Going home...yes...no...yes...no...YES!!

Oh, the joy of a long luxurious shower before breakfast!  Hils, Gary and I meet in the lobby and go to breakfast together where we find a lavish buffet breakfast is laid out for us,  It will be diet time when I get home, that's for sure!  The dining room is buzzing with passengers from the plane wondering when our replacement  flight will be.  Mid morning we are told that the plane is still not ready to fly and that we must wait for further instructions.  A few of us sit chatting in the lobby and find that many passengers will be missing important appointments due to the delay.  I get talking to a South African man who was meant to be in Auckland today for a job interview.  He told me how difficult it had been to make the decision to immigrate, as he has teenage children, but due to the severely depressed South African economy his own engineering company had gone under and he was jumping at the opportunity of an engineering job in New Zealand. We hang around for a while but with no news of a departure we go back to our rooms to watch TV or rest.  I enjoy watching the Ryder Cup golf on TV, the first television I have seen in a month.  At 2.45pm a very excited Ruth comes to tell us that we have quarter of an hour to be packed and at the lobby to catch the bus for the airport.  Fortunately we have  full sized buses to take us this time.  We travel through an area of Johannesburg we have not seen before, passing a huge and very glamorous looking casino and some smart, modern buildings.  No joy at the airport, though.  The queues are even worse than yesterday. There is nothing for it but to get on the end of one and slowly shuffle our way forward to check-in.  The destination label on my bag has come off somewhere during our trip and the girl at the check-in counter tells me she cannot give me a new label - don't ask me why! She tells me I have to take the bag on the plane with me.  It is much larger than carry on luggage, and I am bemused, but follow her instructions.  We work our way through an equally long immigration queue and when my bag is scanned they find the swiss army knife and scissors I have and want to confiscate them.  Then I am told to go back to check-in to check my bag in!!  What a nightmare, it is a long hike through the airport and I have to carry the bag as there are no trolleys available.  I refuse to get on the end of the long check-in queue again so push my way through to the front earning a lot of sour looks and angry remarks from other passengers but I don't care anymore.  The same girl at the desk then checks my bag in AND labels it!!  I ask you...what was that all about? The whole thing is an ordeal.  It takes exactly two and a half hours to get checked in and I get through to the departure lounge with half an hour to spare before the flight.  I manage to grab a very quick cup of coffee before going to the departure gate.  You will not be surprised to learn that there is another delay here...another queue, another long wait.  We are told that the hold up is due to the caterers not having loaded the plane in time.  Finally at 7.30pm we board the plane and take off at 8.  I am lucky enough to have a spare seat beside me and for the first time in my life take a sleeping pill on a flight.  It is worth it, I have a solid five hours sleep but feel sorry for Hils who tells me she didn't sleep at all. With a tail wind the flight is shorter going back, just over ten hours.  We head to the transfer desk in Sydney to organise flights to Auckland.  Due to the delay in Johannesburg we have lost our Sydney/Auckland seats and must try and get on any flight with seats available.  There is a lot of confusion at the transfer desk, especially since our luggage has not been booked through to Auckland.  In the end most of our group get on a Qantas flight to Auckland, leaving immediately, so it is a final rush for the departure gate.  We arrive in Auckland at 11.30pm and, surprise, surprise, my luggage has been left in Sydney so now I have to go to the lost luggage desk and fill in a report, the last thing I feel like doing!  I am told I will not get my luggage for a couple of days. Unfortunately the delay sorting out my luggage means I do not get to say goodbye to some members of our group who pass through immigration and disperse quickly.  Hils' daughter, Emma, is waiting for us and takes us home.  It is 1.25am and a lonely feeling arriving at my empty house but then my own little member of the cat family, Molly,  runs to greet me and I pat her.  It is so good to be home but what an incredible adventure it has been.  I am elated, thrilled, excited and proud. It was absolutely fantastic and  I wouldn't have missed it for the world!

