You don’t often come across two people taking in the sights of Botswana’s Savuti on foot – and during the rainy season no less. Francois Visagie shares an extraordinary story …

It was close to midnight. Standing pinned in a flashlight beam with the rain-heavy African night all around us, plastered with mud and utterly exhausted, we were speechless.

“What are you doing out so late? Show me your papers!” a voice boomed aggressively from the darkness surrounding the staff quarters just outside Savuti Camp’s main gate.

Desperately we grappled with words to begin to explain the extraordinary events of the past 12-odd hours to the official.

Around noon that day, my fiancé, Lindy, and I were on our way back to the camp for lunch and a midday nap. As we got to Leopard Hill, about 10 km from camp, we were amazed to see two people walking leisurely along the road. Perplexed we drew up next to them.

“Hi,” the man greeted us with a broad smile. “I’m David, and this is my wife, Klara. We’re from Czechoslovakia.”

We introduced ourselves and listened open-mouthed as they poured out their story.

An unhappy camper

Completing sentences for each other, David and Klara described how, in search of good game viewing the previous day, they had followed terrible advice from Savuti staff to take the Savuti Marsh Road.

Their rented camper van had struggled in the wet terrain and eventually they had become stuck.

After fruitlessly attempting to free the camper for most of the day, they had tried to attract the attention of sightseeing aircraft, also without success.

They had no choice but to spend the night in the marsh, and had planned to abandon the camper the next day in search of help.

Klara described their fear of midnight encounters with wild animals.

At first light, armed with a GPS and some bottled water, the couple had set out through the wilderness.

“The sunrise was so beautiful,” David said.

After they had described the route they had taken, we were horrified to realise they had walked through areas where we had seen elephant bulls fighting.

Because all their camping gear was still in their camper, getting a lift with us and overnighting at the camp was out of the question.

We would’ve offered them a place to sleep, but we only had a two-person roof top tent on our packed-to-bursting vehicle.

“I don’t want to sleep in the marsh again!” Klara complained. “The car is at a crazy angle and it is scary,” she said.

Looking over at our Land Rover, David asked, “Your car can pull us out?”

The scene began to unfold in my mind. We had done many recoveries before, had a satellite phone for backup, as well as food and water for an army in case we also became stuck.

After all, how tricky could it be? We were about to find out …