Thursday, March 27, 2008

Day 47 – Africa is big!

I rented my 4-by-4 vehicle (a 2002 Toyota pickup with a cab and a folding tent on the roof), spent an hour shopping for provisions, and finally headed out of Jo’burg to the border with eastern Botswana. Now, if you look at a map of Africa you will see that Johhanesburg is quite close to Gaborone, but you will be deceived by the scale. These are large countries, so before I could reach the border I had to run for good 400 km through the South African countryside (I did get to see from the road one of their big platinum mines :) Also, after listening carefully to the advice of the rental company owner, I decided to head first north, toward Maun, and leave Gaborone for the return trip (actually, he advised me to stay out of Gaborone altogether, which according to him is dry, dusty, industrial, and with no road signs or street names whatsoever – a long ways from my idea of Mma Ramotswe’s house in Zebra Drive!)

I finally crossed the border around 5 pm, and knowing that I should not drive at night I quickly found a small side road where I camped for the night.

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