Section 03. NW Botswana

Day 033. 11 June. Maun Walking Safari Day. 12 km. 5 hours. 30m up. 30m down. I was up early at 0600 to have breakfast and pack before I got picked up at 0730. I left the bike in the courtyard at Golentle Homestay where the staff were working outside all day. The pickup was there 15 minutes early and just waited in Kays compound until I was ready. We set off at 0730 and I initially understood we were going to pick others up, but we we soon out of town and then we turned off on a sandy 4×4 track up towards Daunane Village. It was quite a drive and took over an hour bouncing along the narrow sandy track through savannah. I had no idea what to expect but thought the whole thing would be quite tame. At last we came to a very traditional village with about 40 compounds and a small shop. The houses were nearly all small round huts, and there were about 2-4 per compound. Just after the village we passed a sign saying Section NG32. I later learnt that this was a conservancy area owned by the Duanane village community. They policed it and also developed tourism in it. Just after the sign we suddenly arrived at the water’s edge where there were about 10 pickups, 50 people milling around and about 50 fibreglass dugout canoes. We had reached a lagoon on the edge of the Okavango Delta.

Soon Mantre arrived and said he was to be my guide for the day. His English was terrible (but better than my Tswana) and I could hardly understand a word he was saying and he smelt of alchohol. Looking at the tourists milling about, trying to decipher what Mantre was saying and generally looking at the scene I thought what type of circus have I signed up for today. Then Sofie, the other guide, arrived she was more credible but spoke no English. We started to load two boats with stuff from the minibus and then we set off with Sofie and all the equipment in one and Mantre, the driver and me in the other.

It was then I  noticed we were just punting past a group of some 30 hippopotamus who were wallowing at the far edge of the lagoon. I thought they were very dangerous, but Mantre was punting past them as if he was walking past a herd of sheep. I asked him about it and if I understood correctly he said they were all females and youngsters and quite placid. Indeed there were villagers fishing for Tilapia fish close to them. Suddenly the tour became a lot more exciting.

We went across the lagoon, past the hippopotamus and into long reeds. Mantre said the villagers use the stems of the reeds to make fences in their compounds. There was a channel in the reeds where water was gently flowing into the lagoon. This was the flood arriving and in the next month the Kvango river, swollen by rains 3 months ago in the Angolan Highlands, would surge onto the Okavango delta and into a huge patchwork of lagoons raising their level by a metre or two. If the flood was especially big it would then overspill to the 3 rivers and flow towards the 3 depressions and salt pans I mentioned earlier, but this only happens every 5-10 years.

Mantre expertly punted the dugout canoe, called a mokoro, up the channels against the gentle flow and en route we saw quite a lot of bird life, including rails, a small king fisher, storks and ibis. The detla was brimming with birds. The channels were sandy and only about half a metre deep. On each side of the channel tall reeds rose 2 metres above us and each had a large feathery seed head swaying in the breeze. I wondered what would happen if we met a lost hippopotamus coming towards us. It must have happened before. After a good hour passing from channel to small lagoon we emerged from the channel into a larger lagoon and landed. Sofie arrived right behind us. We then unloaded all the boxes and carried them up to the shade of a large tree and left them.

It was than explained we were going on a walk and would come back for lunch. The driver stayed behind and Mantre and Sofie said we were to walk in single file with me in the middle. He justified this by explaining there were lots of aardvark holes, often covered by sticks and I would probably not see them and stumble into one. Soon after we set off we did pass some and they were a trap for the novice after all. Mantre explained about some of the plants and their meedicinal properties but I think he sensed it was going in one ear and out of the other. It was, but to be fair to myself I only understood 10% of what he was saying.

We walked on and soon enough came to another lagoon with about 30 hippopotamus standing on the muddy sand out of the water. It was a sensational scene and I was now starting to enjoy the walk. I took some photos and we walked on. At last Mantre and I found a way to communicate which was him leading the way along hippopotamus, elephant and game trails and me following. When he spotted something he would point it out to me and explain what it was. His eyesight and knowlege of the bush was shinning through, and he was a very skilled tracker. We saw zebra at a distance and lots of sign of elephant as we wandered across grassy areas which he said would be covered in water in a month. Indeed you could see a contour round the depressions where the grass stopped and the more permanent vegetation took over. Mantre then pointed to an elephant perhaps a kilometre away. It took me a while to find it.