Sincere thanks to Grassroots Adventures, Auckland http://www.grassroots.net.nz/  for creating such a marvellous trip.  Thanks also to our guides, especially Ronney and Jonas and to the "gang" : Hilary, Gary, Raewyn, Judy, Trevor, Cherry, Lorraine, Laurie, Murray, Ruth, Uwe and Maria...you were the best, so much fun to be with!...and to Gary and Raewyn for photos.
(photos of the gang previous page)

Miriam Dunningham, Auckland, New Zealand



Left to right: Gary, Laurie, Judy, Hilary, Murray, Miriam (me!),
Ruth, Cherry, Uwe.  Front: Lorraine, Maria, Raewyn, Trevor




Our group with Ronney at the Etosha salt pan.  I'm 4th from right.

                                                                      

Homeward bound, ah, not quite!





We are so used to waking early now that we are up at 6 again and packing our bags.  Mike gives us the good news that we don't have to take our tents down, as they will be used by a new group coming into camp.  Fantastic!  That means we can put clean clothes on and they will stay clean.  Our tally is- pitched the tent 15 times; took it down 14 times.  Hils, Gary and I go for a walk around camp in the cool stillness of the morning and sit on loungers by the pool admiring the river for the last time.

 We leave camp for Livingstone airport at 10am and spend the next 3 hours waiting for our flight to Johannesburg.  It is a neat tidy  airport but it is tiny, crowded, there is nothing to do and it becomes increasingly hot and stuffy.  Our flight to Johannesburg is an easy, comfortable 1 hour and 40 minutes.  When we arrive we find our flight to Sydney has been delayed for an hour and a half.  Good, we think, time to shop - wrong! - the airport is packed and shambolic.  It seems that South Africa built a glamorous shiny new airport for the world cup but failed to instigate any decent systems to make it work.  We queue for an hour at the transit counter and when we finally get through to the departure gates find the crowds are even more oppressive.  We have not shopped at all while in Africa so, keen to pick up a few gifts and momentos, we make for the large "Out of Africa" shop.  The crush in there is impossible and several of the cash registers are not working causing queues to snake right around the shop and out into the departure lounge.  We persevere, though, and when at last we have been served we escape to the relative peace and quiet of a cafe where we linger over longed for flat whites.  When we get our boarding call we find the queue for our flight stretches right out of the departure lounge and through the shopping area.  It is slow moving because of increased security measures with each piece of hand luggage being manually searched.  Once aboard our Qantas aircraft we look forward to take off and another step on the journey home BUT it is not to be. We sit in the plane, on the tarmac for four hours while engineers try to fix an engine fault.  The plane gets hotter and hotter and stuffier and stuffier.  The crew do a great job of feeding us and handing out ice creams etc but they cannot open the cabin doors due to safety requirements.  A couple of people on the plane have anxiety attacks and the rest  of the passengers are  thoroughly bored.  Eventually with the arrival of a set of steps the rear doors of the plane are opened giving some relief.  At 11.30, four hours after our expected departure, we are told that we will be taken off the flight and put into hotels for the night. This means we have to clear immigration, collect our luggage and wait to be allocated hotels for the night. Those travelling Business Class and some people with children are accommodated in the airport hotel but we are allocated The  Birchwood Hotel, about 20 minutes away by bus.  We make our way out of the airport to the shuttle bus stop only to find the shuttle can take just 12 people at a time, and there is the best part of a  jumbo jet full to clear!  We have a very long wait, allowing people with children to go first, and finally arrive at our hotel at 1.40am.  It is a modern, conference centre complex spread out over several acres and requiring a ride in a golf cart to reach our rooms.  Hils and I get a room each and for the first time in a few weeks have our own bathroom and  a bed. Luxury!  We fall into bed exhausted but can't sleep because the golf carts rumble past for hours delivering more passengers to their rooms.  The rumbling carts finally stop at around 4am.

Photo: (1) Mother and bay at our camp site 

City girls show their true colours

There are a lot of adventure activities available in Livingstone and Gary has decided to take a microlight flight over Victoria Falls this morning while Maria and Uwe are going white water rafting.  Hils and I have shown our true colours as city girls, deciding to go for luxury  and  booking ourselves in for pedicures.  Our whole group gets up early to see an excited Gary off on his flight. 



Raewyn goes with him to photograph this momentous event while the rest of us sit chatting over breakfast and watching the antics of the monkeys swinging through the trees overhead and rifling through the rubbish bins round our camp site.  There are men employed to wander round the camp with sling shots to chase the monkeys away but the monkeys  just scatter and return once the coast is clear.

