“Everything is under control” Jorge Ndawa
The flights to fly to Livingstone in Zambia were booked in October 2017. The ’Wildlife of Botswana’ tour with Bench Africa was also booked. Exciting!
We checked the flights midweek. We got the packing done. We got a lift to the airport in plenty of time for a 7pm flight on Saturday 12 May 2018. Here we go, we’re off to Africa to see beautiful scenery and lots of wild animals. Or are we?
We looked at the board to see which desk to go to for check-in and there was no 7pm SAA flight to Johannesburg via Perth !!! We queued at the Virgin Airlines desk (codeshare with SAA) and were a little bit stumped when the lady confirmed there wasn’t a 7pm flight, there was a 7:35pm flight, but we weren’t booked on it. “Are you definitely supposed to be flying today?” she asked. Our jaws were dropping at this point and we pointed to our printed itinerary we’d place in front of her which had all the details there, even down to the seat numbers we had chosen. She agreed she could see that and suggested we phone our agent, Expedia. While Rodney went through the whole, press 1 for this, press 2 for that, press 3 to find out what you want, I continued conversing with our check-in lady and now another Virgin lady. They walked us over to a supervisor, who tapped and tapped on her computer to see what she could come up with. “Ah ha” she said. “You were supposed to fly on the 9:35 am flight this morning!” “WHAAAT!!!!” I said. Panic, we felt. There had also been a 1:40pm flight that day, which might have been better, but we hadn’t been moved to that one…?
By now Rodney had got through to a human being at Expedia and on telling them our problem, the chap agreed that we had been moved and no-one had informed us. We had been moved to a flight which left Sydney 9 ½ hours before the one we chose and booked! This would have meant that, after a 5-hour flight to Perth, we would have had an 11-hour wait for our late night, 11-hour flight, to Johannesburg. Even after all that, we still had a 6-hour wait at Johannesburg for our 1 ½-hour flight to Livingstone in Zambia. There is no way we would have accepted the change of our first flight, if we had been informed! We’ve since found out that “no replacement ticket was issued” to us. Hence the agent never told us. Hmmm.
At this point I was deciding that this was not a good start to what was already a slightly daunting trip to me. Mr Expedia offered Rodney $200 for the stuff up but, with the now five helpful Virgin staff, shaking their heads and muttering figures like $1,000, Rodney declined the offer and told him we would be discussing the issue on our return from Africa……that is, if we ever got there and back. The Virgin staff whizzed around trying to get us onto an already full flight and managed to come up with two seats in Economy, in separate rows, sat in middle seats between strangers. One of the Virgin ladies gave us passes to use the business class lounge while we waited for the 7:35pm flight and it was here that we discovered that the lounge was full of players, coaches, managers and fans of the West Coast Eagles AFL team. Our brains ticked and clicked, and we reckoned that the footy team had wanted our seats and needed to fly a little later following their afternoon match against a Sydney team. And that was why the flight was delayed to 7:35pm, and why we got bumped.
The man seated in the window seat next to me sniffed and snorted all the way to Perth. The man on the other side of me in the aisle seat had constantly twitching legs. Sometimes the left leg, sometimes the right leg, sometimes both at the same time. He also had unpleasant b.o. and constantly fidgeted. All three seats vibrated and shook which annoyed the sniffy snorty man and gave us absolutely no chance of reading or snoozing all the way to Perth.
To add to our woes, the delayed flight took off 25 minutes late, putting me in another panic that we would miss our connection to the Johannesburg flight, especially as we had to change terminals in Perth. As it turned out, the flight made up a lot of time and we did manage to catch our next plane to Africa.
The frustrating thing was that we had checked our itineraries on paper and on line during the week. Rodney even phoned SAA on the Wednesday to ask if we needed to confirm our flights and was told we didn’t need to; they were all already confirmed. Our only cheerful thought was that our return flights seemed to be in order when our Virgin lady checked them at the airport. But should we take that as red? We checked our return flights again before leaving Africa; just to be sure; ever hopeful and with fingers crossed. All of this palaver was really not acceptable as a terrible start to a holiday and a cause for anxiety throughout.
At the time of publishing this, we’re still waiting to hear from Expedia and South African Airways to find out what happened.
