No 1 Adventurers travel blog | Judy and Gregs travels through Botswana and Namibia

Back where it all began

We had planned to spend our last night in the tent at Glentana. We stayed at a nice campground there last time, just set back from the beach, lots of grass, good amenities. But when we left the Mountain Zebra National Park it rained for most of the trip and while we don’t really mind camping in the rain, packing up a wet tent is horrible, especially when we need it to be completely dry for the trip home. So we re-thought that idea and booked a hotel room in Mossel Bay, about 400kms east of Cape Town. We had dinner at Cafe Gannet and I had the seafood stew, a true bargain at 220 rand – about AUD$24. It had prawns, fish, mussels, calamari and half a crayfish! I have no idea how much it would cost at home – at least double, and probably a lot more. It was delicious.

We made a bit of a detour on the way back to Cape Town, to Cape Agulhas, southern-most point of Africa, and the point where the Atlantic and Indian Oceans meet. It had rained on and off during the day, but we were lucky that it stayed dry while we hopped out of the car, read the plaque and took photos. After the mayhem of cars, buses and people at The Cape of Good Hope earlier in the year, we were very surprised that there were only a few people at Agulhas, and no tour buses.

And then the drive on the N2 back to Cape Town. It must have rained a lot recently – a couple of rivers and creeks had broken their banks, dams were looking full, water on flat low-lying areas. The rural part of the drive was just endless rolling green and yellow (canola) hills, and the livestock looked good. Lots of heavily pregnant cows, and tiny white lambs. Even though it’s now Spring, there’s not much evidence around – we passed orchards where the trees still looked dormant, no blossoms or any hint of green yet.

We’ve done the big cull of stuff we aren’t taking home – 3 quilts, a set of fleece sheets, folding chairs, a spade, tent pegs, SA extension cord, a black denim skirt that I bought when I realised I didn’t have enough summer clothes (what on earth was I thinking – I hardly ever wear skirts!), the food we didn’t get around to eating and various other bits and pieces. Our Airbnb host has offered to take it all to an op shop for us.

Greg took the 4WD to be cleaned this morning and we have returned it and picked up another car that we’ll take back to the airport tomorrow. It was easier and cheaper to do that than get a taxi back to where we’re staying today, and then another taxi to the airport tomorrow morning.

So that’s it … another grand adventure almost over. Thanks for travelling with us. Sorry for the lack of musical accompaniment to this trip – internet access was mostly just too slow to be able to do more than write posts and add photos.

Our friend Wayne Manna is a keen musicologist and he made the following suggestion for our trip’s theme song. Thanks Wayne!

“The Great Heart” by Johnny Clegg. He is a British-born muso (and I think an anthropologist) living in South African who incorporates a lot of African themes into his music and has recorded heavily with South African musicians.”

Youtube link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlpKDYJRzMk

A selfie at the southern most point in Africa

In case you can't read the plaque behind — In case you can’t read the plaque behind

While I waited for the car to be cleaned - these are everywhere in South Africa — While I waited for the car to be cleaned – these are everywhere in South Africa

Security at the AirBnB house we are staying at (hope there is no fire!) This is the steel security door in front of the Front door

One of the windows (all the windows have internal steel grills)

Mountain Zebra National Park

We really did try hard to camp in Lesotho, but in our hunt for a flat, level spot to pitch the tent on, we realised that there’s probably almost no such thing in the whole country. It’s all above 1000 metres, and most of it is either mountainous, rocky and usually both. We have a 4WD guide book that has a self-guided driving tour through Lesotho, which recommends campsites and alternatives, but we were unexcited by their camping suggestions, so we headed straight to Maseru. Lesotho’s capital has a population of just under 250,000 .. so large enough to be a decent-sized city, but it still has constant reminders that we’re in Africa – cows and goats roaming around suburban streets, crazy traffic and even crazier pedestrians, invisible road markings because they haven’t been painted in at least 20 years.

We booked a room at a ‘Guest House’ on booking.com, but it all got a bit confusing. We turned up at the Trinity Guest House, conveniently located close to the SA/LS border, only to discover that there are 2 guest houses of the same name, and the one we had booked was 12 kms away. Then when we got there, the receptionist claimed to have no knowledge of our booking. Luckily there was a vacancy, driving in the dark here is … challenging.

