Camping with Elephants! Botswana to Zambia by Motorcycle - Australia to England ep6

Good morning, and welcome to News for Absolute Idiots. In today's news, there have been influxes of reports of people wearing salmon shirts that look more pink than they should. Also, there are riots worldwide about the amount of YouTube Shorts uploaded to this channel. We're getting an urgent report. I'm in Zambia. With such breaking news, we need to cut to our field reporter. Field reporter, me. Thanks, me. I'm currently on my way to your location as we speak, but here's how I got here. Bye! So now that that's out of the way, back to you, hotel-dwelling me. I hate that guy anyway. What an absolute idiot. I can smell you getting off the elevator. Apologies. Now for the actual video. Now in the last episode, I left you at the Botswana border. And since then, I got through. As far as borders go, it's not so bad. In fact, it's very smooth sailing. And on that note, I am in Botswana. And I spent the night in Gaborone. But spoiler alert, I didn't really spend that much time in Botswana. Which is why I'm covering two countries in this video. And this spot was great because of the weird furry visitors in the night. I'm sure you don't want to come in here. And in the morning, I made my way to Nata, because that's where things start to get more interesting. They're so polite. Look at you, letting me go, you little cutie. So cows know how to safely cross the road, apparently. Yeah, just casually an elephant, as you do. I'm beginning to quite like this place. Here's my little road stop for the day. Got my lunch. Got my little loaf of bread. Cost me five pula, which is like, I don't know, 30 cents. And I quite like it. And I think that's elephant poo. So we're getting close. See if the BMW can keep up with 10 cylinders of glory. Now today is hopefully the last day of highway nonsense for a while. Because I'm leaving Francistown, which is here, and I'm going here to stay here. And then afterwards, I'm taking a slight detour to a place that I should or shouldn't do. Probably shouldn't. But I'm going to do it anyway, because it looks interesting. So anyway, the place I'm staying is Elephant Sands something or other hotel. You can see it right now. And I'm going to be doing Hunter's Road, which is apparently a bit of a detour. But I'm probably going to have to do some wild camping along. But, eh, if you're watching this, I didn't get eaten anyway. So calm yourselves. Hi, narrator me again. Now Elephant Sands was recommended by Rob from Moving Pictures Africa. And I've got to say, best place I ever stayed. However, the driveway is an absolute bloody nightmare on a 350kg motorbike. So after many deadlifts, I eventually made it to the campsite and set up my hovel for the night. And it's only after this that you realise how awesome the place actually is. There's just elephants roaming around, not really caring about these idiots camping in their home. And on some occasions, they'll even come and basically sit next to you around the campfire. Now it was here that I met an absolutely mental Italian. This guy was riding from Cape Town to Italy. On a bicycle. And that's not even the worst part. There was another cyclist in this place doing almost the same thing. Anyway, if you're there, stay at this place. It's awesome. And the following morning, I had to tackle the disgraceful sandy driveway in reverse. Welcome to some of the most hideous sand driving I've ever had to do. On the way in, I was down there. Which is like, more than ankle deep, powdery, horrible sand. So I almost gave myself a hernia picking the bike up about 20 times. So on the way out, I'm taking the slightly more sensible option. Which is more rocky and hideous, but less powdery sand ----. But it's still more unstable than your psychopathic girlfriend. As beautiful as she may be. But such is life. I've decided to put the camera on just to record these horrible incidents. And no doubt this is going to be the only time I haven't dropped the bike. So you can probably see some of my skid marks there. Now in post-production, I'm going to take the opportunity to pause this part here. Does this look familiar, Jeff? Vile. Oh, hello, whatever you are. Don't distract me or I'll fall. See, at this point I'm asking myself, why didn't I take this road in in the first place? This is a thousand times easier. This is a drop zone. The good thing about this is that I don't really feel bad about my abilities anymore. Because there was a guy who spoke Afrikaans. And he told me they have a nickname for the GS bikes. And I can't remember the name. But he basically said it means not sand. I'll wait here for you. Because I don't want to drop myself in front of this and embarrass myself. On the way to Hunter's Road after Elephant Sands. I saw an Italian silhouette on the horizon. Well, here's a familiar face. My friend! Here, grab on. No, hold on, hold on. He's the only guy I've ever heard say, Mamma Mia! Now this carried on for about 50km. For the first time in history, an Italian was not going to be behind schedule today. But I had to let him go and turn into the entrance of Hunter's Road. So this looks like the beginning of the Hunter's Road that runs across the border of Botswana. And everyone's told me that doing it on this bike is a stupid idea. And it's not that I don't believe them. It's just that I want to see it for myself. So obviously, they said it's really sandy. If I was struggling with what I was doing just now, then they said there's no chance. And it's hundreds of kilometres of it apparently. And already, yeah, it looks like they're right. Which is very unfortunate, because I had a lot of high hopes for this trek. Because you can do some wild camping, you'll see elephants and lions and things that'll munch your eyeballs. We'll see, I'll stop when it gets too difficult. Now Hunter's Road basically runs along the Botswana-Zimbabwe border, all the way up to the border crossing. And seeing as you're riding very slowly, in areas where many, many wild animals live, you have to be a little bit careful. But unfortunately, there were parts of this road that were pretty much impossible on a bike of this size. So towards the end, I had to cut back across to the main highway and carry on up to the border. I think this is like top ten places you're more likely to get eaten by a lion or break down. This is ******* crazy. Every single person you see are these fixers that are trying to get your money for helping you do the visa. And everything I've talked about makes it seem like a very easy visa. Or so it should be. The fact is, this should be a very easy crossing. But it's made a million times harder by all these fixers swarming you to try and confuse you. I'm good, thank you, how are you? I don't want to waste your time. I don't need a fixer for this, I know it's an okay border. Sorry? That's fine, I've got time. Sorry? Yeah, I've got everything I need. I don't need help. I don't need help, it's fine. I'm very sure, I've got everything. Everything, everything. I have everything. They'll give you fake information to try and make you make a mistake so that you need their help. So if you're planning on crossing this border, don't listen to anyone else except the people in the ticket booths. Because if you do that, it's quite easy to cross. And in case you hadn't realised, that took a while. I'm stealing. And there's nothing you can do about it. So over these last few days, my finger has been getting increasingly painful. And it's swollen to about double the size that it normally is. And I think I've got some kind of infection in it or something. So I think once I get to camp today, I'm going to have to do something about it. With knives! It's cheese, don't worry, I'm having lunch. I'm not a sicko. So last night I stayed in probably the worst hotel I've ever stayed in in my life. Toothpaste chin. But it cost me the same as about two Newtown coffees. Anyway, as I was thrashing around in the night, this happened. That's not the name of this hotel. Now the thing I'm liking about these countries is this. You can just park your bike like that and they don't care. In Australia, they'd have a hissy fit. Now it's time for a lesson in how to survive when you've only got foreign plugs. It's almost like they do that for a reason. Hey, how are you? You're not fine? Why not? Now some of these police checkpoints you have to be a bit careful. I was told I was getting a fine for being too close to the car in front at the checkpoint. But when you ask to speak to her boss, it miraculously becomes okay to be on my way. Oi mate, come over here, come check this out. What does this say? This guy is a dickhead.