That was a slip of the tongue from Sharon as we crossed the border from South Africa into Botswana! What she really meant to say was ‘look at the baboons in Botswana’. And to emphasise she in no way was talking about the cross-border and customs officials. There were actual baboons crossing the road in front of us.

We managed to leave Johannesburg last Thursday, a bit later than we had wanted to. We had to wait for a border letter from the car insurance company, which as it turned out we were never asked to produce! Chico, our car, got a clean bill of health that morning and let’s hope it stays that way. The drive was easy and the roads were in pretty good condition. We just had to watch out for the animals – mostly baboons, donkeys, goats, cattle and loads of ostrich.

We were only crossing through Botswana to get to Namibia so we only stayed there one night in a place called Kanya. We had no idea of where to stay before we arrived. We had found two hotel names listed on an obscure website, so stopped and asked a Kenyan lady where they were. One was no longer operating, but she very kindly led us to the other one which turned out to be fine.

The first palaver we had was with paying on credit card. The receptionist didn’t really know how the ‘chip & pin’ type cards worked. It looked like the card got swiped twice, but it was hard to tell as there was no paper in the machine!

The second palaver was dinner. The meat was a bit tough and Sharon had a choking attack in the dining room, but the locals were concerned and all willing to help. Thankfully the Heimlich (not sure how to spell) manoeuvre was not necessary.

Friday was to be our long day of driving so we wanted an early start. First stop was the ATM machine for some cash where the machine swallowed Dave’s bank card!!! The bank was not open and the security guard said it would be another hour or so before we could get help. But we were in luck this time, a very nice gentleman from the bank came out about 10 minutes later with Dave’s card so we were able to get a move on.

Considering we were only in Botswana for less than 24 hours, we haven’t got much room to comment, but the people we did met were more than helpful. In fact the customs/border officials on the way out of Botswana were the nicest either of us have ever come across! When Dave signed the form as the Customs official instead of the tourist they even joked about it!

We will keep Botswana on our ‘list’ and will try and get back there some day.