Tuli Block: part I

We spent 3 nights camping in an area in eastern Botswana called the Tuli Block. It consists of a series of private game reserves on the edge of the Limpopo river. It's about a 6 hour drive from home on some very good roads. The roads were paved all the way to within the last 30 kms. We stayed at a very well kept camp site run by the Limpopo River Lodge, right on the banks of the river. In this area the river acts as a border between South Africa and Botswana, so as we sat at our campsite and looked across the river we were looking at South Africa.

We arrived on Tuesday afternoon and set up camp and relaxed after a long drive. As night falls all of the animals come out, and the sounds of living creatures splashing about in the water can be a little creepy. Hippo's and crocodiles live in the Limpopo, but I didn't see any. Cassandra swears we one of the creatures lurking about in the dark was a hippo, but I am sceptical.

Wednesday turned out to be a bit frustrating. We realized we were going need more fuel if we were going to be doing much in the way of game drives. The closest gas station on the Botswana side of the river was about 90 kms away. There was a station closer (about 40 kms away on the South African side), but we would have to go through immigration paper work and things at the border station if we went that way, so we decided to go to the farther station. After driving for about an hour and a half we finally made it to the town with the gas station only to be told they were out of fuel. The next closest station was another 60kms away. We had about a third of a tank left, so I decided we would cross the South African border and get gas since we knew that there was more than one station in that town and when we filled up we would only be 40 kms away from camp instead of 150kms. We drove back crossed the river, went through the border check point (thank goodness Cassandra had all our paperwork), and made it to the gas station just as the fuel light came on. We had spent almost 6 hours of our day driving around dealing with this. The moral of this story is to always carry a supply of fuel with you when traveling outside the city. You can guarantee that I will from now on.

On a side note; when we got back to camp I realized that all the rough road driving had jarred the tail pipe loose from the muffler, the ramifications of which we would not see until the drive back home.