Written by my good friend, Marion, a hilariously entertaining account of her recent visit to Botswana.  When Marion circulated an email to her group of friends telling them about her trip, I just knew that I had to share it with my readers.  Here it is…

Despite my friend’s commiserations and concerns about my sanity on my departure to Darkest Africa, aka Botswana, I survived the unsurvivable and returned a little worse for wear, after a journey of 6000km, mostly on my coccyx!

There were 6 vehicles (12 people) in our intrepid little band of wannabe boyscouts with a combined age of over 700 years (the people that is, not the cars!)  Some seasoned campers, and others, like me, wishing we could book into the nearest 5 star game lodge and close our eyes until it was all over.  The trip to Kasane at the northern most point of the  Chobe National Park  took 4 days and John, my dear husband, fearing that I would make a dash for it before he could get me into the Park, had booked us into some quite pleasant B&Bs along the way……

Kasane though, was going to be my first night of “penthouse camping”.  Our camp site was in the grounds of the famous Chobe Game Lodge - a magnificent lodge with all the bells and whistles.  Sadly though, our allotted camp site looked nothing like the Lodge – for starters, it was ankle deep in sand and thorns! Fortunately the ablutions were not too bad, so I put on my bravest face and awaited the erection of the penthouse.  After much huffing and puffing by John, who sounded more like an elephant on heat, we managed this feat and, having joined our friends for a braai on their much more organised site, we spent our first night aloft.

Breakfast the next morning was cereal and boxed milk before we all made our way into the town to buy the fresh provisions for the trip.  Having purchased same, we now had enough food to feed the whole of Africa for two weeks and enough booze to start our own bottle store!

We then filled up the extra petrol tanks situated on the roof of the car, which for some reason are right next to the gas bottles, so I was now travelling in a mobile time bomb waiting to go off!   We did manage a boat safari down the Zambezi River from the lodge  and saw stunning game,

Elephant, Buffalo, Crocs and Buck and the African sunset with its large fiery orb was a sight to behold.

Later that afternoon we entered the Park where we were to spend 11 nights in the wilds. Despite threats of very basic conditions, we were relieved to find that all campsites had flushing loos and showers and most even had hot water.  There was, of course, the inevitable sand wherever we went but I just closed my eyes and pretended I was on a beach in Thailand.

The crowd we went with were great fun and we had many good laughs along the way.  There are no fences around the camping sites so there were several times when the roaring of the lion seemed so close we were sent scurrying up our ladders for safety.

Now that I am home, I will never take running hot water for granted again. I get down on my hands and knees every night beside my Sealy Posturepedic 5 star bed, not to say my prayers, but to give thanks that I will be sleeping there at all!

Would I do it again?  Absolutely, but only if I could sleep in a bed with four legs on it instead of four tyres and where gorgeous game rangers were around doing all the hard work…….

Anyone wanna buy a “penthouse”??