Cresta Thapama Hotel Francistown

Easy day crossing the border. Even had out shoes and vehicle tyres dipped to kill any Foot &amp; Mouth disease that might have been lurking.<br><br>I got in trouble as we did not do our shoes prior to driving the car up to the dip tank.. i looked at the chap in bewilderment as he implied i was now ...

24/11/2008 went back to the hotel after updating my internet stuff for free in livingstone, and waited for the overland truck meeting at 6pm, was a bit concerned that it was only me there for it, but then found one other girl, she had flown from Sydney, to jo burg, to Victoria fgalls,Zimbabwe, where we were origionally meant to meet, and then it was changed to zambia cos of the troubles in zim, so she got a taxi across the border to zambia, paid ...

DAY TWO We spent the night at the Marang Hotel in Francistown which was, as always, very pleasant. At the campsite, we met some guys from Bulawayo on a shopping trip to Francistown to buy stock for their shops. After enquiring about the security and fuel situations in Zimbabwe, we decided to alter the route we planned to use via Zambia to Chirundu. Instead, we entered ...

... We took out 3 lions who were all 17 months old. It was amazing walking beside them &amp; touching them. They were pretty boystrous though &amp; you had to watch you back! The lion handlers had given us a safety talk &amp; we all had sticks which we were meant to give to the lions to play with if they were getting a bit too friendly. We saw some game which they looked interested in but didn't attempt to hunt them. Apparently later on ...

The second largest city in Botswana was large, but only had one "main drag" that did not light up at night. We camped at a luxury resort and are loving the options that our tent brings us. Camping was like $20 US vs. $450 US for a cottage. Again we love our tent right now.... This was another stopping off point on our way up to see Planet Baobab to see the 5500 yr old baobab tree that is 80 ft in diameter!!

I had intended to take the train on a stretch of what was going to be Rhodes' Cape to Cairo railway. However, there is only one train a day leaving at 9 pm arriving Francistown at 5 am. This did not seem to be a good idea - my new pals in Gabs actively discouraged the route &amp; plied me with sufficient Tulbach cabernet over an extended lunch at George's Google earth reference to be inserted her - so I took the bus the ...

We had to leave the adorable little lions behind and headed to Bulawayo. There we went on a fabulous trip into Matobo National Park where we saw some cave paintings, learned about the medicinal properties of the plants and climbed to the top of a crazy rock formation made of solidified magma ...

We left Livingstone, Zambia to continue the safari of Botswana. I said goodbye to 8 travel mates and welcomed 8 new ones. We crossed the Kazungula ferry into Botswana - uneventful border crossing - and headed to Francistown via Kasane (pronounced Ka-saa-neeee). The roads were amazing to our 1st campsite ... Tar all the way with no bumps! The openess of the vehicle was a bit disconcerting ...

December 1 - Otse to Francistown 1st day on the road. The valiant little Chico, how far will she take us? We are full to the gills with tents, sleeping bags, giant gas cooker, spare wheel, food. We were all very excited about going north of Gaborone, as none of us had been before. No hills, but aside from that, much the same. Varying amounts of scrubby trees and slightly differently ...

cross the boarder from SA to Botswana with no problem. My passport wasn't stamped in South Africa so the first entry for this trip is Botswana. This was to get around the problems with apartite. Botswana is FLAT. Even for a boy from the praries. just not used to the red dirt. We could get cold beer and the stores were well stocked. next day we took a 'plane into the ...