8th October Tzaneen
Another day of hellish heat, over 40 degrees c. Spent first part of morning in the Tzaneen Mall (yes there is one!) at game shopping for a digital camera after which I found a coffee shop inside the local Woolworths’ (yes there is a large one). Tzaneen is no longer a small town.
Rode via Moria where the ZCC has its headquarters, quiet impressive, covers a huge area, and would hate to be stuck in the traffic there over Easter. Thereafter on to Polokwane and points northwards. I arrived at a Campsite with Chalets 2kms short of the border which I will tackle tomorrow.
Almost forgot, the most interesting event of the day was a call from David (SA) one of the two other bikers who I am planning to meet with at Nata to say that him and Miles (NZ) had split as Miles is pushing to make Europe by January. Not sure of the rush as there is plenty of time. I suspect that maybe there has been a falling out of sorts? If so it will present a bit of a dilemma as to who to ride with. I guess time will tell.

9th October Francistown Botswana
An early start to my first border crossing of the trip, painless and efficient both on the SA side as well as the Botswana side. Another day of heat and watching my reserve fuel light coming on in the middle of nowhere. My reserve is approximately 4 litres, about 50/60km although not too keen to put it to the test. From here on distances are large and I have realised that I need to top up my tank whenever the chance arises. Took a mid morning break in a town with an unpronounceable name but most important, in fact the only reason for the stop is that there was a new Wimpy. Why there I don’t really know, but what a pleasure!!!. The service and food was great.
Stopped at lunchtime in Francistown and decided to call it a day. Have booked into a hotel that has a Spur as its restaurant, no prizes for guessing where I will be eating dinner tonight. Spent the afternoon exploring the local mall, complete with Woolworths, Nando’s, Cape Union Mart and a CNA. Managed to replenish my library as I was down to my last book. Francistown reminds me a bit of Nelspruit many years ago.
Tomorrow I leave for Nata where hopefully I will meet up with the others?!
10th October Nata Botswana
After an early breakfast at the Spur left for Nata about 250 km away. An uneventful, uninteresting pleasant ride with the exceptionof this huge baobab tree..

Stopped at the Nata garage (one and only) to refuel and grab a cold coke. To my amazement David and Miles drove in to refuel as well. What an amazing co incidence. We decided to call it a day and booked into the Nata Sands Lodge which has only recently reopened since burning down last year. We spent the rest of the morning lazing around the pool.

That afternoon the 3 of us took a drive in the lodge vehicle onto the Magadigadi Pans. What an experience! The first 45 minutes we spent driving through a flat expanse of grasslands with nothing in sight on the horizon. Then almost out of nowhere there was a vast expanse of water, salty and about 10 cm deep with the odd pelican and flamingo on it. It was hard to comprehend how vast it was and that in dry years it disappears completely. We stayed to watch the sunset. Awesome!

Another tough day in Africa!!!