How it all started

The story of our safari in Africa started at the end of last year when I learned from my employer that I would have the three weeks of leave that I had requested for Summer 2010. In my line of work it is not easy to get such a long time off, especially in the summer.

What to do with all that time? This was the big question as it was the first time that I had had such a long time off since arriving back to Europe 12 years ago.

It did not take too long to find out something to do with all that time. How about going back to Botswana for a trip around the country? It had been 15 years since we had left. I do not think I asked anyone in the family if it was OK to go, as it was something I had wanted to do for a long time; but I was also sure that it would appeal to all of them too. So, I went ahead and booked a return flight to Johannesburg (JNB) from the 4th to the 24th of August 2010 for the four of us. We were going to be on our way for what is known as a self-drive safari around Botswana.

The Fun of Planning:

At the beginning of the year I was all excited as it was time to start getting organised. First, how are we going to get around? How else than in a 4x4? So, on to the Internet to look for 4x4 rental in South Africa as we would land in JNB. As we intended to go to Botswana, we wanted very much to stop in Gaborone, the capital, to see our friends that we still have there. That stop in Gaborone made it difficult to organise a safari via a travel agent as most of those outfits have tours already set up from start to finish. On the other hand, it is part of the fun to organise a safari all by yourself. I was surprised that in the search for a 4x4 rental company in Southern Africa more addresses in Namibia came up at the top of the list than in South Africa (SA). I figured that Namibia is probably a better starting point for a 4x4 trip than SA. I contacted about 6 rental companies in SA and I was amazed how efficient they were at replying. It is true that it has always been this way, but, on top of that, it was World Cup year. That was true for the price too, as there was a big difference in price if you wanted to book a car during that month. We were lucky that this was not the case for us; however, we were still in the high season as August is the dry season (winter) in that part of the world and the best time for a game viewing safari in Southern Africa.

The next step was to find out if there were any recently published guides for Botswana. I visited many forums and found out that the most talked about guide was The Bradt Safari Guide Botswana. I was lucky enough to have the latest edition printed in early 2010 so we had the most up to date info. Esther got me a French guide Le Petit Fute Botsana that has useful info too. While reading the forums and the guide I noticed that references to Veronica Roodt Shell Maps of Botswana were constant, so I had to get those too. They are not sold here in Europe, but I got them from an Internet shop in SA ( http://www.netbook.co.za/ ) -- again very efficient. With the maps came The Shell Tourist Travel and Field Guide of Botswana by Veronica Roodt. Indeed, these maps are well done with the indispensable GPS coordinates. You would not want to travel today without a GPS. I know that some people would say it is not adventure anymore with the GPS because in the “old” days we did not have them; but I think that if they had had them then, I am pretty sure they would have used them. Time moves on and you use all available tools at your disposal. (Why not do it with ox wagons if you want real “like in the past” adventure?)

Planning the Itinerary

With all that material in hand, I needed to look into the itinerary. I came up with a few options and a tentative itinerary. I decided to get back in touch with some friends of ours in “Gabs,” Gaborone, who have a good idea of how things are there and how things work now in Botswana. They seemed to think that the itinerary I had come up with was workable and suggested a few changes, one being that, instead of visiting Victoria Falls from the Zambian side, we should do it from the Zimbabwean side as the views are nicer from that side. True, and I knew that; but, over the last few years, we had heard so much about how bad things have become in Zimbabwe that visiting Vic Falls from Zambia seemed the most obvious thing to do as most guides nowadays seemed to talk more about Livingstone than Victoria Falls in Zim. It used to be the other way around.

Final Itinerary

We ended up with 21 days and 20 nights for our safari. Our final itinerary is as follows:

Depart Paris, CDG, on the 4th to land on the 5th mid-morning.

Drive to Gabs and leave on the 8th for Nata (Makgadikgadi Pan).

