An adventure of a lifetime – our honeymoon. The plan was simple, three weeks to drive a truck from Victoria Falls through Botswana and Namibia to its capital, Windhoek. An overland trip taking in the highlights – The Zambezi River, Chobe and Moremi National Park, around the Okavango Delta, Etosha, the Skeleton coast and the Namib Desert, all from the luxury of a Ford Ranger with a roof tent! There is so much to write about I’ve split this into two parts (part 2 here – Overland in Botswana and Namibia: the desert )

Victoria Falls, Chobe and Moremi national parks

First, we needed to get to the start line. An overnight connection in Johannesburg on the same day South Africa won the world cup final was interesting! But really our trip started the next day when we landed in Livingston. We decided not to pick up a truck here, as crossing from Zambia to Zimbabwe and then into Botswana all within one four hour trip just seemed like too much effort. So, instead we enjoyed the luxury of not having to navigate the dusty African roads just yet and used various drivers to get us around. This was also the perfect excuse to get a jet-boat to dinner at the amazing Elephant Cafe, a unique restaurant where you can feed orphaned elephants. We also played tourists for a couple of days here exploring Victoria falls from both the Zambian and Zimbabwe side, including a dip in the Devil’s pool on the edge of the falls and afternoon tea in the famous Victoria Falls hotel.

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A couple of hours drive west of Livingstone and we were in Kasane, the gateway to Chobe National Park, and where we were picking up out trusty steed, a converted Ford Ranger with roof tents. But first we had one more night in a bed, and a chance to view the NP by boat on our first game drive of the trip. We were not disappointed…buffalo, monkeys, crocodiles, antelope and even a lion; all whilst enjoying a beer as the big African sun dropped into the Zambezi behind us. The next day, once we had picked up our truck, learned how it all worked, and filled the fridge with various African delights, we had just enough time for an evening game drive to our first camp for the night, not far beyond the entrance gates to the NP. While it did take some time to get used to the truck and driving on thick sandy tracks, we couldn’t believe the number of animals we saw in that first evening, and all under our own steam. That first night as we pitched our tent in time for the Zambezi to swallow the sun, it dawned on me that the “campsite” was in-fact just a flat bit of ground near the river within walking distance to a toilet block. No fences, walls, gates, barriers, and no other people – just us on the roof of our truck covered with a canvas tent in the middle of the national park… the adventure had begun.

And it continued in a similar fashion… game drives early in the morning before the heat of the day set in and lazy afternoons soaking up the sun, or long drives to our next campsite to get setup before heading out on evening game drives in time for the African plains to come to life again as the temperature dropped. The wildlife also continued to surprise us, with a giraffe’s head poking through a small group of trees, or a herd of elephants blocking the road for 10 minutes as we bumped our way from landmark to landmark. We were like kids again, ticking off new species of antelope that we’d seen, or reading up on some exotic bird we just had a brief encounter with.

Our last night in Chobe NP stands out more than most, as having just polished off a brace of oryx stakes from our grill and squared away the table and chairs, from our roof tent we heard the pacing of footsteps below us. There was genuine fear in Helen’s eyes and having just heard a story from the park ranger of a non-fatal leopard attack in camp the previous year, we both convinced ourselves were was a big cat at the bottom of our ladders! I watched the big lurching animal as it padded behind a tree, desperate to see more I shone a light towards it, and the glimmer of a dozen eyes returned back at me – hyenas! Needless to say, we didn’t mess around too long packing the up the truck the following morning…

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Before we knew it, we’d left Chobe and the Zambezi river behind us and we were in neighbouring national park – Moremi. This really was our first experience of the Okavango Delta, with fingers of wetland sprawling into the dry African plains. Our morning and evening game drives were based around the lush green vibrant patches of land and tree surrounding the water. There are too many photos to share here, but we were lucky to see wild dogs, leopards, hippos, crocs, buffalo and water buck to name just a few. The wildlife was easy to find, you just needed to know where the water was… but with the water came a different problem… as a family in a truck like ours found out the hard way, getting royally stuck.

Northern Botswana – Shakawe and the “Pan Handle”

Now we had some driving to do… and despite dreading the road north, we were pleasantly surprised with nice smooth tarmac! We had left so much time for the journey we ended up having time to make a detour to visit a small group of hills en-route – the Tsodilo hills. Despite these only getting a tiny section in the guide book, they are actually a Unesco world heritage site, and well worth the visit. You need to pay for a guide, but with some hidden rock paintings dating back to 400 AD, and a nice scramble through some caves, its well worth the small fee… Not a bad last-minute find to kill some time before we checked into our next lodge in Shakawe.

