Dan H: the world traveling saxophone holder: 10 Month African Trails Epic Adventure: Weeks 24-25

South Africa, Botswana, Zambia

Week 24 - Apr. 21st - 27th

day 162 - bush-camp to Kimberley to bush-camp near Mafikeng
day 163 - bush-camp to Botswana border to bush-camp
day 164 - bush-camp to Ghanzi to Maun
day 165 - Mokoro (boat) trip to Okavango Delta
day 166 - day in the Okavango Delta
day 167 - Mokoro trip to edge of Delta, drive back to Maun
day 168 - scenic flight over Okavango Delta then Maun to Nata to Kasane

Week 25 - Apr. 28th - May 4th

day 169 - day in Kasane - Chobe river cruise
day 170 - morning game drive then Kasane to Zambian border to Livingstone
day 171 - day in Livingstone - Bungee & Victoria Falls
day 172 - day in Livingstone - lion walk and sunset booze cruise
day 173 - day in Livingstone - microlight flight over Victoria Falls
day 174 - Livingstone to Choma to Lusaka
day 175 - Lusaka to Chipata

On the road again

It was strange to be back on the truck again. Even though it had only been a week since we last were on board it seemed like it had been far longer. But most interesting was the change in group dynamics that we knew would come with our changeover of travellers. Not only did we have the new joiners but Dan & Katie had re-joined after a long absence. German and Carolina had also returned of course after their unfortunate excommunication from Angola. New to the truck were Scott and 'Ziggy, both Aussie guys who helped to bolster the numbers of team Australia. In fact now that we had just lost four Brits from the truck the reign of dominance in numbers by team UK had ended. In fact Our numbers were more or less equal to Team Oz, we had 5&1/2 Brits and 5&1/2 Aussies as long as you counted the fact that Pete 'Toms' was half of each, though I'll never think of him as ever remotely Australian until he loses that utterly 100% British accent.

Helping to boost the ranks of the fairer sex on board, don't forget we were down to 3 when we reached the Namibian border (Summer, Sarah and Lucy), were Emma, Paige and Jessica. Paige & Jessica were two local girls from South Africa who were travelling together, bringing the youngest age on board down to 18 (jesus I don't think I would have been able to handle Africa at that age, I didn't have a clue). Emma was a Brit and was still wondering whether or not to go all the way to Istanbul or just Cairo, I'm sure all our horror stories about the trip didn't help there. So here we all were, ready to head off once again, this time on the Eastern Trans, or better known as the 'Milk Run' to us snobbish Western Trans-ers.

Delayed...yet again

Well if the new joiners wanted a good lesson in the unpredictability of a cross country African holiday then they got what they wanted on the first day. We hadn't even reached our first night, our first bush-camp and we've already helped to dismantle the entire back end of the truck and haul out enough spare parts to lose over a metric ton in order to meet with South African legal requirements. But then the phrase TIA comes to mind: This Is Africa.

We had already been warned that the first few days of the journey towards Botswana would not be pleasant. We had an obscene distance to cover in a short time and we were told that we would be driving all day, eating then driving some more. This was something that the truck veterans had become accustomed to but nevertheless only expected to happen when things went wrong. Like going the wrong way in Gabon. Or being stuck in a mud hole for a day. Oh I don't mean to gripe though it must have been a bit of a bore for the newbies. Oh perhaps not, maybe I'm being pessimistic.

The day started off fine, just driving and more driving, all day long and occasionally interspersed with toilet stops or a visit to the store to shop for dinner. The first spanner in the works came when we were forced to weigh the truck at a service station in order to make sure it was under the maximum weight required for South African roads. Why they cared about this is anybody's guess but rules are rules. I'm sure they wouldn't have cared if we'd pointed out that this truck had already been driving on some of the worst roads in galactic history for 5 months without worrying about being overweight. But it turned out that we were over by more than a ton and since South Africa is one of the few countries in Africa where most of the police actually DON'T take bribes we were forced to embark on a very quick and expeditious weight loss scheme. First things first: we emptied most of our water supplies. Then we literally had to dismantle the entire back end of the truck so that we were able to wrench out one of the spare 'diffs' stored in the back, a colossal hunk of metal weighing more than half a ton that usually holds up the entire rear axle. The final act involved asking the four biggest blokes on the truck; myself included, to take a discrete wander off while the truck was weighed again. We were under the limit barely by a few kilogrammes. Since we had already cooked dinner while waiting for the truck to disassembled and put back together we continued driving for most of the night before stopping at a late hour to unpack the tents and go straight to sleep on one of the most frigid nights we had encountered yet on the whole trip.

Day two was far less eventful, Literally an all day drive from the crack of dawn to late at night with little to see. we crossed into Botswana on the third day and continued on our merry way, for once actually stopping at a sensible hour to cook and set up camp. The next day we arrived in Maun, gateway to the Okavango Delta, and were early enough to get lunch, buy some food stocks and get to the camp-site at an early hour.

The Okavango Delta

The Okavango Delta is basically a river that suddenly found it had nowhere else to go so it decided to burst its banks and spread itself over an absolutely enormous area, creating a huge network of swampy marshlands, countless and ever changing tributaries, wetlands and small lakes that stretch as far as the eye can see. This huge area is absolutely teeming with life and so we had high hopes that we would be able to do some good wildlife spotting when we headed off for a three day/two night camping & mokoro trip. This involved heading deep into the delta, OK so we actually barely scratched the surface but if felt like we were far in, on board our mokoros, small dugout canoes driven by a local Botswanan 'poler' who used a large stick to punt our diminutive vessels along. About seven of the group stayed behind at the truck and the rest of us headed out early in the morning (day 165) and boarded the truck that was to drive us part of the way into the Delta to board our Mokoros and meet our guides and polers. I couldn't help wondering if some of the others had stayed behind because of Gav's descriptions of the possible dangers we could face, such as being chased by angry lions or elephants during one of our hikes. Or our boat being crushed into splinters by an overly territorial hippopotamus that didn't like us getting too close. After all it was in the Okavango Delta that Gav had suffered his hippo attack that I mentioned earlier on in the blog. A wounded male had apparently crushed another nearby mokoro into firewood and proceeded to lunge towards Gav with the sole purpose of squishing him into a crunchy paste. Fortunately this didn't happen and Gav got away that time. And fortunately this didn't happen to me or anybody else during our time in the Delta. Which was a good thing.

We arrived at the waters edge and were surprised to notice that our mokoros were even smaller that we had previously anticipated. Apart from a couple of supply boats to carry our tents and food it was two passengers per boat plus a poler, which seemed about three people too many. Me and Phil teamed up to board our ride and after meeting our 'ship captain' we clambered aboard and sat down, noticing that there was about one inch between the water and the top of the boat. We were soon off, enjoying the ride and the splendid scenery. Although the wildlife wasn't quite so abundant at that particular time of year we still came across some hippos. And found our what hippos sounded like. They sound like Jabba the Hutt laughing. Seriously. At any rate we kept a respectable distance from them which was probably just as well since our guide said his boat had been approached and almost attacked by hippos several times before. At around lunchtime we debarked from the mokoros and found a place to set up a camp-site. After unpacking, eating lunch and resting for a while we then headed off for an afternoon hike to see if we could spot any wildlife. Not much was spotted but we were going to be in the Delta for a couple more days so there would be plenty of time.

The next day we were supposed to head off for a long early morning walk but torrential rain kept us in our tents until it was almost time for lunch. After lunch we went for a walk and this time had more success in spotting wildlife. Herds of zebra and wildebeest were spotted but the highlight was when we came across a large bull elephant not too far from us on the walk back to camp. He walked off shortly after spotting us so we did the only sensible thing you can do when a huge 5 ton male bull elephant clearly displays a desire for us to keep our distance: we followed him into the bush. Embarrassingly we couldn't find him, we were unable to find an animal the size of a bus and so we turned round and returned to the camp-site. Later on that day we embarked on a relaxing sunset mokoro ride before returning to camp for dinner. After dinner our guides entertained us with some wonderful singing and dancing displays. After this superb display of musicality we responded by having Sarah and Phil perform a rather drunken chicken dance for a few seconds before playing obnoxiously loud music all night on the mp3 players. Our guys were probably thinking 'how the hell did these guys ever get it together to colonize our entire continent?'. After a rather sleepless night we embarked upon a final early morning walk before departing on the mokoros for our final cruise back to meet the truck back at the edge of the delta to return to Maun.

