Exchanged messages with my friends on Botswana over the past couple of days. Looks like the Govt is going to "relax" the internal travel restrictions starting on 30 Apr. Up to this point, everyone was pretty much confined to their homes/property and need to actually apply for a permit just to travel to the stores for food, fuel and supplies.
Things were locked down so tight that they could not even shoot game for meat for resale to the commercial markets, just for their own use. They don't know yet if this will be relaxed also yet or not.
The boarders are only open to freight transport trucks and nothing else and the boarders will continue to remain closed to all other general boarder crossing travel.
I'm now 40/50 that the Jun trip will still go, but still 90/10 the Aug trip will be a "go".
Another positive note, the Botswana Govt extended the formal hunting season for the elephant and cape buffalo concessions they auctioned off a few weeks ago, before the lock down, to the end of Dec 2020 and may be willing to extend it further to the end of Feb 2021.
What this means is, when the airlines and boarders do open back up, hopefully sooner rather than later, there are going to be some seriously smoking good deals on some Botswana elephant, buffalo and leopard hunts going to be offered. I KNOW of one guy who's gong to be offering 3x 30-40lbs+ range, exportable bull elephant, in Botswana, 10-days, all inclusive from the time you're picked up at the airport until you're taken back to the airport for $25K US. Consider this an inside scoop as they are currently planning to announce this around 1 May.
