First night in Botswana!

We arrived in Johannesburg an hour late and then spent another hour and half in line at Immigration.  The driver who’d come to pick us up gave up after waiting three hours.  Luckily, I nice lady at airport information called our hotel and the driver came back.  Dinner was still waiting for us at 9pm.  After a full breakfast the next morning we were picked up by the Avis rep who took us to pick up our 4-wheel drive Ford Ranger with the safari package.

We drove about 6 hours to Botswana and camped on the Limpopo River that separates South Africa from Botswana.  It required our 4-wheel drive to get to the campground. Twenty-two kilometers on a washboard gravel road.  There was no power here….nor Internet obviously.  We had stopped for groceries in South Africa.  So after dinner Kassie sat by the campfire and read.  I did the same.

We were in bed early.  This is our truck at night in the campground.

There are two beds.  One up above and one perpendicular on the lower level.  This is what it looks like in daylight.   First the left side closed and then open.

The truck comes equipped with a refrigerator/freezer, cook stove, utensils, gas bottles to heat the water tank for an outdoor shower and the stove.  This unit has a double tank for diesel…43 gallons and 40 gallons of water.  There’s an awning above the left side and a small awning to cover the pop-out for the lower bed in case of rain.

There’s also a pump that will raise the truck to change tires, if necessary.  You fill it by pumping your truck exhaust into the bag.  Good primarily in sand.  When the door is closed on the right side, there’s a ladder and shovel.  Also a air compressor to pump up and lower tires.  In sand, it’s often good to take a little air out of the tires to help drive the truck through the sand.

After breakfast this morning, we headed to Moremi Gorge.  It’s only about an hour and a half away so we chose to go to a Rhino Santuary and spent the day driving through the park.  Again, 4-wheel drive is a necessity.  We saw zebra, wildebeest, kudu, white rhinos, a couple of ostrich and a variety of members of the elk family.

That’s it for today.  Monday and Tuesday were both busy days.  Camped at Elephant Sands yesterday and saw lots of…elephants.  More on that tomorrow plus our arrival in northern Botswana at Kasane today.

Ron