Arriving into Botswana from Zambia...

the first thing you notice is that the roads are paved...flat; which is a major distinction to the mountain-range and bottomless gorge style of paving prevalent in the aforementioned country. I imagine that the long, flat straights would be heaven for motorcyclists...if they can avoid the occasional ostrich, zebra or elephants that occasionally cross the road.

In the safaris, the game vehicles are usually younger than the people driving them, and modifying them to allow for tourists does not consist of simply removing the doors and welding steel planks to the back of the thing. Also, in the game parks, there were well-equipped buildings which housed the anti-poaching units, as opposed to the poachers being the ones with the houses.

Of course, there has to be a down-side...or should I say down-size. As soon as we crossed into Botswana, beer was no longer sold in the half-litre bottles that we have grown fond of in East-Africa and which we considered part of the landscape, well the barscape anyway. Rather, they were sold in piddly little 340 ml ones...which incidentally cost more.

These are the hidden costs of progress which legislators fail to identify!

Botswana is famous for two main natural phenomenon (excluding gold and diamonds), the Okavango River Delta, which is the largest inland river delta in the world and the Kalahari Desert. In what seems to be par for this trip, the delta was dry, thus making it simply an “inland”. Meanwhile we were plagued by thunderstorms and cold weather in the Kalahari.

We started our expedition into the Okavango in the traditional manner; on a narrow dug-out canoe called a “makoro”. These boats are known for their amazing stability; and they are…as long as they're on dry land! As soon as they're placed in the water and then two graceless westerners and a guide are placed into them, everything changes - mostly for the wetter. Now the Okavango is not completely dry...there are still small, reed-lined rivlets that crisscross each other like roads in a badly planned city. In fact, current theory suggests that the delta was modeled after Rome.

After several hours through this labyrinthine waterpark, we arrived at a clearing where we would camp for the next three days. With the help of the guides and porters, we got out stuff off the boats and pitched camp. And that's when the porters walked away...to the next town which it seems was only about half an hour away. That's when the idea first dawned on us that we may not be as secluded as we thought.

That afternoon we went for a game walk to see the local fauna, which included baboons, warthogs, elephants (which came precariously close to our camp on another night) and lions. Now we didn't see any lions, but there were tracks. As we walked for hours into the heart of the delta, our guide stopped us and pointed out the various tracks in the sand. There he pointed out the hoofed kudu tracks and the lion tracks which followed in the same direction. To our disappointment, though not surprise, the most proliferous tracks of all in this the deepest, most savage part of the Okavango were the long, continuous parallel ones of the elusive...4x4.

As bad as this may seem, all was redeemed when we took a bumpy, low-altitude and quick turning scenic flight over the delta in a tiny Cessna. Seems there was some water down there after all.

Then we drove...and drove and drove through nothing but shrubs small trees and fences - while scarcely passing another vehicle, let alone a town, hut or even a hitch-hiker - in order to get to the Kalahari. This is where the famous Bushmen live of "The Gods Must Be Crazy" fame. Unfortunately, the reality of life in Botswana is not the romantic ideal we have of these people. Since all of Botswana has been fenced off like a huge suburb to keep the domestic cattle from wild animals, the Khoisan (or San as they're called) can no longer continue in their traditional nomadic lifestyle. As a result, they migrate towards cattle towns and alcoholism has become a big problem.

We saw the San in a makeshift human zoo-type setting. Basically, a family or group are taken from one of the remote towns and placed in a "fake" authentic village for a month to live "traditionally" so that the tourists can ooh and ahh over them. It was very uncomfortable, but it turns out that they are better paid doing this than they would at other jobs and they are free to go when they choose. They do not seem to mind, and soon as the initial awkwardness passed, they seemed quite happy to have us there and have something to do.

The rancher who ran this "show" was a skeletally thin Afrikaaner called Vampy...or Vimpy...or Voompy. I'm not sure, but I kept thinking about the Umpa-Lumpa song from Charlie and the Chocolate factory when I heard is name...which is probably why I can't remember it correctly!(Actually, I think his real name was Willem). He was quite interesting in his views of the San with whom he grew up and spoke one of the dialects fluently. When we asked why he didn't employ them on the farm, he answered that they had no marketable skills for farming, and besides, they tend to leave and not return when they feel like it, or more often than not, would go on a week-long bender after pay-day.
When we asked about some of the more obscure elements of San society, like the trance-like dancing, he attributed it to boredom, "What else is there to do in the middle of the desert with no TV or radio...I'd be dancing too"

From there, we drove in the freezing cold, as one would expect to have in the Kalahari to the South African border.

I'm out of time and this is way too long already, so I'll send it as it is and include a link to some more photos:

http://www.ofoto.com/I.jsp?c=9s4cmvvd.6vbf4qh5&x=0&y=m9nqdu