Chobe Park, Botswana - Day 248 - Boots on the Loose

Caught a lift with the Danish/South African couple (named Anne-Sophie and Jonathon in case I didn’t mention it before), crammed in the back of their 2-seater Land Rover, to the border then the remaining 10kms or so to Kasane. The border is the Chobe River (where it meets the Zambezi river) and so a ferry ride across is necessary; ferry pulls right up on the beach, a single, double length truck and trailer fits on (plus 1 other small vehicle if lucky), then onto the beach on the other side. A lineup of truck/trailer combos on either side that I suspect wait an entire day to get across. On the Botswana side it’s necessary to drive through a Foot ‘n Mouth disease dipping pool, as well as get out and dip all your shoes, and throw out all your food (we had to do this again a few days later en route to Francistown… seemed a little over cautious to me, but then we met a meat inspector later who said most of the beef is exported to the EU, so I suppose they want to keep the economy protected).

Kasane was nice; was immediately apparent how much more money Botswana has… especially when the cheapest hotel room is $80USD, or a “permanent tent” for $60USD (ouch!). Kasane, being on the Chobe Delta (and the edge of the Chobe National Park) is a huge tourist, safari spot. We were told Botswana is geared towards the rich and famous – I had a hard time believing an entire country could be “geared” towards a salary class but I’m now starting to believe it. Went on a riverboat safari up the delta as soon as we arrived; boat was irritatingly full of rich white people, but met a super-cool Zimbabwean girl (with her friend from the UK) living in Gaborone (the capital) who will hopefully hook us up with a place to stay once we get down there. The park has over 70,000 elephants so the banks of the river were pretty much full of them (I never get tired of seeing elephants!), an incredible number of hippos, buffalo, kudu, impala, etc, etc. The elephants are very destructive, so they’re trying to find ways of moving them around to thin them out without having to “cull” them. Breathtaking sunset on the way back!

Spent most of the next day wandering around the small town; I went on an afternoon game drive with Sara (the Zimbabwean), Jen decided to pass… saw more of the same as the previous day – kinda figured I would but couldn’t pass up the chance to see a lion or leopard. Sara told me about how you can’t go anywhere near elephants in Zimbabwe because they’re pretty much guaranteed to charge you and often can flip a car over and trample you. She told me it was due to all the hunting/poaching there… intrigued by this I asked if they evolved to be this way but no, they’re so smart and have such good memories they associate us to them losing elephants from theird herd. Pretty amazing.

Safari clothes. Good gawd. There isn’t much as irritating as seeing a group of rich people packed in the back of a truck, decked in the latest safari gear. It’s such a show – it’s not like you’re able to get out of the truck and walk around or anything… I always take a little pride wearing my secondhand, Malawian Esprits and bright red “Chad is Rad” t-shirt instead 🙂 (I’m sure most of them are disgusted when they see me)

Next morning shared a taxi with Sara and Fiona to the bus station (at 5:15am… ick); about 10 minutes before the bus arrived, realized I left my “important” bag on the floor of the taxi. Awesome. Passport, credit card, bank card, camera, IPod, about $400 cash. Begged a minibus driver to rip me back to the hotel to phone the cab again, but the call had been made the previous night and the current girl didn’t know to which cabby, so “come back in an hour when the shift changes”. Grrr. Back to the bus station, bus comes and goes, and there stand Jen and I alone in the cold and dark. Shit. About 5 minutes later a fella comes by intending on catching the bus that just left, I tell him the dilemma I’m in, he starts talking to someone else that was near by, we make out the name “George” in there somewhere, gets on his dual cellphones (pretty much simultaneously) and before I knew it (maybe 15 or 20 minutes) I was standing there, bag in hand, waving at George as he pulled away. Wow. I must have done something good, somewhere. So now it was just a matter of waiting 3 more hours for the next bus to fill…