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Trip to Botswana
We (that is myself, my husband, sister and my parents) have just got back from 18 days in Botswana. We went over as my husband is from there and we were having our marriage blessed in a traditional ceremony on the day prior to our first anniversary.
It was my families first time over there, so we had planned a trip of a lifetime for them. The original itineray was to spend a few days in Gaborone, then head to the village for a week prior to the wedding, during this time we had planned on going to Nata Sanctuary on the Sua pan and also visiting the families farm and cattle ranch. After the wedding, we had planned on visiting Kasane and go on safari in the Chobe National Park and a quick visit to Vic Falls, then head to Maun for a day in Moremi National Park and a scenic flight over the Okavango Delta.
Unfortunately, three days before we were due to go over, Air Botswana changed their flight times for the Maun to Gaborone flights to later in the day, and it would have made us miss our connecting flights in Jo'burg, so we had to cancel the Okavango part of our trip. But this just gives my family more to see next time they go!
We all arrived tired, but happy and excited at what lay ahead of us. The following morning was spent wandering around the city, and the afternoon we went to a small private game reserve called Mokolodi near the city for an afternoon game drive. This was a perfect afternoon, where we saw kudu, giraffe, impala, zebra, warthogs, ostritch, brown hooded kingfishers, grey lourie, white rhino, and we also met the hand reared cheetahs.
After the game drive we met some friends at Gaborone International Yacht Club at Gabs Dam for sundowners. This location is great for sunset shots!
The following day, we were up nice and early at 4:30am so we could be on the road for 6am for the 5 hour drive north to the village just north of Francistown. We leave this early to miss most of the buses and the trucks, and also to miss out on the heat of the day, but most importantly, we get to see sunrise!
During this drive north we cross over the Tropic of Capricorn, which is the lowest lattitude where the sun is exactly 90 degrees to the earths surface. So we had to stop the car again for a cheesy photo op, which my husband took for us!
About 3 hours later, we arrived in our village and then start to meet everyone. As the sun was starting to drop on the horizon, we decided to go for a stroll around the village to show my family who lives where and just the general lay of the land, and also witness a great sunset.
Once the sun had set, and the stars came out, the night sky is incredible. Unfortunately while we were there it was a half moon going to a full moon, so the stars were not as abundant as they are during the new moon. For this shot, I was being pretty rude and left my family literally seconds after dinner and ran across to our garden / yard. The rondeval on the right hand side of the photo has been built specially for my sister in law for our wedding, and was built traditionally out of mud. This photo is still in need of some proper processing, as it was done as a quick edit, but you get the idea! When the moon is at least half moon, in the village this is bright enough to give you a moon shadow. This is something I keep meaning to photograph, but keep forgetting to do! Next time I will try to photograph this! :thumb When the moon is full, you do not need a torch to walk around outside, it is bright enough to be able to read in!
On our second day in the village, life starts at 5am with starting the fire to boil the water so we can wash, and then by 7:30am everyone is up and going about their daily life in the village. Over lunch (a delicious rack of ribs and steak) in town, we decided to have an impromptu overnight stay at Nata Lodge on the edge of the Makgadikgadi Pans.
At the lodge, we stayed in what can only be described as fancy tents! They were raised up on stilts and had a wooden floor, but had a canvas roof and sides. They had en-suite bathrooms, but the shower was outside at the back, surrounded by more canvas, but open to the sky!
We had booked a 6am pan drive to go out onto Sua Pan and see the bird life. The edges of the pans are flat grass lands, only the grass is very yellow (even in the rainy season, the grass is still yellow), then when you get onto the salt pans themselves, there is no grass and what can only be described as crunchy mud!! The pans themselves are vast, so much so, you can see the curvature of the earth.
Whilst there, we saw two silver backed jackels, more impala, ostritch, wildebeast, kori bustards, marsh owls, kestrels, lilac breasted rollers, a multitude of waders, a black breasted snake eagle, pelicans and thousands of flamingoes, both lesser and greater varieties, unfortunately these were too far onto the pan to get a good close up photo of.
Kori Bustard - one of the largest flying birds, when stood on the ground it is about 1.3m or around 4 feet tall!