For nearly the next 2 hours we then went on a wide loop through trees coppised by elephant, grasslands waiting to be flooded, and small scrub areas with huge termite towers. Mantre spied so much game and pointed it out to me. We saw quite a few herds of zebra with perhaps 20 in each herd. In one herd there was a small group of giraffe embedded in the herd. Mantre explained that zebra and giraffe are often found together and the zebra like to use the giraffe as an early warning mechanism as their eyesight is good. It was quite incredibe to be wandering across the savannah through herds of zebra and giraffe. We also saw a lot of warthog, red lechwe antelope and Impala. Towards the end Mantre also showed me a distant large male elephant heading from one copse to another. My initial sceptism with the trip and Mantre was completely unjustified and it was really educational and interesting now. After a good 2 hours we completed the walk and got back to the dugouts.

Here the driver had prepared lunch. The parcels we carried up were chairs and tables and these were now all laid out with food waiting to be served. It was a simple tasty meal of pasta, bolognaise with potato salad. We all ate well and then packed everything to return to the dugouts. It took an hour to return and now we were going with the flow a little and we quickly wove down the channels from lagoon to lagoon, which were all slowly filling up. When we reached the final lagoon the hippopotamus there were all basking on the bank. We went surprisingly close to them, perhaps just 40 metres. Despite their size they are very fast and would cover that distance in no time; both the bit on land and the bit in the lagoon. But again there were fishermen even closer and they did not seem to bother. Once we landed I was really quite overjoyed how the day had gone and gave both Mantre and Sofie a good tip before they went back to their village.

I sat in the back of the pickup in specially adapted seats so I could get a good look at the village as we went through it. Daunane was still very traditional and cattle seemed to be the mainstay although I also saw a field of maize. I shouod imagine they woukd have to work hard to protect the maize from elephants and also the cattle from the odd roving lion. The compounds where the livestock spent the night were well barricaded, and as I said earlier within this compound was an inner sanctum fenced off with reeds where the family lived. It was fascinsting to see the village and I would have loved to have spent a couple of days here learning about their animal husbandry and economics, and how it all interlinked with the family and relationships between families. It was the classical Social Anthropology which I studied at university.

However we had to get back to Maun so after another bumpy hour on the sandy track and then 20 minutes of potholed tarmac I was finally back at Golentle Homestay. I met Kay and thanked her for arranging everything for me and then got on my bike for the short trip to Maun Lodge, my third hotel in Maun in 4 nights. It was a thriving hotel and full of people coming and going on safari. It was perhaps the place to be in Maun but it did not have the easy going personal cosiness of Golentle Homestay, but much more character than Cresta Rileys. I shopped at a nearby supermarket for a few staples I needed on the next 600 km stretch to Kasane and then had dinner. It had a great buffet and I tucked into that not knowing what the next 10 days would bring. In the evening I wrote the blog. By and large this third section was quite dull except for the first day from the border to the main road and then this last extra cirucular day in Maun in the mokoro in the lagoons and the walking safari.

Day 032. 10 June. Maun Rest Day. 0 km. 0 hours. 0m up. 0m down. After the great buffet breakfast I chatted with a couple of ladies who were just heading off on a 10 day luxury safari and then went to see an NGO which James Suzman,from a week ago, recommended. They were nice but could not help with a delta trip. So I went back to the hotel, packed my bike and then went to see Kay in the Golentle Homestay.

Kay still had rooms and yes she could arrange either the canoe trip or the game drive tomorrow. She suggested the canoe trip as the game drive was not that unique, while the canoe trip was. She also had a very reasonable room , but just for one night. Unfortunately, I was an hour too late otherwise I could have gone on the overnight trip she mentioned yesterday. By now I was eager to go on what I had previously dismissed as too mundane.

It was agreed I could leave the bike and all my stuff here tomorrow and then retrieve it and go to the Maun Lodge, just down the road which I had already checked out. They did a very reasonably priced thatched cottage. So I went to get money for Kay and the Canoe Tour and then went down to the Maun Lodge for a late lunch.

