My last big trip was technically the only trip I actually planned (sort of) before I went. When I came to Botswana I thought I would go on only one trip... this trip. Everyone talked it up like it was the best thing in the entire world and now I know why. Northern Botswana is home to some of the most amazing wildlife and natural phenomenon's in the entire world not to mention 20 kilometers across both the Zambia and Zimbabwe boarder is one of the seven natural wonders of the world: Victoria Falls.
My friend Anna (from the Netherlands) and I decided it was not okay for us to leave Africa having been so close to these places and not see them so guess what? We packed up our backpacks and tents and hopped on a 10 hour bus to Northern Botswana to start our last adventure.
Our first stop was the hub-bub of Northern Botswana, a small tourist town called Maun. This has become my favorite place in Botswana, it has the feel of a little beach town and everyone there was so nice and friendly- there is sand everywhere because it is right about the Kalahari Desert and it is placed directly on the river of the Okavango Delta. We got a cab to our backpackers which is called Old Bridge Backpackers and it is right on the bank of the river.
So we got there, pitched our tents and worked on figuring out what we were going to do the next few days and how we were going to do them. We ended up spending most of the evening playing pool with a few white guys from Namibia and a few locals who were really good at it but we kept up okay. The next morning we went exploring around the town for a few hours to see the shops, buy groceries and waste a little bit of time until the afternoon when we went horseback riding around the forest and along the river- at one point we even went in the water on the horses which was super fun. Funny story: Anna had never been on a horse before and within 5 minutes of getting on the horse for some reason her horse and mine both started galloping top speed and of course I was just laughing my head off enjoying every second of it but Anna had no idea how to stop the horse or even how to ride it and her helmet flew off her head (so if she had fallen it could have been really bad) but I could hear here screaming "HELP" at the top of her lungs and no its not funny but I was cracking up. Anyways I forget how much I love horse back riding until I get back on a horse and enjoy every second of the ride. So we rode at sunset which was really pretty and fun but bummer for me I wore the wrong kind of pants because when I got off my horse I heard these two local workers start laughing and whispering in Setswana only to discover that the butt of my pants had ripped literally ALL the way down and there was a huge whole exposing half my butt cheeks and underwear... your welcome boys. Ha awkward.
After horse back riding for two hours, we went back to our backpackers and my local friend Tumi who is from Maun hooked us up with a couple of his friends that took us around for the night since it was a Saturday night they first took us to a sports bar but we only stayed there for a little while, then they took us to a place where it was karaoke night so Anna and I sang Some Nights by Fun and Mike and I sang Gangnam Style. Both friends were a little tipsy at that point so I drove which was actually really fun on the wrong side of the road and the wrong side of the car but it was better than driving drunk... although driving on sand is hard- at one point I got us really stuck in the sand and everyone had to get out and push us. We finished the night at this club called Fresh Exclusive where there was a rock concert and it was the most bizarre thing I have ever seen. We walked into a legit gothic hard rock concert where everyone was head banging in long black wigs with eye liner, black leather and chains- I had a surprisingly good time until Mike started to attach himself to me and people started petting my long hair. We finally went home at like 1:00 am and crashed.
The next morning we did what is called a Moccoro Trip where you go in a local canoe and get a tour through the delta for the day and do a walking safari on an island in the middle of the delta. This was awesome. There are two people in a canoe plus a guide from a local village that has a huge pole which he guides you down the river in. Sweet! Supposedly there are hippos and crocodiles in the river but we didn't see any. We did however enjoy two hours passing by water lilies and beautiful birds. We got to a huge island where we took a lunch break and then went on a walking safari where we explored the island and saw some zebras and wildebeests which are always pretty cool. Then our guide let us try to row the boat and it was super hard! I got stuck in the middle of the river for a good ten minutes trying to move forward but only succeeding in moving side to side. The way back from the island was even more peaceful then the morning- the water was like glass and it was one of the most beautiful scenes I have ever been lucky enough to experience.
That was a long and draining day so we got back to our backpackers and called it a night pretty early also because the next morning we were on our way to the next stop in our trip: Chobe National Park.
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