Botswana to Zimbabwe & Zambia- the final leg

Many apologies for the delay in the final chapter of our current adventure! Here it is... (you may want to get the kettle on first, as it's rather long) When I last got in touch I was in Botswana, after which, we headed for Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, arriving on 17th Feb at a fantastic hostel/campsite called Shoestrings, with a great bunch of regulars working and loitering there at the friendly bar, a beautiful garden and a swimming pool (rather dodgy looking & I never saw anyone swim in it, bar the two enormous great danes). Me, Fyf and our truck mates settled into a dorm and had a meeting with an activity organiser in the lounge and arranged a bunch of fun stuff to do over the next week. At 3 'o'clock we went on the 'sunset booze cruise'- a boat cruise on the Zambezi river with a free bar and another truck load of overlanders. Needless to say it was utter carnage and a great time was had by all, though I missed the sunset and didn't appreciate the wildlife. Afterwards we hit the bar at Shoestrings to annhialate (spelling?) ourselves further, resulting in my ripping half my clothes off and hurling myself into the dodgy swimming pool and thoroughly enjoying floating on my back in the water and absorbing the brilliant atmosphere, followed by leaping out and dancing around the bar dripping wet in my knickers and vest, much to the amusement of my travelling buddies.

In the morning I found myself very much battered and bruised, with lots of jewellery either lost or broken and of course with a very sore head. Luckily this was a condition I shared with the other girls and so we all headed out to get a full English at a cafe near by and try to get to grips with the Zim dollar. Breakfast for 8 people came to about 4 million dollars!!! the wadge of note was ridiculous. We soon learned about all kinds of corruption going on in Zimbabwe mainly due to the current ruling president, and the currency is one thing that needs sorting out. The whole country can only function thanks to the black market because the exchange rate is so unforgiving, so thats how we changed all our money. After breakfast we wandered the markets to haggle and barter for jewellery and trinkets, namely carved Nyami nyami's, good luck amulets made from stone or horn, resembling Nyami nyami, the serpent god and protector of the Zambezi river. Soon the heat and harrassment grew too tiring for us to bear so we went for lunch and to explore Vic Falls town, which is small, clean and brightly coloured. Quite charming and I rather liked it. It definately feels more like 'real' Africa, the further North you travel, as it becomes far less Westernised. By the evening and with the hangovers subsiding, we went out for a mean at the Kingdom, a huge posh casino in a huge hotel that also has resteraunts and stuff in it. You enter across a wooden board walk through huge pillars, water features and all kinds of over the top, brilliant bush and safari decor and inside theres marble everything, domed ceilings and gold decorations and fake ivory tusks, huge statues and all that business. Had not showered at this point for a fair few days as the showers and sinks at Shoestrings electrocuted you if you touched them (and I'm not talking a little shock here, I'm talkings muscle spasms, heart palpitations and loss of breath). I eventually learned to go in wearing my flip flops and stand on one foot so i could turn the taps with my spare flip flop to get clean under the freezing water.

On 19th Feb I was up very early to go on what was undoubtedly the wildest and most challenging horse trek of my life. Was collected from the hostel by the lady who ran the joint- aged, tough as old boots and completely crazy. She clattered up in a battered old land rover with the drivers door missing (the remaining ones held to with deadbolts), wearing a full length wax coat with a very grubby cockatiel clinging on to the collar. She was tiny thin, but nearly as tall as me. She had a surprised, wild look of insanity about her face, but with that innocence that batty old ladies sometimes have. She could obviously be fierce and no nonsense though, as we discovered when the landrover broke down a few yards down the road and she began barking and snapping impatiently down her mobile phone while simultaneously hollering out her door in Setswanese at some poor random boys on the road to give us a push start, which thankfully did the trick. My horse was a large grey arab thoroughbred cross named White Hawk. I was assured that although he was fast paced, he was safe. I was nervous having not ridden properly for a couple of years and being on an 'advanced' ride I would be in for a tough workout with a horse like this. True to his heritage, White Hawk went like a bullet. I rode behind our guide, Itale, using his horse as a brake barrier as we charged through the bush, followed by a polish girl and a second guide.