The next day some of us boarded a place for a scenic flight over the Okavango Delta, keeping an eye out for wildlife as we flew. Judging by the numbers of animals we saw it seemed extraordinary that we didn't come across such a great deal when down on the ground. Herds of elephants, wildebeests and antelopes were plentiful, as were hippos, though we still didn't accomplish our goal of seeing a hippo out of the water, quite a rare sight in the daytime. We left Maun and drove all day in order to get to Kasane, a Town in Chobe National park which meets at a crossroads of countries, Zambia, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Botswana. We would be crossing into Zambia in a couple of days but right now we had some time to explore Kasane and the park around us. The first activity was a river cruise along the Chobe River which separates Botswana from Namibia. It was the ideal time of day for wildlife spotting and it wasn't long before we started spotting baboons, impala, crocodiles & even a large monitor lizard by the waters edge. The highlight of the trip was when we came across a herd of more than fifteen elephants, including babies, all enjoying a long drink from the river. Satisfied we returned to the camp-site, getting ready to leave the next morning. We had to leave fairly early in the morning but not so early that there wasn't time to squeeze in a quick game drive at the crack of dawn. Only me and Dave chose to partake in this one, both of us clutching our chunky big SLR cameras and zoom lenses. Within two minutes of entering the Chobe Park we came across a huge male lion who was lounging around in the cool morning light barely a few metres away from the road. A few minutes later a second male lion approached and we wondered if a fight would ensue but they seemed to be the best of friends, brothers it was suspected. I would have been happy enough if these lions were all we had seen all day but we still came across a number of giraffes, baboons, impalas and even a family of mongooses.

Welcome to Zambia, prepare to get mugged raped and murdered

After the game drive we headed off to the Zambian border which was just minutes away and we boarded the ferry to cross the Zambezi River. Gav reassured us shortly before the journey with an inspiring speech about how we WERE going to get robbed in Zambia and to keep an eye out for all the thieving Zambian scumbags who were apparently waiting in the wings to rob us of everything we had. He then recommended that the truck guards pair up in teams of two and to make good use of weapons, such as the sturdy looking axe handle now placed just above the back door to the truck. I should point out that Gav likes to prepare us for the worst so that things can only ever turn out better than expected, most of the locals were fine and other than a couple of shifty characters testing the locks on the truck when they though we weren't looking most of them just wanted to sell us things. At the border we made use of some of the delays to do some trading with the locals. Phil managed to trade an old T-shirt that he didn't want for a wooden hippo and I managed to get some souvenirs for a pittance, I got my hands on some old Zimbabwean dollars, a 50 billion, 100 billion and 10 trillion dollar note. Each of them worth about 5-10 pence just before the entire currency went completely tits-up and the Zimbabwe dollar was devalued and cancelled. We left the border post and drove the short distance towards Livingstone, home of the Victoria Falls, or the Zambian side of the falls anyway. Even when we were more than 20 minutes outside of town we could still see the falls in the distance, or to put it more accurately, we could see the spray from the falls, rising over the horizon like smoke from a truly colossal fire. We entered Livingstone and proceeded to the camp-site, Grubby's Grotto, and were given a quick briefing about the huge plethora of activities that were on offer and ready to dent our bank balances in Livingstone.

As usual there were far too many things to choose from and not enough time to do them all. Or enough money. In fact I should have been grateful that the river rafting was closed due to the river being too high and that the skydiving centre was closed because I probably wouldn't have had time to fit those ones in and then I would have sulked about missing them. At any rate there was time to fit in a bungee jump and bridge swing next to the falls, a trip to the falls, a lion walk, a booze cruise and a microlight flight over the falls.

