We made it to Khama Rhino Sanctuary. It’s a nice place to stop and camp and the drive along the A1, then A14, was really pleasant, not too much in the way of cattle/donkey dodging and really good tar road all the way. As we drove through, I thought I’d like to stay a night or two in Mahalapye or Palapye. Sorry we didn’t. Both look like pleasant towns with most everything you need. The odd thing as we were driving was that we passed about three dozen stalls along the road in the middle of nowhere where the only products seemed to be brooms and some kind of sweet homemade 2L flavored soda. (Qualification: Richard just said, no, not soda, probably gasoline. Or just mystery liquid).
At Rhino Sanctuary, just north of Serowe, two nights was a good choice for us. I wouldn’t really want to stay longer, but one night wouldn’t be enough. At the entrance we were able to buy ice. a block, which Richard hammered into pieces for us. The shop also had a few drinks and braai wood. Very handy and super nice people as usual.
We set up at campsite 6, not far at all from the ablution block, which was clean and tidy. We also found that there was a water tap at our site (yay!). And we have shade trees! Last night as we sipped our gin and tonics, a beautiful (very, very large!) scrub hare came by, then a go-away bird came to check out the braai grill and get a drink of water near the tap. He came back this morning, too, with his friend. Love those birds! I’m now singing the “wah-wah-go’way” call, which to Richard’s annoyance.
The weather has been pleasantly in the nineties and not over a hundred. What a luxury! We slept well our first night; here though with the screens unzipped, we got a lot of mosquitoes. Looks like we’re heading into mosquito territory. We just started our doxycycline this morning as an anti-malarial. Time to goop on the sunscreen and zip up the screens. By the way, I tried something that I thought was very successful with the nighttime insects. I set up our little hanging lamp in a tree, changed the color to a soft blue, beautiful in the night, and I added a small cup of beer just below the tap. I also left our bucket with a small bit of water. Did it help keep insects away? No idea, but I felt better. 🙂
We saw some lovely rhinos on our drive around the sanctuary. Interestingly the rhino sanctuary is near a Botswana military base and the Botswana Defense Force provides 24hr protection for the animals (poaching for rhino horns is a terrible problem). We’ve actually seen the soldiers in action in the bush several times since we’ve been here, and it’s only been a day. I feel like the animals have a chance here and a reasonable degree of protection from poachers.
