for the time being it served to whet our appetite for the days ahead.

Returning around dusk to our lodge, the Swedes were informed that their luggage had arrived and all was well on that front. Returning from dinner, we noticed that the lights in our room were on and assumed that housekeeping had been there, but the next morning coming back from our run, Shanna's mother informed us that all her currency had been taken while we had been at dinner. Immediately we checked around to see what was missing, but could not find anything wrong, but the damage in the other room stacked up a bit with two cameras (including a brand new Canon SLR) and two iPhones, which belonged to us, going missing. So a quiet morning became the usual post-theft rage that South Africans often have to deal with. So much for sticking to the schedule! We made breakfast and minded the luggage while one half of our party went to the police station and the other half hid from the sun in their rooms.

Eventually the reports had been filed and we could get back on the road, two setbacks later. Leaving town, not two hundred metres from the 'elephants have right of way' billboard, we saw a herd of pretty bloody big elephants just shuffling along through the roadside bush.

Chobe sunset.

No germs allowed.

Barred and padlocked shower at roadside stop.

Makgadigadi

We were running late and had a lot of bad road to cover, heading due south. The road was monotonously straight, the scenery dry and dusty with a fierce furnace of an easterly wind whipping us in the open Land Rover. There was little to be done but wrap up and disappear into your thoughts. We later hit a long stretch of temporary road parallel to a new highway that was being built. The surface was torn up pretty badly (much worse than the roads we had taken in Zambia), which had the indirect bonus of slowing us down and allowing us a respite from the wind somewhat. On we went as the sun sank and we finally pulled into Nata, the end of our southerly leg. Here we filled up and headed west into the setting sun. It was getting pretty dark when we left the road and ventured onto alien surface of the Makgadigadi pans. We drove across the bleached expanse of the flats to where we would make camp, a small grass island to our backs.

Kak road, next 135km.

Shanna and her dad, Nata.

Shaba, driving us off into the sunset.

Boesman TV, Makgadigadi

Moonlit, Makgadigadi

The ground underfoot, hard and brittle

The first order of business was setting up camp. In the dark. We would later learn that for the most part, the Swedes had never once in their life dealt with tents, so in my opinion they did brilliantly, given the circumstances. I have been pitching tents all my life, but the steel-poles dome tents were a bit foreign, even for me, but we got the job done in the end. The fire was lit and by now the full moon was lighting the pans around us to the extent that the scene looked like those early Bond films shot day for night. A wonderfully bizarre scene. After introducing the foreigners to some tasty braaivleis, everyone hit the hay and I headed off onto the pans to take some photos, the salt beds crunching underfoot. That night as the temperature dropped, I found the fine salt dust blowing off the flats right through our tent's flysheet, which added to the discomfort of being merely dirty, but we would get used to that feeling in the days to come.

Sunup, Makgadigadi.

Thomas ans Marianne, re all trace.

Leaving the pans, Makgadigadi

No Rest. For the Wicked.

I was approached to do a  cover illustration for the upcoming issue of Something Wicked Magazine, which has been resurrected as an online publication. The artwork accompanies a great short story The Treasons by AA Garrison featured inside. Well, the deadline was reached by the seat of the proverbial pants, although that tends to be the nature of the game, so here it is.

Do check it out and support the Mag, it's well worth a few bucks!

Something Wicked Home
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Here's a set of development sketches leading up to the finished cover.

Blow 'em up.

Good News, Bad News.

Well, the good news is that I just got back from an unbelievable trip through Botswana and got some neat photos to show you guys. The bad news is that upon getting home, I found we'd been robbed and my ancient-yet-hardy Graphire2 which I had been running into the ground for the past eight years had been accidentally stolen. Accidentally because the fuckers took my backpack to put the swag in(they always do) and my poor little Wacom happened to be in said bag. Well, after some mild deadline panic (Wacoms are not exaclty a common retail item in South Africa) I managed to procure a brand spanking new Intuos4 and things are looking up, because its freeing up my work a lot, so apparently all's well that ends well. So here's one of the first scribbles, very quick, but time's a-pressing, so there's real work to be done! 


But stay tuned, I'll be sharing some good shots with you guys soon enough.


H!