Enter Zambia

Well this was an interesting border crossing! Just a few words to get your imagination ticking along and your heads spinning like ours.

Botswana side of the ferry waiting in line:

Driving into pure chaos, touts approaching all windows the moment we park the car in line, goods trucks queued up for kilometers down the road, people absolutely everywhere, lock the car, army men with very old looking guns. Ferry only takes 6 cars at a time, the race is on. This line takes no prisoners baby!

On the ferry:

Completely open. Infinite variations of very ripe body odor that instantly disintegrates my nostrils and force my facial expression to look like a kid who is trying to look directly at the sun… except I am trying to locate a portion of fresh air to inhale. Hot heat from the sun burning down on us, strong engine fumes stinging my lungs, machine noise creating a loud ambient hum, local chatter and laughter, ticket man surrounded by frantic ferry-goers all wanting to be processed first, no one has heard of lines, a loud South African woman demanding something but I don’t know what, quick get back in the car because we have already reached the Zambian side.

Total ferry ride time: approx 7 minutes. There was a lot to take in in 7 minutes.

Zambian side:

Foot traffic swarms off the ferry all at once, cars charge down the ramp like fierce bulls to a matador and his cape. Park the car, pick a spot, anywhere, just park it! Lock it. Man selling mantelpiece ornaments approaches, army man with gun sporting a great green knitted jersey with leather elbow patches shows us where to go, the heat is hot, we line up.

Carnet de Passage does not have Zambia on it, shit, wait a long time, visas get processed, this room smells riper than a ripe thing, just when I thought nothing could be worse than the ferry. Waiting some more… Fiver goes to change money and buy insurance for car. Another ferry unloads and the visa line grows longer. Where is a toilet? Down behind another office, someone has emptied a rubbish bin into the toilet entrance, nice. A large rough looking man sitting on a rusty broken chair demands money for the toilet, I’ll hold on instead. Carnet de Passage is stamped, get back to the car and meet Fiver on the other side. Drive 10 metres to border gate, returning back to car park spot 1 minute later - Need to pay road tax, carbon tax and police tax before we can leave (10,000 Zambian Kwatcha straight into the policeman’s pocket, no need for discretion here, no point). Nothing is in order, too many separate payments to too many different little officey shop things. No more secret payment surprises, now we can leave. Meet Fiver in the COMESA office on other side of the gate, a giant wasps nest hums with activity on the ceiling while she and the insurance lady chit-chat. Twenty grueling minutes later and a terrible map drawing of Livingstone in hand (a T-junction with some scribbles and dots surrounding it) we pass a “Hakuna Matata truck” and enter Zambia.

Half an hour of driving, heads still spinning we pull over for lunch. Eat lunch, yum yum crunch crunch, get back in the car, pull back onto the road, drive 10 metres, pull over again… Flat tyre.

Lets go to Victoria Falls, morning noon and night!

Victoria falls. The notorious Victoria falls, the FAMOUS Victoria falls. They were something else, that’s for sure! We went in the morning, to, you know, catch the morning light as photographers do. There is something about waterfalls that makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, and no not that instant effect they have on your bladder, its.. something else. Once through the entrance gate, we journeyed down the waterfall track, and pre-conceded images in our minds of what we were about to see were instantly replaced by the real experience. Sights, smells and sounds all flooded in at once. It was so loud. The violent thundering sound of constant water plummeting down into the white mist below was almost deafening, yet it made me smile. The mist in the air settled in my hair, giving me a ‘very bad hair day’ look, but it didn’t matter because I was at the Vic Falls. Welcoming the mist to cool us from the sun, but hiding cameras under jackets for protection at the same time, we approached the little lookouts one after the other, in hopes of getting a better view than the previous marvel. Rainbows were everywhere, revealing themselves around nearly every corner, or hovering above pockets in the cliff valley below. We even saw a full circle rainbow. The white water was fearlessly spilling over the edge and franticly churning about at the bottom before finding the powerful current to take it elsewhere. Just magic! Everything about it made me smile.

I had been thinking about the bungee jump for quite some time now, but on the day I was suffering from quite the severe (and unpredictable) case of Tsodilo Hills and wasn’t confident in the probability of returning from such an activity without Tsodilo occurring on the way down (see Tsodilo Hills blog for definition). You never know with this sort of thing, so I’ll just wait for the Nile bungee now.

We went back to camp and had some lunch, downed a coca cola or two, squeezed in a quick nap and then headed back to the falls for sunset. Just when we thought the morning session couldn’t be topped, the sunset sights trumped on in. It was the whole morning session again, but golden. GOLDEN!

It was like someone had placed a yellow tinted adjustment layer over top of us, gorgeous light falling everywhere, making the view even more photogenic than before.

This time we headed to the bridge for some variance; you are now entering Zimbabwe, you are now entering Zambia, you are now entering Zimbabwe again. Had to do it.

Moonbow, Lunabow, dreambow!

Imagine one of those airy dreams, almost nightmarish but not quite, one of those backwards ones where nothing really makes sense, except it does. Now add a glossy cinematic feel to it, as if it were discovered by some indie film art director but put to life with a Hollywood sized budget where no special effects have been spared.

That. Is what the moonbow at Victoria Falls is exactly.

Only 3 days a month can you enter the Vic Falls at night; the evening prior to full moon, full moon, and the following evening. This is when the moonlight is so strong that it has enough light power to create a rainbow. Our eyes don’t see all the colors of a normal rainbow, however what we do see at night is a glowing white arch, perched over top of almost silver looking water, tumbling into darkness below. There is a hint of light coming from Zimbabwe in the far distance, but that just adds to the overall gobsmacking portrait in front of us.

Group laughter, tour guides and loud attempts to talk over the noise were not overthrowing the roaring falls this time. Instead, whispers were exchanged, darkness welcomed a calm feeling of solitude, and tears of absolute bewilderment and awe rolled silently down cheeks…

Then there was the mood killer; some brainless person scuttled in view, trying to capture the dreambow with their piddley 3 megapixel camera on bloody auto-flash! Aimlessly taking numerous photos, while wondering why he wasn’t able to capture the image, spoiling poor Stuarts 1minute long exposures. Fiver went nuts, it was awesome.

Moonbow, lunabow, dreambow – it is definitely one the most remarkable sights one can see.

