Camping Out

Where can you combine a safari consisting of seeing wildlife, the raw beauty of nature and enjoying the wilderness in comfort for a reasonable price tag? Welcome to Botswana Safaris. A Botswana Safari boasts of some of the most romantic trips in a country generally covered by the Kalahari Desert and the scrub land. These safaris range from a 3-day trip to a 15-day fly in; and a 14 day safari to an 11 day Family Safari.

The 3 day Botswana Safari costing between $1000 and $1500 will give you 2 nights of stay at the classic Chobe Game Lodge in the Okavango Delta which is one of the two significant waterways so essential for the survival of some 160 wild animal species besides more than 500 species of birds. The Lodge is located inside the Chobe National Park right next to the river. While on a boat or a vehicle you will be enchanted by sightings of thousands of elephants, the cheetah and the wild dogs of Africa. You may see antelopes and buffalo or the African lion.

An 11 day Botswana Safari may set you back a cool $4000 but you start off the trip with the first night on the quaint Motsentsela Tree Lodge in the town of Maun. Your second day at Moremi Game Reserve will take you 140 km away deep into the Delta where you will be enthralled by sightings of giraffe, zebras and possibly lions. You will see natural, unspoiled habitat and varying landscape between desert, flood plains and thickly wooded forests home to the giant acacia trees. Subsequent days will take you on river cruises through the Delta’s waterways with their teeming wildlife which could be the buffalo, the elephant, hippos and antelopes besides birds of numerous species. The next day you could be at the Savute Marsh home to lions and elephants. The Mopane Woodland is next and after a possible sighting of the bat eared fox and the wildebeest you would wind up the Botswana Safari on the Zambezi River with drinks and snacks after viewing the magnificent Victoria Falls.

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Botswana Safaris

Climate

The majority of Botswana lies between the Equator and the Tropic of Capricorn, with only the very southern part of the country lying to the south of the tropics. The summer months coincide with the rainy season (October to April) which means that the temperatures can hit highs of 45 degrees Celsius but can also get chilly after a rain – down to 14 degrees Celsius. The rainy season is not really that rainy, the majority of the country gets an average of approx. 400 to 450 mm of rain annually, and most of that will occur in 3 or 4 major downpours.

An average month during the rainy season may have 5 or 6 days of overcast and maybe 3 or 4 days with rain. The hottest areas will be in the desert areas like the Central Kalahari Game Reserve and the wettest areas will be in the northern parts of Botswana. The winter coincides with dry season – and it is dry, with rarely a cloud in sight. Temperatures can range from mid-day highs of 35 degrees Celsius down to minus 12 degrees at night in the Kalahari. People not use to the dry climate experience cracking lips, dry skin and on occasion, dehydration.

Population and Culture

Botswana is a country about the size of France or Texas with a population of approximately 1.7 million people. The population has doubled in the last 20 years and its economy has gone from being one of the poorest in the world in the 1960’s, to becoming one of the wealthiest African countries. The majority of people live in the eastern section of Botswana with the central sections still being some of the least densely populated areas in the world.

The people of Botswana are primarily Batswana, (“Ba” is the plural in Setswana) but there are numerous other ethnic groups and tribes such as the Khoe (Bushman), BaYei, Herero, Bakalanga, Bakgalgadi and many more. You will find the people friendly and open but conservative – they are still strongly attached to their heritage and their families. This has kept their cultures and country stable despite the fact they have been surrounded by civil wars, wars of liberation and an apartheid government in the south for decades.

Geography

Over 80 per cent of Botswana could be considered Kalahari savannah, with the other 20 per cent comprising the Okavango Delta and the Linyanti swamps. The land is flat and generally featureless, with only pans and fossil valleys breaking the savannah expanse. The Okavango Delta is in fact just a area of the Kalahari that has been covered by water as a result of seismic and tectonic activity altering the flow of the Okavango river.

Wildlife

The formation of the delta has created a unique habitat that allows for a wide range of animals to thrive. This, combined with the low human population and controlled development, has provided an open range environment that still supports huge herds of almost any type of African herbivore and of course the carnivores that live off them. The unofficial elephant population for northern Botswana is now estimated to be 125,000 – the largest single unbroken elephant population in the world, and that’s just for starters.

Birds and animals that are rare in other countries are fairly common in Botswana – in the delta you can see wattled crane, wild dogs, red lechwe, and sitatunga. In the Kalahari you can see eland, red hartebeest, and the huge Kalahari lions, just to mention a few. And of course there are the herds of zebra, impala, buffalo, springbok and gemsbok – along with the sounds, the smells and the feel of the wilderness.