 Before long the microlight with Gary aboard, comes right over head and we all jump up and wave our arms and shout like a bunch of desert island survivors.







 

This camp site is part of a large complex which includes a beautiful, luxury hotel.  The spa, where we have our pedicures, is located in the hotel.  It includes a large relaxation room where, wrapped in a thick white robe I recline on a lounger and admire the view across the Zambezi.  French doors open wide onto a shady veranda and soft white curtains billow in the breeze.  It is lovely and we simply could not imagine being here a week or two back.  While Hils is having her pedicure I sit in the steam room and get the last remnants of dirt steamed from my pores then take a cool dip in the adjoining pool.  The treatment is pure luxury.  I feel sorry for the therapist who spends an hour working on my manky feet and legs.  They are massaged, oiled, nails trimmed and shaped, feet dipped in hot wax and nails painted bright red.  They look and feel fantastic and I cannot stop looking at them.  Hils and I meet Gary and Raewyn in the restaurant for a leisurely lunch and Gary tells us about his thrilling flight.  We also catch up with Maria and Uwe who enjoyed their rafting experience but found it  to be more intrepid than they had expected. One of their group ended up with a severe gash to his jaw which required stitches, so I'm not sorry I gave that one a miss.
 

We have a lazy afternoon relaxing until 4pm when we meet the rest of our group to go on a sunset cruise.  We are all a bit nervous when we discover the boat we are booked on is the same one that the noisy mob were on last night but fortunately we have nothing to fear, it is a gentle, peaceful four kilometre cruise up the Zambezi and along the border of Zimbabwe.  Our group has the whole downstairs saloon to itself and we have a wonderful time laughing, singing and watching the scenery go by.  As the scarlet sun sets over the river turning the water a burnished gold we feel a sense of sadness as we realise this is the end of our incredible adventure.    We have a light meal aboard the boat before cruising back to the jetty,  grateful to Murray and Laurie for booking this cruise for us, our last activity together and a fitting finale.

Before bed Hils and I go to the bathroom and get chatting to a cleaner.  She is a lovely woman who tells us that she has worked at the camp for ten years to pay for the education of her siblings.  She is very proud that  one is now a teacher and the others have finished their studies so she is hoping that she can now do some training herself.  She tells us that her job is utterly thankless and that she dreads the arrival of the overland trucks with young backpackers aboard. as she knows the bathrooms will be left in a disgusting state.  We witnessed that ourselves; toilets left overflowing, vomit on floors, rubbish and toilet rolls all over the place, and were shocked at the mess. We cannot believe these young people treat the camp sites and their staff with such disrespect and once again, we feel ashamed to be European. What must the Africans think of us?  Hils asks the woman if she would like some clothes for her children and she says she would love them so we go back to camp and gather some of our own clothes and some more from members of our group and take them back to her.  She is absolutely thrilled and we are humbled...they are well worn clothes.  Everyone in our group is tired and turns in early, our thoughts now turning towards home.

Photos: (1) Pesky monkey in our rubbish bin, (2) Zambezi from the hotel spa, (3) Our group enjoying the sunset cruise on the Zambezi, (4) Raewyn, Miriam and Hilary....the three musketeers!, (5) Our last sunset in Africa....or is it?

Livingstone, I presume, and Victoria Falls





We sleep in until 6.30am this morning,  

which for us is a real lie in.  Hils, Gary and I go up to the restaurant in search of a decent cup of coffee, our first in a month.  We find the restaurant serves instant coffee only but we buy it anyway and sit gazing out over the morning-still river admiring the reflections and watching the occasional hippo making its way across.  It is quiet, peaceful, idyllic.  Back at camp our cook has prepared breakfast for us and we can hardly believe our eyes at the banquet laid out...cereal, eggs, mushrooms, bacon, fruit, yogurt, toast with tea and coffee.  What a feast!  We all fall on it like starving wolves.  Mike is surprised when we tell him how wonderful it is.  He says that this is the sort of breakfast we should have been having all the time we were in the wilderness, thereby confirming our suspicions about our less than exciting breakfasts in Botswana. We have a deliciously lazy time until late morning when Mike takes us into Livingstone for a look around town.