Malawi pics!

Getting a little ahead of myself here, but here is link to my Flickr page so you can see some pictures from Malawi.        

Enjoy

Leo the ballsy Lion.

Because the road from third bridge to Chobe was awfully bad, by reputation, and we had not been granted a booking at the ‘forever fully booked’ campsites on the way, we had no other option but to drive back to Maun and head for Chobe via a longer alternative route.  However! On our way back to Maun, whilst gas bagging in the car, completely blasé towards the wildlife we driving past ‘bla bla bla, there goes some zebra, no its ok we don’t need to stop for them anymore, bla bla oh look another giraffe, bla bla careful of that elephant, Stuart’ we were completely unaware that we might see new animals.  And so what happened? We did see new animals. Lions.

 The 3 of us were enjoying conversations with a new member in the car, Clare, who was riding with us while her husband, Paul, followed a few hours behind, with their broken down rental Discovery being towed back to Maun. Suddenly, someone saw a lion walking down the same track that we were driving. The present conversation was suddenly drowned out by something like this:

 “And so, Clare”, (-lion) what (Lion!) do you d –“LION!!”

LION LION!

What?

LION!

WHERE?

THERE! (pointing by staring two gigantically enlarged eyeballs instead of hands makes spotting the animal tricky for the others on the safari you know, but you can’t help it! You are so frozen by the sight of the animal, that you can’t do anything else except yell ‘THERE!’ with both arms absolutely rigid and useless by your side)

‘WHERRRE?’

‘RIGHT THERE’ (eyeballing, stiff arms still not working) ‘ON THE ROAD!’

‘O SHIT HE’S RIGHT THERE!’ …

‘Wowwwwww.’  (Silence for a few seconds as we watch him strut his stuff down the Moremi catwalk).

‘OMYGOD, holy crap its walking right towards us. Ok, can you please wind up your windows now guys – (me).

He was fantastic, a real lion, right there, walking along the grass not even taking a second look at our foreign animal shaped… vehicle.  I have to tell you, seeing a picture of a lion is pretty impressive, but being able to take a photo of one out the window of your car is something else. Imagine actually being the person who got to take that photo of the lion. That was us!  

      

When ‘babs’ attacked

Bastard baboons. Bloody bugger bugger bastards!           

Another campsite note to remember: When you book a campsite and turn up only to find no one at the reception gate, no one appointing you to a specific site and no one giving you grief for parking in their spot, you should ask yourself this one simple question – “Why?” 

We thought we had found the best spot. Nice big trees surrounding us like a beautiful forest, the ground wasn’t too bad and we had all the space in the world. 

Then, we noticed it stank. Like shit.

 We didn’t ask ourselves “why”.  But we should have.

Once my tent was up, and we had our portable housing arranged accordingly, I sat in my ‘hotel room’ reading (lies, I was watching yet another addictive episode of 24) for only about15 minutes. This pungent smell was creeping into my nostrils more severely than before and I couldn’t handle it much longer.  Finally, I cracked. I headed outside and sniffed around my tent area, then branded our spot ‘The shit pit’.

 At the beginning we just thought the drastic smell was the result of that big pile of elephant waste by that tree over there, and didn’t really take any notice of the almost human-like droppings scattered all around the site.  

We soon found out we were the uninvited guests at the house of one of our long-distant cousins.  AKA, the baboon.

 Our first sighting of a cheeky looking babs scoping out our camp setup (fair enough, I would too and so would you) was amusing. Fiver and I were so impressed with our stealth tactics; hiding up in the roof tent, spying on the fowl little creature whilst cracking up at cunning and witty Facebook status ideas we could submit if we had data roaming. “Fiver is: stalking an unsuspecting baboon from the roof tent, Jack Bauer understudy here I come”.

“Merryl is: in the roof tent, rocks and sticks at the ready for any overconfident baboons.”

 

Things escalated rather quickly from there.

Dinner time was nearing, we were getting organisied for another great camp feast. I had a pile of heavy sticks and rocks within my reach, just in case, but had no idea we would need them so desperately. At first, two little ‘babs’ came at our site from different directions, so we threw some ammo at them, only to threaten them and keep them at bay. The intimidating stalkers barely flinched! They would follow the poorly aimed rock , super wide-eyed, then stare at it flat as it landed right in front of them, totally not phased. Then, just to really get on our nerves, they carried on sitting, watching and waiting.  Items have been thrown at these guys before that for sure, they really only moved if they were hit, and for anyone who knows my Waterpolo form, or cricket ball throwing for that matter, would know just how shit my aim is, and would also be able to imagine how rage-face I got at these stubbornly unresponsive baboons.

 Big dog alpha babs suddenly showed up.  Ooooo he was foul.  He freaked me out, the way he sat there and scratched his nose, just like I would scratch my nose. It was one of the hardest thing my brain has had to compute in a long time.  Gasp! He just sighed a long and heavy sigh, just like someone waiting in line at subway…He is NOT human! Shock Horror! He blinked and squinted his eyes at the blinding sun, just like you and I do at the beach…He is NOT human! My word! Now he’s sitting there in the dirt, just like a kid sits on the mat at school; legs stretched out front, back hunched over, fidgety fingers picking at the fraying carpet instead of paying attention – He is NOT human!

 

Then, things got a little outta hand.

I threw a thick stick at alpha-babs (missed of course), but this time it was a little closer than normal. In other words, I pissed him off.  Fiver and I were standing near the back of car when he lurched straight for us.  Worst mistake I ever made: flinching, slash yelping and bolting for safety. Fight or flight syndrome right? Rule number one, in fact, the only rule to remember when experiencing an encounter with a sticky fingered, ill-tempered, adamant baboon – do not show any sign of weakness. 

In other words, do not run, because he’ll run after you.

My cowardly actions showed alpha-babs who the weakest link was of us 3 – me. After that, Five and Stuart were hording him off with whatever weapons they could reach under the circumstances. Five was clutching at a camping chair attempting the ‘shoo’ method . Stuart sourced a glowing branch from the campfire, waving it around all Indiana Jones like.  Five and Stu put up quite the fight, and in the end it was the power of the torch that won us the match. Note to self, baboons do not like 1million candle power torchlight blasted into their retinas.  

