Through Botswana and into Namibia

I have made my way from Zimbabwe to Namibia, passing through Botswana. The trip keeps getting better, which is hard to believe after nearly 8 weeks in Africa.

Botswana was very different than the previous countries I had visited. It is very large, the population is very small, and the country is very wealthy. There were street lights and cars where there had been none since Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. The scenery was amazing as well, with the destruction of the 70,000 elephants in Chobe National Park to the pristine beauty of the Ockavengo Delta. Chobe was a great place to see large numbers of elephants and hippos. We camped on the Delta for 3 days near hippo pools and went on safari walks, during which we came across some elephants. Not a comfortable feeling to be 20 meters from 4 elephants with nothing in between. The Delta itself is huge, and the scenic flight over it was amazing.

After the Delta, we crossed into Namibia and went to Etosha National Park. Etosha is a very dry, arid park, with animals clustering around the water holes in the dry season. Unfortunately, we arrived just after the big rains, so the animals were a bit more spread out. We still saw heaps of lions, oryx, giraffes and springbok, so it was a great experience.

Once out of Etosha we stayed overnight at a cheetah sanctuary and then took a ride down the Skeleton Coast to Swakopmund. Swakop is amazing, and tomorrow I go sandboarding (snowboarding on the sand, basically) and quad bike riding on the massive dunes. Swakop itself is very German, and it is easy to forget that you are in Africa and not Europe. It is a nice change of pace.