 It is a pretty little place with wide streets, large shady trees and attractive plantation style houses with deep cool verandas framed by scarlet bougainvillea tumbling over stone walls.  Hils and I agree that if we were to live in Africa we could comfortably live in Livingstone. We also notice there is a strong Roman Catholic presence in the town in the form of schools, churches and even a cathedral.  After a quick tour of the town Mike drops us off at a supermarket car park and says he will meet us there later.  We stroll up towards the craft market, about a kilometre away, through  colourful crowds of  people out socialising and shopping.   On our way we notice a number of AIDS awareness and anti-corruption billboards.  Mike had also told us earlier that there is a huge problem with teenage pregnancies in Zambia.  He, a Botswanan, was quite scathing about it and said that it is usually because young people want to get away from the strict  rules of their parents.  He said that the young people end up isolated from their families, dropping out of their education and not coping emotionally, practically or financially. Without the great welfare safety net that there is in New Zealand, their children are destined for a life of poverty. 

 

 

We pick and poke our way up town in the searing heat and are very pleased to arrive at the cool shade of the craft arcade. We walk the length of it looking at the stalls which are all selling the same things, African masks, fabric, carved bowls and  animals.  We feel a bit guilty about not buying anything because we would like to support the locals however we have luggage constraints and there is nothing much that appeals.  Back at camp we swim and rest and go to the restaurant for lunch.  Service is incredibly slow and we have just enough time to gobble down our meals before boarding the truck to go to Victoria Falls. 



 





 Arriving at Victoria we walk through some pretty bush, stopping to look at the statue of David Livingstone, the first European explorer to discover the falls, before getting our first glimpse of them.  Although the flow is greatly reduced because of a long dry season they are still beautiful;.  Long cascades of water thunder down the cliff face to the valley below,  rainbows glisten everywhere and gentle spray cools our faces.  Apparently the view is better from the Zimbabwe side of the falls but, due to the political situation there, it is a no-go zone for us. To one side of the falls  a bridge linking Zimbabwe and Zambia arches across the deep canyon. The border between the two countries is right in the center of the bridge. We gaze across at Zimbabwe and wander along the beautiful bush tracks adjacent to the falls.  The tracks wind  closely to the edge of sheer vertical drops and we are astonished at the absence of safety barriers.  We can hardly bear to watch a group of six young tourists leaping from rock pool to rock pool right on the edge of the waterfall, seemingly oblivious to the dangers and  we wonder what their parents would think if they knew what they were up to. Sadly a guide lost his life here recently trying to save a tourist who slipped from a rock pool. 

There is a craft market at the entry to the falls but it is "same old, same old" and we give it only a cursory glance, stopping briefly to listen to a traditional musician, before heading back to camp.  This evening we are having our group farewell dinner so we shower, primp, preen and put on the best clothes we can find before going to the restaurant.  There is a glorious sunset, which is rather symbolic, we think, since we are now coming to the end of our trip.  We sip our drinks and chat, enjoying the ambiance of our surroundings until it is ruined by a  large cruise boat which pulls up at the jetty beside us full of very rowdy, drunk young tourists who are travelling around Africa on  the infamous overland trucks. They shout, yell, call out to each other, sing badly and generally make real pests of themselves.  When they are finally forced to leave the boat they move to the bar in the restaurant, even closer to us and stay for most of the evening.  It is a disappointment and ruins what should be a very enjoyable evening for us.  We are surprised that the management of the hotel allows it because everyone in the restaurant is annoyed but we guess the young people spend freely and are a good source of revenue.  Service is, once again, painfully slow so Cherry goes around our table and takes every one's orders and hands the list to the waitress.  That speeds things up and eventually the rowdy young people leave so we can enjoy what's left of our evening in peace.  We are all happy, enjoying each other's company and sharing memories of our adventure.  I make a short speech, thanking Raewyn, on behalf of the group.  She has been a wonderful guide, positive, calm, sensible, diplomatic  and great fun.  The meal is so-so, my deep fried feta is tasty but the pancakes are as rubbery as a car tyre and smothered in an unpleasant sticky syrup.  It doesn't matter, though, I am happy and we all wander back to camp relaxed and cheerful.