What was my contribution to aiding Five and Stuart in the battle, you say? Well, lets just say that even though I may have been the one that started it all, I was forced to take cover in the car just in case alpha-babs came after me.. uh again.

I was in the front seat of the landy, sipping my ‘Savana’ cider anxiously (skulling nervously), watching the saga through the safety of the rearview mirrors.

The next day we met up with some other campers from third bridge during a morning game drive break, and got talking about the baboon issues. The people told Fiver and Stuart how they heard of two courageous people who were forced to fight off aggressive and vicious baboons with a camping chair. Five and Stuart will go down as heroes in Moremi wildlife reserve history… I will be the cub in the car drinking cider.

Here is an image of absolutely nothing to do with the Baboon attack, but is the sunrise of the next day.  This is what people do to blatantly show that they didn't get any footage of the real encounter, and then they put such a caption as this: 

A long awaited sunrise after that fateful night when the three brave campers were attacked by viciously rabid baboons just the previous dusk..

oooo

Moremi and Third bridge encounters.

Moremi Wildlife Reserve.  Very underrated – kicks Etosha’s butt and is only better than Mahangu because it is bigger. We had quite a bumpy drive to Third bridge campsite, the name comes from its location – the 3rd bridge crossing from Maun to Chobe. Well actually, we missed one of the bridge crossings completely because the roads change according to the weather. And, of course because we are talking delta here, these roads flood big time, which means last years tracks4africa road maps on the GPS were obsolete.  What happens is, when one road is completely submerged, a new and improved one slowly evolves around the sunken tracks, from all the detouring vehicles.  It works pretty well, but is a bit of a laugh when you come across a specific road made around a fallen tree - the tracks are so well set, you would think that tree had been there for years, not from some raging Elephant the week before.

We saw hippos (one walked to a waterhole 20 metres away from the car, Stuart got a great photo but walked back to the car pretty fast), a wattled crane, an egret, a family of warthogs (dam you Lion King!), lots of badly disguised giraffes, an elephant with boobs (excuse my immaturity but I bet you havn't seen one!) and more.

Finally, we made it to our site, absolutely oblivious to what was going to happen that evening – Whenever we retell the story to others, we call it “When ‘babs’ attacked”.

 

Mac Squad strikes again

Maun PostNet got bombed by ‘The mac squad’.  Big time. 

Just another bullshit blog about our internet sessions on the trip. 

Another hilarious mission to the internet café.  Again, we scoped out our target shop, exhausting all research sources to compare prices, time allowances and comfortablility of 3 locations before making the imperative decision – Maun PostNet. 

Macs’ out, power supplies sprawled out all over the café service area, 3 terrible coffees served (why we even try for coffee anymore, I’m not sure.  Fiver barely finds time to breathe during these internet sessions let alone even look at her coffee, or notice me stealing the icing off her carrot cake). 5 minutes into the stressful ‘real world’ catch-up session annnd…. bandwidth has been exceeded.  I guess that’s what happens when one person buys Internet credit and sets up a network so the other two can leech on as well. 

 

They’ll never know!

Scenic flight sights!

1 hour flight over the Okavango delta. O yes!

Yes yes you can see it from space, but we chose a more practical height for scenic photos - 500ft.  That, and you know, space travel is just that $100million or so extra.

Our pilot, Captain no-name, took us on a loop above the spectacular, word thieving Okavango Delta.  Completely lacked personality and flare, this guy – ‘hi, here we go, great, enjoy your day, bye see ya later’.  Talk about clocking up the hours, and Stuart said he even stalled the engine when we came into land.  He was no bigger than a hobbit, I was sure he couldn’t see the runway when we were taking off.

 ‘Beautiful view’ doesn’t even begin to describe what we saw.  Nothing I write will be able to do the Okavango any justice, you simply have to see it for yourself. As I have never seen anything like it… nothing compares.  Sinead O’Connor, you beaut! 

The sights I am seeing on this trip are just incredible.  Mum and dad, be prepared for some very lengthy photo viewing sessions with me when I return.  Think, B and her cute pictures of puppy bones… now times it by a million.  Sorry B, I might out do ya there.

 

Here are two hippos trying to hide from us, but a terrible effort:

 

 

Heading to Maun

Nervous about going into a big city after such a long time on our own and enjoying the serenity of wildlife sounds by day and night, we reluctantly rolled into the frantic town of Maun. (pronounced Maung) 

Maun is no bigger than Greerton was in the 90’s – Chadwick road only.  And if it were any bigger I don’t think we would have been able to cope. It was small, very dusty and quite busy, which at that time was enough to make our heads spin.  Nowadays, (writing from Tanzania) we look back at Maun with confidence, almost as the stopover town that it is.

 Sedia Hotel & campsite.  Another great host and accommodation encounter to write home about.  Andy, the engineer man from Manchester who came to Botswana to work on the roads many a year ago, fell in love with the country, a local woman and this very hotel. You would not have thought he was the owner at all, but I thought he explained his misleading presence extremely well – “I don’t want anything to do with running the place, I’m just the man that walks around trimming the hedges. Would you lot like to come for marshmallows around the campfire tonight?”.  He was so cool.

3 nights later we finally left for Moremi Wildlife reserve in the hopes of seeing some great wildlife –which we definitely did indeed.

I had to add this in, just one of the many hilariously named shops here.

The mission to Nguma Lodge, no wait, Guma Camp.

GPS reliance. 2 camps,1km apart. We like it when we have options you know? Since we haven’t chosen yet, we’ll just enter the first destination we see on the GPS and head down to the other camp if the first one is terrible.

Phone call to reception : “Do you have a 4x4?”

Fiver : “Ha, yup we sure do” ... “Ooo must be quite the track huh”, she wondered.

45 mins driving up, down and around giant sandy bumps, 3 shallow water crossings (they’re still water crossings!) and constantly dodging mountains of elephant crap we finally turned up at the wrong campsite… No problem, we’ll just drive down the road to the other camp like we planned.

Nope, damn you Murphy!

Due to the two camp owners having a massive personal dispute/war, one had put up a fence and gate to make their property totally inaccessible from the other camp.  This actually has not been uncommon on our trip. We have experienced many accommodation sites where the owners are having neighborly issues, just like you lot back home.  Think ‘Neighbors at war’, safari style.

