Botyburps

Our arrival at the Tsabong Camel Park took us to a tent site! This must be what is called glamping.

After we settled in we went for a sunset walk among the camels and saw meerkats scampering around. Then we came across 2 staff members gathering wild cucumbers and tried some. They are a favourite of the camels.

This morning we drove to Tsabong for groceries, then set out for the Seo Pan which is near a small village called Maleshe. The Pan is a shallow bowl of grassland occasionally grazed by cattle, goats and sheep. However, it is also the oldest site of Homo Erectus habitation known – somewhere between 250,000 and 1,000,000 yrs old. The area is littered with Stone Age tools- chisels, blades, scrapers etc. You can just wander around and see them lying on the ground. It seems to have been a manufacturing site as there are seats cut into rocks. It was probably used for thousands of years as shown by the wear on the rocks where hands would be used to help stand up and sit down.

This is a hand adze which has been numbered by archeologists who are studying this site. However, as it is so recently discovered it is not yet a protected site and is not known on the tourist itineraries. We only heard about it from Graeme through his links with Botswana University. One more photo, then Joy will explain how we got there and back!

To get to the site we drove on a back road to a village and James wandered over to a group of people sitting in the shade. They all went off to see the village chief and James came back with a young man who had agreed to guide us to the site. We picked up a young woman as well and headed off into the bush.

At first the road was a defined track and then not so defined! In fact we were driving through long grass with some wheel tracks, sort of visible through sand. We went for about 4km before we finally arrived. It really was interesting and the young woman had worked on the site with university researchers.

Getting out there proved interesting to say the least. We don’t have a 4WD just an SUV. We set off and were immediately bogged in soft sand. James tried several routes and we pushed but nothing was happening. Eventually the young man gave up on us, walked over to the car let air out of the front tyre, asked politely if he could drive and took off like Possum Bourne. He was a rally driver extraordinaire. We raced after him and he politely offered the driving back to James who said no way and hopped into the passenger seat – we drove sedately back to the village. All in all a bit of an adventure and I do wish we had a 4WD but then where would the fun in that be?