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| From Zimbabwe we entered Botswana a second time and passed through the Savuti, the heart of the Chobe National Park famous for it's elephant's and said to have one of southern Africa's highest concentration of game. |
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| There are only 2 types of roads in Botswana, tarred main roads and sandroad's with very often deep sand which is why a 4 x 4 is fairly essential. |
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In the Savuti we met up with French couple "Didier & Laurence" and togehter we made an overnight stop and build a fire to keep any straying animals at bay. |
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We took a magnificent plane ride at 100 m above the ground, across the Okovango Delta, a labyrith of islands, rivers and lagoons where we could get a good view of the herds of animals that where already awaiting the oncoming waters from the north, which has it's source in the Angolan highlands, and can take up to 6 months to reach the marsh.
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| We could see the water from the Okovango fanning out and spreading like small snakes across the 15000 sq km of water wilderness dotted with islands and laced with a maze of papyrus and reed lined channels and disappering as the thirsty sand drank it up before it reached the south. |
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The following days we travelled to the remote Drosky's caves and the small and interesting range of Tsodillo Hills 400m above the flatness of the Kalahari, on which could be seen many San and Bantu Paintings. Said to be among the oldest historical sites in the world with up to 2000 drawings.
I traded our clothing and not needed odds and ends with some local bushman ladies for bows and arrows while Peter did an amazing Magyver job on a engine part which had packed up. |
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| At last Peter found his Kalahari in the north of the Makgadigadi Salt Pan. |
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| The Kalahari in winter with its short and scrubby grass allows you to get a good view over the great and flat vastness of the country. |
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 As I entered our daily adventures into my diary I discovered it was already June the 19th 1998, and so we thought about slowly heading back home, ...wherever home was.
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On our way south we came across the great Makgadigadi Saltpans, a vast shimmering area of 12 000 square km's, all that's left of one of the world's largest lakes said to have covered much of northern Botswana, and our new goal was a small fleck of land somewhere within called Kubu Island.
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 Our speedometer had given up the spirit, our tourist map was no good and our fixed AIRGUIDE compass was no longer reliable (because of months of shaking and battering) so we had no idea were we were and since it was almost dark we decided to stop in the beautiful vast nothingness and listen to the sounds of silence while we watched the glowing african sunset. |
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| When the new day had arrived we followed some of the many tracks that crisscrossed in front of us over the pan, and we did eventually find the little island and it seemed like we had arrived on a strange and mysterious planet. |
| The little island consisted of rounded boulders which where painted a shade of pink-grey in the late afternoon light and all around stood huge stubby baobab trees like silent giant guardians. |
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| We climbed to the highest point and from there I looked out into the pan and could see the great still nothingness stretched out like a sea that it had once been in front of me. It was the most extraordinary experiece that topped everything I'd experienced before. |
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There were trees some with a circumference of 15m. Some, I read could be as old as 4000 years. Uncanny!
The island is also a historic site where evidence of walling can still be seen apparently going back to the 13/14th century to a great trading civilization. |
 We could have stayed forever under the Baobabs, with no one to disturb the silent peace,...
but it was time to return to South Africa. |
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Some days later we found ourselves in Klerksdorp of all places and when our thermometer reached -2.5 Degrees in the night we realized it was no longer summer.
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Tour 1
Map