The four of us were on the hunt for buffalo, following tracks through dense vegitation with no apparrent pathway or trail, making tight twists and turns to avoid the unforgiving acacia thorns and pokey branches until I realized Itale was completely lost. It actually took me an hour or so to finally relax and begin enjoying myself, having goten used to my mount (and him me), and the challenging terrain. After that I had a brilliant time, laughing and giggling as we hurtled along or trotted at high speed through the exciting environment that varied from thick bush and jungle, open plain, mud bog and grassy swamp, scrambling up rocky slope with inclines I couldn't have managed on foot and jumping over streams and ditches. We never found buffalo in the end but at one point my horse fell down an aardvark hole, and we got so close to game such as waterbuck, impala, warthogs, guineafowl, hippos and a field FULL of maribu storks and lots of white backed vultures and kites that flew out of the trees and bush all around us, unimaginably close as we rode. We saw a buabao tree over 1000 years old, so huge that 20 people could have held hands around its thick trunk. These trees are hollow inside and were once used as prisons back in the day, by cutting a door in the side of them. We returned from the ride 3 hours later, drenched in sweat, me with a big macho cut across my cheek and deep, bleeding cuts on my knuckles from the acacia thorns, worn out but exstatic and hyper from the excitement of it all, and looking like I'd been dragged through a hedge backwards. Which I had.

On the 20th I went to see the falls. They were incredible. Nothing could have prepared me for the sight and feel of the whole thing. It was awesome. Made my eyes water, stomach jump and skin goose pimple. The noise and power were immense as the water pushed down through a relatively narrow gorge, the actual crack running as far as the eyes could see through the spray and mist clouding around us from the updraft, spitting up rainbows and soaking us as if someone had a hosepipe on us. We were able to walk almost the whole way along the front of the falls from it's upper level, in awe and imagining how Livingstone must have felt when he set foot here discovering this natural wonder for the first time in the western world. This was the day we bayed farewell to our tourleader, driver and one of the girls, and hitched a lift with a different truck that was heading north (which just so happenned to be the same truck that 3 of our companions had joined to travel as far as Nirobi) to get over the border into Zambia, where we stayed for a few days, exploring the town of Livingstone, playing with yet another currency and hooking up with some friends of Fyfs from last year when she visited.

From Zambia we took a micralite flight to see Victoria Falls from the air and it was smashing fun!! We wore suits as thick as sleeping bags but went barefoot, which was exciting as it added to the feeling of vulnerability in the opensided flying machines, which were essentially a go-cart with an outboard motor fixed underneath a giant stunt kite. We wore big earphones and a mic under our helmets so we could talk to our drivers and that was brilliant fun too. The driver pointed out to me the falls had formed over a million years ago, a few miles further than it is today, behind a sharp zig zag of hundred meter deep gorges(below. the actual fallsy bit os on the far right).
We flew about 1500m high in the sky and the view was brilliant. I just couldn't take my eyes off the immense falls. We flew low over Livingstone island on the brink of the falls and then over some more land to spot herds of Cape buffalo, elephants, and as we went over the golf course there were impala and waterbuck grazing on it, which was quite a bizarre sight. Could see herds of hippo in the Zambezi too. When we landed I was able to appreciate just how fast we were going (VERY!) and it was really exciting.

The following day Fyf went white water rafting (her alternative to my white-knuckle horse riding!), while I explored the town and on the 22nd we said goodbye to the remaining girls from out overland truck tour and relocated to a different hostel and on the 23rd we walked back over the border into Zimbabwe, sweating and straining under the weight of our enormous backbacks as we crossed the bridge over the falls...which was amazing, and we stopped for a while to watch people bungie jumping off it, like Fyf did last year before winding our way back to Shoestrings backpackers, to spend our last few days in Africa partying very hard indeed. oopsie! me and Fyf ready to pay our bar tab after a three day party madness!!

The 24th saw us on yet another type of bush safari- on elephant back! It was excellent, again, riding allowing us to get very close to the other animals, and one of the elephants had a tiny tiny baby which was adorable. The ride was very early but the package included a slap up breakfast after our ride so it was all good. The place housed orphaned and captive bred elephants only, and some of them are orphaned when their mothers get killed by trains.

Look how big the elephant is!! I thought I was going to fly right off the back!!