When we got to Livingstone Airport a taxi took us to the Ngomo Zanga Hotel, which was very cute but a little far out of town. We sat by the tiny swimming pool for a while but could feel ourselves falling asleep. We were hungry, but the hotel restaurant wasn’t going to open on a Sunday, dang! We desperately needed to stretch our legs, so we opted to walk the dusty roads to a shopping centre and not a lot else. We later discovered that we hadn’t reached the centre of town, it was a lot further up the main road. But we found Olga’s Italian restaurant and ordered a pizza, which was actually just as good as anything we’ve had in Italy. We managed to get back to the hotel before dark and despite desperately trying to stay awake for a while we had crashed to sleep by 8pm.
If you ever get a chance in your lifetime to visit Victoria Falls, Mosi-oa-Tunya, ‘the smoke that thunders’, do it. We watched the water falling from the Zambia side on the Sunday and again from the Zimbabwe side on Monday 14 May. The noise and the spray at this time of year, when the falls are in full flood, is awesome. We were soaked, despite wearing raincoats. We wandered along almost every footpath to almost every viewpoint we could find, but some of them we couldn’t access because of the amount of ‘rain’ falling on us and the fact that you wouldn’t have seen anything from the viewpoints if you had walked down those paths. We laughed, we shouted to each across the noise and we constantly said “wow”. Rodney now wants to see it all again when the falls are at their lowest volume of water, just to see the views more clearly and compare the difference.
Our taxi driver taking us from our Livingstone Hotel to the Zambia/Zimbabwe border waited for 1 ½ hours with our bags, while we walked to the falls viewpoints, crossed a very slippery bridge and also walked down to the Zambezi River at the Boiling Pot; all of which were spectacular and quite exhilarating. The driver then dropped us and our bags just a hundred metres down the road at the border post. We got through quite quickly and waved away all the taxi drivers wanting to drive us over the Livingstone Bridge to the Zimbabwe border post. We wanted to walk over the bridge and take photos and being a narrow one-way bridge, there was no way a taxi would be able to stop for photos. We have to admit that we were the only ones walking over the bridge dragging our luggage. We stopped to watch the bungee jumpers and took photos of the falls from another angle. When we got to the Zimbabwe side of the bridge there was a sign advising us that the border entry was quite a long way up the road. Dang! Suddenly dragging our wheelie bags wasn’t such fun.
The A-Zambezi Hotel outside the town of Victoria Falls was a nice introduction to what was to be a very tricky tour. Our lovely room overlooked a lawn and the Zambezi River and at night you could hear the hippopotamus doing their thing. We almost had a close encounter with one, when we all returned to the hotel from dinner on our second night. A hippo was grazing on the grass at the front of the hotel and seemed completely oblivious to us driving past. An even closer encounter was had with a boomslang snake. I was a little relived that we weren’t allocated a room on the ground floor, but when we got back to the hotel after our visit to Victoria Falls, the snake was slithering down the outside stairs from our floor! I was glad to see it slither away on to the grass lawn. Note to self, don’t walk across that lawn to the bar this evening !!!
Between May 12 and May 16, we managed to cover six countries: Australia, South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Namibia and into Botswana. I don’t think we’ve ever managed to do that number of countries in that short time before!
Entering into Namibia was the only border control that made our group of ten, plus our cheery guide, Jorge from Harare, Zimbabwe, have a good laugh and a chuckle. Our tour group consisted of four men and six women, all of roughly the same age. Karen and Sharon were from Adelaide, Australia, Peter and Kim were from the Gold Coast, Australia, Patrick and Jocelyn were from Belgium, Sandy and Carolyn were from Vancouver Island, Canada and then there was us. Before being allowed into the border control building, we had our temperature taken by a man who pointed an infrared laser thermometer at our foreheads; seemed a little unfriendly. He also had a basket of free condoms…”if you would like one?”
