Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Camping areas are usually small (often with only two or three places to pitch a tent and/
or park a vehicle).
Outside of the parks and reserves, some hotels and lodges also provide camping areas .
Most private and hotel/lodge campsites have sit-down toilets, showers (often hot),
braai
pits and washing areas. One definite attraction is that campers can use the hotel bars and
restaurants and splash around the hotel swimming pool for free.
Other places where camping is possible include the Tsodilo Hills and Khama Rhino
Sanctuary.
Elsewhere, camping in the wild is permitted outside national parks, reserves or private
land and away from government freehold areas. If you want to camp near a village, obtain
permission from the village leader or police station and inquire about a suitable site.
PRACTICALITIES
Newspapers
Government-owned
Daily News, Botswana Advertiser
(Gaborone & Eastern Botswana),
Ngami
Times
(a regional Maun weekly).
Radio
Yarona (106.6FM) and GABZFM (96.2FM) broadcast around Gaborone, while RB2 (103FM) is the com-
mercial network of Radio Botswana. With a short-wave radio, you can easily pick up the BBC World Service and
international services from Europe.
TV
Botswana TV (BTV) broadcasts news (in Setswana) and sports (in English and Setswana), and an array of US
sitcoms. Government-run South African stations are also available. Most top-end hotels also offer satellite TV.
Weights & Measures
Metric system.
HOTELS
Every major town has at least one hotel, and the larger towns and tourist areas, such as
Gaborone, Maun, Francistown and Kasane, offer several in different price ranges. In gen-
eral, midrange and top-end travellers are well looked after, but budget travellers will
struggle to find anything as cheap as the budget accommodation in Namibia; the really
cheap places in Botswana often double as brothels. There's a relatively high demand for
hotel rooms in Gaborone, in particular from business travellers, so it pays to book ahead
here and also elsewhere in the high season.
The range of hotel accommodation available includes:
rondavels,
which are detached
rooms or cottages with a private bathroom; B&B-type places, often with a shared bath-
room - mostly in Gaborone; motel-style units with a private bathroom and, sometimes,