Photos: (1) Early morning coffee by the tranquil Zambezi, (2) Typical plantation style house in Livingstone, (3) Primary school mission statement, Livingstone.... (4)....and some of the students.  The boys are knitting.  We saw a lot of students walking around town knitting, (5) Victoria Falls, the flow is low because it is the dry season, (6) The bridge between Zambia and Zimbabwe, (7) With Hilary at Victoria Falls, (8) Traditional musician, Victoria Falls










Back to civilisation and on to Zambia

The wind whistled around our tent last night and a hyena was whooping off and on close by so we didn't get much sleep.  By 4am I was wide awake, ready to get up and delighted that my eyes had fully recovered.  Hils and I got up early and ours was one of the first tents to be down and packed..woohoo!  That's the end of our wilderness camping and I can't say we are sorry.  We wouldn't have missed it for the world, though...it has been fantastic, truly a once in a lifetime experience and beyond our wildest dreams.  We are super proud of ourselves too for having coped with the heat, dirt,  early mornings, wild animals in camp, plus the physical aspects of putting up and pulling down our tents and loading, unloading the trucks.  Hils and I tell each other we can now officially call ourselves "intrepid". Breakfast this morning is a really poor show...just  half a slice of bread with peanut butter.  We suspect that Ike and Mfana have either been  disorganised about buying food or, as some rather darkly suggest, cutting corners to save money.  We leave camp at about 7am and drive along the thick sand road towards Kasane.  An approaching safari vehicle stays in the centre of the road forcing Ike to swerve into deep sand drifts and causing our truck to stop. He tries to get it out by accelerating so hard the engine is screaming with great clouds of black smoke coming out the back but it refuses to budge. Ike unhooks the trailer and puts a long tow rope on it then, with the help of most of us pushing, he is able to free the truck and get it going again.  While we are waiting to free the truck another safari truck approaches and stops to give us space.  I wander over to talk to the passengers who are immaculately dressed Japanese sitting neatly in rows and all wearing face masks.  They look way out of their comfort zone. 

Finally we  reach Kasane where we are meeting our new guide who will take us into Zambia.  We have a half an hour to look around the shops but since we do not have any Botswana Pula cannot shop so instead take in the atmosphere of the town and enjoy the antics of the warthogs which are roaming freely around the car park.  Mike, our new guide, arrives accompanied by our cook, a young woman with a name that we can't quite catch.  They climb into our truck and we head for the Botswana-Zambia border a few kilometres away.  On the way we pass the first golf course I have seen in Africa. Soon we come to a long line of huge haulage trucks banked up waiting for the ferry to cross into Zambia.  Mfana tells us that sometimes the queue is up to 10kms long and that the drivers must live in their trucks, for up to two weeks in some cases, until there is available space on the ferry.  Portable toilet and shower blocks are dotted along the side of the road for the truck drivers to use.  Apparently there are three truck ferries for the short crossing but two of them have been broken down for a few years now and there is no sign of them being repaired and operating again.  We are shocked by the plight of the drivers but Mfana says they are used to it and accept it as a way of life. We pass through Botswana immigration quickly and easily and then drive on towards the ferry, passing luxury lodges, banana, mango and citrus orchards and some scruffy villages.

  The ferry landing is chaotic, dusty, dirty and congested. People mill around amongst the trucks, luggage, piles of boxed goods, stacks of soft drinks, furniture, livestock, you name it, all waiting for the ferry. A couple of soldiers wielding AK47s lazily survey the scene.  We unload the truck and carry our luggage some distance to a small aluminium ferry. It is hot sweaty work.  Ike and Mfana are not coming with us so we say a quick farewell to them and they drive off without a backward glance.  Ike was a very able and interesting guide who educated us and provided excellent insights into the animals, Mfana was a marvellous cook and a very fine young man but somehow our group did not bond with them the way we had with Ronney and Jonas in Namibia.

