Day 86-88: Nata to Kazungula

December 27, 2024 to December 29, 2024

We turned left (north) at Nata.

Heading out of Nata was more of the same – trees on both sides of the road and not visually appealing. But there is so much going on in the forest that you can mostly hear and not see: insects and birds everywhere. And we stumbled on another dozen or so elephant in the first 100 km. We saw a large family of elephant at one point. We spent a few minutes trying to get a long distance photo before a truck driver saw us and immediately offered to shepherd us past the herd. They offered so quickly we didn’t even get a decent photo!

Elephant in the distance...saved by a truck seconds later

We skipped Elephant Sands campground – since the rains have started other travellers have told us there aren’t enough elephant to make it worth camping there.

We met a great police officer at the fixed roadblock. Had a nice chat for several minutes – any excuse for us to take a break in the shade, and for him to chat in English. (Somehow this guy travels to play chess, table tennis, is a pilot and studying law. Overachiever to end up patrolling at a roadblock!). We asked to fill our water bottles, but the water truck had been delayed and there wasn’t any tank water to share. Boo. But the police office just walked to his tent and picked up a 5L bottle for us. And wouldn’t even take the few Pula it would have cost him at the supermarket. Very generous.

It meant we had a bit less water than was comfortable to camp the night, but that’s more than we should have got from the roadblock. We convinced ourselves we would be able to get more somewhere on the road, and an hour or so later a truckie proved us right. For no obvious reason, a truck pulled over, waited for us to catch up and then handed us 2 bottles of ice water. We didn’t need the ice, but it made it much nicer (it's still stinking hot in the sun). Plenty to keep us going, and another random act of Botswanian hospitality.

We spent the night in an abandoned house. No lions/elephant/etc are going to get through the walls, and no rain got through the roof. And no breeze cooled the room below sweltering. Sweating is probably better that being drowned or scared of wildlife at night. Tough call though.

Secure from the animals and the rain, unfortunately not the heat

Let's see what we can see from up here (Cath stayed firmly on the ground, self confessed height freaker-outer)

View from the top, lots of flat, no elephants

Saw a few giraffes in the far distance (they’re so tall you can see them on the road literally kilometres away). The highlight after this was our first experience of Choppies Fried Chicken for dinner (Choppies is the name of a popular supermarket in Namibia and Botswana). The chips were about what you’d expect from a bain-marie in a supermarket, but the fried chicken was surprisingly good.

Steve to the rescue. Steve is a South African motorcyclist we have met a few times along the way. We knew he was going to be riding past us that day and asked if he could bring us 2L of water. What a champ!

A break on the side of the road to share biscuits and play with tyres

We saw our first evidence of large scale farming in Botswana around Pandamatenga. Huge areas of forest have been cleared for maize plantations. The farmers are still waiting for the soil moisture to increase before planting - which is apparently concerningly late this year. Bit of a moonscape with the black soil and nothing much growing in it.