Lilac Breasted Roller looking a little puffed up!
Back at the village my brother in law and his family had arrived, and the family were starting to prepare the food and drink for the wedding. In the three big pots we were making traditional beer, which I believe is a little like the commercially available Chibuku Shake Shake, being a sorghum fermentation.
As the sun was setting, my nephew and my sister decided they wanted to have a go at posing during the sunset as they had got bored of doing various wedding related jobs!
The day before the wedding was mad busy, with last minute sorting of variuos stuff out and more and more family arriving. During the day, we slaughtered two cows and two goats ready for the wedding feast and then started to chop, peel and generally prepare the mountains of vegtables. During the evening, we had 4 fires on the go, with about 20 people all helping out, whether making tea and sandwiches or chopping the veg, or just sitting around and chatting (they said they were supervising! :rofl)
As can be seen in this photo, the temperatures were pretty cold. During the day, the highs were around 25 degrees celsius, but at night, this dropped to single figures. While we were in Gaborone, we could see our breath at night!!
I am lacking in photos that I can post for our wedding day as I don't own the copyrights, so I will have to just outline the event. The wedding was traditional, we went to the local Catholic chruch for the Priest to bless our marriage and for us to renew our vows, after that we went to have our photos taken on some rocks about 20km north of the village. Upon our return to the village, we got out of our car and climbed onto a donkey cart which took us to the Kgotla, which is the traditional village meeting place / court / cheifs office area, where we were greeted into the community and the village church blessed us too.
From here we went back to our house where the marquee was, and had to formally arrive to the reception. This involved the wedding party dancing in through the gate to the marquee in a traditional routine. After the food had been eaten, the wedding party then left for the Change. This is where we change our clothes and then dance back into the marquee wearing our new attire using another traditional routine. At this point, we start with the traditional dancing and singing from the locals. The guests are then formally introduced to each other families. My husbands family introductions took ages, as they had to go through 300 people. My family introductions were short and sweet as there was only 4 people to be introduced! Once the introductions were complete, we were then ushered to a quiet location where we were counselled on what it means to be married and how our lives will change and how our roles and responsibilities within the village and family have now changed too, this was done by the married elders of the village. Once this was done, the day was over and the guests left! We then built a fire in our garden and sat around catching up with cousins and friends whom we hadn't had chance to speak to during the day.
The day after our wedding, there was some left over beef which was made into biltong. They cut it into thin strips, and cut slices into the meat and sprinkled it with a little salt and hung it up to dry. The drying process takes about 4 days in the open air, after which it is ready to eat.
After all the madness of our wedding, we headed a further 5 hours north to Kasane for a safari trip. These photos I am still processing, but will add them to this thread when they are done.
I hope you have enjoyed reading about our trip so far.
It was my families first time over there, so we had planned a trip of a lifetime for them. The original itineray was to spend a few days in Gaborone, then head to the village for a week prior to the wedding, during this time we had planned on going to Nata Sanctuary on the Sua pan and also visiting the families farm and cattle ranch. After the wedding, we had planned on visiting Kasane and go on safari in the Chobe National Park and a quick visit to Vic Falls, then head to Maun for a day in Moremi National Park and a scenic flight over the Okavango Delta.
Unfortunately, three days before we were due to go over, Air Botswana changed their flight times for the Maun to Gaborone flights to later in the day, and it would have made us miss our connecting flights in Jo'burg, so we had to cancel the Okavango part of our trip. But this just gives my family more to see next time they go!
We all arrived tired, but happy and excited at what lay ahead of us. The following morning was spent wandering around the city, and the afternoon we went to a small private game reserve called Mokolodi near the city for an afternoon game drive. This was a perfect afternoon, where we saw kudu, giraffe, impala, zebra, warthogs, ostritch, brown hooded kingfishers, grey lourie, white rhino, and we also met the hand reared cheetahs.
After the game drive we met some friends at Gaborone International Yacht Club at Gabs Dam for sundowners. This location is great for sunset shots!
