More Botswana! (Pictures)

July 3rd, Day 22:

With all of our various meetings and appointments scheduled this day, we were unable to leave Gaborone until around 330pm. Fortunately for us, there is a pretty large town, Mochudi, on the map about 30 miles north of Gaborone that we were able to reach before nightfall. However, when we reached the center of Mochudi, we were unable to find a guesthouse or hotel anyway in the town, and everyone we asked could not seem to think of any place for us to stay. It was dark outside by now so we did not want to start biking around looking for a place, but after talking to a bunch of people, I managed to find a truck driver that knew of a lodge a few kilometers outside of town and was willing to drop us for a small charge.

We eventually arrived at the Rasesa Lodge, thanked the driver for his help and settled into a little chalet on the premises. We had dinner at the restaurant at the Lodge, which consisted of chicken, beef, french fries, and grilled cheese, which was made on a special request for us. After chowing down this tasty meal, we retired to our chalet for the night. We knew the next few days would be a challenge so we went to sleep early...

July 4th, Day 23:

Happy Fourth of July to all; unfortunately there were no fireworks where we were in rural Botswana, but we celebrated it with... more bicycling. Today was actually one of the most difficult days of bicycling we have had the whole trip. Unfortunately, we overslept a little and did not get on the road until a little past 11am and we had to go around 90 kilometers. This would not have been a huge issue had Mother Nature cooperated and did not send a strong headwind in our direction for most of the day. We were able to get the first thirty or so kilometers done pretty easily, but then fatigued set in as the wind increased and the roads looked endless.

On a side note, we met a nice fellow at one of our ten mile breaks who was eating some berries which he said were called Ubunzu. They were probably the smallest fruit I had ever seen, but they tasted good and we talked with him for some time as we all ate the Ubunzu berries. Unfortunately, eating all these berries did not make our journey to Dibete any easier. Dibete is the town we were aiming to get to this night as we made friends with some of the people who worked at the Rasesa Lodge and they informed us the owner's sister lives in Dibete. They were really helpful and called ahead to ask if it would be okay if we slept there and the owner's sister obliged.

We were now racing against time as it was getting late and we were still a good number of kilometers from Dibete. Both of our bodies were tired by the halfway point to Dibete, but we did not want to sleep on the side of the road on this night so we pushed onwards as we struggled against the strong headwind.

A few times we had to stop on the side of the road because we were so tired and Aaron was feeling very light headed, yet this did not stop us from reaching Dibete right before sundown. Once we turned in the town, the road turned to sand and we had to get out and walk the rest of the way to Mrs. Bonang's house, where we were staying for the night. This turned out to be by far the best moment of our day and probably our most enjoyable walk with our bicycles at our sides during the whole trip. As we turned up the sand road, we were met by around thirty people from the village, mostly women and children, who were delighted to see us and helped us find our house for the night. Immediately as Aaron pulled out the video camera, everyone started dancing and running around trying to get in front of the camera. It was a really cool scene, and we have a bunch of pictures and videos to show from it.

Mrs. Bonang turned out to be a really nice lady, who showed us to our room and gave us water for a bath. She also provided us with candles, as our side of the house did not have electricity. We then headed towards the center of town to try and find some food to eat; this proved to a be a challenge as the only restaurant in town was closed by 6pm on this Saturday night, hard to believe, but fortunately the convenience store was still open. Our dinner for the night consisted of a loaf of bread each, canned corned beef, cold baked beans, and two Cokes. Not exactly what we wanted, but we made the best out of our situation and were content with our meal however gross it may sound.

After dinner, we walked back to Mrs. Bonang's house; we both realized we were incredibly tired and ready to go to sleep. The time was 730pm, but this didn't really matter, and Aaron passed out for the night. I decided to do some reading from the book I purchased in Upington, Barack Obama's "Dreams From My Father", which is a excellent book if anyone has not read it already. Anyway, I finished the last two hundred or so pages of the book, was thoroughly satisfied, and dosed off to sleep with another long day of bicycling tomorrow in mind.

-Eric