Never Ending Story
21/07/2012
Another campsite ditched for being too expensive and to be honest just crap. We’re in Botswana…..So we arrived through customs quite smoothly with only some Green Peppers being confiscated. Turns out anything that grows above ground is banned as South Africa have Fruit Flies. Evidentially these don’t fly across the border as they are too lazy so they hitch a lift on chilled to 3C vegetables. I’d like to meet these flies that survive 3C for 24 hours. Anyhow it was a small loss. We didn’t bother smuggling anything as per advice from all other overlanders as we only had what we had so “nothing to declare”. I suppose they missed the chillis we had as they aren’t much different from peppers as they are indeed peppers. We stayed the first night in Palapye and happened on the overland truck stop. Good value at 140Pula for two and although we didn’t pay for the power hookup now we have the Solar (thanks to Kobus and Alett) they had a fully equipped kitchen which we used to cook dinner. Dare I say we used a Microwave !!! First time in ages and how I miss it for defrosting food. Second night we were in the Bird Sanctuary at Nata and this was a welcome change at 85pula and cheap with good facilities considering the bargain price. I say bargain as a few months ago we would have laughed in their faces at this price. There’s 12 pula to the pound. Campsite was good and although no toilet roll in mine Julie had some in hers. Then on to the Salt pans to the “you just can’t miss it” Kubu Island. Well I certainly could have missed it and what a disappointment. 93km off road to get there and the campsite was rubbish with only drop toilets and nothing else. Not even water, let alone a sink. I hear you ask ‘how much?”, well it was 246.60pula for one night. OMFG!!! We decided to stay reluctantly and then the lovely receptionist decided to give our space to someone else so we had to move. Well my answer to that was “of course we will move,,,to another campsite” having seen the island in all its none glory we went 18km to another camp with toilets proper and showers and things like a bar !!! all for 140pula. Nice move and same sunset. We are now in Maun and again happened on the overland truck stop. Again a find as its only 100pula. So we are staying a few night to rest and do washing. The car is dusty so had a blow out this morning and golly was she dusty. Still needs a wash outside as the Pans are mainly Salt (Duh!) so need to get rid of that with some water……not the best mix but how else? We met some people here we met in Vic Falls and looks like their trip back up Africa, if there ever was such a thing, is on hold. They’ve decided to stay down here. We’ve also met some people who sailed to Africa from Australia and then got a Land Rover in South Africa which he promptly took for a swim in a BIG puddle and killed the computer (ECU and BCU). They are stuck here waiting for the parts…..six weeks. I’ve given them the manual for their car so at least they might know how to fix it should he decide to break it again. We finally tried some Baobab seeds. Like sour sweets so quite nice. If you’ve ever had a lemon sour ball its like that with no lemon.
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