Arrived to the Vic Falls Rest Camp and settled into my jetlag quite nicely. The place was quite nice. I wasn't overly happy about being ripped off by my tour operator for the booking cost. I ended up paying double the cost of the room because I didn't book myself directly. I guess I learned my lesson the hard way on that one.
Anyway, the "rest camp" was a really great way of easing into Africa. My first 24 hours in Zimbabwe I didn't even leave the camp. They had a pretty nice restaurant with hot showers and a real mattress. Thats one up over the foam mattresses I have slept on in the hostels all throughout Australia. As it turns out in my old age I really enjoy a good spring mattress. Paul calls me the "Mattress King." I can sniff out a good mattress in a hostel with the best of them.
Paul arrived the next day and he was a sight for sore eyes. After all of the frustration of traveling with the same person for a few months I had really missed him back in the states while I was home. He had been on his whole own adventure without me and seemed to be in a good place about it all. I'm really happy we both were able to do what was necessary due to my shoulder separation accident. Once Paul was there we headed out to explore Vic Falls.
Our first "welcome" was from a few local kids who tried to sell us outdated Zimbabwe dollars. Keep in mind these are no longer accepted in the country and are sold to tourists only as souvenirs. I guess things at the old zimbabwe money printing factory got a bit out of control because the last bill they printed was worth one hundred trillion. Yup thats 100,000,000,000,000. Look at all of those zeros! And all they wanted for that one bill was one USD. Actually they started at ten USD but worked their way down to, "can't you just spare anything? I'll take your t-shirt? I like your shoes? Old unused clothing?"
I had been told by a friend before I came to Vic Falls to bring old used tennis shoes to barter with. I didn't get it at the time but I'm definitely not showing up to the town without a sack full of old shoes next time. The people there LOVE tennis shoes! They have shoe vendors setup all over the little flea-market we ventured out to explore.
So after we made it past the trillionaire bill sellers we wandered around this tiny town. I think we were staying in the only "tourist" area near the waterfalls because it seems like the town must be much bigger. We only saw about three or four regular US city blocks worth of buildings and then it turned to trees and sporadic huts where people were living. All in all there were a few restaurants, a few shops and a few bars. We decided to eat back at the Rest Camp because Paul was pretty jetlagged. His flight took off in India at 2:30AM! Seriously!
The next day my brother made it say into Vic Falls from San Francisco. It seemed like a crazy journey for him as he missed his flight by trying to buy koozies in SFO. Yup, he missed his flight to Africa over a few koozies. To be honest I was the one who asked him for the koozies. This was also another tip from a friend about Africa and I seemed intent upon finding them before I got here. Tim out did himself on the koozies and got the swankiest koozies on the planet. They're San Francisco Giants Koozies and they cost $12 each! Needless to say if you add on the fact that Tim missed his flight by one minute from SFO to JFK that koozie goes up in price significantly!
So the three of us met up and that night we met our "Geckos" group. The truck (not bus!) was awesome and for some reason we only have seven people in our group. Paul and I were expecting more like twenty but hakuna matata (it means no worries… for the rest of your days…)
So that night we got dinner with everyone and started to meet the cast of characters we'd be spending the next few weeks with.
Margina: nurse from East Bay of San Francisco. Originally from Poland but immigrated to USA in mid 80's.
Ken: Lawyer from Japan who is currently working in Dusseldorf Germany. Ken went to law school at Columbia in New York city.
Shannon: works in a dive shop in Melbourne, Australia. 24 yrs old
Deb: works for a massive food service company and after 10 years with the company was granted a three month sabbatical. She's on vacation from Perth, Australia but was originally born in South Africa
Anna: Namibian who is our "tour leader." She has a sixteen year old son and is recently married.
Sophie: Anna's cousin who is the cook for our trip. She's super sweet and I love helping her out in the camp kitchen. She's Namibian.
Muno: Our driver who is "Zim." Which means he's from Zimbabwe. Muno is a great driver who navigates the big orange truck around stray goats, cows and stubborn donkeys. We literally had a donkey walk right toward the truck and didn't seem to mind that we were about to kill it. Leave it to the donkeys! We have also come across many animals as we transit through the multiple game parks. We've had elephants, tons of "Deer like" animals (always forget the real name), hyena's, baboons and of course local Africans. Driving down here is serious business!
The next day Africa got real. We decided to walk down to see the Victoria Falls as a group. We headed out to the town to find the "short cut" that was suggested to us. The local who told us about the "short cut" from the Rest Camp did warn us that there were elephants in the woods we would cut through. He didn't seem too worried about it so we in turn didn't worry much about finding elephants. After all we've all seen elephants at Zoos and circus' back at home and elephants are friendly animals.