The food was good and the staff here seemed very friendly. While the Cresta Riley had an exclusive, and almost conference feel to it, there were very few travellers there. It was mostly Botswanan middle classes on a romantic break or on a business trip. While the Maun Lodge had a lot of safari adventurers either going to or coming back from various safaris. No doubt similar to the ones at the private lodges and tented camps in the delta which were over the top for me. Once I made my booking I returned to Kays and caught up with the blog. I had a great meal which they made for me. It would have been best if I had come straight here from Sehithwa 2 days ago, and I considered it, but I wanted to be in the relaxed coffee shop and backpacker vibe in the centre of town. As it transpired I don’t think there was one and it was just a diffused collection of hotels, malls, petrol stations, tyre repair shops with no tangible beating heart.

Day 031. 09 June. Maun Rest Day. 0 km. 0 hours. 0m up. 0m down. As I was in Maun it would be a great shame to miss the Okavango Delta. The town was the gateway to it. Today I just wanted to relax and find out about doing a tour into the delta tomorrow. However, I rather fatally went back to bed after the large buffet breakfast and snoozed on and off all morning, wasting a lot of time. When I eventually got my act together it was after midday. I could find out very little, except from the limited information the bored lady at the “Excursion Africa” in the hotel reception area reluctantly divulged. She had 2 options; a canoe ride in one of the delta channels interspersed with a short walk or a game drive. Both quite boring I thought. So I went off for a cycle around town.

Firstly I went to Golentle Homestay as it was highly recommended and I needed somewhere to stay on my third night in Maun as the Cresta Riley was full. It was an easy cycle without the panniers and I was there, across the river and up some sandy lanes, in 20 minutes. The owner, Kay, had the same trips for a slightly cheaper price and was also doing an overnight camp in Moreni tomorrow night. She also had rooms. I then went to the Maun Lodge which also had a lady from “Excursion Africa”. They also had nice rooms. However I wanted a bit more so armed with my phone I set off for the airport where all the safari companies were.

It was a relatively short 20 minute cycle and soon I was at the various offices. I went to Kwando Safaries and Wilderness Safaries. Both offered something completely different. They put luxury packages together where people went off to salubrious tented camps or lodges in the Okavango Delta for 7 -14 days. They usually flew into the camps and then spent 300-500 US Dollars a day at them. Almost like a rich man’s retreat. Not suitable for me at all. Running out of time as everything was closing at 1700 I went back to the “African Excursions” lady at the Cresta Riley hotel to sign up for one of the 2 packages which I had previously dismissed as tame or boring. However, she said that was great but there was a minimum of 4 people. I was disappointed as it meant another day tomorrow wasted trying to find something. After a good meal I went to bed early with a new plan.

Day 030. 08 June. Sehithwa to Maun. 100 km. 8 hours. 210m up. 210m down. I was up later than I hoped and had a large bowl of granola and powdered milk for breakfast. In the dilapidated bathroom the small ants, sugar ants I think, continued to pour out of a crevice behind the taps and swarm over the sink. I paid the indifferent manageress, who assumed I had already paid online, and then left. I cycled through the quiet dusty streets of Sehithwa and soon the sand became potholed tarmac and then smoother tarmac as I approached the main road. There was very little going on this Sunday morning and most of the activity was the permanently hungry dogs who were trotting about looking for an elusive morsel. At the petrol station I stopped to get some cold drinks and then headed north east up the quiet main road.

The road was great to cycle on. It was smooth, flat and while the normal lanes were perhaps each 4 metres wide, one in each direction, there was then a yellow line marking the outer edge of the land and then another metre or tarmac after that which I could cycle on. There were not many cars and hardly any trucks and they all gave me plenty of room. I felt more comfortable riding here and I did in Namibia.

The cycle was quite laboured however. There was the usual easterly wind and I was going NE so it was effectively a headwind, and I did just not feel that strong. It was not an upset stomach due to food or water, but rather a poor diet of granola, noodles, biltong and sugar water sodas for the last week since leaving Tsumkwe. I was making heavy work of it and the kilometres were hardly going by at all. I kept looking to the east to see if there were any glimpses of Lake Ngami but there were none.

