The long, long road to Livingstone

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  Kazungula, Botswana
Monday, June 4, 2007

This post will detail John's and my four day journey from Cape Town, South Africa to Livingstone, Zambia, approximately 2500km of driving in 3 driving days and 4 total days.

We set out from Cape Town and drove northeast into the heart of South Africa. We drove through wine country, where shanty towns of tin shacks line the highway. The workers who pick the crops live in these settlements, where structures are framed with wood or logs, covered with corrugated tin, and that is covered with strategically placed rocks to prevent structural damage or destruction from winds or rain. Some of these settlements are packed, some are more spacious. Residents run along the highway with little baskets of grapes hoping to sell some of them to drivers who may be passing by or who may be waiting on the highway for road maintenance. In the distance are the winemaker manors and here in your face are the shanty towns.

After the winecountry the country gently and slowly changed to vast plains of emptiness framed at the horizons by flat topped and ancient eroded mountains. The solitary highway runs through this flat country in a lonely line with only electric poles trailing alongside, and even sometimes none of those and just the road. This part of the country is as grand and desolate, or more, than the great West of the USA. We would pass lonely rusty windmills creaking away in the breeze, pumping water into tanks. The sparse bush and occasional tree added to the feeling that we were in Nevada or Wyoming, maybe.

01 The Defender's ZA sticker, jerry cans, and sky

 

The first night, the massive skies and high cirrus clouds allowed a sunset to stretch to both horizons, burning orange in the west and glowing purple in the east. The moonrise mirrored the sunset on the opposite horizon, balancing an epic scene between two massive globes, a spectrum of color in between.

Once the full moon rose, it shone through the high clouds and made a spherical ceiling of white glow high above us in the atmosphere, bright enough to cast shadow and enormous enough to be a nighttime playroom for demigods.

We pushed on to Strydenburg, a one dirt road town which turned out to be a dusty, tiny place with about 10 yellowing streetlights. At 8pm, this town was absolutely dead. Shut down, locked up. The occasional house that we passed with its lights on had no visible movement inside. We picked a hotel and checked in. The old Afrikaaner inside was glad to see us, as there were only 3 other folks in the entire place. While, at 8:30pm, it was rather late for them to be getting anything going, his wife agreed to cook us up some steak and chips. Which turned out to be a really delicious steak, eggs, gravy, and chips dinner that hit the spot after a day of potato chips and candy in the car.

We woke up around 7am and hit the road again, hoping to make it to Gaborone, Botswana by the end of the second day. We stopped in Kimberley, origin of the De Beers fortune. Diamonds everywhere, at least in the past. Today it is an industrial town, filled with people who look less inclined to be there than somewhere else, almost moping around to do their business.

02 first sunset in the desert

Felt like a place that you're either born into, or are told to go. Lots more driving, and slow, slow landscape changes, from a Western feel to a great plains feel - endless flatlands with nothing on the horizon but more flat. Big skies filled with endless patterned clouds.

We crossed the border at Ramatlabama into Botswana and within 5 minutes had almost smacked into a herd of cows crossing the road. There is a lot of livestock in Botswana. John did a good bit of swerving to get through without any damage to beast or machine. Then we made it to Gaborone and found ourselves a delicious east Asian cuisine place and a hotel.

The next morning, after a brief drive to the gas station, the Defender wouldn't start. Some helpful attendants push-started it and we drove immediately to a battery/starter engine place to check those things. Upon arriving, the Defender started fine, and the battery/starter engine were fine, but there were some major screws loose in the supercharging pipeline so we had to screw some of those things on. It was 2pm by the time we finished so we decided to stay one more day and watch rugby instead of heading off to the northeast of Bots.

Woke up insanely early and had a great morning driving northeast. The fog was so thick that the sunrise was obscured until around 7am, at which point it pushed through only enough light to appear as the stereotypical Red Disk that you imagine in an African sunset. Coupled with the slow landscape change to small trees and bushland, we were starting to enter the Africa of dreams.

03 Moonrise in South Africa

Drove through a lot of small herding villages with folks on the side of the road always asking for rides, because the country is massive and you either walk forever or hitch with someone who owns a vehicle. More huts and shacks, some housing developments with brand new tin. John thinks these look like moon settlements, since the tin is so shiny and silver, and the shacks are usually spaced into grids. Also ubiquitous are Mercedes and BMW's. Botswana is relatively prosperous for an African nation and there are more of these luxury cars than you think, cruising along the well-paved roads.

John got a speeding ticket, because there are short stretches of 80kph zones interspersed within the larger 120kph zones, seemingly just so cops can write more tickets. $15. The engine fix was great, both increasing power and speed and decreasing noise of the rover. we were able to talk without screaming and enjoy the music, usually Bob Dylan or some bluegrass or reggae.

Slowly the landscape changed more and more, yellow grass sprouting up amongst the bush, trees growing ever so slightly larger with each passing hour. grasslands here and there stretching out and dominating the trees, and eventually grassland becoming the predominant characteristic of the land. We were on a stretch of road for 200km in complete desolation, tracing along the Zimbabwe border in the northeast of Botswana. We saw a large animal (we think it was a Tsessebe) jump across the road and started paying more attention in case we could spot something really exotic, like a Zebra or a Giraffe or even maybe an Elephant.

Then, jolting out of countless blurred hours of sameness into a specific moment, John yelled out and there it was- a massive Elephant crossing the road about a half kilometer in front of us.

04 John, the defender, a tree, and sunset

The thing was huge. Looming. Stretching across the two lane road, striding it in about 4 or 5 steps. We were close enough to approach with caution. It ambled off into the bushes about 30m off the road as we passed. We were stunned and pumped up, and our attention was piqued. I, for one, giggled like a child. This was a wild elephant, not even a wild elephant in a reserve, but a wild elephant in the vast space of Africa.

And then we were really there, in Africa, the place you learn about in 2nd grade, wide sweeping grasslands and dramatic branched flat-top trees every once in a while, but always somewhat exotic trees sprouting up past the horizons. Randomly, there was a sunflower farm that abruptly began to our left, stretching literally as far as the eye could see. Acres of live, healthy flowers, then acres of harvested field, then acres of dead, drooping sunflowers. Then we killed a bird. We saw a herd of giraffes a long, long way off in a wide grassland. Then, minutes later, we saw about 9 giraffes. Off the road only about 200m, very visible, as tall as the trees upon which they grazed. We were close enough to cause them all to look at us as we stopped. There was no traffic in either direction for 5-10 minutes while we watched, in awe. They slowly strode away from us, only every once in a while glancing curiously toward the vehicle.

Wow. This was unbelievable. Only about an hour later, we slowed quickly, brakes humming and vibrating, in the middle of the road. We had just passed about 5 elephants grazing, literally, 10 meters off the road. We turned back and approached cautiously, watching these massive beasts grab entire branches and shove them into their gaping mouths. Huge, huge tusks. They plodded along parallel to the road, only occasionally checking us out. Stunned, we watched for 10 minutes, another fortunate window in which not a single other vehicle passed in either direction. We were silent and alert. These things could dominate our Defender with ease.

After these sightings, we were close to the border, and hurried in order to make it that day. At 5:30pm, we were running between bureaucratic buildings in order to get our passports and customs forms stamped correctly. By 6pm, we were on a ferryboat crossing the Zambezi river at Sunset, a glorious penultimate scene to a day in which we watched the sun rise on the south of Botswana and the sun set on the northernmost and only Botswanan-Zambian border crossing. A quick hour later we were in Livingstone, settled into a hostel, ate, read, and fell asleep.

Africa is absolutely immense. There is not a single thing in this continent that is not immense. I will write later about my experiences at Victoria Falls, which is also immense. Then, Wednesday, I am heading to Windhoek, Namibia, for a short side-tour to see the famous red sand dunes near Sossusvlei.

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05 Botswana sunrise through thick fog	06 huge anthill of which there were thousands	07 Potholes ahead (for next 200km)	08 nifty reflection picture, I guess
09 wild giraffes! in Botswana	10 wild elephant! and picturesque Africa	11 the elephants were close	12 Sunset over the Zambezi
13 Sunset over Zambezi #2

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