Botswana 

07-10-2006
Hi folks! We're back! Right now, we're in Lusaka at a backpackers. Let me sum up the last few days.
So friday the 29th we left Gabarone after a fantastic week of doing absolutely nothing! We went to the Khama Rhino Sanctuary, a few 100 kays out of Gabarone. Of course we saw some rhino, very impressive. We camped in the park after a nice home made meal and made our first bread (was a bit black).
The next day we left early, our plan was to cross the Mgadigadi pan to Gweta and visit Kubu island on the way. This was a tip from Mike Copeland. The first two hours were tarrad road and no problem, but after that, the fun started... The road became worse and worse, it was hard on the car and hard on our arses! At around 1 pm we arrived at Kubu island, with its beautiful old Baobab trees and rocks in the middle of the pan. We could have spent the night there but we decided to move on to Gweta. This was anaother 80 kays of extreme tough road, max speed 20 km/h. We ended up in a mud-hut village, but we could not find the way to Gweta. So in exchange for some cookies a woman told us where Gweta was (she pointed in a direction, there was no road but we just went there) after another 40 minutes we ended up in Gweta alright, although we entered the village through a not-so-common route (via the football pitch and somebodies back yard). We checked into the Gweta Lodge for a swim and a Windhoek Lager...
Sunday we left for Maun, so we could enter Moremi national park. Again, we found out that all the campsites were booked (until december 2007!!!), but tried for it anyway. Nice drive through the park and we found the campsite (lot's of space...). But, naive as we were, we thought there would be a reception and some kind of shop, well: tere was nothing, absolutely nothing. Apparently, camping in a national park means stock up[ all you can and don't expect to see civilisation for a week... So all we had was some baked beans, canned meat, water and bread mix. So, for 2 days, all we ate was apples, home made bread with peanut butter (o yeah!) and baked beans with canned meat for dinner. We did see some beatiful animals: lions, elephants, leopard etc etc.
Luckily on day 2 in Moremi we found a little village just outside the park (Kwai village) with a tiny shop. We bought all the beer they had, some more baked beans and canned meat. We we're good for anaother few days.
After that we went on to Chobe national park (north of Moremi). This was another dreadful drive, average speed: 24 km/h... We stayed in Savuti (spotted a dead elephant on the way, boy does that stink!) The day after we went to Kasane and stayed in the Chobe safari lodge, which is a very fancy and expensive place packed with Americans. But we stayed on the campsite and made a huge amount of meat for ourselves to compensate for the past days... We als went on a boat cruise to see animals, this was beautiful: swimming elephants, hippo's, croc's, sunset, terrific.

27-09-2006
Hard work: we bought some toys for in the swimming pool..

25-09-2006
We left Windhoek Saturday morning. The evening before we've been with the Swiss guys to Joe's Beerhouse and a nice local concert. After that we went to the club next door with 3 Norwegian nurses (who also stayed in Cardboard Box). The club gave us the feeling of the Bubbles, no place like home.. Saturday we headed for Gaborone via the Trans-Kalahari highway. The road is excellent and we drove about 700 km's. It's a nice view but there is really nothing over there.

The next day we had to do 400 km's and arrived in Gaborone at about 16h00. Jan & Marijke were expecting us only on Monday, so they were a bit surprised. We had a nice cold beer, took a dive and lovely dinner and slept very well in a warm bed (nights in the tent in Namibia were very, very cold!). We will stay here untill Thursday or Friday, so a lot of relaxing!!