In 2008, a friend casually asked if we’d like to join a tour to Botswana. “Casually” — as if he’d asked us to pop round for a braai, not venture into one of Africa’s great wildernesses. We’d done Namibia. We’d done “local.” Botswana? That was for other people. Braver people. People who owned more jerry cans. We said yes. Hesitantly. Like someone agreeing to a bungee jump while quietly hoping it gets cancelled.
So off we went — four vehicles, eight adventurers, four of whom were husbands who thought this was a good idea, and four wives who came along anyway, which makes them either very brave or very patient. Probably both.
There was the Architect and his wife (previously toured Botswana, dangerously confident), the Oil Dealer and his wife (veterans of the Kalahari 1000km Rally — actual maniacs, the pair of them), the Farmer and his wife from Blue Bulls country up in what used to be Northern Transvaal (well-travelled, man and woman of the land), and then… us. The semi-government clerk and his wife. Wide-eyed, hopeful, absolutely clueless. The only couple for whom Botswana was genuinely uncharted territory — and it showed. We crossed the border at McCarthy’s Rest and entered a new world. A very sandy new world.
The road to Mabuasehube started out as a perfectly respectable gravel road and then, somewhere along the way, quietly gave up and became three parallel sand tracks. You could choose whichever one looked best — which, of course, was always the one you weren’t on. A bit like a checkout queue at Checkers.
The sand was thick. Magnificently, stubbornly, soul-crushingly thick. We stopped twice to let air out of the tyres and approximately forty-seven times to question our life choices. The wives, to their eternal credit, said nothing — or at least nothing printable.
We made it to campsite Mabua No. 4, overlooking a vast pan, with a waterhole in the south corner doing brisk business with the local wildlife. Everyone cheerfully pitched their tents.
Now here’s a thing they don’t put in the brochures: there are no fences. No walls. No electrified perimeter. Nothing between you, your tent, your wife, and whatever large toothy thing happens to be wandering past at 2am. Apparently this is considered part of the charm.
We had been warned that carnivores had been known to stroll through these campsites. Fortunately for us — and for the continued harmony of four marriages — the lions and hyenas apparently had better things to do. We were visited instead by jackals, guineafowl, francolins, and hornbills, all of whom had clearly studied the menu and decided our leftovers were worth investigating. Fair enough.
Every single morning, just after 5am, a korhaan screamed us awake. Every. Single. Morning. No snooze button on a korhaan, I’m afraid.
After Mabuasehube, we headed north through Hukuntsi, refuelled, and eventually hit tar road toward Ghanzi. The next day, we turned off toward the Central Kalahari. We’d been warned the road was dreadful. It turned out to be wide, hard, and perfectly pleasant — all the way to a small town called New Xade, where the GPS cheerfully instructed us to turn onto a track that appeared to be made entirely of beach sand. Without the beach. Or the fun.
There was some disbelief in the convoy. We had just driven hundreds of kilometres of excellent road to arrive at… this?
A woman in New Xade tried to sell us a live chicken. In retrospect, we probably should have bought it.
At Xade gate, the farmer’s trailer decided it had also had enough and attempted to separate from its own A-frame. We addressed this with what would become the tour’s signature repair technique: a lot of wire. The farmer’s wife looked on with the expression of a woman who has seen this sort of thing before. Problem solved. We moved on.
Then came Piper Pan. In the early hours of one morning, we heard a lion roaring somewhere out in the darkness. Like any sensible group of people —coffee mugs in hand, binoculars around necks — we immediately drove straight toward the sound.
At sunrise, we found him. Or rather, we thought we found him. Across the pan was a shape. An anthill? A lion? An anthill? A lion? Eight people, four pairs of binoculars, heated debate, until the anthill stood up and roared.
Lion. Definitely a lion.
Just then, a rental 4×4 crept up beside us, its rooftop tent flapping off the side like a deflated birthday balloon. European tourists. Slightly hollow-eyed. Turns out the lion had spent the entire night in their camp. They hadn’t slept a wink. Being good citizens of the African bush, we stayed with them until they’d packed everything up — because when a couple’s tent has just hosted a lion all night, the least you can do is finish your coffee nearby and look sympathetic.
The trailer continued its campaign of mechanical sabotage. On the way to Nxai Pan, the A-frame broke entirely. A Mopani tree stump was sacrificed, more wire was deployed, and off we went again. By the time we reached Rakops, the farmer and his wife had had quite enough of their trailer’s personality. They said their goodbyes and turned back to South Africa to sort it out — which honestly seemed like the most sensible decision anyone had made all trip. The trailer had, in fairness, earned its retirement.
Nxai Pan greeted us with deep soft sand, flooded pans, and campsites buried in tall grass and mud. In fading light, I radioed the group that I was taking a quick detour to check something out. Unfortunately, the driver behind me had a broken radio and received no such message. He simply noticed I’d vanished — and, reasonably, put his foot down to catch up.
I, now behind him, also accelerated to keep up. The group leader, now behind me, also put his foot down to stay with everyone. Nobody knew why we were racing. Each wife presumably had questions. Nobody had answers.
The oil dealer, an ex-rally driver, was apparently personally offended that this rookie seemed to be driving out from under him. We roared into South Camp long after dark like we’d just completed a stage, our wives gripping whatever was available.
The camp official was not thrilled. He informed us we needed to go back to our allocated site. We explained — diplomatically — that our allocated site appeared to be auditioning for a role in a swamp documentary. He reconsidered and gave us a spot at South Camp.
It was muddy. We pitched tents in the dark, in the mud, and performed our ablutions in the bushes nearby with all the grace and dignity the situation allowed — which was not much. The wives handled this considerably better than the husbands.
You can imagine all eight of our faces the following morning when we discovered a brand-new, sparkling ablution block sitting just behind the bush behind us.
Our final adventure was the attempted visit to Kubu Island. We had been warned — repeatedly — about the mud. We turned off the tar, hit a track, which became a waterway, which became a muddy channel of increasingly ambitious proportions. We dug. We churned.
Eight people reassessed their choices together. We turned around and slid back to solid ground. And then, with the collective wisdom of people who had quite enough, we pointed the vehicles south and went home.
What I learned:
Going somewhere for the first time makes you a pioneer — even if a thousand people have been there before you. You don’t need a big group. You don’t need to pack as if civilisation ends at the border. And you should always, always listen to your wife — especially when she’s looking at the GPS with that particular expression. The SWAMBO is always right. Right?
Happy travelling. — Peter Rau