We got up at 4:45 in the morning to a chilly morning with no sunlight. After a quick breakfast of cereal and yogurt we were back in the van headed for the border. We hadn't gone very far when we stopped for a pee break. A pretty common theme on the trip was stopping every 1-2 hours for pee breaks and drinks. We probably could have done without that many stops but I wasn't in control and the 3 Aussies girls seem to pee a lot. One even had a ShePee, a funnel type device to let her pee standing up and quite gross. We hit the border around 9 am, our first land border crossing of the trip so far. Everything went smoothly as we filled out a form, handed over our passports got stamps and walked to the other side. Back in the van and across the Limpopo river and we were in Botswana, for another pee break and money exchange.
Our destination for the day was Nada, Botswana with a planned stop on the way at a shopping center for dinner and maybe some shopping and internet. Now the roads in Botswana are terrible. I would say it had lots of potholes but in reality it looked a road that had been hit with bombs and had craters all over it. On top of that they had free ranging goats, donkeys and cows that wandered onto the road. All this really tested the nerves of our driver and pushed our average speed way down. We pulled over at one point on the side of the road to eat lunch. To draw a picture, there was nothing to the left of us on the road, nothing to the right. The occasional car would pass but we were pretty much in the middle of the bush. As we sat there eating lunch a cart being pulled by 3 donkeys came out of the bush and started heading down the road carrying 3 people. Africa was starting to be a little more National Geographic.
We made one other stop before arriving at Nata. It was to a small community of mud huts with a elementary school located there. As we pulled up the kids started to come out of the wood work. Garland went over to talk to the teacher and ask if it was ok for us to talk to the kids. She agreed so he waved us over. The first kid that caught my eye was a little boy, maybe 8 standing by himself, sporting a John Cena t-shirt. For those that don't know he is a wrestler in the WWE. I asked the kid if I could take his picture, to show Aaron when I got back and he said ok. After taking the picture I went to show him the picture and he seemed amazed. More kids started gathering around so I started showing them videos on the camera of elephants and other stuff from Kruger. I had some apprehension about treating these kids like a spectacle but once I saw them enjoying seeing their own picture and the videos I didn't feel as bad. I even took video of them and then showed it and about 10 of them crowded around to see. One little boy, maybe 6, let out a huge belly laugh when he saw himself on the video. It was very fun to see the kids get such a kick out of it. After 20-30 minutes we loaded back into the van headed for the camp site, hoping to get there before nighfall so we could avoid dodging animals in the dark.
We pulled into the site just before dark and setup the tents. Garland turned over cooking duties to the 3 aussie girls in the group, or rather they took it from him. We even shared our leftovers with the security guards at the camp site, which was pretty funny. Garland offered to sell one of girls to the guard for 20 cows, 10 goats and 5 chickens. The guard replied that she was only worth 10 cows, which I thought was still overvalued. This was also the first place we had stopped with a bar and since we didnt need to leave until 8 the next day we were in no rush to go to bed early. Justin and I had spent the first few days hiding in the back of the bus and keeping to ourselves, grumbling about how bad the trip was going, but by this time we had given up any expectation of a good time and with the alcohol we started to come out of our shells a bit more. We hung out until 10 or so with a few other people from the trip, swapping travel stories and commiserating about the trip. But it made for a good time and I would call this the turning point of the first Africa trip. From here on out things went much better as the group started to mesh more, the driver Gordon relaxed and we just did not have as far to drive each day.