 



The ferry landing is a fascinating spot because  it is here that Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Zambia converge and we can see all four countries at once.  The trip across the river takes three minutes and we land in Zambia at a chaotic border control.  We complete our clearance forms and wait outside for approval to pass through the border gates.   It is just the sort of scene I have read about in books and I find it fascinating - dusty, dirty, trucks, cars, people everywhere. Girls walk through the crowd with huge baskets of bananas on their heads to sell.  People seem to be wandering backwards and forwards through the border gates at will. A sign over the shabby, run down immigration office says "He who plans to call on God at the eleventh hour will die at 10.30."  Before long we are clear to go and climb into our new truck for the Zambian part of the trip.  This truck is higher and much harder to get into and I crack my knee hard as I climb up - ouch!  The road is tar sealed - what joy! and we sail along the 60kms to Livingstone enjoying the smooth ride. As we arrive in town there is a large funeral in progress and all the traffic is stopped to allow buses, cars and utility vehicles loaded with mourners to pass by.  The women are all wearing white head


scarves and singing.  It is a moving sight.  We are staying at Waterfront Lodge camp and it is absolute luxury, well, not really, but compared to wilderness camping it is.  Hot showers, swimming pool, restaurant - bliss! We unpack the truck for the last time and pitch our tents. We have a huge camp site, however, everyone pitches their tents hard up against each others to get the only shade available, which is understandable but a bit annoying.  We can't wait to shower and then go for a swim.  I check my e-mails - 201 in my "in" box, oh dear, back to civilisation.  Clean, tidy and refreshed we head up to the bar for pre dinner drinks.  The bar and restaurant have a stunning view over the Zambezi River.  Soft lanterns create a restful ambiance and a golden sunset glows on the water. We pinch ourselves again, not quite believing we are here on the Zambezi.  Hils, Gary, Judy, Raewyn and I have dinner together.  We share some crocodile, which tastes like a strong flavoured chicken and I order Zambezi beef stew, very tasty.  Although we are in bed by 9pm we are the last of the group to turn in for the night.

Photos: (1) Warthogs wander freely through the town of Kasane, (2) Waiting for the ferry to Zambia,
(3) Chaos rules at the border crossing, (4) The sole car/truck ferry.  It is clear why trucks have to wake weeks to cross, (5) We say farewell to Botswana.......(6)....and board our new truck in Zambia,
 (7) Mother and child in Livingstone, Zambia, (8) Night falls over the Zambezi from our camp site

Chobe cruise and the attack of the beetles

We are up at 5.15 and have a rather strange breakfast today.  I have cornflakes with a banana I bought at the supermarket yesterday, so far so normal,  then Mfana makes a big pot of custard over the fire  which we all sit  merrily slurping before heading out on safari at 6am. After a quiet start the safari suddenly becomes exciting when, close by, several crocodiles emerge from the river to spend the day basking on the river bank.  Next a hippo  lumbers up out of the river to graze beside us. 


 We find three lions sleeping under a bush and watch them for a while although they largely ignore us. As we drive past them we see that they have killed a zebra and pulled it in under the bush behind them.  Ike says that the lions would have been watching us carefully as they would have been very keen to protect their kill.  He says that it was more dangerous than we realised to be watching them in that situation. We drive through a bleak and desolate looking landscape for a while.  It is how I imagine the world would look after a nuclear war - dead bare trees and hundreds of tall, bright red termite hills everywhere.  We get back to camp by 8.40am and after coffee and biscuits have  free time to wash clothes, shower and relax. Mfana prepares an early  lunch of fresh bread, tuna  and salads  because we are going on a cruise on the famous Chobe River this afternoon and will need to leave camp at 12pm. Well that's the plan, BUT, and this is something we have become familiar with since forward planning is not something our Botswana guides are good at,  Ike realises we are almost out of fuel for the truck!  We had been in town yesterday where there are several service stations and he didn't think to get fuel then, now we are miles from anywhere and don't have enough fuel to get back to town!  He rings through to Kasane, an hour and a half away, and asks a truck to bring fuel to us so we settle in for a long wait.  

