| Highlights of Botswana (April 2007) | ||||||||||||
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Botswana is the place of the Kalahari Desert, the unique wetlands of the Okavango Delta and some of the best wildlife viewing anywhere.
It is also a land of contradictions with huge diamond wealth yet the world's worst AIDS crisis. |
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Kalahari Campbells
Excited to finally reach the famous Kalahari Desert, we adopted traditional gender roles - Cheryl making house and Magnus desperately trying to start a fire by rubbing sticks together. With the help of matches and lighter fluid it really wasn't that hard! |
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Bye Bye Bushmen
The Bushmen of the Kalahari were famed for their sustainable and nomadic way of life. Unfortunately, the government evicted them to make way for a game park. Their descendants still have the skills to survive in this forbidding environment but their culture is gradually fading into history. |
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Happy Easter!
Botswanans travel home on Easter Friday, so to board the only bus we literally had to fight our way through a frenzied crowd. Reluctant to join the punching and biting mob, we used our height and long arms to haul ourselves over the heads of the jostling locals and inside. 3 bouncy, crushed hours later, it was no surprise when the bus broke down in the middle of nowhere. Our next challenge - competing with 70 hitching locals on an entirely empty road. Good luck and good humour somehow saw us transported - via jeep and dump trucks - to our destination by dark. Sometimes catching a bus in Africa is all the adventure you need! |
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Addressing AIDS Ignorance
Botswana is trying to tackle AIDS head on. Rightly so: in the next 30 years, life expectancy here is projected to drop from western levels to a horrifying 27 years. It's hard to take in how bad this really is. While here we met a group of levitating Peace Corp volunteers building local awareness about AIDS. |
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Mystical Tsodilo
On the desolate Namibian border, a set of hills rise mysteriously from the plains. The Tsodilo Hills are the sacred birthplace of the San people of southern Africa. Covering the rock faces are hundreds of San paintings, some bearing a spooky resemblance to the Far Side cartoons of Gary Larson! |
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OK, Ya Vanna Go Okavango?
The Okavango Delta is a unique water system. The rivers never quite reach the sea, fanning out and drying up as they flow into the Kalahari Desert. Travel here is by mekoro dugout canoe. Territorial hippos can easily bite these boats in half, if disturbed, often with fatal results. |
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Too Close For Comfort
My, what big teeth you have... |
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A Game Of Cat & Mouse
On the eastern edge of the Okavango, an astonishing wildlife encounter - straight out of Discovery Channel. We chanced upon a game of cat and mouse (or cat and hyena) as a pride of female lions ferociously defended their buffalo kill against gathering hoards of scavenging hyenas, vultures and jackals. |
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The 5th Element
Keen wildlife spotters, we immediately identified this as a male elephant from its distinctive... ...tusks. |
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Crossroads
At the crossroads of Namibia, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Botswana we bid farewell to beautiful Botswana. Next stop "Natural Wonder Of The World" Victoria Falls in Zambia. |
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- See more pictures from this section - Go to next section : Zambia - Go to previous section : South Africa |
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