After arriving in Francistown, I got a
shared taxi to Dumela Lodge, the only place around that seemed to be reasonably
priced, as it offered camping (P85/night). Might I add that Dumela is the
Setswana (language spoken in Botswana) way to say hello, pronounced exactly
like Lumela, the Sesotho way of saying hello. Sesotho and Setswana are very
close, even mutually intelligible, and I was entertaining my taxi driver by
conversing with him in Sesotho.
We
arrived at Dumela lodge, where I’d be camping for the next two nights before I
headed off to Zimbabwe. Spoiler alert: there’s nothing to do around here, so
the only thing I did was swim in the pool (It was h-o-t hot. The heat was so
much more intense in Botswana than in South Africa.) and read. I’m pretty sure
I was the only one in the whole place besides the staff. But the good news is
that, even though this place didn’t have a self-catering kitchen either, I was
actually able to start a fire and make some hot oatmeal and boiled eggs. Hooray
for hot food. Their camping bathroom was pretty gross, filled with bugs (giving
me flashbacks to summers with the family in our trailer using those buggy
campground bathrooms) and at the time had no hot water. But they let me take a
shower in one of the really nice chalets, which was awesome. Not so awesome was
that when they finally turned on the hot water heater, I was using the outside
sink that might have somehow been connected to the electric current, because I
got electrocuted. So the facilities weren’t great, but it was fine for a couple
nights to stay before a long trek into Zimbabwe.
The
reception lady was super nice, if a little sycophantic. My last morning, she
gave me a ride into town to the taxi rank where she made sure I got exactly
where I needed to go, walking me around to the different busses and talking to
everyone to make sure I got on the right one to get to my next destination of
Bulawayo, Zimbabwe.
My path through Botswana, from Pretoria, South Africa to Gaborone to Maun/Okavongo to Gweta to Francistown, on to Bulawayo, Zimbabwe
No comments:
Post a Comment