Crossing back in to South Africa the next morning was the usual chaos. We’ve done quite a few African border crossings now, and the only thing they all have in common is that they are all different. Some need slips of paper stamped by several different departments, a couple demand health checks, some want all the paperwork for the car, and some just scan our passports and send us on our way.

We spent a night at the Onze Rust campground at Colesberg. We stayed there on our way to Cape Town last time.

We’ve just spent a couple of days camping in the Mountain Zebra National Park, about 1000kms north east of Cape Town. Went for a drive yesterday and saw lots of mountain zebras (they only have black stripes, no grey ones like plains zebras) and heaps of different species of antelopes. This morning it’s very misty and we wouldn’t see much, so we picked the right days to stay. Heading back to Cape Town today and have booked an Airbnb place for our last couple of nights.

The chaos of cars and trucks at the Lesotho/South Africa border crossing

A truck full of ....Pidgeons — A truck full of ….Pigeons

Everything closed up after another monkey stole a bannana — Everything closed up after another monkey stole a banana at Mountain Zebra Park

Sun setting over the rest camp at Mountain Zebra Park

Windmill pump, a common site over the Karoo just like they are in Outback Australia

To give, or not to give?

By Lesotho standards, we are rich beyond belief. We think we are living simply when we travel and camp, but I see some of the locals looking in the back of our ute and thinking ‘what do these white people do with all that stuff?‘ We have 2 drawers that run the full length of the ute tray and one of them has our food in it, probably more food than a local family would eat in a month. AND we also have a fridge! Not much refrigeration or power in this country

People have approached us asking money or ‘sweets’. We have driven on the main roads here and had kids and adults wave and hold out their hands. They do that because that behaviour has been rewarded by people who have travelled here before us, but we don’t give money just because someone asks for it. That’s begging, and while I understand why it happens, and I’m acutely aware of how much we have compared with the people who live here, I don’t reward begging. But I feel conflicted about it, and occasionally have to remind myself to stop getting irritated. At home I don’t feel conflicted, I just get irritated.

We’ve given money to people who do something for us, and we’ve bought and given food to people who ask for it, in return for them watching our car while we’re in the supermarket. Yesterday a man played some music on a traditional instrument for us and while it sounded like a cat being strangled, he gave us something in return for the food and small amount of money we gave him. And he let us take photos. We’re ‘giving something’ by spending money in villages – Greg has almost cleaned out several small shops by buying up their stocks of Vodacom airtime cards, at AUD 50c each. He has to buy at least 6 at a time to be able activate more online data, but one shop we tried this morning only had 3. He walked past some kids near St James a couple of days ago with a strip of 10, and at least 2 kids asked him for ‘just one’, with no expectation that he’d actually give them one – the school gives their students a very strong message and begging is absolutely not the way to go.

Anyway, I was really just thinking aloud, or ‘on paper’. We’re currently at Afriski, a ski resort in the northern part of Lesotho. We’ve just had lunch at the Sky Restaurant, which claims to be the highest restaurant in Africa at 3010 metres. My sea level-dwelling lungs are letting me know how high we are, I get puffed out climbing a flight of stairs! There’s a small ski run with just enough snow to ski on, but it’s pretty funny to compare it with the Swedish ski resort we stayed at in January last year when we were hunting the Northern Lights. There was snow everywhere there, but it wasn’t open because there wasn’t enough snow yet. And further south in Sweden, there were snow-making machines supplementing what we thought was plenty of snow.

We’ve seen the first white people in a few days here at Afriski, and we probably won’t see any more until we get to Maseru, the capital, tomorrow.

