Namibia & Botswana April 2024

Namibia is not easy to get to, particularly from Perth. We flew Qantas Perth to Sydney then Sydney-Johannesburg, and then South African Airways to Windhoek. From the airport in Windhoek we took a taxi to Namibia 2 Go to pick up the car, then we drove to Okapuka, to join the rest of the group from Emotions by Motion.

After a quick lunch and a cool drink we went for a game drive first, where we saw rhinos, giraffes, ostrich, leopard turtle (a live one as well as a dead one / shell), lilac breasted roller, oryx, water bucks and lots of springboks. In the evening we went for a driving experience through the hills and over some boulders – amazing drive, quite steep at times – before having dinner back at the lodge.

From Okapuka we drove to Nhoma. The first stop was Okahandjo for the wood market – we just enjoyed some game biltong from across the road – then we turned into a very nice lightning storm as we went through a valley heading towards Grootfontein, where we refuelled and then had lunch. There was a young toddler at the petrol station, barely able to carry a 1L Coke bottle that his dad had bought for him! Not far from there we turned onto a gravel road and then kept going until we reached Nhoma safari camp – 750 km drive in total for the day. The camp at Nhoma is right next to a San village (the land that the camp is built on belongs to the community). We saw lots and lots of hornbills on the way. We met Freddy, one of the San people, who works at the accommodation and also took us to the village next day and explained about their lives – he went to military school after finishing normal school to year 10, but didn’t last very long as he missed his family. The Sans do not like to fight and that is why they’ve been pushed by the other, more aggressive tribes, further and further away into dry, desert territory. We heard lots of other interesting stories by the fire that evening.

The first night in Nhoma was interesting. We woke up to lightning and thunder around 3:30 am. There was no power and no hot water. Rain water got into the electrical cables and the locals couldn’t start the fire (for the “individual hot water system”) in the rain.
The initial plan for the day was to go for a field trip with the San hunters in the morning, however it rained pretty heavily. They turned up around 9 am wearing shirts on top of their traditional scanty clothes, on their way to catch some spring hares, the only animals they can hunt when it’s wet (by spearing them in their burrows). We changed our plans and drove through mud puddles to see the local San-dal factory, where they make sandals out of eland leather. There were a lot of fallen logs close to the site and they told us the Chinese couldn’t secure export permits so they just left it there. There were some workers who looked really different to the San and who were fixing the fences – Bantu, from the Okavango area.

After lunch we went to visit the San village and did a shorter trip with the hunters – learned again about starting the fire as well as making thin ropes out of Serseviera plants and using them for bird traps.

They also showed us some interesting plants – one that had a root that contained lots of water, one that had a root that had a strong camphor odour, another one that they used the roots to remove fur from animal skins, one that they drink instead of coffee and a hallucinogenic one. We saw lots of dung beetles.
In the village we found the older daughter of the white couple who manage the camp playing along with the local kids. We bought some souvenirs from them and they also performed a dance / play for us (using a small melon).

After dinner we went back to the village to see them perform a healing dance (and also admire the Milky Way, which had become quite prominent by now – and the sky didn’t have many clouds left).

After having an excellent shakshuka for breakfast we left Nhoma heading for Botswana. We drove through Tsumkwe then reached the border. The border crossing office wanted to appear quite serious. They had a production graph with all the cars that crossed the border that week and they checked the suitcases (and the lesson I learned is that if it’s a male officer they won’t check a suitcase belonging to a woman – when they were looking through one of our bags, he saw my cosmetics and quickly pushed it away when I told him they were mine, saying he’s not supposed to check women’s stuff!).
The first part of the road in Botswana was gravel again, not much different from Namibia but obviously greener / more water around. However, once we reached the tar road we understood why Namibia claim to have the best roads in Africa – it was full of potholes, quite deep ones, and the locals were driving on the dirt alongside the road!
We saw lots of donkeys (roaming free, pulling carts, being ridden or just going along with humans) but not that much wildlife (there were new road signs warning that elephants might cross the road). The houses were obviously quite poor and made out of mud bricks, but they were really tidy and well-looked after.
We arrived at Shakawe Lodge in the afternoon after an interesting drive. It is in a beautiful location, right on the Okavango (called Cubango here). We were supposed to go on a cruise that evening but we arrived later than expected so we just relaxed before dinner.

We got up early to watch the sunrise and also found lots of vervet monkeys around the chalets and the carpark.

We had breakfast then drove to Tsodilo Hills where they have a small museum about the area. We went for a walk with one of the guides to show us some rock paintings. There were a couple of marula trees with ripe fruit so we sampled them. And we got overtaken by some pastors in a ute, only to find them chanting (for rain) where the trail looped around.

On the way back we went for a mokoro canoe trip on Okavango – a small business that employs quite a few local water-San people. Mokoro are canoes dug out of tree trunks and used traditionally by the water Bushmen. They took us to a small island and explained about how their ancestors used to fish and retreat to this island when they felt danger on shore. They made some funky necklaces and hats out of water lilies that we got on our way back to the cars.