Guma camp turned out to be fantastic; the serendipity of nearly all our accommodation decisions really is a fortunate wonder. Such a treat. During our stay, I did dad proud by feeding the many different species of birds every morning, Stuart caught some great photo ops of bird fights.  We also ventured on a 2hour, two-stroke boat ride; crocs birds and a beautiful sunset. The whole package really. We also saw a tiny cute, but very confused and (dare I say it but he really was) very batty… bat.

Over the 4 days, a few overlander groups came and went while we kept requesting to stay ‘just one more night’. 

 

The alternative story of Tsodilo Hills, aka ‘I’ve got the runs’.

I enjoyed learning about the rock art a lot, even if I didn’t get to hear it all. Fifteen minutes in, my stomach churned the biggest, most cramped up churn I have ever experienced. I gave Fiver the camera and walked very briskly (not sure I could run with confidence) back to camp. 

The thing with ‘Africa Belly’, ‘Bali Belly’ or any other ‘travellers’ belly’ for that matter, is that it usually attacks at the worst place or time possible. After this incident, if one of us three are ever summoned by the ‘spirits’ of Tsodilo hills, a particular saying has become our handiest code yet. Instead of publicly announcing to my peers that “oh man I’ve got the shits, again”, I can now politely (and almost always sporadically) tell them “I’veGotTsodiloHills”. It is a much more pleasant way to break the news, they understand my pain straight away and they don’t experience that terrible visual.

 The reality of having ‘Tsodilo hills’ on a 470km drive where the roadside is constantly occupied by people, scattered houses or curios stalls, definitely is not.

 

Tsodilo Hills stories

Our first stop in Botswana was Tsodilo Hills; a very ancient site known for its original rock art and ancestral history.  After driving a while down a dusty and bumpy road, unsure when the campsite was going to appear, we suddenly approached an on-coming car containing two Americans.

“How far is the campsite up there?” Stuart asked. 

“O not farrr, we didn’t stay therrre though….it’s a bit grubby”.

A bit grubby?  A bit GRUBBY? Were they serious? Uh-oh a grubby campsite! There I was thinking those two words couldn’t be in the same sentence without each other.  Come on guys, what were you honestly expecting?  I bet this couple would have loved Alte Brücke campsite in Swakopmund you know.

The site wasn’t too bad at all, just dusty (grubby?), with some stray dogs that loyally slept outside our tents all night, in the highly optimistic hopes of receiving any means of food.  They were serious. One even chased away a very thirsty, very cute, and pouty looking donkey who was innocently just trying to survive another day by catching drips from the camp water tap (which we just used to filled up our kettle only moments before).

Yeah it was dusty, but then again, the whole of bloody Botswana was dusty so who cares.  You should have seen my shower water running into the drain. All I can say is thank goodness for concrete decor showers and the total lack of white tiles here.

The next morning we took a tour walk around the famous Tsodilo Hills. Our guide, K-T (who has eaten leopard before and swears it tastes like chicken) showed us around the hills and told the stories behind each rock art drawing.  Penguins, rhinos, whales, giraffes, men with dancing penises - you name it, he told it.  It was very interesting – the first 15 minutes of it anyway, until I had to leave…

Botswana border a breeze.

After a very pleasant drive through the Mahangu wildlife reserve (although, I was cooped up in the back seat with a ragingly sore stomach, I still enjoyed it) we got through the Botswana border with nothing but pure, sweet ease. No queues, no troubles, no fuss.  It was very quiet there, so not much to tell.

The scenery and roadside action changed drastically compared to Namibia though; people walking along the roadside everywhere, small township settlements scattered every few km, the houses were built with different materials, and donkeys and cattle walked aimlessly across the road almost every time we reached top speed!

Dare I say it, but I felt we were now officially entering ‘Africa’. I feel bad saying this, but why?

Actually, a better way of putting it is: I felt I had been officially introduced to the Africa which I was pre-programmed to envisage due to a lifetime of outside exposure; selected media coverage and constant learning of stereotyped images - Wow, I saw one of those real straw huts, and there goes a malnourished kid…tick, I must be in Africa.  As bad as this mentality is, deep down it was all I had been expecting from the day I stepped off the plane in Joburg. Why was I expecting this? And how dare I build up such a prejudice as this in my head when I have never even come close to any African experiences in my life?   

Obviously, there is a lot more to the countries that make up this continent than what we are able to experience from the comfort of our own homes.   I am extremely grateful to be given the opportunity to bridge my own gap between what I perceived as ‘Africa’ and what I am actually seeing! Thanks Five and Stuart, you two are unreal.

 

Hippo gas relief at night. My lovely Namibia-Botswana lullaby

For our last two days, we stayed at another awesome camp site (on par with Naukluft and Abiqua).  Mahangu/o camp was just outside the Namibia-Botswana border.  This border required you to venture through a small game drive in order to get there, how awesome is that? ‘What are you doing today?’ ‘Oh you know, just going to do the Mahango game drive on our way through to Botswana, might see an elephant croc or hippo. No biggy. What are you doing?’

 Mahangu/o camp was beautiful, right on the river, not facing Angola though, this time we had the privilege of seeing part of the Okavango and it’s inhabitants.  During our stay there we also saw the birth of the Merryl Peddie Hilton.  I have to say, as much as I was loving my sweet little pup tent from Fiver’s brother, Mark, the hobbit sized door had had it in for me since day one; I had experienced my fair share of temper tantrums whilst struggling to crawl out of it every single morning that it was time to change.  In order to get out of the tent required an enormous amount of skill you see.  I had to find the motivation every day to shimmy through the minute doorway and developed a technique for the days when I just couldn’t face it with strength. 

It was something like a hovering squat-walk.   Slash tripping over some string and tumbling out on top of my once clean but now dirty, dusted or damp pillow, sleeping bag and mattress.  Yeah yeah, I know- I could have just made 3 separate trips, taking each item out one at a time, but that would have been too productive, and I was trying to be efficient!  Anywho, this did get tiring after nearly 4weeks, so I have been temporarily  upgraded to what I like to call, the Merryl Peddie Hilton.  Actually, I should probably name it after the tent, ‘Coleman’s Hilton’, imported from NZ.  This was Five and Stuart’s ‘land tent’ for when we park up for a few days and they use instead of the roof tent, but since they like the roof tent so much more, I have been blessed with the big roomy dome – I can stand up in it and everything, what more could you want?