Someone had previously told me that the seasonal flood in the Kavango River which flows into the Okavango Delta would just be swamping the delta now and pretty soon the floodwaters would continue South and East beyond the delta flowing into channels which would converge into 3 rivers. The Taughe River to the south, the Thamalakane River to the SE and the Khwai River to the NE. All three of these flow into depressions, forming shallow lakes which eventually evaporate leaving stranded fish and salt pans. At the moment all three of these river beds were dry but I was told this is about the time when the delta is at its maximum and these riverbeds will soon be starting to run given the heavy rainfall in the recent wet season. However they would have to continue for another 100 km for their depression to start to fill, and Lake Ngami was the depression for the Taughe River. I was told it would have to start from scratch to fill it up as it had been dry for many years.

What I saw beside the road was a continuation of the cattle posts. They were frequent and generally seemed to be on quite a small scale with traditional huts in a compound where the cattle would spend the night. There were also a lot of herds of goats alongside the road and the occasional donkey or horse. All of this livestock was free to cross the road at any time and drivers were aware of this and moderated their speed.

After some 30 km I reached the dried up riverbed of the Taughe River. There had been nothing flowing down here for a few years as the scrubland grass was across the sandy trench. This was the life line for Lake Ngami so no wonder it had disappeared. A little further I reached the roadside village of Toteng. Despite it not even being midday it was bustling with people. There were about 6-7 bars and many of them were already rowdy with loud music and gesticulating drinkers shouting above the rhythms. There were also a few shops. The whole verge of the village was alive with parked cars. I was feeling spent and stopped here at a more upmarket roadside cafe cum bar for a meal. It was then I noticed that there was a mine to the south of here, the Khoemacau copper mine. It was owned by the Chinese. The permanent employment at the mine allowed people to spend their wages in these bars in their off time. A day’s euphoria drinking beer seemed little reward for 6 days of toil in the heat to me. Remarkably no one came into the courtyard to the cafe when I was there, save 4 ladies who arrived to drink cocktails as I ate. Feeling recharged I set off again still with over 60 km to go and 6 hours of daylight left.

However I felt much better now and the headwind had dropped a bit. It was warm in the afternoon but not unbearably so, like it had been in the Namib desert a month ago. It was like a hot summer day in the UK now. I made good time as the kilometers started to flow by much more quickly. Some of the cattle posts on each side of the road here looked a bit more commercial as if they were owned by a landlord or resident and had people working on them. Their gates and signs were getting more secure and elaborate, grand even, as opposed to the lorry tyre or chrome bumper with the faded name of the farm daubed on it as there had been in the morning. The traffic got busier and the only car that came to close was one in a convoy to 6 tourist 4×4 pick ups with tents on the roof. I sped through the village of Komana and then 2 hours later entered the southern outskirts of the town of Maun. My water was just about body temperature and it hardly quenched my thirst. My tongue felt glued to the top of my mouth. So when I passed a tuckshop I stopped for a cool soda drink, the bubbles ripping the paste from my throat.

The journey into Maun was not fraught but I had to keep my wits. The traffic was slow but it was suddenly busy both with cars, especially small taxis, and pedestrians. The verge I had enjoyed all day had gone and now it was replaced with street sellers and sand. There was sand everywhere and frequently it extended onto the road too. The most awkward traffic was at the crossroads where the rule seemed to be a very orderly and polite system where people waited their turn until they were next, with even the taxis complying. After a few kilometres I reached the centre of town and found the hotel I had already picked out. I knew they had availability from an app on my phone, and they did. It was called Cresta Riley’s which I think was one of the old historic hotels of Maun from the early tourist days in the 1960’s.

The cheerful staff welcomed me and gave me a nice room for half the price of the app on the phone. It was quite plush with many rooms in various buildings all under a characterful thatch. It was all set in a large garden with very large old trees and a pool. The room had a 6 foot bath which was just perfect for me to rest my weary legs in. Afterwards I went for a great meal in the almost empty restaurant and then went back to the room. I had intended to write but was really quite exhausted and went to bed well before 2100.

Day 029. 07 June. Sehithwa Rest Day. 0 km. 0 hours. 0m up. 0m down. Surprisingly I did not sleep well except in the morning. I eventually got up at 0930 and had a shower. There was no breakfast at the Guesthouse so I cycled off to the petrol station some 2 km away. There I killed 2 birds with one stone and managed to persuade the cashier to give me 1200 Botswana Rope, for the 2 nights lodgings and some spending money for the nonexistent cafe or restaurant. I also bought some drinks as that was all they had.