We had lunch back at the lodge (very nice fish whole-cooked) then went for an evening cruise on Okavango – peaceful, beautiful views and an amazing sunset. We saw a couple of fish eagles (that they fed), egrets, lots of bee eaters (most of them nesting in hollows made in the higher river banks), a small crocodile.

After breakfast we left heading south, round the Okavango delta, till we reached Maun, a big town by Botswanian definition but actually quite small. The drive to Shokomoka was quite interesting – after we turned left from the main gravel road there was a very sandy and bumpy track. It was quite obvious that elephants had been through there with the sheer scale of destruction of all trees and bushes. However we only saw one elephant in the distance that afternoon, some giraffes and baboons.

At Shokomoka we were welcomed with very loud singing and nice dancing, then we had the briefing (warning us not to walk by ourselves at night time as there are wild animals about, the premises being unfenced). They also told us not to leave any food in the tents and to always zip them up due to the resident inquisitive and thievish monkeys and baboons.

Accommodation was quite nice, glamping again but good quality. The food was amazing! We had an early night in preparation for the morning game drive.

Next day we got up at 4:45 am for a very early departure to a game drive. In the classical tourist-baited Toyota-game viewing vehicle we went down the track along the fence again, the turned left onto the main dirt road to eventually reach Kazikinii reserve. We saw quite a few elephants on the way.

At the entrance to the reserve we picked up a local guide who helped our driver take us around to see some animals – buffaloes, giraffes, zebras, jackals, mangooses, warthogs. We also saw quite a few skeletons (giraffe, elephants, buffalo) and learned that many elephants die of anthrax (hence it’s a good idea to stay away and not touch the bones). We had a really nice encounter with a small herd of elephants crossing the road, including a tiny one that rushed across (while in the open and not between his guarding adults).

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We came back to have lunch at the lodge then just relaxed for the rest of the day.

The staff put on a bit of a show for us in the evening.

Unfortunately Shokomoka didn’t leave only good memories for me as I got pretty sick the day we left, probably food poisoning from some fruit yogurt that I had for breakfast. There were no hospitals on the way (as I was sick enough to think I would need one). One of the home remedies for food sickness in Africa is Coca Cola – and as soon as I had a few sips I vomited quite a lot and suddenly felt much better. Just in time to take some photos of three lions that were lingering on the side of the road as we approached our next accommodation, Goha Hills (in Savuti National Park). The road leading to it has lots of puddles and every single car lost at least one number plate, some lost both. The lodge was really, really nice, our favourite accommodation for this trip. Unfenced property again, so not supposed to walk by ourselves at night.

We went for an early morning game drive in Savuti National Park. It started off with a mystic foggy sunrise and hornbills enjoying the early morning sunshine. We met some elephants early on before the guides took us to two of the lions that we had seen yesterday who were feeding on a zebra. We got really close to them and it was quite a sight! There was a jackal nearby as well feeding on the smell.
We kept going and saw blue wildebeest, more jackals, a warthog, zebras, giraffes, springboks, steenboks, more jackals, mongooses, a few desert foxes, Marabou storks and lots of other birds. Raz spotted a python at the base of a tree. On the way back we saw a pack of wild dogs that had killed a kudu. They had removed the stomach (that stunk really badly) and some dung beetles were working on it now. We saw a live kudu as well, more elephants and giraffes. We drove past Savute international airport.

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We then went back to the lodge for lunch and after high tea we went back for another game drive – back to the lions (only one was left now to enjoy the zebra). The other one was next to the kudu that the wild dogs had hunted. And on the way back we met the third one that was simply sleeping across the road!
We saw lots of Maribou storks quite close to the kudu carcass and enjoy a spectacular sundowner on the Savute airport runway.

Here is a video if some of animals that we saw in Kazikinii Reserve and Savuti National Park..

Back at the lodge the staff put on quite a show for us on a background of lion roars that we could hear in the valley.

Next destination after Goha Hills to head towards Jackalberry Lodge in Kasane. The trip was uneventful, we got there around 1 pm. We took everything out of the cars and got them ready for the trip back to Namibia.

After some refreshments and a short afternoon nap we got taken by minibus to a barrell-jetty and went on a cruise on Chobe River (providing a natural border between Namibia and Botswana and lined with jackal berry trees on the latter’s side). We enjoyed the spectacular orange light of the sunset and saw lots of hippos, elephants, buffaloes, a couple of crocodiles and fish eagles.

Here‘s a videoof some of the animals that we saw.

Accommodation was glamping again, with beautiful views onto Chobe River.

In the morning we did another safari cruise to see the hippos again and Chobe River in a different light (not as nice as in the evening as it was overcast).

Back at Jackalberry Lodge, we got on the minibus from Absolute tours and started heading towards the Zimbabwe border. We learned that the fee to bring cars into Zimbabwe is very high (allegedly to cover the road use costs) and on top of that, due to the corruption of the customs officials, the bribes required are really high as well. So at the border crossing there are lots of cars that have been abandoned there by their owners when they learned how much it would cost to take them across.
It took about one hour to get our passports checked and visas issued. And after another hour we reached the Lookout Café at Victoria Falls.

Here are some drone views of the places we visited in Namibia and Botswana.