Monday, 12 Feb - Day 42

We are now in Botswana, twice the size of France with 1,6 mio people.   We shopped intensively in Shakawe, the first city after the Mohembo Borderpost.

We were drining through the Bwaratba National park but didn’t pay to enter.   But we saw quite some game from the car: a big heard of Zebras, fewer Springboks and a Kudu or two.

‘Guma Lagoon Camp’ at the lower part of what is called ‘The Panhandle’, more precisely at the western side of the beginning of the Okavango Delta.

The road to access the Camp was 15 kms of deep-deep sand track.   With some welcome passages like this 1 km one with grass and cattle.

Some kind of Paradise .... 3 nights in our own tent, at Guma Lagoon, in the shade of a hundred years Mapone tree.   No neighbours, only few moskitos and a lovely temperature.  At night we heard the hippos and saw the eyes of the swimming ones.  The last afternoon a small crocodile (2,5 meters I think) came ashore to lie just below the place, we chose for camping supper.

Potholes as big as bathtubs and as long as we can see and this probably over some 400 kms before reaching our next stop, Ghanzi.    

Road control post - Foot-and-Mouth disease within cattle is seriously controlled and non-existant in both Botswana and Namibia.

‘Thakadu Bush Camp’, tent nr. 1 with attached bathroom and a huge  overed terrace.    

In the middle of a stone desert with some trees.   So different from the lush green of the Okavango banks.