I cycled back slowly through town which was all single storey with small 3-4 room houses on plots. There was an open feel to the streets but it was monotone, dusty and dull. The trees which survived here were not by design but just the lucky ones which had been allowed to grow without being cut for roof joists or firewood. I guess Sehithwa had a population of at least 5000, but there was little interest.

However it was situated beside the fabled Lake Ngami which even Livingstone wrote about and praised its “shimmering waters”. However the lake is essentially an overflow of the Okavango Delta and when it has had a very wet season it spills over into the hollow where the lake is, and fills it. Over the last century these overspills have become less and less and the lake has not been here for the last 10 years. There was a track down to see it which I went along but I could not see it. I met a few people and they told me there was no water here. Perhaps I would see some of the lake as I went up to Maun tomorrow as it is beyond the northern edge of town despite the map saying it was beside the town.

I returned to the Guesthouse and wrote the blog for the next few hours. During this time the garden of the guesthouse was taken over by some 40 younger teenagers. I think it was something of a prom or birthday pasty as the girls were well dressed and the boys looked smart. It could even have been from a fee paying school here as the pupils seemed incongruous with the drab dust of the Sehithwa I had cycled through.

Day 028. 06 June. Bush Camp near Nokaneng to Sehithwa. 118 km. 9 hours. 100m up. 130m down. At 0630 just as the first signs of dawn the bush erupted into bird song. The doves and the hornbills, both with joyful tunes vying with each other to welcome the day. In my opinion the doves won the contest for volume and tune. I was physically tired so I wrote the blog in bed in the morning as the sun came up. It was cold outside but warm in the sleeping bag. Just as I had nearly finished it Bletchly came back en route to the cattle post where he worked. He was just interested in how I had been in the night. Once he had left I got up, packed the tent and was ready to go by 0930.

It was warm now and the day was in full flow. As I cycled the 4 km into Nokaneng on the improved road the cattle were just emerging from the safety of their night time corrals and dispersing into the bush to forage for the day. A couple of herdmen on foot were escorting the 200 head of cattle out. It did not take long to reach the community of Nokaneng and the tarred road.

I was expecting it to be quite busy but it was quiet. On one side of the road were a few small single story houses in dusty plots with a few larger trees and on the other side of the road were quite a few compounds with small round thatched huts in them. Here and there were a couple of corrugated roadside “tuck shops” and then there were two shops which were more concrete with a bottle store attached to each. I went into one and bought a coke. The shop keeper was not the happiest but then I still had my helmet and glasses on. Kids quickly gathered outside and peered in. I reckon there was actually more floor space in Nokaneng devoted to selling alcohol than food provisions but did not check out if it was beer or liquor. All in all Nokaneng was quite disappointing. I left the shop and bottlestore area and cycled through the rest of the large village where people were gathering at the side of the road hoping for a fare in a passing pickup.

Once I was out of the town I set my sights on Tsau some 60 km down the road in the hope I could get some food or overnight there. The road was superb to cycle on. It was smooth tarmac and virtually flat. There were no potholes and I was soon flying along. The head wind was slightly from the side and not as strong as in the previous days so I could average just under 20 km/p/h. There were not many cars and they were generally not going that fast and gave me a lot of room. I felt better cycling here than in Namibia. Perhaps some of the reasons the cars were slower were that many were old and rattled, there were cattle along the verge and the road was quite narrow with the verge full of acacia bushed with huge thorns. As I went past at a good speed I could imagine the damage it would do to both myself and my tires if I crashed into one of these.

There were cattle posts all the way along the road and on both sides of it. There was a cattle post perhaps every kilometre or so. Most looked quite small concerns, bordering on subsistence, while others had herdsmen on horseback. Cattle seemed to be the main economic livelihood here, and indeed all the older vehicles and trucks which passed me seemed to be involved in the cattle in some way, with a few taking 10 cattle down the road presumably to the tables in Gaberonne and Maun.

After I had been going for a good few hours I realized I had not eaten today and it was well after midday. I found a concrete bench underneath a large acacia tree which was full of weaver birds nests and had a bowl of cereal here. The birds above came and went and were quite vocal as they perched outside their untidy woven nests of hanging grasses. The second half of the journey to Tsau went quite quickly but I did not get there until a little after 1530. I was now very tired and thirsty and was hoping I could find somewhere in Tsau to spend the night.

