Visiting Botswana 6

Colloquially known as "Kasane Italy" this beautiful spot is a portion of the shoreline of the Chobe River in Kasane, Botswana, that is reserved for the locals to enjoy. The bank on the other side of the river from here is Namibia's Impalila Island.

It was nice to see sophisticated Africans engaged in recreation activity. I felt relaxed and comfortable here, more so than I might have been had we been allowed (which we were not) into those parts of the riverbank that are cordoned off for the exclusive enjoyment of the well-heeled clientele of the numerous expensive lodges in this part of town, mostly foreign tourists from places like Namibia and South Africa, (I observed the numberplates on their vehicles).

The racial hierarchy that has dominated the history of this part of our continent over the last two centuries is still very much at play. Even if more subtle, it is still observable, and it rubs me the wrong way. But that's just my point of view. Perhaps I might not be taking into account other factors that make this inevitable.

Here we're being denied access to a part of the riverbank

Visiting Botswana 5

Lobatse

It's a pretty, little town.

Lobatse is near the South African border. Its history began with early Bakwena and Bangwaketse settlements before its establishment by colonialists in the 1890s as a railway and administrative hub. Initially considered for the national capital, it instead became a significant political and legal centre, hosting the Bechuanaland Legislative Council which drafted Botswana's constitution, and serving as a refuge for political dissidents like Nelson Mandela and Samora Machel.

Today, it remains a key economic centre, particularly for the Botswana Meat Commission, and is home to the Botswana High Court. (I saw both).

The modern town was officially founded in 1896 by the British colonial administration.

It served as a strategic location for administration and as a construction camp for the railway line built from Mafikeng to Bulawayo.

Other institutions include the S'brana psychiatric hospital. (I saw this too).

PS: I took all these photos myself.

Visiting Botswana 4

We drove past this vintage railway carriage in Gaborone quite a few times. It is on display at the National Museum, even though I didn't make it into the museum itself. The carriage is viewable from the road.

This Rhodesia Railways coach was donated to the Botswana Society by the then National Railways of Rhodesia in 1975. The coach was built in 1931 and is still in good condition, serving as a historical exhibit that allows visitors to see a piece of the era when Rhodesia Railways operated through Botswana.

Rhodesia Railways operated a vital railway line through Botswana (then the Bechuanaland Protectorate), connecting it to the sea via Cape Town in South Africa. This line facilitated trade and transport for both Rhodesia and Botswana. The 1931 coach is a tangible link to that period.

This railway line was an extension of Cecil Rhodes' ambition to connect Cape Town to Cairo, aiming to solidify British imperial control and facilitate the transport of resources. Construction began from Mafeking (in South Africa) in 1894, travelling north through Bechuanaland (Botswana) before reaching Bulawayo (Zimbabwe) in 1897. It provided a crucial link for the fledgling colonial territory of Rhodesia.

 

Visiting Botswana 3

According to Tripadvisor, "Flame of Africa offers fishing trips both along the Chobe River and up the Kasai Channel towards the Zambezi River."

There was even a floating restaurant on one of the boats, although, if I'm to be frank, none of the activities offered here were to my taste. For starters, even the floating jetty wobbled under my feet as we walked across towards the boats. No surprises then that my visit lasted for just a few minutes before terra firma beckoned; but it was enough time to memorialise the moment in rapidly snapped photos.

Maphorisa, my guide, suggested that he book me on what he described as a "game ride" on one of these open-deck vehicle things, the better for viewing wildlife out in the wild. But I declined. I'd had enough excitement for one day by then.

Moreover, I find myself more inclined in my thinking towards the ancestral African's attitude to the wildlife he shared the land with. Wildlife do not exist for the purpose of human entertainment, or human amusement. Save for studying them or hunting them for food, the animals should be respected and left alone. I have not and still do not consider myself to be just another run-of-the-mill safari tourist. So there isn't much appeal there. I already saw elephants, baboons, meerkats (for the first time in their natural habitat), and hippos, which were easily mistaken for logs floating in the river.

 

 

Visiting Botswana 2

Made the journey from Gaborone in the far south to Kasane up north, in the Chobe District, by road. Mainly for the chance to see the entire country, limited of course to what was observable from the window of a vehicle proceeding at high speed on the A1 highway, the main north-south artery. With stopovers in towns like Mahalapye, Tonota and of course Francistown, the country's second largest city. 

It was a whole day's journey, but well worth it when I caught sight of several herds of elephants as we approached Kazungula, only a few kilometres from Kasane. Our van came to a halt when a huge bull elephant stepped majestically into the middle of the road in what seemed like a show of declaring who the real boss is around here. Our guesthouse is in Kazungula where the bridge across the Zambezi River (constructed in 2014) is located. To walk on this bridge to the Quadripoint where the borders of four countries meet was always intended to be one of the highlights of this trip.