So little snow at Afriski, next to the dry hills of Lesotho

Maloraneng Lesotho

Senqu River the start of the Orange river whcih we crossed a thousand kilometres to the west when we entered Namibia — Senqu River the start of the Orange river which we crossed a thousand kilometres to the west when we entered Namibia

The steep 4WD track into the Lost Valley of Khubelu

Footbridge across the Khubelu river so schools kids and villages can get across the river when it is in flood

Looking back to the Roundavals we stayed in

Shephards Hut and kraal (animal enclosure)

The next village on from where are staying

Judy warming in front of the coal fire. Yes it really is coal and the fire was set by a local villager

Sani Pass Lesotho

After two days of driving from Johannessburg we left Himmeville and headed up Sani Pass into Lesotho. Sani Pass is the only eastern access to Lesotho and is 2900 metres high. It is 4WD only, the customs post will not let you past if you don’t have a 4WD.
The road is a rough track in places, but not that hard. The most difficult part is the last kilometre that is a series of switchbacks up to the summit of the pass.
We then went though customs into Lesotho paying $3 road tax. We then drove on a brand new road (still being built) that was using chinese trucks and construction equipment, with the Lesotho workers supervised with Chinese supervisors. We then crossed an even higher pass Kotisephola at 3241 metres. It was a 50km drive to Mokhotlong passing Basotho villages along the way, as well as herders with their anogora goats and donkeys and horses. We passed 3 cars.

After reaching Mokhotlong with people riding horses down the main street we realised we needed to retrace our course back a few kilometres to reach the turnoff to St James Lodge.
St James Lodge is fairly basic accommodation (no power) next to St James school and has several nearby villages that the school children come from.

working up the hairpin bends on Sani Pass

Stopped on Kotisephola pass with ice still around

A traditional musician that Judy gave some foot and money to — A traditional musician playing for us, that Judy gave some food and money to him

His instrument made with a horse hair string and he blew into the hollowed wood

Heading to Lesotho

We left Jo’burg on Saturday to drive east along the N2 freeway tollroad towards Durban. One of the closest towns to the Sani Pass is Himeville, which is about 650kms from Jo’burg, so we split the drive into 2 days, planning on staying overnight at Harrismith. There’s one campground there, but it’s very close to the N2, set behind a service station complex with at least 12 fast food choices, cafes, a bus station, and loads of parking. We thought it might be a bit noisy, so decided to head out of town a bit to a campground within the Sterkfontein Dam and Nature Reserve. Much better choice.

We were the only ones in the campground, but there were other campers near the edge of the lake. Finding a cleanish site without too much horse poo on it was a bit tricky, but we did find one, and learnt later that the ‘horse poo’ was actually zebra poo! How exotic! Sadly we didn’t see any zebras.

Something that has really puzzled me about South African campgrounds is that they always have at least as many bathtub cubicles as shower cubicles. This one had 8 baths, 3 showers and a disabled shower cubicle with a broken shower head … so that would actually be a disabled disabled shower cubicle ….HA! Yes, I think I’m hilarious, you may beg to differ.

Last time we were in South Africa, we listed some of the things we saw people selling by the side of the road. We saw the funniest one so far in Harrismith … a guy selling whips! Obviously a rural area, unless he was including a free copy of ’50 Shades of Grey’ with every whip he sold.

Last night we stayed in an Airbnb cottage in Himeville, and we’re very glad we did that rather than camp. Huge electrical storm and heaps of rain in the early evening, not typical weather for this time of the year according to our host. This morning it’s fine and clear, so hopefully the drive through Sani Pass will be okay. I’ll leave it to Greg to add some photos.

See you in a few days, we won’t have internet access while we’re in Lesotho.

Finding room for the solar panels in between the Zebra poo

Camped at Sterkfontein Dam. Ground is dry because it only rains in summer and it is winter. Trees are bare because its winter.

Shopping at Pick n Pay Supermarket Harrismith

Its only a bit broken...Harrismith — Its only a bit broken…Harrismith

Back in Johannesburg

We hadn’t planned on coming back to ‘Jozi’, but when our plans to spend time in Botswana changed, we decided to come back here then head east to Lesotho. This time we’re staying in the ‘leafy northern suburbs’, rather than in trendy downtown. We booked a cottage on Airbnb and it’s been lovely. Our host lives in the main house on the same property, which you can see here. She originally owned the house next door and subdivided the block a few years ago. Her current property used to be the tennis court of her old house.

Seems like that’s a common thing to do around here – driving around we noticed a lot of house numbers with ‘a’ or ‘b’, next to the original house number. Security around here is pretty full-on. These must originally have been enormous blocks – the place we’re staying at is huge!

