Botswana from the Air

I can’t believe that it has already been over half a year since my adventure to Botswana. And I still haven’t put all the photos up.
I was going to post all the details of Bots, and driving there, and the camping, and so on and so forth, but that’s going to take too much time. So I’ve scrapped that. There also won’t be a “Part 3 – Going Home”.
For the flying side, I had this idea that I’d put everything up in a logical order, with a detailed story for each. But now, I know I’ll never get around to it, so here are a load of photos!

My first flight was with Mack Air, in a Cessna 210, to a strip called “Deception Valley”, way south of Maun in the Kalahari. I was there to see the Delta, not the desert! However, this was my first flight in a C210, so I was still happy.

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My second flight was with Delta Air, in the GA-8 Airvan. I was purely self-loading cargo, for the purposes of a training flight around Maun.

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My third flight was also with Delta Air, but this time in the Cessna 206. We stayed in the circuit at Maun.

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My fourth flight was with Mack Air, in the Cessna 208 Caravan. This was not only my first flight in a Caravan, but also my first flight into the Delta. We went from Maun, to Piajio, then back to Maun!

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My fifth flight was with Delta Air, in the Cessna 206, to Lebala, a strip far north of Maun. I think it was on this flight that there were some hippo nearby, but I just wasn’t fast enough with the camera.

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My sixth flight was with Delta Air once again, in the Cessna 210. And, I was self-loading cargo for a few circuits. I spent a lot of time within 3nm of Maun International...

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My seventh flight was my first real taste of a bush pilot’s busy day.
I flew with Mack Air in the GA-8 Airvan. From Maun, we flew to Kwara, then Kwhai, then Xaxaba, and then back to Maun. It was on take-off from Kwai that I got some truly amazing photos of the elephants. That made my trip!

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Flight eight was with Air Shakawe, in the Cessna 207. It was a freight run to Xuguna and Shindi.
What was special about this flight, was that it was my first time in a C207, AND, it was the exact same aircraft my father flew many years ago.

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Flight number nine was with Mack Air, in the Cessna 210, up to Savuti.

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Flight ten was in the Caravan with Mack Air. Another busy day; we flew from Maun, to Stanley’s, then Chitabe, then Kwhai, and back to Maun.
On approach to one of the strips I was happily taking photos. That evening was I was going through the photos, I noticed that we came quite close to some very large birds of prey.

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Flight eleven was in the Cessna 206, with Mack Air, all the way south to the Kalahari Plains, where we waited a while in strong wind for the clients. Then it was north to Pom Pom, where we had a spot of drizzle. And then to Stanley’s, and back to Maun.

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Flight twelve was my longest. It was in the GA-8, with Delta Air. A long freight run that took us from Maun, to Nxai Pan, then Tau Pan, then back to Maun, and then to Savuti, and back to Maun again. Those of you who have flown an Airvan will know the seats are rock hard. After returning to Maun to load up more freight, I was considering staying. But I decided to push on through the numbness, and I’m glad I did; near Savuti we were graced with seeing pairs or elephants standing beneath the shade of trees, to avoid the hot sun. And between patches of shade, you’d see one of these massive creatures making their way along one of the many tracks.
The Savuti camp is right on the river, with elephants within 50m of your “porch”. Amazing!

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Flight thirteen with Mack Air in the C206 took us to Xaxaba, Pom Pom, and Ntswi. Ntswi is one of the shorter strips, which was exciting. What was more exciting was having an elephant eating lunch in the trees no more than 30m away from the runway. I wanted to take a closer look, but the clients had arrived so we had to go.

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My last flight was with Mack Air’s Airvan, to Kwara to drop off some guests. A storm was brewing, so we wanted to get back to Maun asap. As we were flying back, we flew through some rain. The pilots always joked that if you fly an Airvan through rain, you get a free shower. Well, they weren’t kidding. The roof leaks, and water gets in through the air vents. Luckily we weren’t in heavy rain, and it wasn’t for long. Seeing the sun make its way through the sky with patches of rain, and plenty of clouds, and fires burning the grass below, was such an awe-inspiring contrast.
The next day the first of the real rain hit Maun.

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Apologies if some of the photos were out of order. Blogspot does funny things :P