Travels With Maria

Botswana 2022

Safari Vehicles

Game drives in safari parks are a rough affair. Everywhere the bumpy ride is referred to as an "African massage". An ad hoc network of tracks generally consisting of two ruts through the bush, never maintained, made worse by traffic during the rainy season mud, treacherous in sandy soil. The typical safari vehicle starts out as a Toyota Land Cruiser which is a rough, tough pickup truck, rear wheel drive that can convert to 4 wheel drive. On older versions you have to get out of the truck and manually lock the front hubs when you shift to 4wd.  There is an African industry that converts this workhorse into a…
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Four Corners

There is only one point where four nations come together in one place. We crossed this X today. We drove across the beautiful new, one-year-old Kazungula bridge across the Zambezi River between Zambia and Botswana. From the bridge we could see Zimbabwe on our left and Namibia on our right. The point where all four meet is in the middle of the river, slightly to the east of the bridge. 

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Safari Vehicles

Game drives in safari parks are a rough affair. Everywhere the bumpy ride is referred to as an "African massage". An ad hoc network of tracks generally consisting of two ruts through the bush, never maintained, made worse by traffic during the rainy season mud, treacherous in sandy soil. The typical safari vehicle starts out as a Toyota Land Cruiser which is a rough, tough pickup truck, rear wheel drive that can convert to 4 wheel drive. On older versions you have to get out of the truck and manually lock the front hubs when you shift to 4wd.  There is an African industry that converts this workhorse into a…
More

Four Corners

There is only one point where four nations come together in one place. We crossed this X today. We drove across the beautiful new, one-year-old Kazungula bridge across the Zambezi River between Zambia and Botswana. From the bridge we could see Zimbabwe on our left and Namibia on our right. The point where all four meet is in the middle of the river, slightly to the east of the bridge. 

More