Day 1: Brackenfell to Sanddrif

Almost 11 months after arriving back from our 8-month African expedition we’re sitting in the Hilux again in Hugo’s parents’ driveway. This time we’re joined by our friend Jaco and we’re heading to Botswana.

Since arriving back from Africa last year we almost sold the Hilux, Caro finished her teaching practical and we spent 3 months backpacking India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and the Maldives with a stopover in Dubai.

Unlike our previous trips we had to do some advanced bookings for Botswana as one cannot simply pitch up at national parks and pay at the gate. We booked two nights in Mabuasehube, three nights in CKGR and two nights in Khwai. In between we have plenty of open days to stay in ‘open’ campsites or to bush camp.

It’s also only the 3rd of September and we only need to be in Botswana by the 10th, so we’re taking it slow as usual.

We had lots of plans on how to change things around, but in end our setup was largely similar to that of our previous trip. The only new additions is a handheld spotlight for viewing game from the tent at night and a new drone.

Hugo impulsively bought a DJI Spark yesterday when walking past Audiovision by accident in Tygervalley mall. Its our third attempt at owning and using a drone as the first one broke within two months and the second one got stolen within two weeks. Hopefully this time we’ll be able to get some memorable footage before either of the above happens.

With everything finally packed we set off towards Wellington and then over the Bainskloof pass. We stopped for the drone’s maiden flight down the valley which went without incident.

In Ceres we turned left towards the Cerberg mountains. The gravel road through the Cederberg never fails to impress and plenty of stops were made to get the drone to follow us. At one point the drone lost contact and Hugo and Jaco had to run back up a steep hill for what felt like a kilometer or more. The drone self-landed back on the road, where it took off. Luckily no other cars drove past or over it as that would have resulted in the shortest drone owning period yet. Two cars however did come up the hill as we were walking down with the drone, so it was pretty close. We quickly learned to use dynamic home points when doing follow-me shots.

We ended the day at Sanddrif Holiday Resort and bought two local craft beers: ‘Voertsek’ and ‘Boggom’. Unfortunately, the Wolfberg cracks hiking route is still closed to let the field recover after the fires in December 2016. We thus just hiked down to the Maalgate, but it was too cold to swim.

For dinner we had pork neck, braaibroodjies and foil fired vegetables. As soon as the sun started to set it got extremely cold. We were still way to close to Cape Town and couldn’t wait to get to the warmer Botswana.