Bad Old Botswana

Part 1 of a story of over landing ways from the old days.

- Al Maytham

This is a story from the old days when the tar road stopped at Nata and it took the whole day to drive through to Maun, where you would emerge from your vehicle at the Duck Inn looking as old as I do now because of the white dust that leaked into your Land Rover and coated you from head to toe.

The Nata-Maun road

There were no fresh vegetables in Maun back then, and visiting the ‘butcher’ involved going into a shack and selecting your favourite cut from a fly covered carcass hanging in the corner. You could get beer in Botswana but wine was virtually unobtainable, so the women tended to drink Crossbow cider − which, for some reason, wasn’t freely available back in SA. Fridges were rare so you carted large blocks of ice in the cool boxes and, when they melted, you drank warm beer and cider.

This was before the proliferation of comfortable Japanese double cabs, so South African tourists were few and far between − you had to own an old Land Rover or Land Cruiser, as well as suffer the discomfort of driving in them across the many miles that it took to get to Botswana. (Yes, our speedometers were still in miles, then.) The really good thing about those days was that they hadn’t yet tried to discourage independent travellers by hiking the parks’ prices, so that even on a teacher’s salary you could afford to spend four or five weeks in the parks.

It was 1988 in fact, when this story took place. My wife, Gail, and I lived in Eshowe, KwaZuluNatal, as did our friends Mark and Bridget. I had (and still have) a 1957 short wheelbase Land Rover, and Mark had a long wheelbase of the same vintage. We saw no need to travel in convoy (and still don’t), so we would set off independently and hope to bump into each other along the way.