When we entered the building, there were a few travellers ahead of us and a young African lady. When the chap behind the desk got to the young lady, he beckoned her to stand aside and he pointed at Sandy and Patrick to come forward. They did, and he studied their passports, stamped them in and waved them on. He then pointed to Rodney and Peter to step forward and processed them. We all assumed that he was being sexist and doing all the men first. The young lady in front of us then stepped forward, but he waved her aside yet again. Another older black lady had now entered and joined in with us querying what the desk chap was up to. He called Kim and myself forward and asked how old we were, we obviously said something right as he processed us next. At this point the older African lady asked him why he wasn’t serving the young lady and he told us all to “respect our elders and shut up”. He then asked how old Carolyn and Jocelyn were and processed them next. By this point we were actually quite impressed that he had managed to get us ladies in correct descending order of age. Despite our muttering protestations (don’t argue with border control in any country), he still wouldn’t serve the young lady and asked Karen and Sharon to step forward. There’s only a year between them, but Karen wasn’t too impressed that he served her first, he got those two the wrong way around, oops. He then served the older black lady and when Jorge approached the counter the sexist bureaucrat waved him away and finally served the young lady, who was by now very annoyed that her husband was still waiting outside for her and she had a 6-month old baby at home that she was anxious to get home to. More people had arrived by now and we thought we might be waiting ages for Jorge to be served, but he did get stamped in next and we all piled back on the bus and headed off across the Caprivi strip of north-eastern Namibia.
By the time we arrived at Camp Kwando, the sun was setting. We were given a welcome drink and sent off to our tented rooms with a staff member carrying each suitcase, or holdall on their heads. The girl that carried mine was no bigger than me and I have no idea how she managed to swing my bag up on to her head and then look like she was carrying it with ease. I was very glad that I was travelling light for her sake. We were forewarned that our rooms might contain stink bugs, and they did; tiny little things and lots of them. We were still finding the darn things in our bags at future accommodations. Even at our last camp, I managed to find one at the bottom of my bag when I emptied it out to re-pack for the journey home.
The following morning, we popped into Kwando village next door, before heading off to Botswana. As always happens to me on these occasions, I got picked out from our group to dance with the witch doctor and to be given some advice. Apparently, I was going to have a good journey and good luck; I sure hoped he was right! To support the village in their tourism efforts, a few of our group purchased baskets and bowls from their tiny dark shop. But having already bought a beautiful bowl made from coloured telephone wires, back in Victoria Falls, I went for something a bit different, a kalimba or African thumb piano. It is tiny, very rough and only has four keys, but I can get a nice, simple sound out of it.
Later that morning, on the 17th, we were stopped by the Namibian Police. We were told to stay seated on the bus and the very thorough police officer checked around the vehicle. She looked decidedly happy when she spotted that the South African registered tax discs were out of date and proceeded to have a slightly heated discussion with Jorge. He was taken across to a desk under a tree on the opposite side of the road to continue with the argument and show the paperwork proving that the discs had been renewed. We all piled off the bus and tried to find a tiny bush for a private wee…hmm… and we waited and waited for the police to let us proceed. They wanted a fine of 1,000 Rand to be paid, because Jorge only had photocopies of the renewal paperwork from Jenman Tours. They also wouldn’t accept the company credit card so Jorge, looking rather embarrassed, asked if any of us could cobble together enough Rands to pay the fine until he could get to a bank and repay us. We had none, but fortunately some of those going on to South Africa afterwards did have enough and the police released us to carry on with our journey.
When it took half an hour to fill up with petrol at a service station…the pumps are very slow and the staff kept wandering off mid-service…. we were glad to be leaving Namibia and thankfully, passing out of the country through the border control on the west side, was a lot less discriminatory than the entering on the east side.
The Fluffy Bakery in Shakawe, Botswana, didn’t look as enticing as a French patisserie, but they do sell ‘fat cakes’ there. I wonder what they look like, or does the name pertain more towards what they do to you….?
The roads in Botswana were appalling, at times there seemed to be more potholes than tarmac. Jorge spent a lot of time driving along the dirt verges, on either side of the road. Along some of those verges people rode donkeys; their legs spread wide and they were jiggled up and down with the speed of the animals’ stride. It made me recall my jiggly ride on the plane from Sydney to Perth……no, let’s not go back there. As the manager at the Guma Lodge commented to Jorge when we were leaving, “it would be better if they skimmed the bits of tarmac off the top and let it be an unsealed road. It would be smoother!” As we passed one large pothole I heard Jorge exclaim “you could fish in that one!!!” Jorge also reckons that the police cannot tell a good driver from a drunk one because everyone has to veer all over the road to avoid the continual potholes. I reckon if anyone needs to find a good slalom driver, check out the guys who have trained in Botswana, their very skilled in that style of driving!!
