We woke up to freezing conditions! There was actually a bit of frost on the roof. What a contrast to our balmy night around the fire the previous evening! We struggled to get going with our numb fingers and shivering bodies. Thankfully the sun soon reached us and the friendly rays started to warm us up. The Troopys continued to “crawl” along and we were forced to stop before going around a massive aardvark hole. Night driving on this track would be very tricky! The going was mostly through heavy sand, but there were harder sections of orange sands as we drove through depressions between the dunes. As we approached the Nxaunxau village the track became even rougher with the sand being churned up by donkey carts and cattle. The villagers waved at us and were very riendly, but they did not make any attempt to beg or ask anything. Here the locals have certainly not been “spoilt” by tourists handing out sweets etc. Now all our GPS’s knew the way again and it was easy to pick up the next track going north and this time to the road that would lead us to Tsodilo. It looked very squiggly on the map and we realized that we would be following a riverbed. The main gravel road leads from here in an easterly direction (parallel to the Khaudum river) to the main tar road, but we were not going that way!! We were still doing the” shortcut”! The track initially was well used and we actually came across some kind of safari setup and there were horses grazing. It was a beautiful winding road through the grassed riverbed, but the dust was unbelievable. We had to stay far behind Ssyrill, but there was no wind and the dust would not settle. It was incredible. Troopy instantly became a grey and very a stripey car (from all the scratches) and we ourselves were properly dusted too! We did find a lovely spot in the riverbed for lunch. There was the sad sight of a huge elephant skeleton scattered about. It was quite an experience to be able to “inspect” the huge skull and the jawbone with its set of razor teeth. We wondered how this giant had come to die here. Perhaps shot by angry villagers because of destruction of their fields??? The track now moved away from the riverbed and we once again were driving on an undulating and narrow track alternating with firmer sand patches in the more open areas and very sandy in the thick overgrown bush on higher ground. By early afternoon we finally reached the gravel road that would take us directly to Tsodilo in an easterly direction. We had “conquered the shortcut”, but the Troopys certainly looked worse for wear! Stephen and I still wondered about the campsite marked on our map and GPS, but Tracks for Africa was very outdated. We drove to where it was supposed to be. There was no sign of a campsite, but the key word (Tshukumutshu) had helped us to pick up our “shortcut” track! By choosing to drive this beautiful, but rather challenging route, we had driven 190 km instead of 330 km if we had we taken the conventional route! The Troopys had been scratched and it took much longer, but it was a wonderful adventure and a lot of fun! Back on a conventional road, progress was now relatively fast since the made gravel road was in good condition. We soon could make out the Tsodilo Hills in the distance. This site is sacred to the San and the Hambakushu and is famous for its amazing rock art galleries. This was the first declared National Monument in Botswana (1927). There are more than 4500 rock paintings. Although difficult to date, it is believed that some of the paintings could be 100, 000 years old. It is now a UNESCO WORLD HERITAGE site. It is a main tourist attraction and I had been there on several occasions with my tours (and twice with Stephen) and I wondered if we would find many tourists there. The ladies at the entrance gate were friendly enough, but it took a while to try and pay. The lovely campsite from many years ago was now not operational (was in the process of being fixed up – we hope!) and we were sent to the museum site where the day picnic site now served as a campsite. As we arrived, we were approached by a very pleasant young man. He was James, one of the official freelance guides and it was agreed that he would take us to the various sites. To do all four of the walks would cost us 600 Pula, but we could at least share the cost. He suggested that we do the hike up the Male Hill first thing in the morning and that we should start at 8h00. This was fine with us. The museum was functional, but the site generally looked very sad and neglected. There were a lot of little tents dotted around on the day picnic site which now served as the campsite, and we would later discover that the occupants were an interdisciplinary team of archaeologists, geologists and botanists from Cape Town. In fact, I had had contact with the one archaeologist in my study days and we could chat about the people we had both known well (especially Proff. Hilary and Jeanette Deacon). The ablutions were not very good and I got myself properly soaked when the top popped off one of the outside taps. It was really not acceptable and a bit of a shock after wonderful evenings alone in the bush. We were told in no uncertain terms that we could not walk about on our own and a couple from the research party had been reprimanded for going for a walk to photograph the wonderful glow against the Male Hill as the last rays of the sun touched it. Nevertheless we had a pleasant evening around the campfire and we were looking forward to the activities the next day.

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