A Completely Unofficial Guide to Not Embarrassing Yourself (Or Getting Eaten)
By Peter Rau
Your Passport: The First Hurdle
Before you start dreaming about sundowners and lion sightings, check your passport. Is it still valid? Not just valid, but valid for at least six months? Because nothing deflates the excitement of a bush adventure faster than a border official calmly informing you that your paperwork is, in his professional opinion, not going to be sufficient to leave the country. You will have to turn around, drive home, and explain to everyone why you’re back so soon. The lions will have to wait.
Tell Someone Where You’re Going
Leave a rough tour plan with the people staying behind. They’ll want to know where Mum, Dad, or the family’s most adventurous idiot is at any given point. It’s also useful to let them know when you’ll have phone signal — because yes, some of those wide open spaces have absolutely zero coverage.
This is either a problem or the greatest gift modern travel can offer, depending on whether your boss or your telemarketers have been particularly active lately.
If you absolutely must stay connected, bring a satellite phone. If you’d rather not, simply drive deeper into the Kalahari and enjoy the silence.
Medical Aid: Give Them a Heads Up
Do not surprise your medical aid. Phoning them from behind a bush somewhere in the middle of Botswana to announce that you are, in fact, bleeding, is not the introduction they were hoping for. Let them know beforehand that you’re heading into the wilderness. They will reward you with a thick stack of fancy paperwork that nobody understands, which you’ll need to produce at whatever hospital is brave enough to admit you.
The Vehicle: Is It Actually Yours?
If you still owe the bank for your vehicle — or borrowed it from a friend, or rented it — get a letter confirming you’re allowed to take it across the border. Some border officials also want a police clearance certificate for the vehicle, ideally less than six months old. This is to prevent stolen vehicles from crossing. Naturally, if your vehicle is stolen, this document becomes significantly harder to obtain.
Border Taxes: Bring Cash. Then Bring More Cash.
Some border crossings will cheerfully relieve you of money in a remarkable variety of ways. Vehicle cross-border fees, immigration tax, customs tax, vehicle insurance, third-party insurance (even if you already have insurance — yes, really), road tax, carbon tax, council tax… they may not all apply, but several will. Think of it as a lucky dip, except you always pay and you never win anything.
Your Credit Card: Wake It Up First
Call your bank before you leave and tell them you’ll be using your card across the border. Because there is no experience quite as character-building as standing at a fuel station in a remote town, having just filled up your tank and eaten half a pie, cold drink in hand, only for the card machine to look at your card and quietly decline it.
The other half of the pie will taste like regret.
Cash: How Much?
How long is a piece of string? Think of what you’d normally spend at home on a good weekend — drinks, dinner, snacks, a few things you don’t need. Now add souvenirs (those dust-attracting ornaments won’t buy themselves), and remember that some fuel stations are cash only, or their card machine has taken the day off. Pack accordingly. Then pack a little more.
Fuel: Your Vehicle Is Thirstier Than You Think
Do you know your vehicle’s fuel consumption? In normal conditions? Good. Now forget that number entirely, because thick sand roads will make your bakkie drink like it’s at an open bar. Plan for at least 600km between fuel stops — and even then, be prepared for the attendant at the only station for 200km to cheerfully inform you that the fuel delivery is coming on Tuesday. Today is Saturday.
Carry extra jerry cans. Because the alternative is sitting in the dark, staring at an empty fuel light, listening to something large roar nearby. Not ideal.
Water: Wash Only the Important Parts
Water can be scarce out there. Plan how much you’ll need for drinking, cooking, and washing. When supplies run low, you adopt what experienced bush travellers call the strategic wash — you clean only the dark places of your body and move on without guilt.
Most campsites offer some form of ablution facility, ranging from a proper modern block all the way down to a hole in the ground. Whatever your situation, if you dig a hole, please cover it completely when you’re done. Leaving it open, decorated with a half-white surrendered flag of toilet paper, is not the legacy anyone wishes to leave in a national park.
Predators: They Are Not Impressed by Your Fire
Never, ever drop your guard when camping in the wild. Jackals, hyenas, lions, and leopards do not care how high your fire is burning. They will stroll into your campsite and help themselves to whatever you’ve left out — the blackened kettle, the braai grid, the pot with last night’s burnt dinner, the dish towel, the dustbin, your smelly shoes outside the tent.
We’ve had all of the above visited upon us.
And if nature calls in the middle of the night — be alert. There are few things less good for the cardiovascular system than standing under a half-moon in the beautiful African night, listening to the sounds of the bush, mid-stream, and then hearing something large and breathing moving in the shadows very close to you.
When the sun goes down, your position in the food chain drops dramatically. Plan accordingly.
Firewood: Don’t Be That Person
You are not allowed to collect wood inside the parks. Do not be the person dragging a massive log behind their vehicle to the campsite. You are destroying the habitat of insects, reptiles, and small creatures who live in that wood and have done nothing to deserve it. Buy your firewood before you enter the park and use it wisely.
Also — and this is important — put your fire out before bed. The wind does not check your schedule before deciding to pick up at 2am.
Veterinary Gates: The Bureaucratic Boot Inspector
Some countries take animal disease control very seriously. In Botswana, for instance, you can take red meat north and east, but not south or west. Namibia has similar rules. Going the other direction? Think pre-cooked, white meat, or tinned.
Expect inspectors to look in your fridges. Expect dairy products, fruit, and various other items to potentially be confiscated. And expect, at the vet gate itself, to step off your vehicle and perform what can only be described as a ceremonial dance on a wet carpet soaked in anti-foot-and-mouth disease liquid.
It is yucky. It must be done. Welcome to the bush.
And always stop at the stop sign, even if someone is waving you through — because there is a stern-looking policeman just out of sight who has been waiting all day for someone to ignore it.
Wildlife and Your Groceries: A Warning
If you’re camping in elephant country, do not bring apples, oranges, or any fruit with a strong smell. Elephants have a nose like a heat-seeking missile and they will investigate your tent. This is not a situation that ends well for the tent.
Monkeys and baboons are another matter entirely. They are clever, shameless, and completely without remorse. They know how to open tents. Some of them know how to rip tents open. They will take your bread, your cheese, your chips, and, with absolutely no embarrassment whatsoever, your make-up kit.
Clothing: The Overall Strategy
To save on laundry, buy two overalls for bush wear. You can wear them for an impressively long time before they reach the stage where they could technically stand up by themselves. When you reach civilisation, switch to your good clothes and feel like a new person. Wash your underwear and socks whenever opportunity allows, and if you need a proper laundromat, some towns have them — just budget an extra day, because the bush runs on its own schedule.
Final Thought
You don’t need to pack your vehicle like you’re crossing the Karoo by ox-wagon in 1852. There are shops, restaurants, and even grand hotels out there — places where you can sit with a perfectly respectable gin and tonic, watching strangers swim, and reflect on what an absolute adventure you’ve just survived.
If I’ve left anything out, please let me know.
Happy travelling. — Peter Rau