Most of our 14-day tour was along very straight, dusty, flat roads with no change in elevation. There was nothing to see except occasional villages and local people strolling about. The vegetation was low and scrubby with nothing vibrant to see apart from the huge blue sky. Coming across some damp brown lumps of poo by the side of the road was always cause for excitement or “good news” as the guides called it. When we ever spotted the animals that had deposited them the cameras clicked non-stop.
The appropriately named Guma Lagoon Camp was set on the north-eastern edge of the Okavango Delta, beside the Guma Lagoon. From the main road it was a rough, bumpy ride on a sandy road for half an hour and we finally arrived at the camp in the dark. We were fed cold chicken and cold vegetables; I guess we did arrive a lot later than the chef had expected. Our bags were again delivered to our tented cabins on the heads of the staff and we spent the night listening to the strange sounds around us.
After breakfast we all boarded a fast boat and whizzed across the Guma Lagoon to a bit of muddy land on the far side. Here we were transferred to mokoro, dugout canoes; though they no longer use wooden ones ‘dug out’ from tree trunks, they’re now made from very rough fibre-glass. The explanation was that they are now preserving the few larger trees that remain around the delta and the fibre-glass ones last longer. Two of us climbed into each one, apart from Jorge who had his all to himself, not that he got lonely as we all followed each other in a single line, almost touching each other.
The boats are propelled through the shallow, narrow waterways by a man standing in the stern and pushing with a long wooden pole, in much the same way as punting. When we set off, it seemed very wobbly and I’ll admit to being rather nervous knowing there were plentiful hippos and crocodiles in the area. But Richard, our ‘poler’ said he had being doing it since he was a child and he was now forty years old. Once you got used to the wobble and into the rhythm, and tried to forget about the wild animals, it was a rather nice way to be moving along; certainly a very nice change from being in the rattily, shaky vehicles that we had already spent days in and had many more to come.
After an hour or so, we pulled up on Madikwena Island and Sunday, an elderly local man guided us around for an hour pointing out the hippo poo, various trees and flowers and explaining the various ways in which they use everything around them. He made a darn good sewing needle from an acacia thorn and then threaded it with an extremely fine strip of a palm leaf. The sausage tree, or Kigelia, was mighty impressive; the fruit can grow up to a metre long and can weigh up to 10kgs, they’re huge and they look like an enormous pale sausage hanging on a long rope from the branches. Some trees are covered in them. They’re very odd and you wouldn’t want to sit under one, or even park your car there, in case one dropped. But Sunday informed us that they believe if you make a paste and rub it on a skin cancer, it will cure you….?!
He also told us about the pointy termite mounds that we must have seen thousands of on our tour. They always point slightly to the west; “it’s an African GPS”. The low growing mopani trees, of which we also saw thousands, are good for firewood and they eat the caterpillars that live on them. No, we never tried one. The ride back in the canoe was very relaxing as we floated through the narrow channels between endless papyrus plants, tall reeds and water lilies. You can’t see anything beyond the edge of each channel, apart from the occasional tall tree and so it was lovely to see a fish eagle sitting near the top of one of them.
Back at the camp we were presented with a lunch of cold beef burgers and coleslaw, not brilliant, but maybe we were late again?! At least there was some entertainment as we picked at our lunch sitting on the deck of the main building. Vervet monkeys jumped around in the trees above us and the owner’s two cattle dogs would go bananas, barking and running around in circles below. That evening Jorge cooked up a pretty good spaghetti Bolognese, served hot, though we’re really not sure why he had to cook a meal, when there was a fully paid chef in the kitchen. I thought perhaps that he too was bored of the cold food, but apparently he has to do it once on each trip.
On Saturday May 19th we had a very early breakfast and drove out of the camp at 7am; another long day ahead on the bumpy roads of Botswana. At Maun we stopped for lunch, in two sessions beside the road at the airport. Five of our group went on a 45-minute flight over the southern end of the Okavango Delta, pre-lunch. Then when Rodney, Sandy, Carolyn and I had finished our lunch, we walked over to the departure lounge to wait for our 3pm flight and on a TV screen we watched some highlights of the royal wedding in Windsor. The pilot was a rather gorgeous lady who looked like she should still be in school; another unnerving moment. But she got us up and back down safely, so we were all very grateful for that. When she wiggled the wings and banked very steeply so that we could see the elephants, giraffes and zebras below, it was a bit of a heart stoppage moment, but we all lived to tell the tale and have photos to prove it.
