We took Steve to the airport in Windhoek, where we spent only one night stocking up for the days in Bostwana - sorry to lose Steve's companionship, intresting insites, and amazing bird-spotting camera!
From Windhoek we headed straight for the Okavango Delta in Botswana. Maun is the entry point town - YUCK! has all the essentials but no personality, wicked expensive and run down. It is, however, a great place to spot Mma Ramotswe - a traditionally built African woman in her oddly victorian traditional attire. We saw this kind of outfit all over town!
In order to drive through Moremi Park and then on through Chobe you have to get entry permits at the park authority in Maun, but they won't issue them until you show reservations somewhere within the park. This reservation system is usually done online in advance, so they aren't set up for walk ins! this means running back and forth all over town in traffic, and of course, everyone is closed between 12 and 2 for lunch!! Could cause even the most centered zen master to lose his/her temper! Finally got it all sorted and found a place to camp that was quiet and cheap and actually had an interesting view of the water. It also had a bar - all the essentials!
while the government booking agents said you could traverse Chobe in a day no problem, the locals laughed at the idea and said it was at least a 2 day drive. none of the places in the middle had openings for campers so of course we pushed on through. The road was CRAZY!! it was a slolom of deep sand, huge road filling puddles of unknown depths with gooey sticky mud bottoms and we were the only ones on it so a tow was unlikely!
I figured that we'd regret blasting through without looking for animals but I was wrong - the track was really narrow and overgrown, so there wasn't alot of viewing to do unless you got off and wandered around, but we still say lots of elephants, mongooses, impala, red lechwe and baboons - and we finally got to see a giraffe!. we really needed Steve's camera for all the birds we spotted! Oh - we saw the African Hoophoe!!!
Molemi park was nice - we got a spot at the almost empty government campsite there - cold water ablutions and no services, but really quiet. we were TOTALLY surrounded by baboons sleeping in the trees around us!! Strangely, they gave us no trouble at all, never nosed around our dinner - of course it was dark by then and they stayed up in the trees away from our fire. They were really stinky though!! by morning the camp was thoroughly pooped up - apparently the staff sweeps it daily to make it look nice!!
We took a short canoe trip through the swamps - saw red lechwe, the malachite kingfisher, and several cool frogs.
The drive through Chobe was pretty cool. Saw large herds of ellies...
and made a cool river crossing...
Made it to Kasane just before nightfall and had the best treat of the drive - WILD DOGS! they were dozing along the roadside!
These guys are SO RARE!! This was a fairly large pack of about 12-16 dogs with puppies. Of course, as soon as we stopped they got up and walked off, but the last time we saw them we got no photos at all, so at least now we can prove that we saw them!
Kasane is another overpriced town geared to the "once in a lifetime" traveler who's just flying through Kasane before going to the $500pppn places in the park. The crossing into Zambia had Jeff pretty stressed, as he and Jason were nearly beaten up there trying to cross about 3 months ago. It's the only crossing from Bostwana directly into Zambia without going through Zimbabwe - this means alot less government hassle but there's little official Botswanan supervision at the ferry, so there's lots of thug boys who put line jumping trucks on ahead of the line for fees.
They left us pretty much alone this time (diplomatic plates may have helped?) and we only had to wait for 3 ferries to come and go to take our turn. After 5 weeks of relying on our Nissan with no trouble at all, we stopped for diesel in Livingstone (a thriving Zambian tourist center) and immediately started having engine trouble - bad diesel! The engine sputtered all the way home and the check engine light kept coming on - making jeff turn off the engine to reset it so that the car's computer wouldn't shut us down entirely - BIG fun in the Zambian mountain passes!! Still made it home in about 2 hours less than expected and got in before dark. Jeff is powerwashing the truck as i type - he's been at it for awhile now, and i expect it will take him all morning to take off the dirt of 8 countries!
Glad to be home - Yogi does have a big sore on his inner thigh - may have started out as spider bites but it's hard to tell now. He's being really good and it's healing up nicely. Mattie is just as we left her - perking right along for a 15 year old dog. They went apeshit when we pulled in and i think Yogi may have broken the cartiledge in my nose with his head!! God only knows what they think when we come and go like that!
Looking forward to the next trip!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment