Ernest's instructions when we went to bed last
night was that we all needed to get up at 6.30 to be packed and off by 7.30.
Well that didn't work too well as it was still pitch black at 6 .30 and I for
one wasn't going to stick my nose out of that tent for fear of getting frost
bite and my poor nose falling off. I think most of the others felt the same so
everyone eventually started creeping out at 6.45 to 7. Still freezing! Anyway it was a quick
breakfast with a choice of muesli, muesli, or muesli so everyone chose the
muesli and I didn't have to cook.
Packing up was a case of lots of fingers and
thumbs but I must say I was impressed with the speed with which everyone got
going. Ken and Rouvierre were the two fastest off the mark and left the rest of
us standing in their dust. I think Ken was determined to show Ernest he has met
his match.
The town of Jwaneng we learnt is a mining
town... Diamonds of course and is totally controlled by DeBeers. I couldn't
figure out why there was a rather nice golf club in town, an unusual thing to
find in Botswana, more like the old colonial times in Zimbabwe. From the
campsite we could see the huge mine dumps, looking just like the mine dumps
around Krugersdorp and Joburg.
The days travel was fairly uneventful; it is a
pretty straight road, well maintained. No SA potholes
that you
have to dodge or break a wheel off. The only thing you have to be wary of is
the odd donkey, cow or goat that runs across the road. One other interesting
things is that the grass on the side of the road has been cut for miles on end
for about two to three hundred kilometers, we just couldn't work out why they
would cut these huge verges until my bright spark of a husband realized that is
obviously a fire break and so the mystery was solved.
There is just endless
bush up here and a big fire would be totally devastating with no way to stop it
other than the road. When the grass was cut it showed just how many Kalahari
melons grow in the bush, just mile after mile of a literal carpet of melons.
During our lunch break Kim and Ernest got into a game of putting the Spiky
melons onto each other’s seats in the hope
that someone would sit on the dam thing. Ernest is missing playing tricks on
his grandsons so Kim is now the target.
We traveled up to Ghazi which has an interesting
history. During Rhodes time he settled a lot of British farmers in this area to
stop the Germans from spreading further into Africa from South West Africa,
just as he also formed an alliance with the Barotse king in the western side of
Zambia to stop the Portuguese from spreading into Africa from Angola. Rhodes
had a dream about colonize the whole of Africa for the British Empire.
When
we arrived at Ghanzi we sent Ken off to try and find out if there were any camp
sites close to Lake Ngami which was our target stop for the night. They very
smartly found the tourism info center who told us there was an old abandoned
campsite so off we went ...Ernest was smiling as he had a place at the end of
the journey. We arrived at Lake Ngami, found the abandon camp site but there
was now a local bar established on the site. After a bit of debating we decided
that the bar was better than nowhere so we set up camp and prepared ourselves
for a noisy night. I think they took one look at us and decided to abandon the
bar and take their party elsewhere. Shew we all sighed with relief.
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