When we arrived at our next place of rest, a Bedouin Camp to the west of Maun, it was dark again. We had no idea of where we were, which is quite unsettling not being able to orientate yourself. No time for showers and no hot water anyway. We ate our evening meal, chicken again, and then piled into another safari vehicle for a crawl around our surroundings in the dark. Jorge waved his torch around and occasionally pointed up into the trees. Apparently we saw galago, also known as bushbabies and there was much excitement when an aardvark was spotted scurrying across the road. I was sitting in the centre of the vehicle, trying to keep warm wearing all my clothes and snuggling down under a blanket. My long sight is also not brilliant at night, so I never saw anything and was glad to get out of yet another bumpy vehicle an hour and a half later .
The camp guides then walked us all to our camp tents and we were zipped in for the night, with instructions not to leave the tent under any circumstances and to sound the horn beside the bed, if we were seriously concerned about anything more than a gecko. On the plus side, the hot bucket shower in the morning turned out to be alright, and the brilliance of the stars above us was spectacular.
Two mornings of early starts and two very long days driving around the Moremi Game Reserve was pretty exhausting. We saw plenty of animals, but I was getting very bored of the same old flat scrubby landscapes and the discomfort in the safari vehicles. It would be below 8 or 9°C when we set off; my one fleecy got a darn good wearing and the lack of gloves or hat was frustrating me. In an open vehicle, the wind chill brought the temperature down to not far above freezing. I really was wishing I had brought some of my ski clothing with me. By 10am the sun would start to warm our bones and by midday, we were sweating in 30°C. By the time we got back to camp in the early evenings we were getting really cold again and all the clothes were piled back on and blankets pulled up.
Returning to the camp on our third night we had another bout of bad luck. Rodney and I were sat at the back of the safari vehicle and noticed that a knocking noise was getting louder. Rodney looked down at the back wheel and noticed it was wobbling wildly. Jorge and Daniel, the local guide, took the wheel off but couldn’t put the spare wheel on properly because two of the wheel nuts on one side had sheared off and therefore they could only screw three of the wheel nuts on. While they struggled with the wheel, we watched the crocodiles lazing on the river bank and tried to find private spots for much needed wees, without walking too far from our group. Keep an eye out for those crocs and be noisy. This all led to another arrival at our camp in the dark. We were always so cold and tired and rattled by so many hours in bumpy vehicles, that no-one ever sat around after dinner to chat, we would all slink back to our tents or rooms and save our copious good chats for during the day to fill the long hours in the vehicles.
On Tuesday 22nd, we left the Bedouin camp early and limped back towards Maun with only three wheel nuts on one back wheel of our chilly safari vehicle. Fortunately, by the time a third wheel nut sheared off, the temperatures were starting to lift. We all piled off again and had an impromptu yoga class in the road with Daniel, while Jorge hitched a lift in to Maun to collect our main vehicle.
We had hoped for an afternoon free at the next lodge, but with all the delays it was yet another late afternoon arrival at 5pm at the appropriately named Nata Lodge, near Nata. A rather large termite hill right next to our tented cabin concerned me a little, but Jorge assured me that the termites had vacated, and the large holes were made by small birds that were now using the mound as nests. Recycling at its best in nature. For some reason we had to buy our own dinner that evening, but as I had had awful heartburn during the three nights at the Bedouin Camp, I really didn’t want much to eat and managed at last to sleep through the night.
It was my turn to sit in the front of the vehicle with Jorge the next day, so when we approached the Makgadikgadi Saltpans I got the best view of the sprawl of water spread out before us. It was wonderful to see a change in scenery at last. When we arrived next to the massive body of water, we all climbed out of the vehicle and just stared out across the water. After all the scratchy dusty scrub it was a beautiful and refreshing sight to see. It was a shame we didn’t have the day’s lunch with us, it would have been so nice to sit there for our picnic.