So easy to please… 

 My first night at the camp was a little bit restless.  For one I was far too excited about my fabric walled hotel that I couldn’t nod off as easily, I kept opening my eyes and seeing giant amounts of space around me, then I would smile and then attempt to fall asleep again. This was joined by another factor contributing to my interrupted sleep - the sounds of hippos at night.  Have you heard the noises they make? Good god, its loud!  I cannot type a bunch of random letters together that would even begin to give you an idea of what they sounded like, however it was kind of like (but nowhere near), a bunch of people who had serious flatulence issues, all letting rip at separate but consistent intervals on a megaphone, no wait… a delta sized sound system.  Whether or not that is what the hippos were doing, perhaps they were just cruising round on land making big whoppee cushion noises while they hung out, I’m not sure, but it was a very different noise to cars passing at night or a party going on down the road. 

I couldn’t help but lay there, in the early hours of the morning all wrapped up in my sleeping bag, and laugh.

Rundu Robbers

We arrived in the frantic town of Rundu after a late morning drive from Sachsenheim camp, just outside Etosha.  We had stopped at the Tsumeb museum on the way for a light history lesson (and some ab-fab mineral rock viewing) before heading into Rundu, which really was no more than a ‘border town’. Check me out with my traveller lingo ay.

Our camp was nice, yet slightly questionably empty.  What I mean is, it was on the river -  always lovely,  however the river was the border to Angola - hmmm.  Need I say more as we had a guard who sat by a fire near our site for the entire evening, on watch for illegal border crossers attempting to enter Namibia via our camp.

We watched another pleasant ‘African sunset’, saw a bushbaby in the trees, and the fantastic outline of an owl, had some dinner and were in bed by the average 7 year-old’s bedtime. Early.

Morning came and we were all up at funnily enough the same time any average 7year old would get up on a Saturday morning to watch cartoons. AKA sparrow fart.  We had to pack up and get ready for a big day at the internet café.  I was rummaging around in my tent as per usual; rolling up my mattress, shuvving the sleeping bag back into its bag with brute force, and being astonished at how much stuff I accumulated in my tent overnight. Fiver had briefly emerged from the roof tent to use the bathroom and Stuart was wandering around watching the sunrise while the water for the tea was boiling.  This was the tiny window of time when the roof tent was unattended, and robbed…quite possibly by a couple of tree swinging children.  That was the unanimous decision anyway.

 

This was our wake up call.  Now we are much more cautious of leaving the car and belongings unattended for more than one minute at a time.  Hmm.  Luckily, the only items that Stuart and Fiver are now less of, are; a couple of pieces of dirty washing, 2 empty bags and Stuart’s recently extracted tooth from Windhoek.  Too many lollies at the Swakopmund movie theatre, I think.

We thanked our lucky stars this was all, and I pretty much kissed my passport after finding it was still in its original place.  My question is though, who robs a bloody roof tent when the back doors are almost screaming out ‘please, someone, anyone, take these three conveniently charging laptops from this wide open and unlocked car’? 

Whoever they were, we were glad they preferred empty bags, dead teeth and dirty washing to apple technology and cloning identities

Etosha salt pan and national wildlife reserve TOP 5, with Merryl Peddie.

My first rather large (absolute understatement) wildlife reserve experience; far too overwhelming, far too many animals and far too many photos, so I have decided to make a top 5.

 

Top animal encounter:

Watching a very brainless vehicle turn its engine off in the middle of the road to watch the ‘cute’ and ‘lovely’ elephants cross it.  The photo says it better than I ever could. O and I can’t wait to see the footage.

Top animal blooper:

Lions and the warthog. Watching two lions chilling out by the waterhole.  A warthog comes sprinting in for some water only thinking ‘one lion, ha, I can handle him, if it means I get a sip of water’.  We know he only saw one because soon enough he slammed on the brakes, skidded a metre or two and just bolted in the opposite direction. If you have seen a warthog run, you would be laughing right now.  Very short stick-like stumps for legs, running along the ground as fast as they can whilst trying to support a large log for a body, and a pathetically thin tail as stiff as 10 pieces of number 8 taped together; so bolt up-right in the air you could hang a surrender flag on it.  No disagreement there.

 

Top animal defence mechanism – denial of the Kudu

While we watched the male lions rule the waterhole with absolute ease and the warthog flocking about like a headless chook, we spotted a Kudu in the trees, which had also just spotted the two lions.  The only thing that gave this animal statue away was the sunlight hitting his horns – he would have been cursing those horns if we were game hunters you know.  While the warthog was creating his own doom, the Kudu was trying his absolute hardest to do the opposite – he just stood there, so dead still it was incredible.  All I could picture was this Kudu, talking between his teeth managing no lip movement what-so-ever telling himself, and us “you can’t see me. I swear, I am invisible….I am NOT here”.  It was like you had just been spotted in a game of spotlight and you’re trying to tell your friend ‘don’t you dare give me away you bastard’ without movement of any kind, it was classic.

 

Top animal pun:

Seeing a zebra crossing. The first time we saw one I think I took about a hundred photos. By the end of the day we had seen so many I wouldn’t even bother to reach for my camera. How spoilt.

 

Worst animal camouflage:

Giraffes, without a doubt hands down no arguments.  They look like a bloody skyscraper in a grassy 8-hectare paddock.  Or, a teacher standing at the side in a primary school class photo the equivalent height to three rows of staggered primary students. 

 

Hakuna Matata in my head for 1month straight now. I swear to god every time I see a warthog I want to short-circuit my brain

Camping confusion

Our campsite in Swakopmund was rather fancy, yet absolutely unnecessary. It started off with reception. The lady at reception wasn’t just the standard one lady at one little desk. She was three ladies, two desks and one of those ear tearing ‘yappie’ dogs that fit into your handbag. All three very white ladies were immaculately dressed, presented themselves at only the highest standard and spoke with perfectly posh South African accents. I could have sworn I was walking into a ritzy hotel or enquiring about my some day house mortgage at the bank. They were still very lovely and helpful and issued us with our very own numbered bathroom key. Fiver and I thought this was rather unusual.