But if Nokaneng was a disappointment then Tsau was crushingly so. There were two shops but neither could take a card, which seems like it is going to be the norm. However as I was outside the shop a man overheard the shop keeper in her barricaded shop saying she could not accept my South African Rand. He said he would change them as he was Namibian and the two currencies are pinned together. He could use them when he got home. He gave me a fair rate so I gave him 200 Rand and got 160 Botswana Rope. So I got my sugar water drink after all. He offered me a place to camp in his compound but it was too close to the centre of the village where there was the usual bar and bottle shop. So I decided to make a dash to Sehithwa where I knew there was a guesthouse and perhaps a cashline or ATM.

It was a mad dash really to do the 40 km before dusk which was surprisingly early at 1800. The road continued to be fast to cycle on with the occasional pothole sections which barely affected me. I had to push myself as the evening approached so I would not be caught on the road too long in the gloom as in Africa the dusk is quick. One minute you still have a shadow and half an hour later is pitch dark. I had to switch my back light only just 5 km from the town and then reached the T junction at the edge of the town when I could still just see.

I found the route to the Monlek Guest House. It was still 2 km away so I put my headtorch on, mostly to see the potholes, and cycled off through the streets. I passed a busy bar and disco and then turned south to reach the guest house with a couple of dogs barking at my heels. The manageress gave me an indifferent welcome, especially when I said I had no cash and she did not have any card facilities. Like many places in Africa they operated on money transmitted through mobile phones and had done so for well over a decade and far before it was common practice in the West. It was not something I was geared up for. She said I might be able to get cash from the petrol station, otherwise it was a bank transfer. She gave me a room which was beyond the end of day with many things broken. However the wifi, kettle and fridge worked and this made up for the missing toilet seat and ripped shower curtain. Soon I was ensconced with all my stuff in the room and could collapse. There was nothing to eat in town so I had a couple of packs of noodles and then fell asleep. It had been the longest cycle so far, but not the hardest.

Day 027. 05 June. Qangwa to Bush Camp near Nokaneng. 111 km. 9 hours. 190m up. 300m down. I slept with the flysheet on and it made a considerable difference to the temperature of the tent, perhaps as much as 5 degrees, so I was never cold in the night. I woke early, before anyone else was up, and started packing up. I was done by 0730 by which time the households were coming out to start the fires. It was of course mostly women up first. My host soon appeared and I gave him some South African Rand and thanked him and then filled my water bottles from one of the community standpipes. By now the village was busy and full of kids going to school in their purple uniform. I must have seen a 100 and that was just in one small part of the village. Perhaps the whole population of the village was 2,000-3,000 in all, but the young seemed to easily outnumber the old.

As I set off it was cold. My hands felt nippy for a good hour and the wind I created by cycling went through my top. Eventually as the sun rose above the scrub the chill started to vanish. The sun was directly in my eyes for the first half hour or so and it was difficult to see the road, even with sun glasses on. The condition of the road was quite good, nothing like Namibia, but tolerable with a few washboarded areas and the occasional stretch of sand and I was managing about 12 km per hour. I had 115 kilometres to do altogether today to reach Nokaneng on the main road so my mind was already actively calculating.

I passed quite a few cattle posts. They were ranches effectively with perhaps 100-400 cattle scattered across the bush. I am not sure how the structure worked but it looked like there was a bigger mud brick house with perhaps a manager and then 5 or so smaller compounds with small mud huts. I passed one guy, a cheerful Zimbabwean called Eric, who said he was working at a cattle post which was owned by a South African. So perhaps they were in a private ownership rather than a communal one.

While the road was OK for cycling on, the sandy stretches were becoming more and more prominent. When I hit one I had to keep the momentum going and stay in the slightly firmer track of the previous 4×4 and float over it. I think the early morning dew and cold helped a bit earlier on as it became more difficult later in the day. If I lost the 30 cm wide track then I was into the deeper loose sand and it was usually fatal. The bike would veer off to one side and then back again across the 4×4 track to the other side and grind to a halt in 5-10 cm of sand. Sometimes I was lucky and I managed to keep going, wrestling with the handlebars, but more often I came to a stop and was sometimes even flung to the ground. Invariably then I had to push the 50-100 meters to the end. It was an exhausting business.

