Information Botswana

January 17

Food

In nearly every little village you can find a shopping mall, Spar and Woolworth you can find often as well. International products and brands you can easily find – shopping like at home.

Water

All of the campsites and some gasoline stations offer drinkable water, most of the times for free.

Diesel

Petrol stations are well spread over the country. At least every 100km you find one. The quality of the Diesel is good, works for modern engines as well. Just make sure that you get the 50ppm diesel, which you can’t get any more along the eastern road to the boarder of Sambia. You can allways pay with credit card.

Money

ATM you will find in any bigger village. We could withdraw up to 8000 BWA. Most shops though accept the common international credit cards

Overnight places

In the national parks it is not allowed to camp free. Elsewhere you can stand free – with the usual respect of course. Botswana has a lot of wild animals, so it’s better to stay inside during the night.

Internet

Even with the local SIM card you hardly have internet access. If you have, it’s most of the time quite slowly.

Streets

The main roads are paved all the rest are gravel or earth tracks. We though found the gravel roads often better than the paved ones with its thousands of potholes.

Our personal highlights

1. Elephant Sands (overnight at waterhole with elefants)
Khwai River (24h with hippos)
3. Tsodilo Hills (hike and bush camp)
4. Planet Baboba (Meerkats)
5. Shakawe River Lodge (relax with friends)
6. Okawango (flight over the delta)
Sowa Pan (along the salt pan)

Border formalities

It’s not a big problem to get 3 month visa at the border. But it’s important to clearly state that you want a 3 month visa and to control it. Theoretically you can only apply for a new visa after 12 months or you re-enter from overseas.
The carnet de passage is not stamped voluntarily in the toll union. Most of the time they are very friendly and put a stamp where we would like it to be.
It took us never longer than 45 min to cross boarders.

Our Stats

Daily expenses for 2 people:

Personal Observations

Tourism seems to be developed centrally and towards a high end/luxury standard. The National parks are not affordable for self-drivers with a big vehicle; you have to pay 1500 BWA per day just for the vehicle, which is the monthly salary equivalent of a worker in a hotel. In addition you would need to calculate the park fees and the campsite fees (all per person, per night!). Though some of campsites at the border of the NP managed by the local communities are as expensive as the ones inside the park. But without any extra facilities and not maintained.

There are a lot of wild animals in Botswana, in the north east mainly Elephants. It seems that numbers are growing every year so that they will end up with 200’000 of it soon. With this amount of Elephants nature is harmed so much, that the eco system is in danger.