We arrived at our grassy site and wondered why it had a front door. The front door had the number 8 on it, which funnily enough matched our bathroom key – no way! Then we took a proper look around the area.

Each campsite was so perfectly laid out that it looked liked we were camping on someone’s front lawn down a perfect suburban street. It looked like a whole group of protestors (who had all managed to lose their signs, have top of the line camping equipment and were all happy) had raided a pretty little street and pitched their tents on every front lawn. It was classic.

As you can probably see, I am really enjoying all the different camping experiences we are already having. They vary so much that a lot of the time I find myself thinking about the results of a lucky dip draw at calf club day – there is a list of the top prizes placed above the bin (camp site listings in the guide book), you give so and so’s mum your entire $2, (making a mental note that at last years calf club it was only $1), then you put your hand in the bin, have a feel around and finally pull out your prize just hoping you got the right one (making the decision and calling a camp site). The problem with lucky dips is that the prizes would vary drastically. Sometimes you’d get that awesome prize everyone was crossing his or her fingers for (highly recommended camp sites). Other times you got a really average prize whilst thinking you had your hands on the good one. You then gave so and so’s mum a long, drawn out and unenthusiastic ‘thaanks’ which was more an act of politeness and covering your butt rather than gratitude (sites we thought were going to be good that turned out to be…not so good). Other times there was just that straight up weird prize. The one that you couldn’t figure out - was it a really cool toy or a completely impractical household item? What did it do? After calf club day was over it would just kind of hang around the house until it finally ended up being biffed into the junk draw. That, or, a friend finds it amongst a heap of junk one day and is absolutely ecstatic about it but can’t understand why you don’t mind if they borrow it and never give it back.

I think the last prize was Alte Brücke camp site for us, I could see how some people would absolutely love it but we just saw no need for the extensive number of bathrooms (which means ridiculous amounts of plumbing in the desert!) and having our own set of ‘house keys’. A simple patch of grass, dirty or sand and a nearby ablution block is enough, and for many other campers too, I am sure.

Sandboarding with Konstantine

No joke, that was my instructor’s name. Konstantine with a K, very coool I thought. I booked my sandboarding experience the afternoon we arrived and luckily got to go the very next day; I was going to be picked up at a certain spot at a certain time.

That morning I walked out the gate of our camping ground and to my surprise saw a nicely sign-written van parked right outside with snow (sand) boots and boards piled up neatly in the back. Yusssss, no awkward waiting. Or so I thought. I took a longer look at the writing on the van, more like a leaning in stare really. The smartly dressed driver looked over at me as if to say ‘what do you want?’ and I realised it wasn’t the company I booked with. Gutted, I did have to wait awkwardly, and now I had to wait in front of the cool van in my sweet tramping outfit. I sat down on a fence and soon enough two scruffy non-uniformed guys came over and one asked me if I was going sandboarding today.

Fantastic! We got into the non sign-written taxi (that was parked in front of me, of course) and headed off for the dunes.

I never thought I would be wearing snow boots, track pants and a thermal on the sand dunes. Ever. It was hard work walking up the dunes every time, surprisingly not hot work though, quite the Atlantic breeze was flying over us. After a hell hike up, I found the actual ride down was more of a rest than anything, but it was still so much fun. What I didn’t like, was after a few runs we would head for the next steepest dune, which of course meant the next hike was twice as strenuous as the last. Good ol Konstantine only liked giving each dune two runs before moving on again. I gave him my two cents once I cottoned on to this behaviour don’t you worry. Ate my words (again) soon after though. There I was whinging and moaning every time we started our dune ascent. He would first take my board, then my bag, then we would have constant pit stops, and he would walk ahead so I could follow in the footstep groves, yet I was still praising chairlifts or escalators as if they were a godsend. I started joking around how chairlifts are such a better way to go and soon enough he told me he hadn’t ridden in snow before. Ugh! The guy hadn’t even seen snow before! I felt rubbish afterwards, absolutely rubbish. But he told me how in Swakopmund they still have sand boarding comps with slalom, jumps, and downhill blitzes and it all sounded like good times. It made a lot more sense afterwards though, thaaats why he wasn’t really responding to my comparisons of sand versus snow. Shot Merryl.

On our last dune slide we raced to the bottom. Kosta (nick name) let me beat him, but I didn’t let on I knew. I did a fake wee ‘yay I won’ parade and then downed a well-deserved Windhoek lager on the beach. Thanks Kosta, I had a ball on the dunes!

Next activity on the list – dune buggy thrashing! Or Vic falls bungee jump, rumours aside it doesn’t cost more than my entire student loan. Being that it thrives off such a tourist attraction though, I’m not holding my breath.

me and my mandatory helmet

3 days in one place – wow!

We worked out that Swakopmund was the first place we had stayed for 3 nights. Everywhere else had only been 1 or 2, so this was big for us. It ended up being the only place we stayed in for three nights during our entire visit to Namibia. I don’t necessarily see this as a bad thing at all, but it is impressive to show you how often we are moving, and are almost constantly on the go. To be honest, I never thought 3 days at one spot could seem nearly too long, but we are getting so good at settling in, relaxing, sorting shit out, doing some touristy stuff and heading off again that when we have any spare time after that we kind of get a little lost, and don’t really know what to do. Plus we all like to keep busy and keep on schedule so moving on always seems to be the appropriate thing to do next.

On the other hand, you may think 6 months seems like a long and luxurious time to do this trip, but really when we break it down to every country and the almost daily distance goals, it is only just enough.

Since we had a whopping 3 nights in the very german Swakopmund, Fiver, Stuart and I managed to get a lot of ‘stuff’ done – went to the movies where they handwrite your ticket and let you choose your seat from a laminated seating plan, (Angels and demons, terribly trashy don’t do it!). We dined out German style - I think I managed to fumble out three terribly pronounced words; “bitte, danke and…ja”, how shocking. We also finally found awesome travel mugs, squeezed in a morning jog, and sent some excess baggage to Germany. A near 30kg parcel to be precise, which has made packing the car an absolute dream compared to our old, vacuum packed, every cubic cm utilised, ways. This also meant my hair could now start growing again. Just the slight whisper of the words ‘pack’, ‘unload’, ‘find’ or ‘store’ were enough to send any one of our blood pressure levels soaring. All fixed now though, good work at the post office Five and Stuart!

