Quarter of a million strong Gaborone has all the criss-crossing metropolitan lanes, shiny new builds, municipal government rises, financial institutions, neat pedestrian promenades and square-cut parks you’d expect of a planned capital city dating from the early 1960s. In fact, straight-up order pervades most all aspects of its urban centre, between the glistening white faces of the Botswana Stock Exchange and the glassy walls of the national university.

That said, traces of earthy, folksy Botswana have still found their place between the metropolitan cracks here, and today visitors should be sure to ask their Gaborone tourist guide for tips on the National Museum and Art Gallery where pre-colonial artifacts rub shoulders with the eerie busts of stuffed African beasts, or the heights of Otse Village and the concomitant Manyelanong protected area just to the south. The capital also offers some interesting sculpture art like the honorific Three Chiefs' Statues, and great access to the wilds of the Mokolodi Nature Reserve, with its rare white rhinos and roaming giraffes.