Cape Town-Hooray!
Trip Start
Jan 10, 2008
1
5
22
Trip End
Jan 20, 2009
Cape Town,
South Africa
Sunday, March 9, 2008
I'll quickly fill you all on Botswana and Namibia.
Botswana
Massive improvement in the roads. Roads become very important to you when you're on a 'truck' for 10 hours a day. Girls now daring to wear bikini tops and my pedometer has stopped counting potholes. We did however feel very sorry for the cyclists. Regardless of their 5 crates of coca-cola stacked worryingly high or the cycles heavily laden with the weeks firewood or the cycling equivalent to people carriers, the only warning they all got was a long blast on the air horns right up there backsides sending them wobbling hazardously into the verges. Herds of goats, donkeys and cows faired no better.
Little Fact file
Capital-Gaborone
Population-1600,000
Currency-Pula
Main Attractions-Okavango Delta and Chobe National Park
We both really enjoyed Botswana but also feel it was 'uneventful', which I think has also lead to a "Botswana Blog Block"
"I'm following the leader"
. We arrived during there summer/rainy season, not at all the best time, but we were lucky enough to experience hot, often stifling, sunny, humid days.Okavango Delta
1430km, the Okavango delta river rises in central Angola, making its way across N/W Botswana stretching out like an "open palm" across the flatlands. Its the only African river which doesn't make it to the ocean, its sucked dry in the Kalahari desert. We plumped for a 2day, 1 night camping in the wilds trip. We met our guide, "Company" who insisted on being called "C" with his Mokoro-its a shallow dug out canoe which C punts along at the back. He'd dug our mokoro out of a sausage tree several years previous taking him 3 months. We sweep along the labyrinth of waterways effortlessly. The still sparkling waters reflecting perfectly the tall dark green reeds, which occasionally whipped us in the face, and the numerous pure white water lillies. Wildlife was very hard to spot due to adequate water supplies-no need for them to venture into the delta-disappointing so its definitely on the re-visit list between July-September months some day. We continued gliding past many hippos carefully tracking our course, feeling really relaxed almost sleepy until C came out with a real gem-he told us that his cousin had met an untimely death when a massive hippo had tossed him from his mokoro, bitten him and finally drowned him in 1997-Oh great not so sleepy now!
Other Botswana Experiences
We took a 45min Cessna plane ride over the delta at dusk. It was quite an experience not one that we will ever forget mainly due to our pilot-Bruce from Devon. Bruce explained that this was his last flight before his well earned days off and felt a little risky-what could his mean.....we soon found out.....all I can say for those of you who have watched Top Gun you'll understand.....we did a Top Gun stylie fly by over the ground, I swear the wheels of the plane brushed over the reeds, we were so close to the ground I could almost see myself smile in the shadow of the plane
'Chico' and M - lost again!
! Elephant Adrenaline
This is quite simple...we went on a sunrise bush walk, stumbled across a massive bull elephant who was not too pleased to see us. He curled his trunk, threw out his ears and raised his tusks whilst peering over the top of an acacia tree. C hardly instilled confidence as he waved his arms, clapped and whistled a little and then another C gem-"not good to wear white top Suzy" and "not good I'm in red top"-oh great! I'd hatched my plan, rip off top and run in a zig-zag pattern across dusty plain. Luckily it didn't come to that, we walked on by.
Namibia
"An annual quota of a minimum of 300 days of sunshine"
Capital-Windhoek
population-2,055,080
Currency-Namibian Dollar
Again we both really enjoyed Namibia, again on the re-visit list during June-October months.
Etosha National Park, 23,175 sq km
"Great white place of dry water"
Far from dry
Ahh - a cuddly White Rhino!
. We hit Etosha during there summer/rainy season. We were lucky not to experience any daytime rain but at night we experienced fantastic displays of distant pink lightening storms and the constant rumbling of threatened storms. Everywhere was very green and lush with water holes filled to there brim. We arrived after a 'tense' 8 hour truck journey, music to loud, who hasn't done the washing up and the growing frustrations evident in our guides use of their air horns with quick blasts becoming more frequent and prolonged. Wilting in the 3o'clock, 38 degrees fierce sun camping site dust hole, M asked me to deal with the tent slowly and then he was off...Oh. 15 stifling minutes later a could see a distant SOS stlylie hand waving and there it was.....the key to our chalet upgrade! Hal-a-lu-ya.Air conditioning, double bed, duvet, mini-bar,bug-free power shower, pristine white cotton towels (sorry Vix as much as I like the giant pink shamy leather it has absolutely no place when 100% cotton is around), 2 nights and as much as you could eat fresh fruit, good old English style breakfasts-WOW. We checked out the sighting diary, not much at all in the previous 5 days. So we sacked off another hot, dusty 3 hours on the truck that same afternoon in favor of ice cold white wine spritzers, numerous refreshing dips in the pool and challenged the laundry lady to 4 weeks worth of grimy African soil laden cloths-result! Not one once of regret. We spent the following day doing much the same, watched weaver birds busily weave, strolled over to the Ecology centre-all very interesting and continued with the spritzers
Beautiful Big 'Dugga' Boy!
. We did have a little poolside excitement-The Snake Man. He turned up mid afternoon with rifle under one arm, whilst the other held an extended arm tool and a very large white cotton sack with an equally as large black skull and cross bones printed on it. It turned out that the poolside gate that M and I had passed happily through numerous times that day, delivering ice cold spritzers to each other, was in fact the sanctury for a very venous spitting cobra!We are now in Cape Town sitting back and enjoying the 30 degrees of clear blue skies sunshine, its wonderful. Tomorrow we are venturing into the winelands for a day of cheese and wine tasting and today as the weather is clear we are heading up table mountain.
Must dash, lots of love
Suzy and Michael xxx
PS. M has managed a couple of pics but it was painfully slow, we are having a re-think, bear with us. They are on the first blog entry-enjoy.
