19 December 2016: Botswana- Gweta

               My plan was to go eastward across Botswana after visiting the Okavongo Delta, so my next destination was a tiny place a few hours away called Gweta. Back in Maun, all while kicking ants off my feet, I folded up my super sandy and wet tent at Old Bridge Backpackers, got on a taxi to Maun town, then got on the Francistown bus, intending to get off at Gweta. Actually, the place I was going, Planet Baobab, was about 5km past Gweta, so I asked the driver to drop me there, and he happily did. A gigantic aardvark and a planet mounted on top of an enormous termite mound pointed the way.

                Planet Baobab is mostly a fancier lodge that happens to have camp sites (around P75/night). It has a great pool too, but no self-catering kitchen, so I ended up eating dry ramen and cold-soaking oatmeal to eat it for breakfast. After several failed attempts to start a fire with trash and damp leaves and twigs, I went to their restaurant for a grilled chicken salad that cost the same as my camp site. Oh well. True to its name, there are baobab trees everywhere, which I didn’t know grew in the Kalahari. Well, actually, I didn’t know anything about the Kalahari, so there you go.

                The best part about this place, besides the pool and the fact that the camp sites are covered, is that there are these little green caterpillars absolutely everywhere. Instead of raining water, I suppose it’s raining caterpillars as they descent from silk strings down into my tent, getting through the mesh at the top. Speaking of my tent, the poor dear, I had to do more sewing repairs on it, as well as duct tape one of the pole segments that was splitting apart lengthwise. This thing has been beaten up.

                I’ve just been lazing around, swimming reading a lot, including Packing for Mars by Mary Roach, which talks about prepping to go to space, and how people go through all these tests and simulations to prepare for the boredom/loneliness/stir craziness of being in Space. Sure sounds a lot like me in my rondaval for two years…

                My last morning, I half hitched, half walked to Gweta town where the bus would pick me up. (I later realized that I could have just stood on the road right outside of Planet Baobab and the bus would have also picked me up there. But then maybe I wouldn’t have gotten a seat.) I talked with another traveler from Planet Baobab, who turned out to be the guy who almost got squashed by the falling branch back at Old Bridge. He was on his way to Namibia to work at a bush camp, whatever that entails. Soon enough, the bus let everyone off at the enormous taxi rank in Francistown. Stay tuned!