Drive to Kasane (Chobe, northern Botswana) on the 10th,

Drive across to Victoria Falls on the 12th and

Return to Kasane on the 14th. From there

Drive to Savute on the 15th to

Continue on the 17th to Moremi (south eastern part of the Okavango Delta) and

Drive on to Maun on the 20th to

Continue on to Tuli Block on the 21st and drive on to Johannesburg on the 23rd.

Depart that evening and arrive back in Paris on the 24th in the morning.

Bookings

With the itinerary finally worked out, now came the time to try to book all the campsites we wanted to stay in. The Bradt Guide is good as it gives all the e-mail addresses and telephone numbers of the many places in all price ranges. A new thing has come up since that publication: Most of the campsites inside the game reserves have been given to private companies to manage and, therefore, these camps are no longer under the Botswana Wildlife Department as they used to be. In general, this seems to be a good thing, but it is difficult to tell from a self-drive point of view which camp is run by whom until such time as an updated guide is printed. Here again our friends in Gabs were of great help as they were able to let me know who ran which camp.

It is now around February, but all the campsites in the different game reserves are fully booked. I then have to look into different places to spend the night around the Savute and Moremi Game Reserves. After some research it is clear that there are no available campsites in the Savute Game Reserve, so it looks like we will have to drive through it. As for Moremi, I found in the Veronica Roodt Travel Guide to Botswana a campsite to the south east of North Gate (one of the gates to get into the Moremi Game Reserve) that is run by a local development trust, the Khwai Development Trust. There is an e-mail address ( khwai@botsnet.bw ) and I got in touch with them. They kindly got back to me a few days later, and here we start to deal with real Africa, which I will come back to again.


Vehicle with Tents on Top

In the mean time, I had decided on renting our 4x4 from an outfit call Bushlore ( http://www.bushlore.com/ ). They have been efficient at answering my queries and I found good write ups on some Internet forums about them -- and the price looked right. I went for, and Charles agreed, a Land Rover fully equipped with 2 roof tents. The Land Rover is a must for me as I had grown up with one while I was raised in Zaire (now RDC), and I owned one (a 1969 Series II Model) while in Botswana and Namibia. Besides, surely it is the car to have while on safari as it is so iconic, with mythic powers, that any other 4x4 would not have the same aura. (Here is a link. Tell me which looks better, the Hilux or the Land Rover, be honest! http://www.bushlore.com/Gallery4.asp )

Back to Booking Campsites

Some of the campsites will not take advance bookings. You just have to drive in and hope that there are still some places left when you get there. This is the case for the Nata Lodge in Nata and the Chobe Safari Lodge in Kasane. I do not see it as too much of a problem as, from what I remember, it should not be too busy.

Now back to our Kwhai Development Trust. It took 5 emails to organise the 4x4, but it took 50 + email exchanges to book and confirm 4 nights in a campsite in the middle on nowhere with no facilities whatsoever. This booking was a great experience and we ended up having to use the help of our friends in Gabs to finalise the paperwork as it became so difficult to deal with them via email. I have to be honest in saying that they have done all they could to be as helpful as possible, but efficiency is probably not one of their main attributes. I was lucky that I had lived long enough in Africa to know not to have too high expectations or to be too demanding in that respect.

So for you to have an idea of the time it took to book 4 nights, I sent the first request on the 20th of February and received a reply reasonably soon after. I went on to confirm the dates on the 25th for the entire booking to be finally confirmed on the 25th of March. That is about 5 weeks -- and that with the intervention of our friends in Gabs. I have to be honest that my bank here in France was not helpful either as it took them 12 days to transfer the money across as they did not know what the Botswana Pula (BWP), the local currency, was. The biggest problem is that the Khwai Development Trust will not confirm your booking until they receive their money. They do not have credit card facilities and so you have to make a bank transfer. They check their account once a week and on Friday only. In my case, I asked my bank to charge me all the transfer costs. But, once the money arrived in Botswana, there was some money missing; however, no one could tell me where it had gone. One problem was that the missing money was less than the transfer cost. Also, if I had to send that missing money from France, I would not know if all would arrive and so we could go into this never ending circle. Not only that, but once we had worked out the missing amount, I asked my friend in Gads to send the amount directly from within Botswana. Once that was done, the Khwai Development Trust came back to me saying that they forgot to include the VAT and so there was some more money owed. All those amounts were small in Euro terms, and so it would have ended up costing me more in transfer fees than the cost of the booking for the 4 nights in the campsite. Once again I cannot be grateful enough to our friends in Gabs for the help they gave us in dealing with the Khwai Development Trust.

