Onward to Zambia with some final thoughts on Botswana

Tomorrow we head to Livingston, Zambia where we’ll spend 4 nights at a lodge situated on the Zambezi River. Our reservation says “riverfront view” so hopefully this will be the case.

We dropped off our camper truck/home for the past month on August 25th and had accumulated a total of 6,456 km travelling through Namibia and Botswana.

We traveled a total of 1,497 km through out Botswana. Some of this was on paved roads but the majority of our travel time was spent going short distances on incredibly challenging sand roads. The map below shows the route we took through this relatively small but diversely landscaped country.

The people of Botswana are some of the most friendly we have met to date. Always a smile, a hello and how are you today. The nature is truly unspoiled and rugged and we felt like we truly were in the wilds of Africa.

There were no fences at any of the campsites so we always had to keep a look out for baboons and hyenas or elephants and although not advisable we did walk to the ablutions (toilets) at night but we always had our super-duper military grade 1,000 lumen flash light with us!

The weather was hot during the day and comfortable at night. It is the dry season so it really was dry throughout the country which created great game viewing opportunities along the remaining water holes and river edges.

The driving was challenging but if it had been any easier I don’t think this would have been the true adventure we experienced.

Adventure comes in many forms. This was an exhilarating trip at times and at other times we were challenged to keep going but keep going we did and except for the last 2 days we endured a truly wonderful experience that was both just as hard to put into words as it was to not want to stop and give up. As I sit here writing this we asked ourselves “would we do this again?”. The hardship, no showers for days, the dust and grime. Yes, absolutely and without a doubt. The last two weeks have left a mark on us that we will never forget and I know we will return again someday to Botswana.