We needed to get from Kasane, the gateway town to Chobe National Park, to Maun and the Okavango Delta. We were told that it could be done on public transport, although any further details were sketchy at best. The early bird catches the worm and we packed-away our tent in darkness at 04:20 to get in the line for the first bus which was rumoured to depart at 06:00. To our surprise, there was an orderly queue of both luggage and people — normally in Africa there’s just a huddle of people and it’s a free-for-all. How civilised, we thought. We added our mountain of bags to the end of the queue.

After half-an-hour of kicking our heels, a bus pulled into sight. Oh dear. We had expected a 52-seat coach. We got a 14 seat long wheelbase Transit van. Worse still, the orderly luggage queue was just a ruse and had already descended into a position-scuffle not dissimilar to that of the grand opening day at a new Ikea store and we had been left behind. Luckily, the Squifter was on top form and used her diminuitive size to squeeze under the flailing Africans and tag four seats for us.

There wasn’t a luggage compartment on the bus and so we had to sit with our backpacks, tents and food on our laps… for over four hours. The locals were not happy about our oversized presence. Poor Squifter probably had about the worst of it. In addition to having nearly fifteen kilograms of baggage on her lap, she also had the displeasure of sharing half of her individual seat with the left bottom cheek of the ‘Big Mama’ sat adjacent to her…

After four long hours with dead legs, we grabbed the opportunity to continue our journey on a bigger, safer coach to take us to Maun. We eventually arrived at the Sedia Hotel, a recommendation from a friendly overland truck tour leader, pitched our tents and flopped onto our new foam roll-mats (which cost us only a beer at the last campsite).

Probably our toughest day of travel yet; glad it’s over but pleased with our achievement as many people said that Botswana couldn’t be done by bus!

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