{"id":1444,"date":"2015-05-22T14:30:13","date_gmt":"2015-05-22T19:30:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/?p=1444"},"modified":"2025-03-03T12:51:03","modified_gmt":"2025-03-03T18:51:03","slug":"hi-from-botswana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/2015\/05\/22\/hi-from-botswana\/","title":{"rendered":"Hi from Botswana"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"People<\/a>
People transport across the Zambezi River<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Tourist Africa: Chobe Botswana<\/p>\n

We\u2019re almost 1200 miles from Cape Town and 17 degrees closer to the equator tonight.\u00a0 Getting here required leaving Cape on a 7:30 am flight for Johannesburg, then a flight to Livingstone (named for David Livingstone, I presume), the onetime capital of Zambia, now one with a major (Chinese built) airport, and roads into the interior (again Chinese built), that took us through 3 countries\/customs, and across the Zambezi River at a point where it defines four countries: Zambia, Namibia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe.\u00a0 If that sounds confusing, you should have seen the traffic waiting to cross the river\u2014by ferry.\u00a0 We got fast tracked, but the trucks were lined up and wait anywhere from three days to a week to go across.\u00a0 We took a speedboat to get across, and so did our baggage.<\/p>\n

What an insight into logistics nightmares! Makes you wonder about what was really happening at that checkpoint, and grateful for the transportation system in the United States. I met an Indiana Hoosier in Cape Town who had motorcycled with a group from Cairo to the Cape, and he said it took about a month, but was mostly on roads, mostly paved.\u00a0 He did mention a few stretches which required armed guard escorts.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>As for us, we\u2019re back in tourist Africa, at a lodge that is also a marina.\u00a0 What that means is that we\u2019re on the Chobe River (one of the Zambezi tributaries), at the entrance to a National Park, with wetlands that look like the Canadian Wilderness near Bissett, but with the significant difference in the animals, naturally.\u00a0 We did a dinner cruise when we got here, and saw, in habitat: giraffes, buffalo, crocodiles, elephants, hippopotami, and the ever useful impala.\u00a0 Not to mention a stunning sunset and a sky that is full of stars you probably can\u2019t see at home\u2014and I finally discovered where Orion hides during the summer.\u00a0 We\u2019re doing a land safari tomorrow morning (6-9 am), and we\u2019ll have a choice whether to do another cruise or another land safari tomorrow afternoon.\u00a0 Sunday we\u2019ll be visiting Victoria Falls before resuming our business visits in Lusaka, the capital of Botswana.<\/p>\n

I may actually get to finish \u201cNature Merit Badge\u201d before we leave.<\/p>\n

Have a great holiday.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tourist Africa: Chobe Botswana We\u2019re almost 1200 miles from Cape Town and 17 degrees closer to the equator tonight.\u00a0 Getting here required leaving Cape on a 7:30 am flight for Johannesburg, then a flight to Livingstone (named for David Livingstone, I presume), the onetime capital of Zambia, now one with a major (Chinese built) airport, … Continue reading “Hi from Botswana”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-south-africa-may-2015"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1444"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1444\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8515,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1444\/revisions\/8515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}