By Roxanne Reid
After two weeks in friendly, colourful Zambia, we found Kasane on the edge of the Chobe National Park in Botswana way too busy and full of South Africans for our liking.
After two weeks in friendly, colourful Zambia, we found Kasane on the edge of the Chobe National Park in Botswana way too busy and full of South Africans for our liking.
When we’d planned our trip to Zambia’s South Luangwa National Park and Botswana’s Chobe, we’d discounted that it would be school holidays. And that had turned out fine for Luangwa because Zambia is a little further from home, a little more adventurous and out of South Africans’ comfort zone, being in Central Africa and all.
But we hadn’t bargained on how many South Africans will travel to Chobe at the drop of a hat, so the little town of Kasane was heaving with them, sucking the local colour from the place and replacing it with a boring sameness we didn’t much care for some 2600km from home.
But we hadn’t bargained on how many South Africans will travel to Chobe at the drop of a hat, so the little town of Kasane was heaving with them, sucking the local colour from the place and replacing it with a boring sameness we didn’t much care for some 2600km from home.
Elephants 'shopping' for food in Kasane
In fact, Kasane nowadays could be any small dorp in South Africa (except for the elephants peacefully roaming the outskirts!). There’s even a well-stocked Spar in a rather buzzing shopping centre, its shelves filled with all the brands we’re used to at home, though of course here they’re ‘imports’.
We found ourselves longing for the remoteness of Zambia, for the simplicity of fewer choices to be found in most shops outside the bigger towns, for brands like Mazoe orange squash from Ndola, and of course Mosi beer, deliciously addictive on a hot winter’s afternoon.
But we were here to experience the Chobe National Park for the first time, not lament that Botswana wasn’t Zambia.
More about that in the next blog…
Copyright © Roxanne Reid - No words or photographs on this site may be used without permission from roxannereid.co.za
We found ourselves longing for the remoteness of Zambia, for the simplicity of fewer choices to be found in most shops outside the bigger towns, for brands like Mazoe orange squash from Ndola, and of course Mosi beer, deliciously addictive on a hot winter’s afternoon.
But we were here to experience the Chobe National Park for the first time, not lament that Botswana wasn’t Zambia.
More about that in the next blog…
Copyright © Roxanne Reid - No words or photographs on this site may be used without permission from roxannereid.co.za
