Back on the road
Posted on in Travel.
By mid afternoon the other campers had left and I was about to spend the night totally alone. It seemed ok until the sun went down, and all of the night sounds started. My imagination started to free fall as every breeze moved trees, branches and my tent. I had seen an elephant in the adjoining camp site, and he moved close during the night. His slow rumble and footsteps were a little unnerving at first, but I decided he was probably a good body guard. I slept with my leatherman….not sure why, but it seemed better than nothing. I made it through the long night and heard my centurion move off at about 3 am.
I had been dreading the drive out, and decided to ask a local about a better route. He perused my map and “explained” a longer, but easier route. It seemed fairly simple, after all I had a good map and a gps….but this is Africa. It’s about noon here, and I left at 6 this morning. That’s 112 km in 6 hours. I somehow took a wrong turn, and ended up going through a number of water crossings ( not for the faint hearted” but I was following some sort of road. There are no signs at all and after a while the roads are not even where that appear on the map anymore. For almost 3 months of the year the park is totally closed due to flooding. Roads are all under water, and must be reestablished after the waters recede. So maps and gps are just guidelines. I did eventually run into a safari truck, and he pointed me in the right direction. I decided to go back to Maun and detour around the park to Kasane, as I was advised that the route I intended to take was “very bad”.