We set off to Kasane, stopping for petrol and eating hotdogs in a supermarket car park in Pandamatenga (not appropriately named as we never saw any pandas wandering around, only warthogs). Onions and sausages were cooked up by Jorge on a tiny camping stove. And while we were there, I bought two metres of a very bright and jolly fabric in a tiny shop next to the toilets; the colour just seemed to cheer me up.
We arrived at the Chobe Marina Lodge in Kasane at 3:30pm, lordy be, a shorter day! We didn’t get a riverside room, but it was a very nice room with an indoor shower and an indoor bath, lordy be! And, we had a great view of a crocodile and warthogs on the grass lawn in front! Nice! I wallowed in the bathtub, doing my best hippo impression, and then we wandered down to the bar to drink cocktails as the sun set over the Chobe River. I’ll admit to having a tear in my eye with the feeling that I was back in a vague comfort zone. Dinner that evening was a spit roast lamb buffet; we were told it was lamb, but it was a darn big lamb?!! There was no apology drink for me, despite receiving a letter from Jenman tours regarding the police hold-up and breakdowns. Beer and wine only this time, so I bought my own gin and tonic and pushed the ‘lamb to the side of the plate when I couldn’t chew it. The vegetables were nice.
No-one stayed up after dinner, again, because we were under instructions to be ready at the front of the hotel at 5:45am for yet another safari, this time in Chobe National Park. It was still dark when we left and it seemed to take a while for the sun to fully rise. We shivered and shook under our blankets and some of us wished we had brought some snacks with us as we had set off before breakfast. We did get to see more of the same animals, my favourites are still watching a giraffe crossing the road and I do find the chubby helmeted guinea fowl scratching and running, around a very quirky sight. We also got to see some lions; they were not very close, but Rodney was pleased that he finally gazed upon those gorgeous cats.
When we stopped for a morning cuppa under a tree in the middle of the park a little vervet monkey managed to sneak into the vehicle, creep under the seats without being spotted, and steal three packets of sugar from the open boot. He didn’t take the tea bags or the coffee, he instantly selected the sugar; he’s obviously learnt what’s in the white packets. He sat in the tree, peeled open each packet, tipped the sugar into his mouth and threw the empty packet down. Not at all a good diet for a monkey, but rather funny to watch.
Sadly our bad luck was still following us. Another break-down!! The driver couldn’t get today’s safari vehicle to re-start after our tea break. I assumed one of the other half-empty vehicles would have taken us back to Chobe, but they all gradually drifted away, and we were left standing beside our dead vehicle. We huddled a little closer and waited for the hotel to send out another one to rescue us. Breakfast finished at 9am, but when we finally got back at 10:30am we were very glad to find they had kept the kitchen open for us and we all filled our empty tummies with a darn good breakfast.
Today was the first day that gave us a bit of free time to sit by the pool, or to wander around a village, for which we were very grateful. So after the very late breakfast, we wandered down the road to stallholders for a mooch about. I bought another two lengths of brightly coloured fabrics and Rodney got himself a little wooden carving of a hippo, which has lovely patterns in the wood and feels so smooth in your hand. We didn’t have long to wander, or enough time to sit by the pool, as we had to be ready at 2:45pm for a cruise down the Chobe River.
This turned out to be one of the highlights of the trip. It felt a lot safer than a dugout canoe, even when an elephant rose out of the water after feeding on the river grass and proceeded to wander ashore in front of us. We saw more hippos and crocodiles and even a water buffalo poking a crocodile with it’s nose until the croc got peeved and ran off. I was waiting for it to attack, but maybe the buffalo was too big, and the croc wasn’t hungry. Watching the sun set across the water on the Namibia side was lovely; everyone went quiet and the only sound was the clicking of camera shutters.
We slept well that night. Enjoyed a final enjoyable indoor shower before another big breakfast and departure at 7:30am. Crossing the border back into Zimbabwe was another event. We all had to pay another $30 US, because we had slept in Botswana and not just done a day trip. The advice on the multiple entry visa was duff. Poor Sandy and Carolyn had to pay $100 US each because Zimbabwe and Canada don’t have the same agreement! It was all very confusing, but we all had enough money on us, and at least we weren’t being held up, for up to a month, like some of the truck drivers who were queued up for miles either side of the borders.
