Planning our trip to South Africa and Botswana

We are in love with Africa, its nature, its animals, its sunsets and its people and, as soon as we can, we do not miss the opportunity to escape to lose ourselves in the wonders of this continent.

This journey, and consequently its itinerary, was born from the request of some of our friends to accompany them on a trip to Botswana, to the Moremi Reserve and the Chobe National Park.

First we defined the dates and the itinerary to share with our friends because it was important to match them and our travel needs; we contacted our local partner with whom we usually organize mobile safaris and we defined to do a private mobile safari, so only for us six.

We decided on the itinerary: two nights at Maun where we will visit the Okavango Delta by mokoro, two nights at the Moremi Game Reserve, two nights at Savuti and two nights along the Chobe River.

Once this part of the journey was established, that was the most urgent, even to book the camps, we defined the remaining part, that is what to do and where to go before and after the mobile safari in Botswana.

Our car, Dr Livingstone, is located in Johannesburg, where we always leave it parked when we are not in Southern Africa; so our journey will obviously start from there.

As always we need to spend a few days in Johannesburg to prepare our car and to do the shopping; we will do camping up to Maun so the expense and space management will be crucial.

From Johannesburg we need to go North to Botswana, so we thought we'd visit the Pilanesberg National Park and the Marakele National Park; we have never visited these two national parks and therefore this seems to us the right occasion.

From here we head towards the Botswana border and spend the first night at the Khama Rhino Sanctuary; we have already been here and want to come back as it is a very beautiful reserve and worth a visit.

The next stop will be the Makgadikgadi National Park at the entrance of Khumaga, where it is located the Boteti River; even here we have never been before and we are really curious to see this place that is a fundamental step in the migration of the zebras that takes place between Botswana and Namibia at every change of season.

We will then move to Gweta, a village that is in nothing but an excellent base for visiting the Nxai Pan National Park, the Makgadikgadi National Park, from another entrance than Khumaga, the Ntwetwe Pan and going to Kubu Island in the Sua Pan; we have already been to this area of ​​Botswana and it is one of our favorites, this time we want to dedicate ourselves to the Ntwetwe Pan that, unlike the other destinations, we have never visited before.

From here we will go to Maun where we will meet our friends who will arrive by plane, we will stay two nights there and spend a day at the Okavango Delta by the mokoro and taking a walking safari.

We will then leave from Maun for the mobile safari that, in the following six days, will take us to the Moremi Game Reserve, to Savuti and on the Chobe river, the latter are part of the Chobe National Park; our days will be entirely dedicated to safaris that in these places are particularly exciting for the exceptional sightings that are usually possible.

Our mobile safari will end at Kasane, our friends from here will take a flight back home, while we continue our journey; we go back South and we will go to the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, here we will have to be very careful both with the shopping and with the fuel since within the CKGR there is nothing and we will be alone for five days in which we will meet very few people.

Once out of the CKGR we will return to South Africa and spend the last two days between Pretoria and Johannesburg.

We have calculated the distances and journey times several times, we searched where the service stations are located along our itinerary, as well as the shops and supermarkets where we can do the shopping; we booked the hotels in Johannesburg and Pretoria by Booking and we booked all the Botswana campsites, after searching for them and reading all the reviews, while for the plane tickets we bought them months ago when we found a not to be missed offer.

Our itinerary is ready, studied in the smallest details, we have booked everything and so we just have to go!