There is nothing for it but to relax and smile and go with the flow.  Actually Ike has a very relaxed attitude to life altogether.  Last night I asked him what the plans were for today and he said to me "We don't think about tomorrow, only today"...well that is now very obvious!  It is 40 degrees in our tent even hotter outside and the thought of a cruise on  cool water is attractive but as time ticks on we start to think we may miss the cruise altogether.  At 12.40pm Raewyn suggests to Ike that we at least start out and meet the truck on its way to us thereby saving some time and maybe still making the cruise.  We head off at a hair raising speed.  I am sitting in the back seat and get thrown around as Ike speeds and swerves around corners.  My heart is in my mouth and I start to wonder how my sons would feel if I was killed and didn't return home.  We meet the rescue truck about 40 minutes from camp, re-fuel and then speed into Kasane, arriving only 5 minutes late. Fortunately for us,  we are the only passengers booked for  the boat so it has waited for us.  The cruise landing is within a very glamorous resort perched on the edge of the river.  Walking  through the lobby we feel out of place and grubby so when we spot the swimming pool  we cannot resist the temptation to sit on the edge of it and dangle our feet in....ahhh...bliss!  I surreptitiously try to get as much ingrained dirt off my feet as possible.  Gary and Murray go the whole hog and dive into the pool in their shorts. We feel sorry for the hotel"s paying guests, pretty sure they are not impressed by this disreputable, dirty mob descending on them and polluting their pool but we are so happy to be refreshed that we are beyond caring.

 



 We board our craft, a low to the water aluminium boat with seats in rows which the guide drives from the back.  It is the perfect boat for viewing the wild life giving us an eye level view of hippos and elephants.  The Chobe River is rich with wild life and we have some stunning encounters with crocodiles, coming within feet of them basking on sand banks and huge monitor lizards perched on trees above us. 







 We also enjoy spotting and identifying the widely varied bird life along the river banks. The Chobe River is the natural boundary between Botswana, Namibia, and Zambia and at one point during the cruise we pass into Namibian waters. There is a lush green island in the river which is a dry season haven for many animals which swim there and stay there for  four months, living an idyllic life safe from predators.  Some elephants cross the river in front of us and we enjoy watching the behavioural dynamics of the herd when a large bull elephant arrives at a water hole forcing the rest of the herd to back off and give him right of way.  He swishes his feet backwards and forwards splashing water in all directions clearly enjoying himself and relishing having the water hole to himself. This cruise makes us feel at one with the animals and is a real highlight, of the trip.

 

 

Afterwards we re-trace our route back to camp arriving at dusk.  Mfana hasn't yet lit the camp fire when we sit down for a pre dinner glass of wine.  At first I just  feel something crawling through my hair and reach up to remove it.  Then I find that my head is alive with  little dark beetles. Soon my whole body is covered in them, they are inside my shirt, down inside my pants, inside my under wear.  It is ghastly, like something out of a horror movie and I start jumping around and swatting at them. Some of the others have beetles crawling on them but I seem to be by far the worst affected.  Mfana lights the camp fire and, to my great relief, the beetles miraculously disappear, driven away by the smoke. Oh dear, it is just not my night, I sit down to dinner and then have a massive allergic reaction to the smoke from the fire.  My eyes stream and sting and I can barely open them.  They are extremely painful.  Ike tells me that a lot of people have a bad reaction to the Kalahari Apple Tree timber they are burning, the same tree that Mfana is allergic to.  Fortunately Judy, aka camp mother, has some eye drops in her medical kit and kindly puts them in my eyes for me.  I go to bed early just so that I can lie down and shut my eyes.  It has been quite a dramatic, and dare I say, unpleasant, end to my last day of wilderness camping!

Photos: (1) Lions guarding their kill, (2) Mfana finds a shady spot to sleep, (3) Aaah! Bliss!! we soak our feet in the pool at a luxury resort, (4) One of the many crocodiles we saw, (5) A close encounter of the scary kind, (6)  African Kingfisher, (7) Hippos at eye level, Chobe, (8) Elephants crosses the river in front of our boat

 

Supermarket, dancers and a long, long day!



 It's a 5.15 start today because we have a long trip ahead of us to Chobe Game Reserve. We pack up quickly and have the truck loaded and ready to go by 7am. Ike can't resist a short safari first, though, so we go back into Savuti.  We see a number of safari trucks waiting for a pride of lions to emerge from the bush so we  join them, waiting  silently and expectantly, but after about 10 minutes, when the lions fail to appear, we leave to start out on our long trip to Chobe, a distance of 172km, not a huge distance but it will be slow going on the deep sand roads. At one point we see a solitary flamingo beside the road deep in the park and wonder how and why it is there.  We all feel sorry for it but Ike doesn't seem to think it is in trouble.  We pass a sign which tells us Kasane, close to our destination, is 142 kms away.  We travel for another 20 minutes and see another sign which tells us Kasane is 145 kms away!  Africa!!  After our usual firewood stop we travel on seemingly endless, wide, straight, roads.
 