Those last few days were awesome. We met such brilliant people, including a couple of blokes we'd first met in Zambia, and had some really interesting conversations. We learned all about the ways of life in Zimbabwe, and about the polotics and corruption going on, meeting a white S'African hunter who'd been evicted from his family farm property under a new law and who had some amazing stories to tell. By midnight on the 26th we were at Vic Falls airport for our internal flight to Johannasburg, which draws us near to the conclusion of the story, which is written in full a few posts back, titles "freezing greetings from England" for those of you who are very confused by the backwards and scrambled entrys at the moment!!

A great many thanks to everyone who has followed and/or been a part of my stories over the last 7 months it has been a truly memorable, worthwhile and mind-broadening expreience. I am back in Cambridge for now, and hope than anyone in the area will soon be in touch to catch up before I move back to the farm in Oxfordshire (I'm accessible on my old phone number, email me if you haven't got it!!).

Namibia to Botswana

February 2006
Sand boarding in Namibia was so cool! We kakked ourselves whizzing belly down 120m high sand dunes over distances of 400m on a piece of plywood! I was clocked at 72km/h with a speed radar gun, though on other runs I definatetly exceeded that speed! The comedy stunt/injury award went to me at the end of the day, for not putting the breaks on (digging my toes into the sand) hard enough at the right place on my second run, zooming over a load of rocks and then smashing face first into a near vertical sand dune in front of me and doing a mega wipeout in style. It actually really hurt and the burn on my neck looked like someone had tried to cut my throat! My mouth was actually FULL of sand!

We left Swakupmund after that and went to a cheetah park en route to camp. We went out on little open backed landrover pickups into a huge paddock and were surrounded by 17 hungry cheetah and watched them being fed, it was amazing. We even got to play with a couple of tame adult cheetahs that lived up at the farm house. They are the only big cat that can purr, and purr they did, whenever we stroked them and it was the most wonderful sound that has ever graced my ears. That night in the bar I had my first experience with a wild snake. I spotted it crawling along one of the roof beams. Unfortunately my exciting discovery was not well recieved, and dispite me telling the barmen and guests it wasn't poisonous, they bashed it and killed it. I was really upset, more than I expected, and had to excuse myself to hide on the floor in the dark at the back of the truck and get it all out of my system before returning to skin and disect it on the bar by lantern light to identify it and demonstrate that it wasn't venomous. The bars clientel suddenly became an audience watching me and it turned into quite a lesson, and there was one overlander who happenned to be a vet so he joined in and gave me a hand which was great fun. (inside it's belly we found a skink (lizard)!! The next day we arrived at Atosha national park where we camped and did a few game drives, spotting pretty much every animal you could imagine... tons of giraffes, elephants...zebras... lions...

and all kinds of antelope and gazelle, warthogs, and amazing birdlife. And everything had irrisistable tiny babies!!!

At the campsite me and Fyf walked among a troop of mongooses without them batting so much as an eyelid while they scraped away in the soil after lizards and bugs to eat. After Atosha we went to the Okovango Delta where we were driven in mocoros (dug out wooden canoes propelled with a pole, like punting or a gondala) by some locals through hippo and croc and motorboat made narrow channels through the reeds, the water inches from spilling into the mocorrows that we lay snugly inside, surrounded by water lilies on clear water that you could drink (infact, it was the only drinking water available, and it was lovely- soft, fresh and earthy tasting, flitered superbly by the reeds), while eagles soared overhead. It was so gorgeous and peaceful. Above, Jen being a hippy child!

We camped in the delta and while lightening filled the sky and the clouds threatened us with rain, we were lucky and stayed dry. Above, Emma, one of our truckmates, ready for sleep, christening her new mosquito net. She had to get Fyf to hold it down by dumping a huge buffalo skull on the end!!

Were up ridiculously early (our guide had already boiled the kettle on the campfire for coffee though!) and went on a couple of walks to track elephants, feeling like extras from a jurassic park movie as we stepped in their huge footprints as our guide told us all about the different animals signs and the trees and plants. We found the elephants in the end and watched from just 50m away! the night before we stood and watched hippos in the water too, which was very cool.