We also sourced some Internet access during our stay in the bustling wee town. We located an internet café the day we arrived, scoped it out and then swooped for the kill the next day. For the following two days we absolutely bombarded the café’s bandwidth. Six hands typing frantically, posting blogs, emailing family/friends and uploading pictures.

I was completely unorganised and was more the frantic typist than anything else. I hadn’t completed a single blog let alone had any photos sorted to upload yet. Shit it was so stressful, I don’t think I breathed for at least an hour and was absolutely spent afterwards. I hope I’ll be ready next time, no promises though.

<>>

Gosh it was such a scene. I chuckle so much when I think back on it now. You can just picture 3 wired campers’ with scruffy hair, looking like something straight out of a tragic camping article, except we were all hovering over our different generation apple laptops, squinting anxiously at the screens for connection confirmation, and were oh so crammed onto one miniscule table (even though neighbouring tables were free). Backpacks were exploding with fire-wire, USB cables, external drives and cameras. Desperate power supplies were tangled all around us like hungry house pets, sucking the power from the café’s only available ‘cambrook’ whilst utilising every second of internet bliss till the bitter sweet, ‘timed out’ end.

It was the birth of the ‘Mac Squad’. Internet café’s of Africa beware!

Swakop success.

Driving into Swakopmund was a lot different to how I had pictured it was going to be, and I wasn’t really prepared for what I saw – sand dunes sifting their sandy volume across the roads by rather gusty winds which were also giving me and the steering wheel quite the jiggle around. The road was a high contrasting black against the orange sand and pretty ‘hotel like’ palm trees were planted all the way down the centre. The change was so abrupt too; one minute we were happily cruising along flat plains of desert and gravel with a gorgeous blue sky and then suddenly all visibility went from infinite to ‘oo I can only just make out the car 10 metres in front of me, I better slow right down’. The sand dunes were incredible how they just took over anything in their way, including the train tracks which, several men were trying to recover by shovelling mounds of sand aside that just inevitably blew straight back on the track again. I hoped they hadn’t been there all day. It was unreal.Then, I realised this was Walvis bay, 30km out of Swakopmund. It is the port Swakop never managed to get or beat. I guess I was a little ahead of myself and the GPS, so the drive continued a little more, down a very long road which ran nicely parallel to the Atlantic Ocean. The view of the ocean was much closer than at Lüderitz, however this did make it rather difficult for me to pay my full attention on the road. In the end though, I did manage to get us to our destination safely, and in one piece.

Here is the Swakop wharf and some nice waves crashing on the shore.

Some photos of Sossousvlei

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“We don’t want to pay for a park pass for tomorrow, honestly we’ll be gone by 6am so there’s really no need” – Fiver to the reception lady

After a yummy scrummy dinner and me getting all ready for bed (6.30pm, it was getting late you know!) Stuart noticed a puncture in the rear right tyre.  By morning, the tyre was as deflated as it could possibly get.  The culprit – a sharp piece of scrap metal, object, thingy.  

Now I would like to point out to all of you, that just because I had a great driving shift that day, changing gears, charging up gravel mountains and being all manual driver like, doesn’t necessarily mean the puncture occurred when I was in charge of the wheel.  Then again it most definitely could have been, but that isn't really the matter of concern.  What matters is, I am travelling with two super duper tyre changing pros’.  I filmed the entire saga (thank goodness as I am useless with tyre changing, although now I have no excuse) while Five and Stuart got stuck into it – air jacks and all.  It was pretty fun, however the freezing temperature of being so high up in the mountains was not.  I had my big thick hiking (clean) socks jammed over my hands, and made it my sole responsibility to be in charge of making hot drinks.  This also meant I could hover around the gas cooker and never took my hands off both sides of the boiling kettle – my heater-hog days and tactics came flooding back to me!

...We left the camp at 10.30am

A night in Naukluft camp - baboons and a flat tyre.

Naukluft was possibly my favourite camp in Namibia.  It is a tossup between Naukluft and Abiqua though, both offered such a beautiful stay in two completely different ways.  Abiqua had the gorgeous Oranje river and although we were in Namibia, South Africa was just across that stretch of water.  I liked that. The sunset on the river was stunning and the giant rock cliffs cast impressive shadows for photos. Plus, the campsite was so good that we almost felt spoilt. Naukluft was high up in the mountains and although we didn’t have a raging view, the experience was only positive as well.  Perhaps Naukluft was just such a relief from shitty Sesreim that made me like it so much, but I don’t think that entirely.  Stuart and I went for an afternoon hike up the river until we encountered some baboon territory.  We were dawdling along, watching for big rocks that liked to trip us over, gas bagging away when I heard this strange noise.  It sounded like someone doing a wheeze laugh, in and out consistently. I looked up and saw about 5 ugly baboon faces staring down at me, then the big-dog alpha male made an appearance and I suddenly didn’t want to continue my afternoon hike anymore – the fact that I would have to walk past them again on my way back to camp didn’t help.

 

 

 

 

Shitty Sesreim and the spectactular Sossousvlei!

The thing we have started to notice about the beautiful natural wonders of Africa is that they always have the worst and most expensive accommodation nearest to them….and they are almost always a national park.  Sesreim was our wake up call.  To be honest, the camp site was fine, more than fine, but the fact that we were paying almost triple for this site did not give us a good impression.  Also, due to booking mishaps, we were bumped down to the overflow section which was a nuisance more than anything.  I heard my first jackal rummaging in a rubbish bin that night.

 None of this mattered the next day when we woke before dawn (pretty standard these days) and drove 70km to the Sossousvlei dunes of the Namib desert.  I had obviously never seen something like this before, and was a little lost for words that morning.  Fiver took pictures while I filmed Stuart climbing a big dune.  The light was incredible and we had chosen a good time to go as it wasn’t too hot.  I ran down the dune, nearly tripping over every time I lifted my legs and I giggled hysterically like a kid the whole way down.  I kind of looked like one of those cartoons when they run with their legs sticking/winding out the sides and there's a big circular dust cloud going on..classic.