We drove back to Victoria Falls and Jorge wanted to check that the transfer for Rodney and me to Livingstone Airport had been arranged by Jenman Tours. The office was closed and he couldn’t raise anyone on the phone…it was Africa Day, “a public holiday for some people”, but they obviously hadn’t told him. We were now in the middle of a tourist town and most of us needed a wee, so Jorge checked that the restaurant next door, Mama Africa, (which we had had dinner at when we were staying in Victoria Falls the week before) would let us all troop though and use their loos. Thank you Mama Africa, it was much appreciated.
I was ready to get a plane home by now, but the tour still wasn’t finished. We had to drive south now to Hwange for yet another safari. We stopped in the town of Hwange, a place that has one whole street full of churches of every denomination. We counted fifteen, but I think there were more, and it was a very curious thing to see. The catholic one was the biggest and the smartest. At the far end of town Jorge dropped us off at a local market while he went to buy more petrol. We strolled around for fifteen minutes wondering what on earth most of the items were and then it was ‘back on the bus’ to drive to the Painted Dog Conservation Centre. It was closed. It’s Africa Day. So we ate the day’s picnic standing in the car park watching a large black dung beetle rolling around. Then it was off to Elephant’s Eye Lodge near Hwange National Park. It was still daylight, so it was lovely to see where we were and be able to stroll over to our tent cabin on stilts to unpack, remove the last stink bug from Camp Kwando, and have time for a G & T before dinner (pork loin for the second night in a row and the fourth time in fourteen nights). Annoyingly, despite another long day on the road, another night safari had been arranged after dinner. Doomy drove around in the open vehicle for 1 ½ hours, but we never saw anything, and everyone seemed a bit grumpy and ready for bed by the time we got back to camp.
The tented cabin was lovely, with a bathtub overlooking the waterhole where animals gathered. But the shower was outside again and when I stripped off to wash my hair out there mid-afternoon on our last day, the mozzies came to visit again, along with three baboons who stared up at me and looked like they were assessing the distance between the tree and me and the height of the wooden stilts and me. It was very unnerving and hard to wash my hair with my eyes open to keep an eye on any unwelcome visitors. I got bitten again. By the mozzies, not the baboons, and I was very glad when the baboons lost interest in me after a while.
It was yet another early start on Saturday and we left the camp at 7:15 after breakfast. We drove to Hwange National Park and spent all day on the road again. We didn’t see any animals until 10am and I was getting seriosly fed up. Lunch was cold meatballs with cold pasta and a cold bean salad, not a favourite of mine, but it filled a gap after such an early breakfast. A group of cyclists clad in lycra came past, ‘Friends of Hwange’, and they were raising money for Hwange National Park. They identified themselves as ‘lesser spotted lycra peddlers’…hmmm….. at least they were colourful.
We saw a female lion with two cubs under a tree, they just snoozed and twitched as the shutters madly clicked. But most of the animals we saw were the same as we had seen every day, apart from our first sight of a secretary bird. By now, the sitting in safari vehicles every day was tortuous. We got back to our nice camp just before sunset and not wanting to stand outside in the shower, I opted for another hippo-style wallowing in the bath inside….. for fifteen whole minutes……. as the sun set over the water hole.
Dinner was a delicious steak with veggies, after a rather nice frittata and followed by a lemon meringue tart. Very gourmet. Only negative, it was eaten in the open air, in the cold and dark again. After two weeks of eating outdoors, I was looking forward to eating a meal in a warm, well-lit room one day. In fact, I was even looking forward to eating a meal on the plane. Sad eh? Somehow that evening we all managed to stay up until 9pm and we sat by the fire pit and watch the flames shimmer and shake. Everyone had a really good laugh when Karen took a photo that included Jorge and our local guide, Doomy. When we looked at the photo, all that you could see of Jorge and Doomy was their teeth smiling in the dark. Brilliant!
On Sunday morning, I decided that even if it was our last day, I could not face another trip sitting in a safari vehicle to look at animals. I stayed in our tent on stilts, sorted our luggage, did a bit of yoga, read my book at last and rested in daylight. Zebras, baboons, warthogs and impala wandered past the window and I really enjoyed having the animals visit me instead of travelling miles in a shaky vehicle to spot them somewhere else. It hadn’t made sense to me that we had booked and paid for some lovely places to stay and yet had spent or seen very little of any of them. They all got back before midday and Rodney confirmed that I had made the right decision; I hadn’t missed anything new. We filled in our trip review forms (which took ages) and then enjoyed being able to sprawl unshaken on sun-loungers beside the pool for a little while, for the first time in weeks. Dinner that evening was very good again and on our last night together we all sat by the firepit and talked over the flickering flames, before Rodney and I started to say our farewells to everyone. We were the first to bed that night as we had to be first to leave in the morning.
