August 2008, I went for a 2 months self-drive journey into main National Parks & Game Reserves of Botswana & Namibia. During this trip more than 6000 photos were taken and following friends advise, I have now published a coffee table book which contains the Best 100 shots.

A preview is available online.

A 2 months jou…

By Cedric Favero

Book Preview

Our two months self-drive safari in Botswana and Namibia is now over. We drove nearly 11′000 kms without any major incident and I shot about 6000 photos. After a first selection, 1700 remain and about 150 are now available online on a dedicated gallery.

Our trip went quite smoothly without any major incident. Indeed we got some visitors at night in our camps (Elephants, Hyena, Baboons and Lions) and we got some minor technical damages (the auto-focus of the Sigma lens 50-500mm gave up, a tyre exploded in Southern Namibia and our 350W power inverter did not go further than Maun).

As I’m leaving Thailand for Côte d’Ivoire, the traditional content of this blog will certainly change a bit and get an African perspective on new technologies. Nothing clearly defined yet, but for sure, moving from South-East Asia to Western Africa will have an impact.

In the meantime, enjoy the photos and feel free to drop questions and comments about our trip

After more than 18 days we got the 1st opportunity to get an Internet connection. So it’s time to give you some details.

We left Johanessburg on August 18th and cross the border with Botswana 2 days later. Close to Point Driff border we spent 2 days in Tuli Game Reserve and went for our first game drives. Lots of birds, gazeles and some elephants welcomed us (specially a young bull.. see photo).

We then drove North to Nxai Pan National Park for our first 2 nights sleeping on the top of the car. We also got stucked in soft and deep sand near Bairnes’ Baobab. Fortunaltely a hour later some Germans guys, also took than road and pulled our car out.

Next stop was in Magkadigkadi pan were we slept full of dust under thousands stars on the edge of the pan.

Last week we stop for 4 days camping into the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, looking endlessly for these lions which disturbed all our nights but never shown up during day light.

After a night to Maun (the 2nd largest city in Botswana) we flew to the Guma Lagoon in the upper part of the Okavango where we finally saw our first lions from a 300m distance. A bit far for some nice photos but as we were by foot everyone agreed that this distance was finally quite appreciable.

Some Technics for these interested:

• Having all our cameras and laptops in waterproof bags works fine. We don’t have too many problem with dust so far.
• Cheap Chinese 350W DC/AC power inverter gave up after 2 weeks. It could not stand 1 battery charger + 1 laptop power adapter. Lesson learnt: don’t trust what is written on the sticker.
• Digital fracture is quite present. GSM network is only available near cities and main villages reason why we cannot frequently update these pages, but we’ll keep trying.

That’s all for today as we have to hit the road again and enter Moremi National Park tomorrow morning.