The following day, we were up nice and early at 4:30am so we could be on the road for 6am for the 5 hour drive north to the village just north of Francistown. We leave this early to miss most of the buses and the trucks, and also to miss out on the heat of the day, but most importantly, we get to see sunrise!
During this drive north we cross over the Tropic of Capricorn, which is the lowest lattitude where the sun is exactly 90 degrees to the earths surface. So we had to stop the car again for a cheesy photo op, which my husband took for us!
About 3 hours later, we arrived in our village and then start to meet everyone. As the sun was starting to drop on the horizon, we decided to go for a stroll around the village to show my family who lives where and just the general lay of the land, and also witness a great sunset.
Once the sun had set, and the stars came out, the night sky is incredible. Unfortunately while we were there it was a half moon going to a full moon, so the stars were not as abundant as they are during the new moon. For this shot, I was being pretty rude and left my family literally seconds after dinner and ran across to our garden / yard. The rondeval on the right hand side of the photo has been built specially for my sister in law for our wedding, and was built traditionally out of mud. This photo is still in need of some proper processing, as it was done as a quick edit, but you get the idea! When the moon is at least half moon, in the village this is bright enough to give you a moon shadow. This is something I keep meaning to photograph, but keep forgetting to do! Next time I will try to photograph this! :thumb When the moon is full, you do not need a torch to walk around outside, it is bright enough to be able to read in!
On our second day in the village, life starts at 5am with starting the fire to boil the water so we can wash, and then by 7:30am everyone is up and going about their daily life in the village. Over lunch (a delicious rack of ribs and steak) in town, we decided to have an impromptu overnight stay at Nata Lodge on the edge of the Makgadikgadi Pans.
At the lodge, we stayed in what can only be described as fancy tents! They were raised up on stilts and had a wooden floor, but had a canvas roof and sides. They had en-suite bathrooms, but the shower was outside at the back, surrounded by more canvas, but open to the sky!
We had booked a 6am pan drive to go out onto Sua Pan and see the bird life. The edges of the pans are flat grass lands, only the grass is very yellow (even in the rainy season, the grass is still yellow), then when you get onto the salt pans themselves, there is no grass and what can only be described as crunchy mud!! The pans themselves are vast, so much so, you can see the curvature of the earth.
Whilst there, we saw two silver backed jackels, more impala, ostritch, wildebeast, kori bustards, marsh owls, kestrels, lilac breasted rollers, a multitude of waders, a black breasted snake eagle, pelicans and thousands of flamingoes, both lesser and greater varieties, unfortunately these were too far onto the pan to get a good close up photo of.
Kori Bustard - one of the largest flying birds, when stood on the ground it is about 1.3m or around 4 feet tall!
Lilac Breasted Roller looking a little puffed up!
Back at the village my brother in law and his family had arrived, and the family were starting to prepare the food and drink for the wedding. In the three big pots we were making traditional beer, which I believe is a little like the commercially available Chibuku Shake Shake, being a sorghum fermentation.
As the sun was setting, my nephew and my sister decided they wanted to have a go at posing during the sunset as they had got bored of doing various wedding related jobs!
The day before the wedding was mad busy, with last minute sorting of variuos stuff out and more and more family arriving. During the day, we slaughtered two cows and two goats ready for the wedding feast and then started to chop, peel and generally prepare the mountains of vegtables. During the evening, we had 4 fires on the go, with about 20 people all helping out, whether making tea and sandwiches or chopping the veg, or just sitting around and chatting (they said they were supervising! :rofl)
As can be seen in this photo, the temperatures were pretty cold. During the day, the highs were around 25 degrees celsius, but at night, this dropped to single figures. While we were in Gaborone, we could see our breath at night!!
I am lacking in photos that I can post for our wedding day as I don't own the copyrights, so I will have to just outline the event. The wedding was traditional, we went to the local Catholic chruch for the Priest to bless our marriage and for us to renew our vows, after that we went to have our photos taken on some rocks about 20km north of the village. Upon our return to the village, we got out of our car and climbed onto a donkey cart which took us to the Kgotla, which is the traditional village meeting place / court / cheifs office area, where we were greeted into the community and the village church blessed us too.