Monday 28 May came around and Rodney and I had to be up at 5:30am. We had our breakfast alone until Peter, Kim, Sandy, Carolyn, Sharon and Karen wandered over for last minute hugs goodbye. At 7am, Given (love the name) appeared and took us to a car. A real car, with a heater and comfy clean seats. Jorge waved us off and we left Elephant’s Eye, Hwange to travel to Livingstone Airport. For the first 45 minutes we passed endless groups of children walking beside the road to their schools; a lovely sight. Half way to the airport, Given stopped at a petrol station so that we could use the loo. Bad timing. There were already ten Indian women in there, queuing for the one filthy toilet. Ah well, we all had a lovely chat about where we were all from, and where we had been, and where we were going. As each one of them left, I got a hug and received multiple good wishes from them. I came out of that filthy loo with a smile on my face and a warm and fuzzy feeling.
Given took us through Victoria Falls and then through the Zimbabwe exit border. While we were waiting to be processed, I noticed a large wood and glass box with a slot on top marked “suggestions”. The box was stuffed full and piled on top was another six inches of paper ‘suggestions’. It didn’t look like it gets checked regularly, if at all. My suggestion would be that someone reads all of the suggestions and perhaps acts on some of them. But then, as Jorge always said…. ”it’s Africa”.
Outside Given introduced us and passed us over to Mr Gideon who took us through the Zambia entry border. Mr Gideon was very chatty and on the far side stopped for a view of the falls and waited while Rodney took more photos from another angle. When we crossed the bridge in our second comfy car, we were very glad not to be walking with our wheelie bags that day. The wind was in a different direction and the spray from Victoria Falls was blowing heavily across the bridge. You could hardly see the falls and we would have been soaked if we’d walked that day. Seems we did at least have the wind in the right direction on our first visit, thank goodness.
As Mr Gideon drove through Livingstone he pointed out the larger houses with fenced gardens and told us the Indians own those. “The Indians run all the shops and petrol stations, they are very economic. The black people here have many wives, maybe ten or eleven. The Indians don’t, only one. They are very sensible.” We asked how many wives he had, but he admitted to only one. We arrived at Livingstone Airport around 10am and had to sit with our bags for 45 minutes until they opened the security section allowing us through to the check-in desks. When we finally got through to the main area with cafes, shops and bathrooms, we were approached by a smart young man and asked to fill in a form. We sat down straight away and discovered that we were being asked for our opinions and suggestions regarding the airport. Tricky we had only just arrived in the area that we were being asked about, so we had no opinions as yet. My suggestion, ask the visitors when they look like they’ve already had a bit of a wander, not just as they walk in the door!!! It’s Africa, as Jorge kept saying….
Highlights and lowlights of the trip? Well we won’t go into the many lowlights, that’s been well covered. As for the highlights….. Victoria Falls, of course. Our first sight of Southern Giraffes crossing the road in front of us. Watching the sun setting on the Chobe River cruise. Laughing together at the antics of the sexist, ageist, border control bureaucrat. The flight over the Okavango Delta, although I would have preferred to have done it further north over more water. First sight of the Makgadikgadi Salt Pans and the way it lifted my spirits. Watching Karen’s and Sharon’s faces lit with joy whenever they sighted elephants. Floating between tall papyrus and reeds in a mokoro surrounded by water lilies. And the smiles of the vendors in Kasane. Plus, of course, the very good company of our eight fellow travellers.
Things we learnt along the way: A group of giraffes standing still is called a ‘tower of giraffes’. A group of giraffes eating is a ’stretch of giraffes’. A group moving is a ’journey of giraffes’. And a group running is called a ‘stride of giraffes’. They can grow to 6 metres in height; a lot taller than me. A group of zebras is called a dazzle of zebras; love that one. And we were also told that a group of hippos is a pod and one standing alone is an iPod….boom boom!
Published (after) 29 May 2018