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Shakawe sits on the banks of the upper Zambezi and is a well-known sport fishing destination for tigerfish. Of course, I had my fly rod with me! We spent two days fishing on the river (on Helen’s condition that we stayed in a nice lodge), so Shakawe it was. Regardless of the fishing the lodge was perfect, and sessions with our guide on the boat were like game drives, with incredible bird watching on each trip and cameo appearances from the odd croc or hippo. The first tigerfish fell to a dead bait on the end Helen’s spinning rod (she didn’t realise it was on for a least two minutes), and perseverance on my part with the fly rod and some old tarpon feathers did the job. We were also lucky to watch a pair of bald-headed eagles diving for fish on the surface. Another magical African sunset followed, and we enjoyed our luxurious lodge before hitting the road again.

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Namibia – Etosha

Pleased with our catches and feeling well-rested, we were back in the truck and heading west to the even smoother tarmac roads of Namibia. We were on our way to Etosha, the main National Park in Namibia. The first thing that struck us was the far more organised feel of the National Park (and the country in general!). The park itself was surrounded by plush and expensive private game and hunting reserves, a haven for African wildlife, a great source of income for local communities and a much better land use than the popular alternative – cattle ranches. Straight away Namibia just felt more developed than its neighbour in the east, but with that, we got a slightly blunter adventure. Getting stuck in the sand on a “A” road, or being swallowed up by a boggy ditch just wasn’t going to happen here, especially in Etosha were the tourist trail was well-trodden and we struggled to find a forgotten corner on the map.

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We had obviously been spoiled in Botswana. Despite it being very dry for the time of year, there was always an abundance of water in the Okavango Delta, and with that came trees, cover and wildlife. Etosha was a complete contrast to this, being on the edge of a salt flat there was lots of nothing… with a mixture of natural and man-made (or supplemented) water holes providing the occasional oasis for a huge abundance of animal. This didn’t however take away from the wildlife viewing… huge volumes of different species at each watering hole, all coming and going at different times, and all of them keeping one eye over their shoulder as they sipped precious water. A multitude of birds swooping and diving, antelope edging closer and closer to the water jumping back with each flutter of birds or breath of wind. You could stay at a watering hole for an hour and be pretty much guaranteed to see giraffes, kudu, springbok, wildebeest, zebra and many more. We followed a large male hyena to one of the smaller watering holes – a pretty intimidating sight, and one that made for an interesting reaction from the already nervous occupants of said watering hole.

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Despite it being harder to stumble across wildlife at the turn of each corner, we were lucky to have some pretty amazing encounters with lions on our trip: a full pack right next to the road – complete with cubs, a big male wondering in-front of our truck, a lone female on the prowl and the most impressive wildlife sighting we had all trip; a lion taking down a zebra. It was at one of the larger watering holes and there was a huge volume of wildebeest, springbok and zebra, all coming and going to take a drink. The waterhole was completely surrounded by animals, with more wildebeest coming in from the distance. Each animal taking its turn to drink before following the natural flow of animals away from the hole. Perhaps it was safety in numbers, or just bad luck, but a zebra clearly didn’t see the charge of a lioness over a lump of grass… there was a huge commotion, animals everywhere and when the dust settled we could see a lone zebra with a lion securely fastened to her neck. Another lion came bounding in (photo below) and the two predators took the zebra down less than 100m away from us. Shortly after this, two cubs appeared over the mound of grass a curiously made their way down to the kill. The remaining animals stood at a distance and watched on, clearly less surprised by what had just happened than us! It was one of those incredibly powerful sights that you just didn’t believe you would ever see in real life.

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We had two amazing days in Etosha, and after that were ready for the next leg of our adventure. We were extremely lucky with what we had seen, and it was capped off by an appearance of a (very heavily protected) black Rhino in the watering hole next to the main camp. We couldn’t have asked for more, but also were ready to take ourselves a bit more off the tourist track for a while. And so we headed south west towards the coast and away from the big game plains to experience what Namibia was really all about. Continue reading in part 2 here – Overland in Botswana and Namibia: the desert