Source: Botswana – General Information

There are few things I enjoy more than going to amusement parks and water parks with my wife and kids. In just one day, I get a SD card full of great memories to download from my camera. The kids remember the best parts for ages and there is nothing like the bonding you get from going down the giant hill with your little ones on their first real roller coaster. It’s no secret that cost of admission to the great parks (and even the lousy ones) costs an arm and a leg though. This past summer though I figured out how to go to amusement parks and water parks with all my kids all the way up and down the east coast from Pennsylvania to Florida for around $125 a piece. I also got free preferred parking at the parks and discounts on any souvenirs and food I bought. Your mileage may vary a bit since prices and policies change, but this is how I did it.

The key to the whole thing is Sesame Place in Langhorne, PA. Sesame Place is part of the network of Busch parks throughout the country, but they are mostly on the east coast. If you buy a Super Grover seasons pass at Sesame Place, you also get free entry and parking at almost all of the other Busch parks. Plus when I called to buy my tickets, I found out that if you ask you can get a family pack on these for a discount that took about $30 off the price for us in 2008. So instead of paying around $150 each for the 5 passes I would need for my family I saved more than the cost of a pass by buying in the bundle. Since I live in PA, I also had the extra advantage of going back to Sesame Place several times with my kids, but the kicker was all the other parks we went to.

These are the Busch amusement parks that are on the east coast that I was able to visit on my amusement park family road trip all for that one fee (I’ll also be putting together feedback on each of the parks we visited from my viewpoint and my children’s in the near future. If there is a link on a park name it is pointing to the review of that park):

First we went to Sesame Place. The cost of daily tickets to Sesame place for my family of five (really we’re 6, but baby was 18 months so got in free everywhere) would have been around $50 a piece so $250 for the day plus the cost of parking. The ticket is actually a two day pass for the price of one.

Next we spent several days in Williamsburg, VA at Busch Gardens Europe and Water Country USA. We went to Busch Gardens one day and Water Country USA for two days. Two days at the water park would have cost me $360 plus the cost of parking each day, the one day at Busch Gardens would have been around $250 plus parking. So just from those 3 days of parks I was able to about match what I spent for the passes, when you include the cost of the day at Sesame place we are already far exceeding it. The rest is just gravy at this point and there is a whole lot of gravy.

Next we drove to Tampa to Busch Gardens Africa. There is also Adventure Island Water park, but is was closed when we went. It reopens for 2009 though so you could go as part of this family roadtrip. I really enjoyed Busch Garden’s Africa, but I’ll leave the details to the review. A day at Busch Gardens Tampa would cost $60 each or $300 (like Sesame Place, they are currently offering a second day free included in this cost). They aren’t giving prices right now for the water park, but I would expect it to be around the same price as Water Country USA, so that would be another $180 for the day.

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Botswana Safari Camp

Making your wedding ‘just perfect’ entails a blend of factors, not least of which includes the dress ‘to die for’ and a great venue. With Cape Town, South Africa as the city of choice for your big day, you won’t have far to look. Cape Town is the city of fair skies, gorgeous beaches, magnificent gardens and an extensive list of wedding and reception venues. Outdoor locations for wedding photographs abound.

Picture the oldest and largest botanical gardens in South Africa, Kirstenbosch, with the eastern slopes of Table Mountain as your backdrop. These gardens alone contain as many as 6 000 floral species and over 22 000 indigenous plants, so whatever your colour scheme and whatever season you choose, there will be blooms to augment and complement your style.

Early morning shoots are probably best for Cape Town’s beaches as the Cape Doctor – another name for the spring and early summer south-easterly wind that prevails in the city – tends to make its presence felt in the afternoons, although with it comes Table Mountain’s legendary table cloth – providing yet another perfect photo setting.

Nevertheless, you are spoilt for choice as the Mother City has some of the most picturesque beaches in the world with wide expanses of sand, sparkling water and strategically placed boulders for those ‘photo’ moments.

From the fashionable beaches of Cape Town’s ‘Riviera’ – the Atlantic Seaboard – including Camps Bay, Llandudno (definitely one of the most beautiful) and Noordhoek with its miles of sand and dunes, to the beaches of False Bay offering some real character beaches, such as St James or Boulders.

The wine estates in and around Cape Town all have a unique beauty of their own. Invariably wine estates lie tucked into picturesque valleys, surrounded by majestic mountains and vineyards heavy with grapes during the summer months.

The Cape West Coast, until recently largely unexplored and unexploited, is a region of unrivalled beauty and geographical diversity. This area of the world is renowned for its spectacular display of wild flowers during spring, its unspoilt beaches and beautiful mountain ranges and picturesque little towns like Darling, St Helena Bay and the fishing village of Paternoster.

And if that doesn’t tempt you then the Garden Route’s shadowy forests, peaceful lakes and wetlands or the Overberg’s numerous quaint villages and the dry Karoo with a sullen beauty all of her own – flat, sandy plains, shimmering heat and distant smoky-blue mountains – certainly will.

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Botswana Safari Camp