After 4 hours I had done a little over 40 km and stopped for a meal – my first of the day. It was the usual granola, powdered milk and a packet of biltong, or dried meat strips. The hornbills were out in force again after a day of absence yesterday and at last I managed to photograph one who was more preoccupied in a courting song than fleeing from me. I also saw a very strange cameleon. It was bright green and moved very awkwardly with slow jittery movements. As it was crossing the track (as opposed to a road) it was very vulnerable to any vehicles so I photographed it and then picked it up with a stick and moved it into the bush. Its eyes swivelled right round so it was looking at me even when facing forwards and ahead of me. There was a bit of elephant dung on the road but most of the dung was cattle. The difference being one had small twigs in it while the other had small sticks in it. None of the dung was fresh and it was all being pecked at by birds.

The cattle posts continued with one every 5-10 km and I thought if I don’t make it to Nokaneng I could approach one and see if I could sleep in the vicinity. However these posts were probably manned by men, essentially cowboys and with dogs. They would not be a homely alternative and I am sure if there was any drink I would not be able, or allowed, to relax, so it was a last resort.

After about 70 km when I still had a chance to make Nakoneng I hit a very bad patch of track for about 5 km. Here the sand was deep and it frequently went right across the road. It was very slow going and I had to push frequently. Twice local 4×4, stopped to see if I needed help and would have probably offered me a lift. There were also a couple of smaller sedan cars coming towards me and I was amazed they managed to make it through. Although I did see that they had all got out to push twice. It took me a good hour to do this 5 km and it ruined any chance of me getting to Nokaneng by nightfall. The problem with the road was there was no maintenance on it. I could see it had once been graded by the ridges along the verges but these verges were now covered in 2 metre high thorn bushes so the grading must have been years ago. Also the grader had not formed a curved ridge, proud of the surrounding landscape, which would then be well drained and packed by the wheels of 4×4’s, but had instead formed a trench in the landscapes into which sand could drift. There was a fair bit of cursing as I toiled and negotiated my way through the sand.

At last I got to the other side and the surface improved. There was now a lot of dung on the road and all of it was elephant and some was reasonably fresh and the birds had not made much impact in spreading it about. I also noticed there was no cow dung. As I cycled I saw signs of elephants everywhere, numerous paths off the track, trees broken, holes dug in sandbanks looking for minerals and footmarks all over the place. I was obviously in a corridor and alarmingly the cattle posts had disappeared. If this continued all the way to Nokaneng I might have to camp in the bush in the midst of this. With a renewed urgency I began to peddle harder and was up to 15-18 km per hour on the improved surface, but the maths of the distance left and daylight hours still left were not in my favour. It was 1700 and I still had 25 km to go. My legs were pounding away like the pistons of a Wartsilla ship’s engine.

I saw some large animals on the road as the sun set and thought they were elephants but as I approached they turned out to be cows. Soon all the signs of elephants started to disappear and there was more and more cattle dung and footprints. The track was also better now and I thought I could make Nokaneng after all but maybe the last 5 km would be in the near dark. Just then a car approached and stopped. It was the mother of the boy in whose compound I camped last night. We chatted for about 5 minutes and she said there was no hotel or cafe at Nokaneng.

After we parted I cycled a bit more with still 10 km to go and dusk approaching. Then a man came out of a sandy lane to the south on a small cart pulled by 2 donkeys. He was going to Nokaneng where he lived with his family and worked on the cattle post here. His name was Bletchly and we chatted as his donkeys tried to keep up. He confirmed there was nothing in Nokaneng. I thought, “What is the point of arriving in Nokaneng in the dark and then having to find somewhere to stay?” It would be far easier just to stay in the bush here. Bletchly confirmed there were no elephants here and certainly no lions. He then showed me a good place to camp as nightfall approached before he continued. I had the tent up and was in it within half an hour, with my pepper spray, airhorn and knife close at hand. I had a can of chakalaka and some biltong and fell asleep quickly. I was tired and slept well. Occasionally I heard the clunk of a goat bell or the braying of a donkey and thought if there are lions then they have an option and I would not be the first choice.

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