The Bridge

In the first photo is the confluence of two rivers. The Chobe River on the left and the Zambezi River on the right. In the middle is the Namibian island of Impalila. On the far bank of the Zambezi is Zambia. I took this photo from the Kazungula Bridge.

The Chobe River

The Chobe begins in the highlands of Angola, where it is known as the Kwando River. After entering Botswana, the Kwando becomes the Linyanti and forms the Linyanti Marshes. Near the Ngoma Bridge, the river emerges from the marshes as the Chobe River and flows east to join the Zambezi River near Kasane.

In Kasane itself the driver took me to some marshy land on the bank of the Chobe River that is rich in salt, which was clearly visible on the ground in its white form. And it was clear from the large hoofprints and the large amounts of dung in the area, that the area was frequently visited by elephants and water bufallo. Elephants and water buffalo are drawn to mineral-rich salt deposits for essential nutrients like sodium, calcium, and phosphorus, which are vital for their health and growth but often scarce in their regular diets of vegetation. (I took some photos of this marshy area and intend to do a different post on this. In this marshland, I saw a bubbling spring of fresh water coming out of the ground and then flowing into the Chobe River. It is clearly one of the many similar sources of the river's water).

The Zambezi River

The Zambezi is the fourth-longest river in Africa, the longest east-flowing river in Africa and the largest flowing into the Indian Ocean from Africa. The river starts in Zambia, flows successively through Angola, Zambia again, borders Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe, through Mozambique where it enters the ocean. The Zambezi River source is a bubbling spring in a marshy bog located near the town of Ikelenge in the Mwinilunga District of north-western Zambia.

Walking across the Kazungula Bridge from Botswana to Zambia.

And there I was, in person, right on the bridge, walking across the mighty Zambezi River, walking from Botswana to Zambia, across The Quadripoint where the borders of four countries meet. Seeing the four countries all at once was surreal. I had dreamt of this moment for years. First it was the Namibian island of Impalila to the left, then ahead of me was Zambia (the border posts for both Botswana and Zambia are on the Zambian end of the bridge). To the right was Zimbabwe, and behind me was Botswana where I was coming from.

I had not expected to see the amount of pedestrian traffic I saw on this bridge, mostly Zambians who had crossed over to Botswana on foot, and by bicycle, and were returning home. They weren't very many, in truth, but they were more than I had expected. The majority of the vehicular traffic was composed of Heavy Goods Vehicles transporting cargoes across the continent. The Victoria Falls Bridge downriver from here has an 18-tonne axle load limit for vehicles, so the vehicles that come this way are huge, and as they drove past the wind swirled around me in the middle of the bridge. I nearly lost my balance several times and learned for the first time that I perhaps suffer from vertigo. There were also some smaller commercial vehicles, mainly from Botswana, ferrying people across to Zambia and back. I saw a few Zambian taxis too, but it was the individuals whom one said hello to on the bridge as we passed each other in the middle of having a shared experience that was the more memorable aspect.

 

Visiting Botswana

I finally arrived in Gaborone after more than the 30 hrs it took to get here. There were delays by Air Botswana that meant I remained in Johannesburg for longer than expected. But I arrived last evening around 7pm Central African Time. My host at the lodgings has gone out of his way to lay on everything almost to excess. What I have seen of this city so far has lived up to my expectations.

Clear blue sky from horizon to horizon with not a hint of a cloud anywhere. I am informed by two reliable sources that no rain has fallen here since March of this year. This, now, is September, 2025, as the southern hemisphere is emerging from its winter.

Daytime temperatures can top 33°C (91.4°F), but night-time temperatures plummet to 10°C - 11°C (50°F - 52°F). This is a difference in temperature similar to what obtains in other arid, or semi arid, regions with low humidity (dry air) and no proximity to large bodies of water to mitigate the heat loss - (water traps heat and cools more slowly than land). The absence of clouds also necessarily implies that the heat of the daytime freely escapes into the atmosphere at night, with no cloud cover acting as a blanket to hold back the heat from escaping.

Overall, it's hot and dry here, but not too harsh; nothing like what we see, for example, in the Sahel regions of West Africa. Here, after all, is outside the tropics; it is south of the Tropic of Capricorn. The Tropic of Capricorn passes near Gaborone, the city is just south of the line, placing it just outside the tropics.

Taking this drive out of town was only one of the items on our itinerary today. We did lots of other things besides, including my first solo adventure into a wineshop to make purchases while trying out a new language. Suffice it to say then that I'm having a lot of new experiences that I hope sometime to talk about.