Overlanding Part 1: Botswana to Namibia
“I like animals. I like natural history. The travel bit is not the important bit. The travel bit is what you have to do in order to go and look at animals.”
– David Attenborough
What is Overlanding?
The next chapter of my nomadic life involves a new way to travel – overland camping. For weeks, I’ve been throwing around this term like using it makes me that next level of travel professional. I’ve started telling my friends – ‘why yes, after the next stop I’ll be overlanding across Africa for a few weeks’. Sometimes I use it as a noun, often a verb, once in a while as a method of transportation. Oh, I say, ‘I’ll get there by overland.’ No matter I had no idea what this meant until a few months ago. I do now. I know all the trendy ways to get around these days.
So what is overland camping exactly? And how did I ever find out about it?
I’m here to answer these questions.
According to Wikipedia (they really can help with EVERYTHING):
- Overlanding is self-reliant travel to remote destinations where the journey is the principal goal. Typically, but not exclusively, it is accomplished with mechanized off-road capable transport where the principal form of lodging is camping, often lasting for extended lengths of time and spanning international boundaries.
As definitions go, it’s a bit dry, but I agree. In my specific case, overlanding will involve meeting a group of 10-20 other travelers and tour guides, and driving together in a giant truck together across southern Africa. We will be camping in tents each night. This kind of tour may last months for some, crossing half a continent along the way. People join and leave along the way, and I’ll be joining the tour for only a few weeks.
So what’s the truck look like? THIS.
How did I find out about this exciting way to transverse continents? I first found out about overlanding on a hike in Peru, of all places, from my Dutch tentmate (shoutout to Liset!). She overland camped across half the Africa for three months. And loved it.
I was not up for three months of tenting it. No thanks. Before leaving on this trip of world and life exploration, I had never tent camped more than two or three nights in a row. Cabins, sure. Sketchy motels, RV’s, and cheap hostels. No problem. But not outside. My love of the outdoors lasts during business hours. At night, I prefer walls and the amenities our species worked for centuries to achieve, like running water and air conditioning.
A lot can change over the course of eight months of globe trotting. This year, I tangibly lowered my minimum lodging standards, and on top of that I’ve done a LOT of hiking trips. I’ve hiked and camped all the way from Peru to Tanzania. I’m still far from an expert, but my tent intimidation factor has gone down considerably. Three months of it, no. But I can handle a few weeks.
But First…Botswana
Before meeting my overlanding group in Namibia, I had one more solo stop in Botswana. I made a brief stop here to hit a few highlights – river cruising down the Chobe river and doing a game drive in Chobe National Park.
I’ve been on a few game drives in Africa by now, but you know what? They never get old. I never get sick of seeing a tower of giraffes grazing on trees, or seeing a herd of hippos lazily waiting for the sun to go down. Maybe it feels ordinary and boring if you see it everyday, but it’s still pretty great to me.
My brief Botswana tour started on a hot day. Full sun, no clouds, light breeze. It was a dry heat, which is a thing people say in an attempt to explain why it wasn’t so bad. True, I didn’t morph into a complete sweat covered nightmare. But it was still HOT.
The Chobe river serves as a watering site for many animals, a notably large number of elephants. It’s really half marsh and half river. In the middle it is a squishy looking, but surprisingly solid island of green. This island was once the point of contention between Botswana and nearby Namibia, who’s border lies on the other side of the river. Namibia wanted the land for agricultural reasons. Botswana for tourism reasons.
The UN got involved and sent a bunch of environmental scientists and land surveyors to the region. In the end, Botswana won because it agreed that by using it for tourism, it would restrict people from going on the island and would thus maintain it’s existing animal habitat. It’s a strict animals-only policy except for once a year, when a lucky Botswanan gets to climb on the island to change out the Botswana flag on a pole in the middle. The flag is there to fly in the face of Namibia and serves as the only marker of human presence.
Botswanan Boating and Gaming
I boarded a river boat ride with a new group of strangers, the mix this time including a Zimbabwean family and some upper class gays from San Francisco. Usually my travel groups are a boringly reliable mix of young couples and vagabond 23 year olds, so I was happy for the demographic shift.
My pictures from this part of the trip are rather disappointing. I got lazy and sleepy that day. Hey, it happens. The sun and the breeze made a boat nap feel like the most amazing idea in the universe. It was a struggle to keep my eyes open. Still, here’s a small sample to show that I stayed mildly conscious.
Following the boat ride, the game drive was super dry and dusty. There were so many bugs. Everywhere. In my hair. In my face. Swarming in the hot air, poised for attack. It was a steamy, mosquito filled day. Luckily this didn’t stop the animals from coming out in droves. Especially the elephants. We got alarmingly close to them. Which was cool…..but there were a few moments where I was like…yeah we don’t have to get THAT close. I’d rather not piss them off.
