Everything works out in Botswana. No worries.
This was our first weekend “away”, out of the capital city of Gaborone which is oddly enough beginning to feel like home. Any number of things could have gone wrong, but didn’t.

First of all public transportation in Botswana is an adventure in itself. We arranged for a taxi to pick us up Saturday morning, and phone calls here are always an event. Trying to pronounce our street name correctly is a challenge! But the taxi did show up at 5:30am and drove us directly to the main bus rank. He kindly offered to walk us through the dark sketchy lot to help us find the bus to Orappa which we were trying to catch. I don’t mean “trying” as in we were running late, I say “trying” because there are so many unknowns with this task. You need to literally find the correct bus: there is no set location, just a general area where numerous buses are loading. There is also no set time when buses leave. A paper or online schedule does not exist; there is no schedule as busses here simply depart when they are full. So in order to get a seat, and ensure you find the right bus, you need to go early. Luckily, a woman at the Khama Rhino Sanctuary told me she thought the Orappa bus left “around” 6:00am. So we managed to board the correct bus, with room for our packs underneath, and find two seats together near the back amongst all the Batswana who had clearly all done this before. After being offered bananas and sweets too many times from the street vendors who board buses before and as they depart, we were on our way and the bus actually left on time! It was a long ride with many stops, people loading on and off the bus, many having to stand in the already narrow and crowded aisles for over an hour until seats cleared. You can’t beat the scenery though! Seeing the red-orange sun rise above the desert shrubs and rustic hills is awazing! We passed many villages and communities where we could really get a sense of rural african life. Some homes were fenced in while others were outlined by broken rock walls or no divide at all. Laundry hung outside mud huts and small cement-like structures. Goats and cows grazed on the sides of the road while dogs guarded homes and yards. After 4.5 hours we were dropped off right at the entrance gates to the sanctuary, where a fun-filled weekend of camping, game driving, and rhino tracking awaited us.

There were three clear signs that things were not meant to go well this weekend. First of all, before leaving for the weekend I received this email from the rhino sanctuary:

Dear Amanda
Thanks for your email. rhino tracking is done through using a vehicle to a certain spot where there are fresh rhino footprints, then that’s when you drop out of the car and follow our guide who in this case will be having a gun and the other one at the back with a gun also and follow those tracking till you find the rhinos. Giraffe tracking is cancelled we no longer offer it.we do NOT at all allow clients to walk from their base for what ever reason, at-least wait for one of our cars to pass by to avoid danger.
regards
T***
Marketing Officer

Secondly, our campsite was #13. And the third sign was that it was a full moon Friday and Saturday night. But despite these worrisome signs, we had a wonderful weekend! It felt great to spend time in the outdoors. We enjoyed a game drive, a cold evening camping, and the rhino tracking activity. Please visit Andy’s website for pictures and more tales of our weekend. **Gail and Steph…fondly remembering our evening out just a few weeks ago to see the Lion King musical. We saw some of the same animals in the sanctuary, even warthogs (but they were too fast to get a picture).

Just after 10:30am on Sunday, we waited at the side of the road across from the sanctuary entrance for a bus to pick us up (an unofficial stop). Within only a few minutes, a combi actually stopped for us. These are large white mini-vans which act like buses. The one we were in held 27 seated passengers and some standing passengers at times, despite the posted sign that said “0 standing passengers.” It was also a well groomed Volkswagen combi, with nicely upholstered seats, very different from the other beat-up ones I have seen in the city. Once again we were the only non Batswana people on board and the only ones wearing shorts and t-shirts. Despite the gradual increase in weather last week, (it went up to 28′C on Saturday), people are still bundled up for winter). But it was soooo hot on this combi. The Batswana do not like to feel cold (any kind of breeze) so they do not like to open the windows which meant very poor air circulation for the 4.5 hour return to the bus rank. Again though, the scenery was beautiful and interesting! We easily managed to catch a taxi back to our German guest house from the bus rank. After our adventurous weekend outdoors and with public transportation it really did feel like we were coming home.

I was hoping for us to have an exciting and memorable weekend to celebrate Andy’s 33rd birthday and so we did!