KALAHARI DESERT
So yes indeed, let’s go mad, it’s Christmas : rather than retrace our footsteps and travel down the eastern strip of Botswana, we've taken on a last big challenge by heading south-west across… the Kalahari Desert ! No point in saying that we really have to get it right (and in any case, you can’t go wrong : you simply have to stop in each rare village over about 900 km from Okavango to the South African border).
The Kalahari is in fact a vast, semi-arid desert (covering 80% of the territory), dispairingly flat, just like the entire country, and we are surprised to see a variety of wildlife all along our path, led by ostriches and antilopes. This deserted immensity is the playground of the Bushmen, the San people, and big game hunters…
Ever since our arrival in Botswana, we have always had the same problem finding a place to recharge our batteries. Here, foreigners come to camp, hunt, in short, experience the great outdoors…. So there are very few structures capable of helping us out. But I’ve come up with another way of coaxing the most recalcitrant souls to respond to our requests : in Ghanzi, for example, when a young girl I asked for help in finding a connection just shook her head in a negative, disinterested way, I offered her not one, but two of our expedition T-shirts. Her eyes opened wide and she rushed outside shouting “Stay put, I’ll find a solution !"… Five minutes later, I was plugging in the car in the corridor of the building she was keeping an eye on… These Venturi T-shirts are pure magic !
We spent our last night in Botswana in Jangheng, a mining town which makes a living from mining diamonds. The atmosphere here is very special : in a nutshell, you can tell that money is there, but that it doesn’t benefit everyone… In the distance, you can make out the artificial mountain which has resulted from the extraction of earth in the mines (Botswana is the world’s N°1 producer of diamonds). In town, labourers and men with attaché-cases cross each others’ paths, geologists, all kinds of adventurers… We plug in behind a casino hoping that the ambiance won’t be too crazy throughout the night and that Africa won’t suffer from the frustration of gamblers down on their luck.
Next morning, what a relief ! The car was fully charged. We crossed the border, and found ourselves in the last country on our agenda : South Africa. The change is pretty radical : traffic is denser, cars are more modern… We are beginning to feel that our adventure is nearing its end. We arrive in Johannesburg, the final destination in Mission N°4 of the Venturi Global Challenges !