I've been to the falls but I didn't actually SEE them

So first activity of the day (171) was a nice relaxing bungee just from the bridge that sits right next to the falls and that separates Zambia from Zimbabwe. Actually not just a bungee jump but a triple pack, a bungee, a swing and a zip-line across the gorge. The zip-line (or flying-fox if you prefer) might have been fun for somebody who hasn't dedicated their life to spending every opportunity trying every adrenaline sport available to them but to me it was actually quite tame. That's why I did it first. Next up was the swing which simply involved taking a running jump off the 111 metre/350 foot bridge and free-falling for what seemed like an eternity until the rope I was attached to went taut and whisked me in a 180 degree arc out across the gorge and very close to the waters edge. The view of the falls was wonderful (or at least the view of the spray coming from the falls) as I was being hoisted back up and just as I was about halfway up Sean, who had also come along for the gravity defying merriment, went plummeting past me on a bungee cord. After getting back up on to the bridge we swapped places and I leapt off with an elastic band round my ankles as Sean descended on the swing.

Afterwards it was time to actually go to the Victoria Falls themselves. I hate to sound pessimistic but this was something of an anticlimax. You see not only were we here in the Zambezi River's high season but due to excessive rainfall the river was now at its highest it had ever been for decades. All of this created an absolutely unimaginable quantity of water cascading over the falls which would have been an absolutely breathtaking sight it it weren't for the fact that the spray almost completely obscured the view. At least it provided a good incentive to come back to Africa, along with the lure of being able to go rafting on the Zambezi as well. And the experience of being under the spray was quite exciting, even at the height of the top of the falls the spray would pour down like the heaviest rain you've never seen because rainfall this torrential simply does not occur. Ever. But if I wanted to see the falls I would have to leave Terra Firma and get above the falls. But not quite yet.

The next day me and Phil embarked on a lion walk, a unique experience where you got to go on a walk alongside four semi-domesticated lions who only didn't rip your arms clean off because the guides were effectively considered the alphas of the pack. Even so we still were warned to take some precautions. First of all we were given a stick each. Not to hit the lions of course, the idea of going up against Africa's top predator armed with a pitiful little twig seemed almost Monty-Python esque in its absurdity, but to 'assert our dominance'. Apparently if the lions got too playful with their razor sharp claws we would use the stick to slap the ground in front of them to show them who was boss. If we were charged by the lions we apparently had to shake the stick at the lions and shout 'NO' as forcefully as we could. Otherwise it would keep charging. Very reassuring obviously. And best of all we were told not to show any fear at all otherwise we would be treated like prey by the lions. An interesting suggestions since the fear of having a razor sharp limbed giant cat claw your flesh open and tear off your head has a way of sticking in most peoples minds. Still I thought it would be a fun way to go so me and Phil grabbed our feeble little sticks and we headed off to meet the lions. It was a wonderful experience and we even got to pet the creatures at times, all the while hanging on to our mighty sticks as we went. My only gripe was that the experience was over too quickly and was far too overpriced. Still I shouldn't complain since it's not often that you get to pet a lion. Armed only with a stick. Later on the majority of us embarked upon a sunset booze cruise along the Zambezi on one of those all-you-can-drink affairs. I think the less said about that the better so we'll just skip that little chapter shall we?

My brand new lifelong dream No. 108

The next day, with many of my fellow Af-Trailers nursing massive hangovers, the morning was not too surprisingly quiet. Later on I accompanied Phil as he threw himself off the bridge next to the falls and after that it was time for the microlight flight. All I can say to anybody that visits Victoria Falls is you have to try this. There simply is no better was to see the worlds most spectacular waterfall. Though the spray of high season blocked almost all views from the ground it created the best possible view from the air. I also chatted to my pilot during the flight, a friendly American chap who normally lives in Scotland, making a living doing microlight flights and training. He also made me realise I wanted to quite my job and buy a microlight, they're apparently really cheap to run, they take unleaded petrol and get great mileage and you don't even need airstrips to land on. Apparently last year my pilot took his aircraft and went on holiday, flying from Scotland to France over the Alps, landing on beaches and unpacking his tent before packing up and fly off again. Which pretty much sounds like the best thing ever. So now I want a microlight Maybe I can sell a kidney or something. But anyway one thing at a time, I am still in Africa for quite a while yet.

After our 4th night there it was time to bid farewell to Livingstone and head north. We spent a couple of days driving, stopping only briefly in the capital, Lusaka, to shop and then camp on the outskirts. Next day we also drove all day, heading to a camp-site in a small town called Chipata. We were now ready to head on up towards South Luangwa national park to do yet more game drives. And hopefully not get eaten.