Funny Things That Happen While You Are Traveling

One of the things about living while travelling is that you come across the most absurd situations.

When there’s no more room for despair, laughter is the best remedy. It doesn’t matter where the story we’re about to tell happened, because it could have happened anywhere in Botswana. We have many stories from Botswana, but as we know, gossip sells. This happened in Chobe, at one of the most renowned campsites in the area. But we insist it could have happened in any corner of Botswana. Imagine it’s November 8th. And we have decided to extend our stay at the campsite for 4 more days. As it turns out, it’s a very busy campsite, and the plots are really bad, with a lot of unevenness and some really small. The larger ones are reserved for groups, so those aren’t an option for us. With our piece of paper, we walked around the campsite to write down the plots where our car could fit. You need to do your homework before going to reception. Plot 1A, 1B, 2, 3… and several more we write down. We arrive at the reception. “Good afternoon, we wanted to extend our stay for four more days,” we tell the girl. We had done it twice before and knew it wasn’t a simple, error-free process. But this time we did our homework. In fact, the night before, security came to check we were in the plot assigned to us because someone else was assigned the same one. “Just a moment,” the girl says. Then she lowers her head and starts typing on her computer, we don’t really know what. “Please, give her time, we’re overwhelming her,” Juan tells me. Well…we wait patiently without knowing what the hell she’s typing for so long. Then she asks us which plot number we’re in. “Number 2, for three days. Before that, we were…” “Just a moment.” She lowers her head again and starts typing. I look at Juan; he says, “Patience…she needs her time…” Well…I keep quiet and wait for her to tell us. “The name on the reservation?” she asks. “Juan.” “Just a moment.” I couldn’t believe it. Eyes popping out of my head. Again, “Just a moment,” she says. She lowers her head and starts typing. After a while…she says: “Alvarez…” “Yes,” we say with some excitement. They had found us. “We just want to extend until Sunday for four nights. We’re in plot 2 now, and we want to see if there are other plots available…” Juan stops me again: “You’re giving her too much information. Wait until she’s done typing.” We smile. It seemed like a simple thing, but here, even the simplest things get complicated. After about 20 or 25 minutes, we finally got the extension in the same plot we were in. We thought she would burn out the keyboard with how fast she was typing and how little progress we were making with the reservation. Changing plots was already too complicated. Anyway, even though this campsite is not on our itinerary, on a trip to these latitudes, laughter is guaranteed. If you want to have a laugh together… It’s here

With love, Mavi P.S. Writing this email, Juan tells me I type like the receptionist. And it’s true, I find it funny to type so much.