As we were going to spend 2 nights in Victoria Falls, I looked for a place to stay and came up with a campsite, Victoria Falls Rest Camp & Lodges, in the middle of town that offers a chalet too. As we would have been camping for the previous 4-5 nights, I thought that a real bed and a shower would be a good plan and booked a chalet with 2 rooms and four beds. It all was done very efficiently by internet ( http://www.safarinow.com/ ). I checked on the one thing I promised Charles and Victoria we would be doing, and that was white water rafting down the Zambezi gorges below the falls. I had done it 17 years earlier and remembered enjoying it so much that I could not imagine going back to Vic Falls and not doing it again. It would also be a little change for the kids from game viewing. It seemed that booking was not necessary and again I was told to just show up on the day.

Back to the vehicle with 2 tents on top

While looking at the Bushlore web site to confirm the equipment provided in the 4x4, I noticed that they had added a new type of 4x4 available for rent, a Toyota Land Cruiser S76. I knew deep down inside that there was more leg room in the back of the Toyota than in the Land Rover. I had even gone to the nearest Land Rover dealer (in Compiegne) to see how much leg room there was at the back and I knew that it would be hard for Charles as he is 1.92 meters tall. After an email to Bushlore asking them if indeed the Toyota had more leg room than the Land Rover, I had to change the rental to the Toyota. (This was difficult as my love for the Land Rover goes back a long time and it is a personal thing between me and a very good friend. He will recognise himself.) I had to be honest and, for the sake of us all, I had to choose the Land Cruiser as it would give the most comfortable ride for all. After all, we would be spending loads of time on the road.

Equipment

Other things that were to be organised was a good camera as we had never had the need to have a high quality one until now. Again after reading a few write-ups, we went for the Panasonic LUMIX FZ 38.

We had some friends who had made a similar trip in Namibia last summer. I had asked them what they missed the most in the fully equipped car they had rented. The answer was “lights” as night falls early and quickly. They had found that there was only a gas lamp provided and that it did not provide enough light to set up camp. So, I looked around for car rechargeable lights and now days I found that there are plenty of choices. I bought 2 so that they could be used in each tent if necessary. I also had to make sure that we would have car rechargeable batteries for the 2 cameras. That was a lot to be recharged while driving and, as far as I know, each car comes with only one cigarette lighter plug. I found an extension for the multi- cigarette lighter plug with an integrated USB plug so that the kids could recharge their iTouch. (Surly they could not imagine going away for 3 weeks without them!) Oh, yes, I got myself a little hand held GPS (Garmin eTrex H) as back up and I enjoy it as it is quite an amazing piece of kit considering its size and price.

So by the beginning of June we were just about ready for the trip. There were just the small odd things to sort out. One of them was an International Drivers Licence and it turned out to be slightly more complicated than I thought. I could not get one from Belgium as I am not resident in that country and have not been for many years. So I had to exchange my Belgian driver’s licence for a French one and then get an international one here in France. It was far less painful than I thought, as the French administration is not known to be the most efficient: but it took me less than a morning to get it all done. So it was with a little sentimental regret that I gave away my Belgian driver’s licence with the picture of me from when I got it in 1982. (The kids loved it as I had so much hair then.)

Esther had noticed that Charles’ passport would not be valid for more than 6 month by the time we got to South Africa, so we made sure that he got a new one before we went. This was not a bad thing as he has grown, changed so much, since his last renewal.

So this is it: The day big day is just about here and we are all very excited and can’t wait to be on our way.