Day 1 - Juaneng, Botswana

Sitting around the fire after a hard day’s travel is what this kind of activity is all about. It is what keeps us South Africans in Africa and it is the most wonderful peaceful activity that feed the soul. The stories that come out would never be told in normal life and sitting under the stars allows ones universe to expand to the heavens. 

The night stars are very bright in the bush as there is no other light to dull the night’s sky and the sounds of the bush with the jackals call is a thrill that only people who love the bush really understand.

We set off very early this morning ... Not quite 6 o'clock but we did make it out by 7 which I think was pretty good going for a group of this size.

Fritz and Ronel had to arrive and unpack very rapidly as they never made it last night. Fritz had been bitten by a spider a few days ago and he had had such a bad reaction that the doctor had to lance the bite yesterday and drain the poison out of his arm which was very badly swollen. Anyway he is a tough boy and has two sets of antibiotics to control the infection.

We made it as far as Magaliesburg before we had breakfast ... Got to feed those stomachs and all ate a very hearty breakfast except Ken who is still on his diet. Of course the one disadvantage of this "bottomless pit truck" that Ernest and I are driving is the fact that we can never get into any parking lots or find an easy parking place near to our breakfast spot at the Wimpy. So we had to park in the main road right in front of the Wimpy thinking there would never be a cop anywhere in sight on a cold Wednesday morning.... Bad thinking as standing right there was a lady traffic cop. So Kim boldly went up to her and explained that we were on our way to our first Africa expedition and we wouldn't be long, she was rather a large lady with a lovely pleasant smile who looked at Kim and said that we could park there as long as we took her with us on the trip, to which Kim replied we would be swimming so she had to have a bathing suit, to which she replied she didn't need a bathing suit as she always liked skinny dipping!! Without flinching Kim said that in that case of course she could come with us.  Oh dear Kim that was a wrong move as we will tease him about it for the rest of the trip.

It turned out to be a long day of driving flat out to get to our first target of Sakoma. The border posts were really not a problem except for, surprisingly enough the SA side, when we tried to declare all our cameras, binocs computers and sat phone etc. there was a little old lady who insisted on seeing all the serial  numbers and laboriously writing every one down. She hardly knew how to work the computer so it just took ages which made the anticipation of the Botswana border much worse... I really had been worrying about them searching the vehicle and not allowing us to take all our meat with us. Anyway the Botswana side was a breeze and we just sailed through.

From the time we crossed the border at 12 pm Ernest started to fret about where we were going to camp. The side of the road was fenced all the way and there was simply no way to get off into the bush to go and bush camp. Finally when we hit the last town before our Target town, a little place called Juaneng.

Ernest put his stubborn foot down and insisted that we find somewhere to camp, he sent Ken off in one direction, Kim and Steve somewhere else to investigate possible sites and we sat in our big hippopotamus waiting and directing the guys on the radio and having an argument about whether we should just press on or not. I thought we should go for target and obstinate Ernest (he calls it decisive) wasn't going any further.

Anyway Ken eventually found a guy with a campsite 10 Ks out of town so off we went while the others were catching up. We got to the campsite called  "two lovers campsite" quite literally. Oh my gosh it was worse than a campsite in the middle of Soweto.... All broken down and full of thorns and broken beer bottles. Ernest tried to convince me it was fine and we must just keep our shoes on!  By this time my temper was really flaring and thank goodness we got a call from Ken to say we were at the wrong camp site -

Shoo I don't know who had the lucky break as murder was on the cards.

Anyway the campsite that Ken found was quite spectacular. Some guy had built it for the car club and it was used once and then it was closed down.  He was kind enough to open it up for us. Clean ablutions with hot water and lovely fire pits with tons of great wood and cleared of all thorns and bushes. What a find!!!  Lucky Ernest as I had to admit it was the very ideal place for our first night.

Getting into the camping thing again is quite a challenge I must say, even though I meticulously packed everything in places that I would remember, it was quite difficult finding where I had hidden things. Fortunately Fritz and Ronel are quite experienced bush people so they were a great help and even more fortunate is that Steve knows everything about the truck like where to turn on the gas and where to switch on the water otherwise it would have taken twice as long to set up anything.

 

So we had our first camp in the bush in relative luxury with everyone in high spirits and looking forward to the next few days of hard driving to get to the top of the swamps where our real journey and adventure begins.  

I am sure we will be bush camping tomorrow so will keep you informed of our first real bush experience.

Cheers for now!