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Prior the Ockavango Delta, we could well have been accused of driving the Man Van only to compensate for our inadequacies. After all, a normal-person car – a puny two-wheel drive - could have just as easily got this far. Happily, the Delta was proof that the Land Rover was a necessity, not a just subtle statement about our genitalia.


Our transition from the Moremi to the Chobe National Park was signalled by a noticeable change in terrain – stark, sparse and sandy became sodden and saturated – and it wasn’t long before the Man Van was taking its first dip of the trip. Other than feeling pretty ace driving through bonnet-deep water, it was a chance for us to get used to the diff, which we hadn’t needed to use until now. We managed to clear two water obstacles, and on the third we were lucky enough to chance upon a convoy of Land Rovers. A simple exercise in monkey-see, monkey-do helped us weave through the sizeable stretch of water behind the convoy, rather than careering straight into it and into trouble, as we doubtless would have otherwise.

There aren’t a great deal of road signs to be found in game parks, simply because lions don’t have a great deal of use for them. However, the combination of my since orienteering skills (no coincidence that orienteering was the only badge I received during my unremarkable cub-scout career) and the Garmin 60 GPS system saw us safely through to the next campsite.

Sadly, self-congratulation was short lived - the campsite we were hoping to stay in at Chobe was full. With heavy hearts and increasing frustration at the difficulty of getting the car out of diff, we drove to the Zambian border.

By the time we arrived, we’d been driving for over ten hours, covering a total of 109 miles.