Botswana - Endless roads and red tape

December 21-22

Hello everyone!

The bulk of my time away from Malawi is being spent in Botswana, a country famous for…umm…

A kingfisher near the Kalahari

The edges of the Kalahari Desert

Frankly, it’s a country we rarely heard about until it was suggested as ground zero for the Omicron variant. It hasn't really been in the news before November 2021 - no fighting, no civil unrest, no dictatorship. It has a stable democracy. The country’s most famous sportsperson is probably Nijel Amos. He won a silver medal in the 800 metres at the 2012 Olympics.

The capital is Gaborone

Amos won silver in the 800 metres

What I did know was that Botswana possesses some of Africa’s most spectacular places. Deltas. Salt pans. Too many elephants to count. I’ve wanted to visit for a long time, have tried to visit before in April 2020, and was determined to enjoy its sights and sounds this time around.

A great way to start 2022 at Elephant Sands

Beautiful rainbows in the Okavango Delta

I did my usual of hopping on a tour. Botswana can be an expensive place to travel, another possible reason it isn’t globally renowned. Starting in Johannesburg, leaving at 7am, our little minivan drove…and drove…and drove…

Moving through South Africa's North West province

The town of Zeerust

We soon arrived at the border. The South African side was uneventful, with the only point of interest being the goats eating bushes outside their offices. We left that section at 12:30pm.

Goats eating the bushes

Stamping out of South Africa: easy 

At this point our trip leader, Stephen, mentioned that the Botswana side might be ‘a bit more challenging’. He, and we, had no idea…

Botswana's immigration building

After wiping your shoes on a squishy doormat (for foot-and-mouth prevention, apparently), we filled in a form to say that we didn’t have Covid-19. We then took this form, as well as the PCR test we had been told to take before arriving, to a small window. The man pretended to read it (he seriously couldn't have retrieved any information in the five seconds that it took), signed the form and told us to join a queue.

How many queues do you see?

That queue. You may notice there are two lines. This is very much one queue. What were we queueing for, you ask? To get a Covid-19 test, of course. The two lines represented ‘the public’ and ‘the truck drivers’. For some reason we weren’t allowed to queue together, even though alternate people went into the building. One from the public line, then one from the truckers line - you get the picture.

Don't get fooled by the clouds - they rarely
protected us from the scorching Sun

We’re given another form to complete in this line, before being instructed to move back to ‘social distance’. When I pointed out that we were being pushed onto the road upon which trucks drove their quite large loads, I received a glare from the female immigration officer before she manoeuvred the line away from the road. Either way, we were in a long line, made even longer by there being another line of truck drivers, and stood in the burning Sun.

That's a cow by the immigration building

Steven was caught unaware of this new testing requirement - he’d factored in an hour for the border crossing. When driving 720 kilometres in a day, you want to do as much of that as possible in daylight. 

It gave our minivan a bit of a break at least!

Hours pass. Mainly this is because there is only ONE person conducting the rapid tests. We were later told that the other doctor was off for ‘reasons that cannot be disclosed’. Basically, they have Covid. Fair enough, they shouldn’t be there. But in the week before Christmas, when border traffic is increasing, you surely want more than one person doing testing?

Eventually I get into the portakabin. I have a nice and sympathetic chat with the doctor - it’s not his fault after all. Slightly bewildered at his final comment - “You have a really small nose” - I exit and wait outside for my results. That doesn’t actually take long. Negative. Away we go.

Proof I could now get my Botswana entry stamp

Not quite. You see, a new doctor did arrive before all of our group had been done. Rather than working together, they decided to do a shift switch. This took about 20 minutes, after which the new doctor barked instructions in a very condescending manner towards the poor souls who had been waiting in a sun-baked line for hours.  

The rejigging of the line - note the distancing

We left, passports stamped, at around 4pm, with sunburnt necks and a driver who was keen to cover as much distance as possible before sunset. The only slowing down was for a toilet stop or if a cow came too close to the road. That happened a few times.

These cows were not on the road - many other were

As the Sun dipped behind the acacia trees on the left, we started to have to slow down for other animals as well. Donkeys, goats…and then two black shapes which scuttled across the road, looking like large hedgehogs. Steven was very excited about this. “Do you see the honey badgers?” My eyes darted to follow them as they ran off to the right into the short grass. Over five years I’ve been looking for a honey badger, in all kinds of national parks across the continent. Here they were, crossing a road in Botswana.

The Sun setting - it would be fully dark when we arrived at camp

This is a cartoon of what a honey badger looks like

I didn’t realise honey badgers would be here. I also hadn’t quite comprehended how big Botswana is - think Texas or France. We were driving from below the southern border up to the north of the country. Luckily the roads, though seemingly endless, are in better shape than Malawian ones.

Cat's eyes built into the road are particularly useful after sunset

Botswana is one of the least densely populated countries on Earth

Getting to the Okavango Delta in the north involves a long drive which skirts the Kalahari Desert, a massive arid area which covers land in three countries. 

Kalahari comes from Kgala, which is
the Tswana word for 'the great thirst'

It's not technically a desert as it receives
'too much' annual rainfall - about 20 cm a year

Covid in its Omicron form has affected life here. The men from the San tribe who were going to take us on a bush walk were unavailable due to being in isolation. Our guide, Steven, did his best to reenact elements of it, such as the ‘game’ where you spit dry impala dung at a target. 

A bushman's house

Dung spitting

We also spotted some interesting creatures. Below is an ant lion, one of the ‘Little Five’. You can rouse it by dropping grains of sand on the small divot which shows the location of its shelter. 

Deadly. Well, for ants...

The ant lion's lair

We didn’t see the giraffe and ostriches which also populate this particular private farm, though spotted some beautiful birds. Their calls and songs seemed to echo on for miles in the sparse, scarce landscape.

The fork-tailed drongo

The crimson-breasted shrike

‘Endless’ has thus been a feature of Botswana so far. From the seeming eternity of the time taken to get through the border to the edges of the never-ending Kalahari, the first 36 hours has shown me the enormity of the country. Maybe that’s what it should also be known for…

We almost stood on this frog!

Walking in the bush

An arid sunset

Love you all,

Matt