South Africa - Botswana - Mozambique

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This was an organised excursion throughout the Kalahari desert and a tiny bit of South Africa and Mozambique that I did back in September 2009.

When I started preparing this trip I thought Africa would be a dangerous country to go to so I opted for an organised excursion instead of going on my own as I usually do. As it was an organised excursion with a Spanish company I thought I would minimise the risks... but as you'll see in some of the posts...the risk of getting eaten by some wild beast were always present and I felt, sometimes, that the risk was way out of my comfort zone. The good news though is that I survived the experience and I enjoyed the experience so much that I intend on going back to Africa again...some other time. :-) Everyone needs a little bit of adrenaline in his/her life...that makes life worth living!

The trip started in Johannesburg from there we headed north to Botswana were we spent most of the time, then we went back south towards Mozambique and made it back to Johannesburg in order to catch our flight back to Spain.

It was about 25 days, we had a guide, a cook, a driver and someone helping the cook. Nonetheless we had to do the washing up after every meal, set up our tents etc, in other words it wasn't the kind of excursion where they do everything for you, you actually had to do some work! :-)

This is an overall description of the itinerary:

First we went from Johannesburg to the Madikwe Game Reserve

From there we went to the Central Kalahari Game Reserve

Then back to South Africa in order to visit the famous Kruger Park and then off to Mozambique, where the Limpopo river meets the sea.

There were many miles ahead of us, great extensions of land most of it without any road and through some of the most inhospitable terrain well away from civilization. If you are looking for an adventure, this is it! it doesn't get much more adventurous than this!


But I think it's time you get to meet the rest of the gang. Unfortunately I've been unable  to remember the staff's names, it's been a long time and their names weren't the easiest to remember. Cook's assistant was from Botswana, the driver from Namibia and the Cook from Zimbabwe.

Front row, from left to right:
Cook's assistant, Reme-DIOS, Paca, Belén, the driver


On the back row, from left to right:
Moi, the cook, Fran, myself, Carlos, Héctor (the guide), Luís, Mercé and Victor.

 The only person missing on that picture is Ina, but you can see her on the next picture at the front fixing her hair.

The trip in itself was very good but what made it exceptional was the group of people I travelled with, they were all well travelled and some were pretty funny which made the trip far more enjoyable than it would have been otherwise and thank God for that!, otherwise imagine spending a month with a bunch of people you can't stand all together in a bus... Someone would have ended up killing somebody else!