Wow, what a week. Thanks for being patient those of you who follow this...ahem...mom. No, wait, you emailed me twice asking if African bushmen had carried me off. To answer your question, not quite, but I did venture far into the bush this past weekend on our trip to the Makgadikgadi salt pans in northern Botswana. Eighteen of us caravanned through cows, goats, and shanty towns to Planet Baobab, named for the huge and creepy Baobab trees that dominated the campground. I know what you're thinking...we must have carried in massive amounts of hand, foot, and mouth disease into the bush. Nope! There were several "check points" along highway A1 that required walking through muddy pesticides and driving the Dingo through deep puddles of it. It felt very similar to fording rivers in the Oregon Trail in that I had no idea if the Dingo was going to make it. In other news, no one on our trip died of cholera, but Sarah is likely to feel the effects of Salmonella soon, after eating half of her insanely raw chicken wrap at Wimpy Burger in Francistown.
We pitched our 8 tents at the campground and had a massive cook-out. I think this is an appropriate time to mention this country's obsession with sausage. The meat rack at the grocery store is approximately 90% sausage. There's lighter-colored sausage, darker-colored sausage, bloody-colored sausage, and old-looking chicken sausage that no one seems to buy. It is also impossible to buy less than 10 feet of sausage. And it's impossible to pay over $3. Anyway, let's just say that our cook-out included multiple sausage designs of Princess Leia's hair buns, or, what I thought looked like sizzling tape worms.
The next morning was spent with goats and hornbill birds (Zazu from the Lion King) at the pool. Apparently, we couldn't leave for our tour of the Pans until 2pm because it was "too hot". Anyway, making good Botswana time, we left for our tour at 4pm in two giant safari trucks. My window seat turned out to be a serious liability as we sped through the bush and its knife-like thorn bushes. Our first stop was to join five Japanese tourists in harassing a family of Meerkats (Timon from Lion King) by slowly pushing them off their land with 18 giant cameras. Not going to lie, they were pretty freaking cute, and much smaller than I expected.
Next, we pulled up to an isolated village of three small traditional huts next to a herd of cattle. "A cultural stop," I thought to myself. Wrong. Behind dilapidated mud hut #1 was none other than 15 badass ATVs! Sarah and I claimed one, and she maniaced our way onto the salt pan, which felt like floating onto the flattest, whitest beach I've ever seen, except no water.
Sadly, because it started raining, we didn't get to camp overnight on the salt pan and experience the famous peaceful star-gazing we'd heard so much about. Instead, I drove our ATV back to dry land, and we camped another night by the Baobabs.
Pictures to come. For now, I have to prepare for a powerpoint presentation to the Emergency room staff tomorrow, and exhaustion is hitting me like a carton of shake shake. Oh there's so much more to tell...
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