Maun and Moremi, Botswana

We’ve made it from Etosha National Park all the way to Maun in Botswana to meet the Lloyds. It was a lot of driving… 8 hours from Etosha to Poppa Falls, Namibia and then another 7 hours from Poppa Falls to Maun in Botswana. But the scenery was incredible.

We left Etosha early in the morning and had a quick game drive before we left the park. That was a good idea as we managed to see a (very rare) rhino. The rhinos are seriously endangered, more so after a bright spark of a South Korean politician claimed last year that rhino horn had cured his cancer – now rhinos across Africa are being wiped out by money-grubbing poachers. Botswana has rounded up all their rhinos and put them into a single reserve which they’ve fortified against poachers. South Africa has lost 30% of their rhinos in the past year.

About two hours south of Rundu, in Northern Namibia there’s a veterinary fence and checkpoint after which the landscape completely changes from dense bush to small family villages. The villages are gorgeous: fenced and thatched villages where the traditional tribal families live. Every village sells something on the road: pots, carvings, fruit, vegetables. We stopped at one village, Fiona haggled like a fish-wife and bought some wood carvings (yeah, like we have room – I’ll now have to sacrifice my toolkit) and were then invited into the village to meet and hang out with the extended family. The roads are dangerous – not because of the road conditions but the donkeys, goats, cows and other livestock that think they own them. Every couple of kilometres we’d have to stop for something that had failed to look both ways before crossing the road – a real hassle given how much encouragement it takes to get our full-loaded diesel Land Cruiser back up to cruising speed.

We eventually made it to Poppa Falls which was pretty ordinary save for the Okavango River running next to the camp site – apparently full of hippo and crocodiles (we didn’t see any). We packed up again and headed for Maun.

Namibia was great. Really friendly people, eminently safe, and breathtakingly beautiful. Botswana’s even better. The people are super-friendly and it’s even safer. The villages that hug the Okavango are similar to those in Northern Namibia – thatched, fenced villages. The towns are bustling. There’s no complex, South African racial thing going on. It’s just really relaxed and very comfortable.

It’s great to see the Lloyds… not only because they’re a larf but because the boys now have playmates after two weeks of mainly hanging out with their parents.

We made it to Maun late in the day to find the Lloyds at Audi Camp, a full-facilities (lounges, pool, restaurants, electricity, showers etc.) camp site about 11 km outside Maun. We spent New Year’s eve just hanging around the pool, letting the kids play and hang out while we plotted our New Year’s day trip: Moremi Nature Reserve (the place we said we wouldn’t go on sanity grounds).

Moremi was amazing. We managed to haul our slightly hungover selves out of bed at 5 am (on 2-3 hours of sleep) and head to Moremi Game Reserve, almost two hours directly north of Maun on the Okavango Delta. The roads were terrible but the heavy rains had not yet hit so we were spared any unplanned river crossings. Moremi is the biz. It is completely unmanaged and therefore the real African wilderness. The roads in the park are 4×4 trails (at best) and a hell of a challenge to drive on. We were explicitly told to never let the kids out of the car for fear of lion-chomping. It took us about 7 hours to drive 70 kms in the park – slow and challenging going with lots of little rivers and big pools of water everywhere through and around which we had to navigate. Fun, fun driving – and the big (and little) boys were loving it (despite grogginess). The animals were sparse but when we found them – wow. I’m not sure we’ll get to experience something quite as remote and wild as that again as most of the game reserves and parks in Africa now are much more managed and people-friendly. Moremi was neither, in the least. The car and it’s occupants survived an amazing experience… exhausted and exhilarated.

The kids are having a riot playing with the Lloyd kids – and we’re all having a great time. What an experience…

We’re trying to reach consensus on where we go next and what we do… stay tuned. We may try the crazy route to Kasane through Chobe National Park. More crazy 4x4ing…