On our way back to the car, we saw an oryx.  He was just hanging out behind a bush, having a standing snooze in the morning sun.  Apparently oryx are one of the animals that the unicorn tale comes from (don't forget my favourite narwhals now!), and this guy was a classic example - he had lost a horn; maybe in some brute force oryx on oryx man battle or something, and was just standing there, looking rather mundane and unimpressed that he had lost one of his weapons.  He can't of been that gutted, because he posed so well for my camera. 

 'Bye Merryl, hope you had fun in the dunes...Thanks Mr Oryx!'

 After that fantastic morning, we headed off to Naukluft camp and I got to drive us through some rough ass gravel!  This does not necessarily mean it was I who got the tire puncture….

Not so spooky Kolmannskop

Just out of Luderitz is the ‘ghost town’ of Kolmannskop.  Once a small town thriving on the diamond industry that is now nothing more than old German architecture slowly being consumed by sand dunes.  Perhaps it wasn’t so spooky because we went there during the day. We were more interested in the bathtub filled with sand, or the many once-were doorways which are now small dunes inside four walls rather than the spooky side of it all.  It was incredible to see.  Stuart took some stunning photos and I got some great footage too. Take a look at www.sa2de.com to check out Stuart and Fiver’s blog to see more pictures as this one is pretty tame.

 

 

 

 

Oh-so accommodating Lüderitz

After Fish River Canon we set off for a long day’s drive to Lüderitz. Fiver made the routine phone call to book some accommodation for the night.  We opted for proper beds and walls this time as Fiver was slightly (major understatement) bashed up from our wild horse riding expedition.

She spoke German to the man on the other end of the phone, and laughed as she hung up.  I understood some of what was being said but not all, not until she translated to me - I will be staying in the son’s room of the owners of the B & B…..

There was one room for 2 people and all the other rooms (the other two) in this cute German house-turned B & B were taken. “But that is no problem” the man told Fiver on the phone, “our son is studying abroad and we can make up his room for the young girl”. 

 

In reflection, I was a little weirded out by this homely offer but I knew it wouldn’t be that bad once I got there.  It was as if I was going to be staying at a friend’s house, but my friend wasn’t going to be there… and I didn’t know my friend at all. 

What I realised quickly about the places we have been and are going to go during this trip, is that the majority of the hosts really are so kind and genuine. They really do enjoy having you there and not somewhere else, and I didn’t at all feel uncomfortable during my stay.

 

So, we arrived at Lüderitz. It was cute but man was it dead! I later commented that it had the potential to be the next Kolmanskop if it didn’t watch out.

Fiver introduced herself to the host’s wife, and they did their little German spiel thingy. Stuart and I stood awkwardly in the background both sharing the same concentrated expression; faces scrunched up and necks craned out as far as possible so at least one ear could catch the conversation, then trying our hardest to grasp at any common words.

Stuart could understand a lot more than I.  

I finally understood a whole sentence when Fiver was explaining that Stuart was English, I was a New Zealander and we did not Sprechen Sie Deutsch so well. The lady looked at us for a split second (obviously saw the ever-so-trying look on my face) and then blurted out “Well that’s great! We can all speak English then, I’m rubbish at German anyway”. Fantastic.

 

Once Fiver and Stuart were settled in, the lovely lady showed me to my son’s bedroom. Hmmm, how to word that one?

I was more than welcome to make myself at home and use the bathroom and shower as I pleased.  I was not to worry if I heard any ‘movements next door’ as that was their daughter, and I was also warmly offered a cup of hot chocolate. 

How nice was she? I even had her own personal set of house keys so I could ‘come and go as I please’. 

Ich liebe Sandrose B & B, Vielen Dank! 

‘Have you ridden a horse before?’ – ‘Oh yeah totally, we’re experienced!’

The words I will eat for a little while longer yet…

Now that I think about it, the lady didn’t ask if we had ridden wild horses that had not had a run for 5 months.  That could have been helpful!

 

‘I’ll give you a ‘wake up horse’ said the guide. I thought, sure that makes sense - one that is awake sounds a lot better than one that isn’t. “This horse, he is the fastest!”

I lasted about 3 minutes.

Two minutes of walking before my horse boosted into a gallop, not just any gallop, but an unannounced, radical change of pace fuelled by some sort of horse rocket, type of gallop! I was screaming wild panic, I was pulling reins, my legs were dangling lifelessly out of the stirrups and I could tell my horse just wanted me off… 

The guide gives me HIS horse. Ohk cool, I jump off one horse and get given the lead horse, sure.

“Beware, this horse is very wake up, he is used to leading so you will have to hold on, he is very fast…he is the fastest!” –

‘Yeah ok but you just said the other horse I was on was the fastest!”

“Yes. But this one is the fastest.”

“Great”

 

A few minutes later I was wildly transported up into the mountains of big rocks and sharp desert trees. My horse didn’t want to go back down, nor respond to my rein pulling and leg kicking, obviously.  After some time we got back down to the track and gave trotting another go.  The giant horse took off again, this time we galloped sideways. SIDEWAYS! Same scene as before except this time he didn’t really want to stop, not until we bowled through a sharp tree shrub thing and I was dangling from his neck. I recovered miraculously, I must say.

 

Another horse guide came galloping to the rescue and gave me his horse instead; Yussss the pretty little grey horse I liked from the stables, but couldn’t have because it was for the beginners. He had to point that out didn’t he?  What a jerk. Haha, my ego was so bruised, but not as much as my legs the next day.

Satisfaction as I galloped down the sandy straight once more and actually made it in one piece.. The horse’s name… “Try Me”.

 

Fiver was the guru lady at riding wild horses.  While I was throwing tanties left, right and centre, claiming that my horse was ‘weird’, ‘strange’ or just plain ‘psycho’ she was pretty much training the wild beasts.  That was until her horse (who always had to canter when we trotted, such a show off boy horse) decided it had had enough and was getting ready for the big hill climb up ahead.  I turned around to see Fiver dangling from one side of the horse and then toppling gracefully onto the ground as the beast disappeared into the mountains (different horse to my 2^nd one).  Tough lady as she was she got back on and kept riding with no worries, but man you should have seen her bruises!

The doctor even gave her big ups.

Shot Five! Hero!

 

 Here is an image of Fiver's beasty bruise from the untamed horse: