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Showing posts from March, 2006

Livingstone and Victoria Falls

My first Impression of Zambia were not good. Firstly the border was a shambles. There was only one ferry across the Zambezi for all traffic between Botswana and Zambia and once on the other side there were trucks everywhere trying to get through customs with no visible que. There was rubbish and touts everywhere on the sides of the roads. As we got approached Livingstone I got little shivers as we got closer and closer to the cloud that hung over Victoria Falls. Which are, as you would expect, amazing There is a constant spray so don't think you'll stay dry or take a decent photo with a digital camera. I tried with a plastic bag with varying success. Photos did little to capture the experience anyway. The sunset game cruise that night was often jokingly refered to as the 'booze cruise' by our drivers. I expected given the name to see some wildlife or maybe even a sunset. I saw neither. There was however plenty of booze, all you could drink actually and there were 'G

Kasane and Chobe NP

Maun to Kasane was eventful for two reasons. 1) Elephant sightings were a regular occurence. Its kind of funny when you see your first elephant and its miles away but you still spend twenty minutes taking photos of it because its still fricken awesome only to go over the next hill and almost hit twenty of them as they cross the road. Incidentally this occurred with almost every animal you see. We must have stopped for ten minutes the first time we saw a zebra or giraffe, two days later its like why are we stopping its only a giraffe? And 2) i was awoken from my afternoon kip by a shatter proof truck windscreen shattering all over me. Besides the shock from the sight of blood and shards of glass all over me it turns out i was left with just a few scratches. Once in Kasane we camped on the Chobe river. We did a game drive in the morning; it was the same old story, lion poo, lion tracks, no lions. There were however elephants, hippos and crocs everywhere. In the evening we did a game cr

Okavango Delta

From our base campsite in Maun we drove in the back of the truck to the delta (Strangely passing a VB commodore on the way). Once there we were met by a number of pollers and their mokoros in varying degrees of waterproofness. I chose the safest looking for a very relaxing two hour trip up the delta to our campsite. From there we went on dusk and dawn walks. We were given instructions on how to act if we game across a rhino, lion, buffalo or elephant. Unfortunately those instructions were useless. Despite the presence of elephant tracks, elephant poo and elephant scratching posts our 'tracker' failed to 'track' an elephant or anything else for that matter. In my free time i had a go at polling a mokoro (quiet please children). It's not nearly as easy as they make it look. I ended up tipping over and in the process breaking a pole. For the next two days i felt about as welcome as Michael Jackson at a wiggles concert. The flight over the delta was an experience not to

Kalahari Campsite

Went on a walk with kalahari bushman, possibly the same ones from the 'Gods must be crazy'. But i doubt it. Basically just walked around been told about the medicinal properties of plants and how to find water from places where there appears to be none.