Now we are in Botswana. Today we did a game drive round the Chobe national park and saw all kinds of things... amazing birds (such as these BRILLIANT GUINEA FOWL!!!!), including 3 types of hornbill (above), impalas and... kudu so close you could almost touch them(above, a female of the species. I think these are the most hansome of the antelopes and they are one of my favourites for sure. The males are magnificent beasts, and have huge spiralling horns), and my first wild crocodile!! When we came back for breakfast that our tour leader and driver (Sue and James) had prepared, we found a warthog family trotting between our tents, and James chasing off endless harassment by vervet monkeys that were all over the truck and stealing our food, while he threw limes at them!

Below, the three warthogs crash out on full bellies after consuming our entire supply of bread. What a spectacle it was to see the mother suddenly snatch the carrier bag and run off with it in her mouth, trotting briskly with the other 2 in tow, tails erect like car aerials!!So this afternoon we have some free time. I have to buy some new flip flops as my last ones got nicked at a campsite a couple of days ago and so I've been barefoot ever since!!! The mosquitos are unbelievable evil. We all look like we have the plague we are so badly bitten and are trying our best not to scratch our legs off!! This evening we are going on a river cruise so will see more hippos and hopefully crocs and elephants too, while we pretend to be upper class safari goers with pimms cocktails. Cheers darlings!! (Below, some pictures from said cruise, which was brill. Elephants were swimming across the Zambezi river right in front of us! It was amazing!! We also got very close to crocodiles, hippos, a Nile monitor lizard... awesome!!)

Cape Town to Namibia, a shamefully quick narrative

Mon 6th Feb 2006

At the mo I'm in Namibia. The tour is going great. In South Africa (Cape Town) I finally fulfilled my life long dream of swimming with Great White sharks. It was awesome, even though they were only 10-footers they were beautiful and mesmerising and we had a great day out on the boat. The water was freezing and the visibility was terrible unless they were chomping on the cage, which they oblidged in doing a couple of times!! Fyf wet her pants!! I think what will become one of the highlights of my trip will be the moment of the morning I spent perched on the side of the boat drying off in the sun with my legs dangling over the side, with one of the most impressive predators the earth has ever seen circling and glistening in the water just meters beneath my feet. Fantastic!

We also went up table mountain while we were there which was really cool- it was huge and cold and the top completely flat. Cloud whooshed towards you and around you and over your head, and spilled over the top and down the sheer rock face as if it were a waterfall, only in silence. We saw lots of agama lizards and rock hyraxes (below) up there too. We rented a car and went on a little road trip to some fishing villages with Fyfs brother and his girlfriend who also happenned to be out here same time as us but then I got mega sick with terrible gastro entiritis and landed myself on the doctors trolly yet again! He hooked my up to an IV drip for an hour and now I'm right as rain. Had massive dehydration and puked all over the car on the way back (lovely!!).

We joined an overland tour with 4 other girls and will cruise up to Victoria Falls with them. So far we've been canoeing up the orange river- the divide between South Africa and Namibia, we visited the fish river canyon- the second largest after the Grand Canyon (well cool!) and hiked up Dune 45, which is the famous one in the Namib desert that all the photos on calendars are of. It was only 120m high but it killed us getting up it. You lose all sense of perspective and distance, like being underwater. The desert and dunes were incredible. I never thought I'd sit on the top of a huge dune and watch the sun rise. (At which point, just as the sun spilled through the clouds, lighting the dunes on fire and the range to my side flaming pink, in the most amazing sunrise I'll ever see, my camera broke, having got sand in it. So better pics will follow in the months to come). The feeling of walking along the peaks is like nothing I've ever experienced. It's like being on top of the world, or in another world, and is very exhilirating.

On the way through the desert to the town of Strokupmund where we are now, our truck got stuck in the sand and it took us all night to dig it out. A right palava! we ended up camping right there in the wild and moving on in the morning! Yesterday we visited the Cape Cross fur seal colony. They are actually sea lions though, not seals as their name implies. There were thousands and thousands of them (it smelled a bit ripe!) all with 2 month old babies and you could get so close! It was a truly amazing sight. I felt like David Attenborough. Tomorrow the girls are going sky diving. I can't afford it and have done it before so am just filming them getting ready and landing etc but am so envious as would love to go again! The day after we're going back out to the desert to go sand boarding- like surfing but in the sand dunes!! The wildlife you see on the sides of the road here is so cool!! Huge birds of prey all over the show, warthogs, more springbok than you can shake a stick at, ostriches, an oryx, I almost ran over a little tortoise when we were road tripping too (near gave me a heart attack)!!! And the beetles are HUGE!!

