Drawing Inspiration For Travel
Stop! Elephants! We missed them at first, and drove straight past. Then we saw the herd in the rear-view mirror. A handful were eating by the side of the highway. Another car pulled up and told us to go back the way we came; and sure enough, a few hundred metres away was the rest of the herd, at least forty of the biggest land animals on earth.
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Our headlights were illuminating the tall, wooden, arched gate. ‘Welcome to Chobe national park’. Through those gates were elephants. Further beyond that was the border to Zambia. But we were in a pickle; we could go no further. It was dusk and the park was closing. The game lodge we wanted to spend the night in was still about three hours away, and the guards wouldn’t let us drive at night. What’s more, there were no hotels for many hours back the other way.
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The Okavango Delta is one of the stars of southern Africa. A beautiful, unspoilt wetlands, slow waterways glimmering in the sun, alive with mangroves, insects and crocodiles, covering thousands of square kilometers. It is the terminus of the Okavango river, where the water fans out and eventually evaporates.
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We arrived in Maun, a long, sparse strip road of small, square brick shops, with more buildings continuing on into the bushland beyond. We stopped at a local butcher to buy some steaks. The butcher was a shack without a door; inside was a glass display counter piled high with cow hearts, another pile of enormous cow tongues, and some assorted steaks.
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We had grand ambitions for Botswana. The goal was a drive from the Namibian border to the town of Maun (pronounced something like Mau-oon), gateway to the magnificent Okavango Delta wetlands area. It was a huge distance which would cover almost the entire country.
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