We haven’t really done much in Jozi this time, we’re really just using it as a rest stop – we went to Sandton City Shopping Centre yesterday to resupply and have lunch. They claim it’s the biggest shopping centre in the southern hemisphere and it’s full of up-market shops, mostly clothing stores. We did find a nice place to have lunch – Walnut Grove.

Now we’re heading east. Probably won’t have any internet access in Lesotho, but we’ll let you know what it’s like when we get back to South Africa.

Just for perspective here is the size of Australia versus Africa

Narrow high windows on the flat we stayed in that are difficult to climb into

One end of the road is blocked off with an electric fence. Next door are two properties both with their own security booths — One end of the road we stayed in is blocked off with an electric fence. Next door are two properties both with their own security offices with security guards.

The other end of the road with a security gate, the only way to get in

Rocks on the front of the neighboring house making it hard to even get near the front wall

A catch-up on the last few days

It’s been an interesting couple of days. As most of our virtual travelling companions know, we’re not great ones for pre-booking stuff. Usually that works out for us, and we like the flexibility of being able to change our plans because we learn along the way about things that sound interesting.

On Saturday we did actually get ourselves organised and booked a couple of nights at Nambwa Community Camp via their website. It had been recommended to us and had good reviews in our guide books. We received 2 confirmation emails so it all seemed fine and we worked around staying there on Monday and Tuesday. The camp is attached to more up-market accommodation in a national park along the Caprivi Strip, so we paid our park fees and drove 15kms along a truly dreadful sand track. At the park entrance gate, we were kept waiting by a group of 11 ‘tag along’ 4WDs, who seemed to be going to the same place as us. And we knew the campground only had 4 sites, so it was a bit mysterious how we would all fit in. Anyway … we got to the campground and were told that we didn’t have a booking, they had no knowledge of our booking and they were booked out. The tag-along people were all squeezing into one site, there was another large group and the other 2 sites were also taken. The manager got quite nasty and blamed the website, whoever handled their website bookings, US (!!) … just about everyone he could think of, rather than accept any of the blame himself, or offer a reasonable solution. So after some heated words, we drove back along the horrible 15kms of sand, making room for the 11 tag-along vehicles to drive past (only 3 of of the 11 drivers even bothered to wave a ‘thank you’ to us) and headed another 100kms to Katima Mutilo, on the Zambezi River, and on the border of Namibia and Zambia. We camped right on the banks of the Zambezi, at the Caprivi Houseboat Lodge. It was a lovely place and it worked out to be a much better option for us than the Nambwa campground, which would have been severely overcrowded with the group campers.

The downside of not booking ahead is that it seems as if the whole of Botswana is fully booked out. The national parks are managed by multiple private companies, and it’s a very fragmented and difficult process to navigate. We have emailed a few places without success, and went to another one when we were in Kasane yesterday. It seems that the ‘only’ way to do it is to go to Maun and visit each company office separately. However, after our experience in trying to find a campsite in Kasane yesterday, we’ve changed our plans completely. Kasane is a fair-sized town on the edge of Chobe National Park, at the far north-west of Botswana. It is close to the Zimbabwe and Zambia borders, situated on the banks of the Chobe River. Lots of wildlife on the river, lots of tourist activities, lots of accommodation and more tourists at this time of the year than the area can handle. Very much like Broome in winter. When we were there in January we stayed for a few days and loved it. This time we tried 6 places for a campsite. 4 were completely booked out, one had great signs on the road but wasn’t open yet and the 6th was completely empty!

The Tilodi Lodge is about 15kms south of Kasane, well sign-posted on the main road and along the sandy side roads (probably really only suitable for 4WD), nicely set up with fancy permanent tents as cabins, more basic permanent tents in a large area full of trees, nice common areas, pool, permanent waterhole with bar/viewing deck and a day spa with gym, hydrotherapy pool and massage room. The staff let us pitch our tent in the tented area and the manager came to chat with us last night. It’s a complete mystery to us why it’s not full of tourists, like every other place for miles around. More guests arrived late in the afternoon, but we have the tented area to ourselves.

