Old Palaype

This weekend I found a small paradise of rippling water and greenery within Botswana!  

On Saturday morning I left Gaborone with three other girls on a cramped bus, holding my backpack, bound for Palapye.  After a three hour bus ride, that really wasn’t too bad we landed in palapye.  We walked across the street from the bus rank to the tourism office.  The lady there was very nice and she helped us choose between going to Moremi or Malaka.   We headed for Malaka which is a small village about twenty minutes away from Palapye.  From Malaka you can access old palapye.  It contains ruins, springs, and gorges!

We went back to the bus rank and found out where we could catch a combi to Malaka.  While waiting for the combi we bought a watermelon and broke in to it! It was delicious.   We didn’t make it on the first combi but we did successfully push our way onto the second combi.  The combi blared lil’wayne the whole way.  You never know what kind of music you’ll here in Africa.   We arrived in Malka, a small rural village and started asking around for Cisco.  Cisco was to be our guide around old Palapye.  People quickly helped us and sent us with a teenage boy to the “depot” where Cisco was.  The depot consisted of a small building with many men standing around outside drinking.  Cisco was very nice but very shy.  We worked out with him that we would camp at the old church tonight and he would meet us there in the morning.  We could then walk around the ruins and see the gorge.  With that settled, we walked back through the village, stopping to talk to two women and several children.  We left the village and walked a bit down the road where we ate lunch under a tree.  After sharing our food we continued a couple kilometers to the turn off to the trail.  We walked the trail and arrived at the old LMS church ruins.  It was really pretty.   

 

Lunch! 

After exploring a small amount we split up so that two people could set up tents and the other two could go find the water.  Audrey and I set off on the small path to the river.  We finally found the river bed but there was no water. The area itself was beautiful!  It was a gorge area with greenery!!!  There was green grass and green plants!  It was wonderful!  We started following the river bed and kept hoping for water.  The ground started to get muddier, and then we saw small streams of water.  Yet, the water was really dirty and you could tell cows walked through it often.  (There were cows all around the trials, just wandering around.  A few had cow bells; you could usually hear cow bells somewhere in the distance.)  Audrey and I were about to give up because we didn’t want to run out of daylight, when BOOM we walked into an area with a small pool of water and water coming from the rocks!  WOOO HOOO!  After a small celebratory dance we filled up all our water bottles by holding them up to the water coming from the rocks.  We added chlorine tablets to make them safe to drink.  Locals drank the water straight but after being sick for so long I was a bit paranoid.

 Camp Site!

 our water supply

After getting back to camp we lit our small cook stove and made cous cous.  It was delicious!  We added pepper, raisins, peanuts, seasoning, and a sauce packet. After stuffing ourselves with cous cous, we made bush hot chocolate.  We laid in the remains of the church, drank our hot chocolate, and looked at the stars.  Is felt great to be in the middle of nowhere, away from the hustle and bustle.   We were lucky to have a semi chili night and I was able to snuggle down in the sleeping bag when going to sleep.  We were in bed by 9pm so we must have been tired from all the walking done that day.

The next morning we got up around six am and headed to refill our water.  At the gorge, we explored a little more.  It was a great view!  After playing for a bit longer than planned, we hurried back to camp.  We ate sorghum porridge for breakfast and quickly packed up as our guide Cisco arrived.  At 9:30 we left our camp and continued to walk 300miles.  He he okay.  Not really, but we did in fact do a ton of walking that day.  We were able to see more ruins, a natural spring, and another gorge.  The sites were breath taking.   The greenery was such a nice change. We kept joking that we had left Botswana.  (In Botswana’s defense, it has been dry season here so everything has been dead.  Now that the rain has come, things are becoming green!)   We had to have walked at least 10km; I’d say a bit more.  Maybe it felt like more because we had our packs and we were walking through loose sand.  Our hike ended back in Malaka Village.  We thanked our guide profusely and jumped on a combi to head back to old Palapye.   The guides are provided free of charge.  I think he is paid by the government of Botswana to lead around tourist.  The hills that we hiked are considered sacred by the people there and it is believed that the ancestors are still in the hills.  I think the guide keeps people from getting lost but also ensures that the hills will be respected. 

Spring near our campsite

 Cool Plant!

Refilling our water supply on our hike

 GRASS!

This is what most of our trail looked like!  Sand, Sand, Sand! 

In Palaype we went to the grocery store and bought cold drinks and ice cream!  It was refreshing.  We debated on the idea of staying at a hostel that night in Palapye or heading back to gabs.  In the end we decided to be responsible and head back to Gabs so that we could attend class Monday morning.  The bus ride back to Gabs was interesting.  It was one of the nicest buses I’ve been on.  We watched two movies and I had plenty of leg room.  Still, when we got to gabs I was more than ready to get off the bus!  We took a taxi back to UB and went to Michelle's room to cook dinner.  We used our small cook stove to fix pasta.  We added soy mince, pasta sauce, and feta cheese.  YUM!    I stumbled back to my room, took a long shower, and was asleep by 10!  

It was a wonderful weekend!  I’m so glad that I got to explore for a bit. It’s always a nice change to get out of the city.  We didn’t have to pay much either.  We paid 58pula for the bus each way, 8pula for the combi each way, and then we tipped our guide.   Not including food, we only spent around 132 pula which is just above 20 bucks!  Woo Hoo. 

Hope you all had a great weekend too!  I’m sorry for not posting more often!