Blowing off the cobwebs
Without being sure how much internet access I will have here in Botswana, I’ve decided to dust off my old Fiji blog to record my experiences for the time being. Its been so long since I last logged into WordPress that I have just had to reset my password!
After three days of solid travelling, I am finally here in Francistown, Botswana, with Eli, Will and Richard. Our journey started on Monday with a drive to Heathrow, flight to Madrid, and a (delayed) flight to Jo’burg. Pushed for time, we made our way to South African passport control, only for me to be told “Your skin temperature is too high” and be whisked away to have my temperature properly tested by a nurse. When I protested “I’m not sick” it was met with “But aren’t you worried that you might be?”
“No!” (but I was worried about missing the bus to Gaborne). Luckily I was declared healthy, and we all jumped into a taxi for a dash acorss Jo’burg, just in time to get on the bus.
The journey to Gaborone took about 7 hours, the highlights of which were a toilet stopon the South African side, where we bought beef jerky and Simba crisps for dinner. My first ever beef jerky and it tasted amazing! Dissapointingly, they don’t really seem to sell it in Botswana. Then we came to the border, where we all had to get off the bus and be stamped out of SA, walk across the border on foot, then get stamped into Botswana and have our bags checked before getting back on the bus.
We were expecting a friend of a friend to pick us up in Gaborone, but at the last minute found out that he couldn’t make it. Once off the bus at the Shell garage, a man came up to us asking “Richard? Richard?” and gave us a piece of paper with the number of another friend of a friend to call. Turns out Richard’s Motswana colleague had phone ahead of us and asked the man to pass on the phone numbers. Richard called the number, and soon a smartly dressed lady came to pick us up, and drove us to the outskirts of the city, where there was a beautiful big white house for us to stay in free of charge. The only catch was the lack of power, but given how tired and cold we were at this stage, it didn’t seem to matter. We went straight to bed! In the morning, a man from the water board would turn up to switch off the water due to an unpaid bill.
I had wrongly assumed that Botswana would be quite warm. It really isn’t. During the day its shorts and T-shirts weather for us, but the locals are wearing wooly jumpers and hats. At night, the temperature can drop below freezing during the coldest months of the year, though thankfully winter is on the way out, and it’s not quite as cold as that.
The final leg of our journey was the bus from Gaborone to Francistown. The locals insisted on having the curtains closed to keep the sunlight out, but I divided my journey between reading and peering out through a gap in the curtain at the Botswana countryside. Once we were clear of the shiny billboards and huge modern buildings of Gaborone, the view was of dusty organge ground and small dusty bushes. A few dried river beds and cattle, the occasional donkey, and further out we began to see the little villages and mud huts that make me think of Africa.
We arrived in Francsitown after dark, and dumped our stuff at the Grand Lodge before heading out to forage for food; our first proper, sit-down meal since leaving England. We had curry (not very african I know) and tandoori kebabs and some African beers at a place not far from the lodge, and resolved to find something a bit more local once we had seen Francistown by light! Then it was off home to check out Botswana TV, and have my first (lovely warm) shower in nearly three days.
