Botswana&Namibia Road Trip: Chobe National Park and Planet Baobab, Botswana
on Postcards from Zambia (Zambia), 30/Sep/2011 16:27, 34 days ago
Truthfully my holidays started a bit before our September 9thdeparture across the border in to Botswana. Mum and her friend Reegena arrived in Livingstone with a week to check out the town prior to the start of road trip.So, as a result Mike and I got to do a couple of the remaining tourist activities that we hadn’t yet done such as “Walking with the lions” and the Zambezi Sunset Cruise and others that we had done before such as sundowner drinks at the Royal Livingstone Hotel and Sunday lunch at Taita Falcon Lodge. Mum with the lionsThe lions: Unfortunately these ones are bred in captivityEnjoying sundowners on the Lady Livingstone CruiseSunset on the Zambezi RiverFinally, the 9thof September arrived and we set off on our Botswana and Namibia trip, with Mum and Reegena joining us for the Botswana part.First stop was just over the border in Botswana, to Kasane. After a quick“lunch stop” at the border post where we had to scoff down our home packed lunch before being allowed to cross the border (damn that foot and mouth disease!), we made a return visit to Chobe National Park."Scoffing" down our packed lunch at the Botswana borderI won’t spend much time writing about Chobe as this was our 5thvisit. But I will say that Chobe never disappoints and hopefully the photos speak for themselves!Monkey TreeImpala taken it easyMum and me: Check out what's behind us!After a couple of awesome days in Kasane, we set off south, heading towards Nata onroute to Planet Baobab, west of Nata.The road south to Nata was interesting; under construction, the diversion road was narrow, slow and dangerous with large trucks coming from the opposite direction and taking up much of the road.The road on the way to Nata: Over turned carThe road to Nata: Narrow roadsOn this road we also had our first negative encounter with the Botswana Police. Set up on this stretch of road was an“Animal Control” post, at which we were forced to give up our earlier purchased rump steaks (vacuum packed), salad ingredients and apples. Apparently there are different zones in Botswana and you cannot bring such goods from one area to the other. I had a couple of issue with this as:Botswana Tourism fails to disclose this to tourists, so many people run into this issue after making large purchases at local supermarkets in known tourist towns, andThe post was for animal products only. There was no mention of vegetable products, only the police telling us that they had to take our vegetables due to issues with fruit flies. I’m not sure if they were telling the truth or not, however no where on the post signage was there mention of vegetable products, only animal. Also interesting and a little suspicious to me, was how selective they were with the vegetable products. Things like lettuce they let uskeep.I did get a little fired up during this encounter, probably a result of my built up frustration at Zambia. But as expected I/ we didn’t win and I have little doubt in my mind that they all had a lovely dinner much laterJ. Local hoteliers also later confirmed that the vegetable products should have been ours to keep!From“animal control” we continued onwards to Planet Baobab, a bush camp surrounded by giant Baobab trees.Planet BaobabI loved this camp and the Baobab trees that surrounded it. They are truly amazing. Most of the trees are believed to be between 2,000 and 4,000 years old and are just beautiful, especially at sunset and sunrise.The camp itself was also lovely with cute bush huts, which mum and Reegena were lucky to stay in (Mike and I camped) and a large inviting pool to chill in while gazing up at the Baobab Trees.The pool at Planet Baobab and me in it!One of the many huge Baobab treesSunset at Planet BaobabMike taking a picture of a giant Baobab treeTo give you some idea of the scale :-)Unfortunately we had planned only one night there; a second night would have been great and also given us the opportunity to check out the Makgadikgadi Salt Pans, which we were sad to pass by along the highway. Nonetheless, we continued on to the next exciting phase of our Botswana leg, the Okavango Delta!Road on the way to the Makgadikgadi Salt Pans