I’m not even zooming
I know my pictures and my brief description are probably disappointing, but again, I was feeling sleepy. I would still love to go back and see more of beautiful Botswana. When I’m not so tired and I have more bug spray.
Meeting the Overlanding Group
Next stop – meet my overlanding tour! The group and I will be traveling together for the next 2-3 weeks, spanning Namibia down to South Africa and ending in Cape Town.
As is normal with these kinds of things I’m apprehensively excited. This could be great. I will make lifelong friends and make lifelong memories. We will end each night, laughing and reminiscing about the days’ events over pints of beer.
Or.
They will all be 23. A bunch of wandering youths who have no distinct life plans because they’re young, traveling on mom and dad’s money, growing their dreds out, and can still physically handle drinking the day after a hangover. This scenario is a large fear of mine.
We will see.
The rest of the group was already at dinner when I arrived in Windhoek, so our camp chef walked me down the street to the restaurant to meet them. Nine people were already there. Myself and one other person are new, and two more newbies were arriving the next morning. The rest of the group has already been traveling together for awhile, and joined the tour in various other countries several weeks ago.
So far it looked like my worst fears may be realized. The crowd was young.
Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against youths. I used to be one of them.
However.
I don’t like to feel old because I regularly read the news and get sleepy on my second glass of wine. More importantly, I don’t want to be surrounded by hungover college kids taking the perfect instagram selfie at every national park across Africa. This is both an overgeneralization of an entire generation and my absolute worst nightmare.
As I sat down at the table and put on my ‘friend making face’, reaching out my hand out in neighborly introductions, I was hoping this group would defy my biases.
I eventually learn that there is, in fact, one person over the age of 30. The Italian that joined the group that day along with myself is about my age. Once I get situated, I strike up a conversation with an Aussie and a Swiss woman who, through no fault of their own are quite young, but also seem perfectly mature, agreeable, and capable of good conversation. They certainly don’t seem like the type to be puking in a tent at 3am. This is a plus. There’s also a South Korean girl that doesn’t speak much English. The next day a retired Australian couple joins.
Ok. I’m not a total outsider here. I’ll take this as an acceptable day one. It could definitely be worse.
Exploring Namibia
The first few days of overlanding are, quite honestly, a bit slow. The thing no one tells you about this type of travel, or at least the part I chose to ignore, is now much boring driving is involved. And when you’re not driving, there’s a lot of down time.
On leaving Windhoek, our tour started with several days in Etosha national park. We stay at campsites inside, and around the park each night. The campsites have shower and bathroom buildings near where we park the truck and set up our tents. Often there is also an on-site restaurant and bar, and most of the campsite have some kind of swimming pool.
Our daily routine typically starts with a game drive around the park. We start early, often before 7am, while it’s still cool and the animals are active. This is great, we are spotting lions and zebras, and all kinds of interesting animal life.
Lioness
I also (FINALLY!!!) saw my first real black rhino. This is an exciting moment. Big five – check box!
But by about 3pm we’re done with this and we end up back at the campsite for ‘free time’. Free time to do what? Wifi barely exists. I’ve started to get to know the traveling group better, but honestly, they’re mostly 23, we don’t have a ton in common, and we’re spending A LOT of time together. Also, it sounds great to have a pool, but the pool situation is not the cleanest. I jumped in the first one without inspection, and only later realized the water was questionably murky and there was a thick green sludge growing off the sides. Plus, how many hours can I spend at a pool?? Do you know how pale I am??
The other ‘thing’ to do at these campsites is to sit in front of a watering hole lying outside the fenceline of the campsite and wait for animals to come. This is a very common thing. The campsites set up flood lights at night, and benches for people. And you sit. And you wait. You sit and wait for hours and hours, hoping that animals will show up.
It gets old. I’d say, ‘it gets old fast’ but time is not moving quickly these days. It’s like I’m watching the second hand on a clock tick by all afternoon. Not that I’m complaining (well…I kinda am). I realize my daily schedule of African driving and lion spotting around Namibia is still pretty amazing. Not to mention that I’m incredibly privileged to do this, and it’s a definite upgrade from clocking hours in an office everyday.
I didn’t forget all of this. I’m dealing with what we call, ‘first world problems’ right now.
But I am who I am. I’m not the best at sitting around. I don’t handle excessive down time very well. After three days of this overlanding thing, I’m real antsy.
Leaving Etosha
On our way out of Etosha we make a memorable stop at what is basically a giant salt flat on the edge of the park. Having regrettably missed the salt flats in Bolivia on my way through South America, this is a highlight for me. It’s a great spot for pictures, and I got some real keepers here.
Our guide Tembe 
The overlanding group
On leaving Etosha, my time of game drives is over. No more lions and rhinos. The group heads to Swakopmund, Namibia to see the waterfront and sand dunes. More overland adventures to come in the next blog post.