Freezing Greetings From England

I now find myself on home ground. Needless to say there was no kissing of earth going on when we set foot back in the land of winter jackets, pavements, mobile phones, congestion, freezing weather, crowded buildings, rushing around, running late, and all kinds of cleanliness. Rather a culture shock, really. I actually haven't yet dared to remove my hat or scarf yet, for fear of freezing to death!

We ended up arriving back a day earlier than planned because something had gone wrong with the flights and without telling us they had cancelled Fyfs flight and put mine back a day. We discovered this after getting a domestic flight from Victoria Falls (Zimbabwe) to Johannasburg (South Africa) and weren't allowed on the flight that we thought we had seats reserved for!! We were pretty upset and frustrated, having left Vic Falls sooner than we wished, to find ourselves stranded for the night in Jo'burg, where there wasn't all that much for us to see or do, and by this point we were very low on cash. Jo'burg was rainy and miserable, reflecting our moods as we contemplated the end of our amazing journey and was surprisingly chilly. So we handled the crisis as only two girls can- we hit Nandos for a mega injection of junk food, and checked into a nice lodge for the night, paying approximately 20 quid each for transfers to and from the airport, bed and breakfast. Result! The place we stayed was called the Dove's Nest and we shared a twin en suite room with a TV. We spent ages getting clean in the shower room, scrubbing, shaving, brow plucking, moisturising and enjoying the luxury of not being electrocuted by the taps (will explain in later post) and then slept for 12 hours straight on a proper matress with a feather pillow and thick duvet. Duvets! How I had missed duvets!! When you're on the road for so long you become accustomed to being totally filthy and sleeping on anything. You forget how amazing it feels to be clean and all cosy in a proper bed, and how these things are taken so much for granted I felt like a princess and it was the best sleep in weeks.

In the morning we hid from the weather, and after our full English got back into those marvelous beds and watched films on telly until it was time for the taxi to take us to the airport, where we went a bit nuts in the duty free, crippled ourselves under the weight of all the booze and souvenier shopping and caught a flight from South Africa to Frankfurt, Germany. Where it was minus 3 degrees celcius, snowing, and we lamented having very little in the way of warm clothing to hand. Now we had originally planned on stopping over at Frankfurt to visit the zoo and whatnot, but after the unexpected mishap in Jo'burg, had to reschedule so at Frankfurt we just changed flights and headed straight for London Heathrow. Everyone on the flight was in dark colours and the atmosphere was decidedly miserable. It is safe to say that we were, without a doubt, the most colourful and healthy looking people on the entire plane.

London carried on the theme and was pretty nasty, too. We ripped straight into our bags to get more layers on and then got a bus to Oxford and another bus from there to Woodstock, where our work mate Ceris picked us up in her car and took us back to the farm (Zoo) at Heythrop. Back in the trailer, I was almost in tears reuniting with my snakes, who I had missed so much. I also met Ceris's new meerkat, Spud, and we get along famously. To keep warm, we had to share my housemates double bed (he was away on holiday) and in the morning stayed in our pajamas and made pancakes for breakfast, enjoying being ladies of leisure (as Fyf put it!), and running out among the flamingos, storks, swansand crowned cranes on the front lawn in on bedclothes and slippers to bring Paul and Micheal (who we work with) breakfast and coffees as they were resurfacing the monkey enclosures, mixing concrete in the unforgiving weather.

So now I am back in Cambridge, trying to sort my life out (so to speak) before returning to the farm on a full time basis in April (and a quick visit next weekend for a mates birthday). It's great to be romping with the ferrets again (though a bit cold for rolling on the floor, and Mum won't let me in the house with them), although Flossy seems to have suddenly aged and is rather frail and skinny.

As you may well have noticed, the entire tour of Africa is missing from the blog. Apologies! I will be spending the next month (though I hope it won't take that long!) filling in the blank, with words and pictures, so watch this space!

Huge thanks to everyone who has followed my adventures around the world by whatever means and supported me, and an even bigger thankyou to the many truly wonderful and interesting people who I've met along the way and who have enriched my experience so much, without you it would not have been the same and I will remember our time shared always.