Planning and Departure.

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Trip Start Jul 09, 2008 Trip End Jul 30, 2008 Next
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  London, England, United Kingdom
Thursday, July 10, 2008

Planning for our holiday to Namibia, Zambia and Botswana started long before our departure. We were embarking on a trip that would need extensive planning. This was not an escorted holiday, we would be on our own, travelling over difficult terrain and planning a self-drive trip before you go is key to its success.  It was an exciting prospect but also quite a frightening one for two forty somethings from Brighton and their 16 and 17 year old sons. So it was during the Christmas holidays of 2007 that things began. We had chosen a UK company called Safari Drive to devise our trip having been incredibly impressed by their website and brochure. It appeared they could provide us with the thrill of a self-drive holiday with support if we needed it. So a flurry of emails commenced and eventually an itinerary was devised that would take us on a loop through Bushmanland, the Waterberg Plateau and the Caprivi Strip in Namibia to the Okavango Delta and the National Parks of Chobe and Moremi in Botswana and the magnificent Victoria Falls in Zambia. Our adventure was finally beginning to take shape.

When your annual holiday takes up such a small amount of time it is important that the planning and research beforehand adds to the whole experience. We started with a lot of surfing and reading to find out more about the trip we were to be doing. Bradt's Safari Guide to Botswana was incredibly useful as were Footprint's Namibia Handbook and Lonely Planet's Botswana and Namibia. A tremendous and well written blog by Ed and Kathy Dalboth called 'Wild Dogs and Englishmen Out in the Midday Sun' was also very informative as they had done a similiar trip in 2007. We also sent for Shell maps of Botswana, Chobe, Okavango Delta and Moremi  from Expert Africa.  For the Namibia section we had the Roads Authority's Map of Namibia and the Namibia Tourist Planning Map. However far more useful than these was to be the GPS Unit we bought, a Garmin Nuvi. This enabled us to download a map of Botswana from the Tracks4Africa website that could be loaded onto our PC and updated with useful waypoints then synchronised with the GPS. This meant that we would have a fully functioning map of Botswana when we got there. We also used Google Earth as Tracks4Africa is on there and it can really help with initial directions before you go.

Immunisations

When visiting Africa, it is important to visit your doctor's surgery to see what injections you need. - tetanus, polio and diphtheria are advised as well as hepatitus A. Although we would be travelling in winter we would be in a high malaria risk region and it was important that we took some form of anti-malerial drug. We went for Malarone as the side effects are fewer and you don't need to take so many tablets or for so long, but be warned as it is incredibly expensive. We got ours from Asda as we heard it was cheaper but it cost over £300 for three weeks for the four of us!

What to take
As we were to be camping for a lot of the time, packing the right things is incredibly important. Cases are not a good idea as they are too rigid. Soft bags are much better as they can be squashed in the back of the Landrover. If you are going in winter the temperature gets very cold overnight and can be below freezing so make sure you pack some warm fleeces. Sunblock and lipblock are also essential as the days are hot and the sun powerful. I would also recommend darker clothes as our 'whites' looked lovely for two minutes then ended up covered in sand and dirt from the car and black streaks from the campfire.  Another very useful item was the adaptor that could be plugged into the cigarette lighter and provided mains power supply. This meant that we could keep cameras, camcorders, ipods etc powered up without worrying about finding an electricity supply (a little difficult in the middle of a game reserve)

Check Ed and Kathy's blog as they had lots of great ideas to help you select the right things to pack in your luggage.

Money

We took cash as a lot of places do not take credit cards. You will need Pula for Botswana and Namibian Dollars or South African Rand for Namibia (they are interchangeable). In Zambia it was recommended that we take American dollars as their local currency the Kwacha was quite unstable. Currently you need about 6,500 Kwacha for one English Pound, having said that, currently the Kwacha is getting stronger while the dollar is weakening.

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