A bright and early start
Our two firestarters Donny and Rowan had volunteered for the one permanent position on our overland trip through Zambia, Botswana, Namibia and South Africa. They were probably thinking it would enable them to avoid cooking and cleaning duties (the rotating teams). Of course, it didn’t hurt that “firestarter” sounded so manly. Being a firestarter also meant the two had to be awake before everyone else arose in order to get the fires going for the morning’s cook-group to start breakfast. After a quick tea or coffee and a bite in the dark, we set out for our Botswana border crossing from Zambia. The overland truck (affectionately nicknamed Shaggy) is closed only by tarp walls, so we froze on the ride til the sun came up. The ride from Livingstone to the Botswana border crossing is about an hour and a half (70 kilometers).
Botswana Border Crossing at Kazungula
We crossed the border into Botswana at the intersection of the Zambezi and Chobe Rivers. This spot is also the intersection of four countries: Zambia, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Botswana! The Botswana border crossing begins with a ferry across the Zambezi river on the Kazungula Ferry. It took some time to get the truck through the line for the ferry, so we spent some time wandering around, people-watching and chatting. The official line is somewhere in the middle of the river.
The other side of the river is Kazungula, Botswana, where all of the paperwork for entering Botswana is taken care of. That process for us was quick and easy. We had lunch just a few kilometers west at the town of Kasane. Kasane is the north entrance to Chobe National Park. Since there are no boundary fences between the park and the town, wildlife sightings are common. We saw elephants just wandering down the road! Lunch consisted of whatever we’d purchased from the grocery store in Livingstone (breakfast and dinner are made by one of the 3 work groups, lunch is on your own). In Kasane we also did a big group shop: enough ingredients to feed the 18 of us for the next week in Botswana. We’d be in the delta bush camping for a couple of days, so there was even more planning ahead necessary than usual. Bangers and mash, beef stew, pasta and other easy-prep things along those lines were in our near future.
Foot and Mouth Checkpoints
From here on in through Botswana began a series of hoof and mouth (foot and mouth disease) prevention check points. Foot and Mouth Disease is a virus that is highly contagious among cattle, sheep, pigs and goats. It has been an ongoing problem, with a number of outbreaks and epidemics in the country. We were asked not only to walk, dragging our shoes over a mat soaked with some unknown, caustic chemical, but to also surrender any other shoes we were traveling with for the same treatment. Some checkpoints were more strict than others, but each one we passed while driving through Botswana always involved a warning call from the cab of the truck that we were approaching one. Even though the only meat we were carrying was purchased locally in the supermarket, there was no real way to prove it. I suppose since we still weren’t that far from the border, carrying any fresh meat wasn’t allowed. At the checkpoints we’d scramble to hide the meat we were not supposed to be carrying in the rubbish bin. One of our traveling companions known to carry cologne was tasked with spritzing some of that around to mask the smell that lingered after opening the freezer. Quite a production!
Thebe River Camping
We spent the night at the Thebe River Camp after a late-afternoon river safari. The camp has accommodation in its lodge as well as tent-camping sites for groups, individuals and overland trippers like us. The communal ablution blocks were clean and comfortable. In the afternoon, we did a Chobe River Cruise, during which we saw elephants and hippos and crocodiles, impala, kudu, baboons and Cape Buffalo, as well as a beautiful African sunset . . . one of many to come!