From here we went back to our house where the marquee was, and had to formally arrive to the reception. This involved the wedding party dancing in through the gate to the marquee in a traditional routine. After the food had been eaten, the wedding party then left for the Change. This is where we change our clothes and then dance back into the marquee wearing our new attire using another traditional routine. At this point, we start with the traditional dancing and singing from the locals. The guests are then formally introduced to each other families. My husbands family introductions took ages, as they had to go through 300 people. My family introductions were short and sweet as there was only 4 people to be introduced! Once the introductions were complete, we were then ushered to a quiet location where we were counselled on what it means to be married and how our lives will change and how our roles and responsibilities within the village and family have now changed too, this was done by the married elders of the village. Once this was done, the day was over and the guests left! We then built a fire in our garden and sat around catching up with cousins and friends whom we hadn't had chance to speak to during the day.
The day after our wedding, there was some left over beef which was made into biltong. They cut it into thin strips, and cut slices into the meat and sprinkled it with a little salt and hung it up to dry. The drying process takes about 4 days in the open air, after which it is ready to eat.
After all the madness of our wedding, we headed a further 5 hours north to Kasane for a safari trip. These photos I am still processing, but will add them to this thread when they are done.
I hope you have enjoyed reading about our trip so far.
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The others are really nice also
After the wedding, we headed for a 5 hour drive north to Kasane which is the the gateway to Chobe National Park. We booked on a 6am game drive to try to see some of the big cats.
We were lucky and saw a leopard, and better still it wasn't asleep in the tree (on my animal sighting coolness rating, a moving leopard is second only to any of the predators on a kill!) However, as it ran out from behind a bush straight into some other bushes, I didn't manage to get a decent shot, so I will show a poor shot (only editing is to crop) to prove we saw a moving leopard!
The following day we headed over to Zimbabwe to visit Vic Falls. The Zambezi was in fairly high flow, and as such there was a lot of spray in the air. There were some veiwing areas which were like standing under a shower! My camera and lens got totally soaked on a couple of occaisions, fortunately everything worked flawlessley (40D, 17-85mm lens), thanks to the heat (about 28 degrees celcius) we all dried out pretty quickly!
On both times that I have been to Vic Falls, I have yet to see someone bungee jump off the bridge that forms the boarder between Zimbabwe and Zambia!
I would love to get onto this bridge, but to do so, I have a feeling I must pay for a visa into Zambia and then pay for a second visa back into Zimbabwe, and at £35 per visa for a UK citizen to Zim and I believe a similar price for Zam, £105 to look at a view from a bridge is pretty steep!
While at the falls we saw a bushbuck, a couple of vervet monkeys and some fabulous birds - crested barbets, blue waxbills etc
We had a speedy exit from Vic Falls back to Kasane for an afternoon boat cruise along the Chobe River. Well, when I say speedy, we stayed to the 80 kph speed limit in Zim (even though the road was totally empty and surrounded by bush on both sides) and barely stopped to look at the elephants which were grazing next to the road just past the boader in Botswana!
For me, the joy of the boat cruise is to see the vast numbers of elephants and also the bird life. I never used to really appreciate birds until I first went to Botswana - the different varieties and their abundance make it a pleasure to visit, even if you don't see any of the big cats or buffalo up close.
African Openbill
A fish eagal with a fish (a poor photo, but my first time seeing one with a fish, and my best shot of one in flight)
Great Egret
a Pied King Fisher (massive crop, hence why it doesn't look too good!)
Yellow billed stork with a marabou stork behind
This was our final day in Kasane and it was with heavy hearts that we packed the car up for the return trip south. We had a 5 hour drive back to the village where we spent the night, and then a further 5 hour drive to Gaborone where we spent 2 nights before returning back to the UK.
For my family it was a proper trip of a lifetime - like they have said; no amount of money can possibly buy the experiences they have had with our wedding in the village. As a bonus they thoroughly enjoyed the safari part of the trip too and are already trying to figure out what they would like to do and see on their next trip over there!
I hope you enjoyed the photos, they are not the best, but on a flying visit, you make do with the light and the position of the trucks as best you can!
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