Crossing over the Namibia-Botwsana border was the usual confusing, time-consuming process of trying to find the correct building, filling in forms, getting pieces of paper stamped, waiting ages for the underworked immigration staff to finish their long personal conversations with each other, going to the next window to go through the same process all over again … then repeat all of the above at the Botswana side, although the staff there were more efficient and friendly. There was an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in north eastern Botswana a few months ago, so they are very vigilant about trying to stop meat and fresh milk being brought in from Namibia, and they spray the car tyres and make people dip the soles of their shoes in something. The upside of all of that was that within a very short distance from the checkpoint we saw our first giraffe! And a small herd of zebras a couple of kms further along. Driving south from Kasane, near the Zambia border and the turn-off to Zimbabwe, we were amazed to see at least 50 semi-trailers lined along the road, waiting to cross into Zam. Last time we drove that stretch of road, we saw 3 giraffes ….. this time we saw 2 a bit further south past the trucks.

Not much other wildlife this time – the waterhole on the way to Kasane where we saw elephants and our first giraffe last time is now dry.

Back in Botswana

I’ve written a post about the last couple of days, but a combination of terrible internet and a laptop that’s not working properly are making it difficult to post it at the moment.

The condensed version is that we’re actually spending very little time in The Beautiful Country and we’re heading to Lesotho. We’re back at the Woodlands Stop Over and Lodge just north of Francistown … we spent a night here on our last trip. In Jo’burg for a couple of nights, then to Lesotho for about a week before heading back to Cape Town and home.

Divundu, Caprivi Strip

We’re in the far north-east of Namibia, in Caprivi, a strip of land that lies between Botswana to the south and Angola / Zambia to the north. From east to west, the strip is about 450km long, and at its narrowest, it’s only about 50km wide. The Caprivi Strip was acquired by the Germans in a land exchange with Britain in the late 19th Century because they wanted access to the Zambezi River and their East African colony in Tanganyika (now Tanzania), apparently forgetting that the Victoria Falls would make it impossible to get through.

Being in the far east of Namibia, the time zone has switched to ‘Caprivi time’ – which is the Botswana/South Africa time zone. We’re now 7.5 hours behind ADL time. We’re spending a couple of nights at the Nunda River Lodge, which was recommended by our fellow campers at Kunene. We’re camped right on the eastern bank of the Okavango River, and across on the other bank is a bloat of hippos (I don’t know if ‘bloat’ is the official collective term for hippos, but in this case, it seems about right). They spend most of their time lying down very close to each other, but whenever a tour boat stops nearby, some of them get up to give the tourists a bit of a show. We think we heard them during the night over on this side of the river, and there’s grass on the bank that looks like it’s been mown by hippos. They are vegetarians and even though there seem to be a lot of stories about how dangerous they are to humans, they may be exaggerated. We won’t bother them, so hopefully they will leave us alone.

We’ve spent the last couple of days driving along the Trans-Caprivi highway. We spent a night near Rundu at the Kaisosi River Lodge campground which was okay, the campsites were very close together and thankfully they weren’t all occupied or it would have been VERY squeezy. Rundu has a population of around 80,000 and is the 2nd largest town in Namibia, after Windhoek. It was originally built as a bus stop in the 1940s to transport local labour to German-owned farms. Apart from a couple of sealed roads, most of the streets are sand (yes, more dust!). A new shopping centre is being built on one of the sealed streets.

As we drove to Rundu on Friday afternoon, we passed lots of small villages with dwellings built of sticks and grass roofs. They seem to be arranged in extended family units, with multiple huts inside a fenced-off area about the size of an Australian house block. Some huts are open – just some vertical sticks and a roof, others are closed. Different huts for different uses – sleeping, eating, storage. We saw loads of people walking along the highway. It took us a little while, but we realised that they were getting water from the nearest water tanks, which were often several kms away. I guess this is a daily occurrence for the villagers – lugging water. The most amazing one we saw was a woman just about to cross the highway with a full 20 litre drum of water on her head, breastfeeding a baby! Yesterday morning, Saturday, was washing day and we saw women and children carrying washing tubs full of clothes to their nearest water tank to wash, then take home and dry. We take such a simple thing as having potable running water in our homes for granted, don’t we?

The trip though Namibia so far

Behind a bakkie (ute) with 14 people in it

Camped on Okavango River you can see the Hippos on the other side

Sunset over the river. Sunsets are really red because of dust/smoke?