 For some strange reason, approximately every 100 metres or so, there is a tree right in the centre of the road and Ike has to veer around it.  We reach the gates of Chobe Reserve around lunch time and stop for a lunch of macaroni, mashed beef and fresh bread.  We watch in amazement as a 12 seater van fills up with local passengers and give up counting how many have boarded it after about 25. Ike tells us we are going into the town of Kasane so that Mfana can get an injection for the severe rash he has developed through his allergy to the Kalahari Apple Tree. He says he will drop us off for about an hour so that we can have a look around.  Kasane is a small dusty tourist centre town with modern shops and an affluent, progressive look about it. We change some currency into Botswanan Pula and walk along the busy street to the supermarket which is large, modern and deliciously cool inside. We are like kids in a candy shop swooping on cold drinks, fruit, beer and wine to replenish our stocks.  While we wait for Ike and Mfana to return to collect us we enjoy watching the locals.  They are handsome, happy looking people, many dressed in bright colours with several women carrying large loads  on their heads.  We stroll past a very glamorous resort and eye it longingly...good showers and decent beds are now but distant memories! We re-board the truck and stop again on the outskirts of Kasane.  Ike goes into a scruffy, run down looking, building while we wait wondering what he is up to.

 

 After a few minutes a group of dancers come out and approach the truck.  They invite us into the building where they put on a free half hour concert purely for our benefit. It is an absolute treat, the highlight of the day.  They dance with vitality, enthusiasm and joy using syncopated rhythms and foot stamping.  The men slap on leg shields and the women ululate.   We are all invited to join in, something I usually hate and shy away from, but I join into the spirit of it this time and love it, it is great fun. Their leader tells us that the music is drawn from a number of different tribes and that the group's philosophy is to unite people through music. It works, the whole concert is exuberant and uplifting.

Then it's back into the truck and on the road  to our camp again.  We  re-track back into Chobe Park and go through another very perfunctory disinfection.  We turn off the main road and are starting to get excited at the prospect of nearing our camp  but we are wrong!  After another hour of bumping and crawling along a rutted, sandy road we are getting hotter, dustier and tetchier.  We come across a herd of several hundred Cape Buffalo making their way to the water and stop to watch them,  all of us becoming fixated on a young, injured buffalo valiantly trying to keep up with its mother but really struggling. Sadly, it probably won't live long.  After watching for about 40 minutes Hils makes a comment to one of the group about "watching paint dry".  Ike must have heard her because he starts the truck up immediately and we once again start out for our camp site.  We drive along the edge of the gigantic flood plain and see herds of many different animals in all directions.  It is a magnificent sight and we are enthralled.  

We finally arrive at our camp site at 6pm - 11 hours after leaving Savuti and still have to unload the truck, pitch our tents and make camp.  It is always amazing how quickly we make the most impossible looking site look like home, though, and this really is an impossible looking site!  Ike tells us to keep our tents zipped because there are a lot of snakes in this area - eek! - he won't have to tell me twice, that's for sure. We sit around the fire enjoying a hard earned glass of wine and waiting for dinner then, later, we toast marshmallows on sticks over the fire and chat about our day.  The toilet tent is set a fair distance from our sleeping tents and Raewyn comes back from it to tell us there were two bright blue eyes staring at her from the bush.  Mfana accompanies a few of us down to have a look and tells us it is a jackal.  We fall into bed at 10pm, exhausted, hot and dirty.

Photos: (1) Our truck loaded up and ready to go, (2) Exotic signpost.  Shall we go to Zimbabwe, Zambia or Namibia...I know, let's  go to Kasane, (3) The long straight sand road....,(4)....with trees in the middle,
(5) The exuberant and captivating Matsosa Ngawao Dance Troupe.....(6)....the highlight of our day, (7) Hilary and I pose with the dancers, (8) Hils in our tent, pleased to have finally made camp