Not in Africa. Picture the six of us (ken was bungee jumping) walking down this path chatting away on our way to see the beautiful falls. The sun is high and the air is warm. We're checking and re-checking our cameras so that we can get the right shot. Our rain coats are wrapped around our waists to protect us from the spray. We bump into some locals who walk with us and try to sell us more 100 trillion Zimbabwe dollar souvenirs and local wood carvings of Hippos. The day is looking up. At - that - peaceful - moment we hear a rustling in the trees to our right. As we look over we see a massive bull male African elephant munching on tree branches and looking annoyed at the tourists who just disturbed his snack. In a split second the locals who were walking with us were sprinting back up the path at full speed as if they'd been electrocuted. It was everyman for himself. The elephant charged toward us and I sprinted forward faster than I think I've ever run in my life. I knew I wasn't the fastest of the group but I also knew I just had to beat someone else to live to see another day. Of course that was a joke… sort of. The elephant didn't end up charging all the way into the group. We learned later that what the animal did was "mock charge." He wanted to warn us that he was pissed and we needed to scram. Hilariously enough the group split with half of us running forward and the other half running backward with the locals. The second group had to come back past the elephant again and AGAIN he mock charged.
We were lucky. We were stupid. We learned our lesson. After speaking with our tour leader, Anna, she explained that elephant was definitely dangerous and that next time we should avoid animal experiences like that. We listened and I mumbled a Hail Mary that we got through it.
Welcome to Africa.
The falls were rather impressive. I've been to some large waterfalls but this was the widest falls I've seen. It seemed to be about twice as wide as Niagra and a bit higher. We were soaked!
We headed out of Vic Falls the next day and made our way to Chobe national park. It was really nice to get on the road and feel like we were progressing forward with the itinerary. I had been at the rest camp for four days and I was itching to get more face time with the animals. Chobe proved to give me just that opportunity! After arriving into Botswana we setup our tents and had dinner. That night we sat around the camp fire drinking Milo and coffee talking about our pasts, joking about english language differences between Oz and the US and just getting to know each other.
We were up at 5am the next day for our early morning game drive. As it turns out all of these animals are spanish. They take siestas all day long in the hot sun and then are very active in the mornings and evenings. Not a bad gig if you're a wild animal in Africa. Lots of snooze button action. The land cruiser was outfitted with stadium seating on the back and we all shivered on our way deep into the park. That morning was amazing. We ended up seeing two young lion cubs playing around about twenty yards from our truck. They were beautiful big cats and I had a moment when I knew I'd never watch a discovery channel show the same way again. It was also an experience that the Discovery channel ruined a bit for me. On those shows you always get to see them go in for the kill, you see them active and playing and doing all of the cool activities you'd WANT to see. In a game drive you're very VERY lucky if you see them do anything other than run away from you.
This game drive also introduced me to my new favorite animal, the Hippo. How did I not realize how awesome hippos were until I got to africa! These animals are MASSIVE and seem so fun! They hang around in the water all day to stay cool and avoid sun exposure while munching on grass. They can also hold their breath for up to six minutes while they "walk" along the bottom from place to place. They have their own underwater hippo highways from place to place!
The drive gave us good views of hippos, lots of birds, giraffes, lion cubs, african buffalo, wart hogs and tons of impala and pukas!! What a trip! That afternoon we grabbed our SF koozies and took a boat trip on the delta to watch the animals as they came down to drink. We hadn't had any more views of our new found African Elephants that morning so I was excited to see them drink that evening. Again the Hippos captured my imagination and I couldn't take my eyes off of them when they surfaced. Seeing a hippo yawn and then call our to let other animals he's in his territory was such an amazing experience. We drank beers an watched the sun go down as the elephant herd drank from the delta before heading further inland for the evening.
The next day we headed back into Namibia from Botswana to use the highway along the Caprivi strip. We headed down the road a bit further until we could head south back into Botswana to the Okavango Delta. Over the next three days we'd leave our truck behind and head into the bush with a bushman group of guides to camp among the elephants and hippos. I was very excited but a different emotion overtook me once our tents were up and I realized we were camping in what looked like an elephant and hippo mating ring!! There was hippo and elephant poop everywhere and huge foot prints in the water from where they came in to throw their huge keggars at night!! Would I fit in with them or would they kick me out?! The bush camping was really great and I made good friends with the leader of the guides, John Butler. He liked my "Butler" shirt so I gave it to him!! That was my favorite shirt but I could see he'd appreciate it more than I would. Paul and I were able to go fishing for an hour or two in the delta with John and another guide in their mokoro. The Mokoro is a traditional Botswana flat bottom canoe. Since its a flat bottom without a Keel like a canoe the boat is very unstable but we lodged it in the reeds and were able to cast out for a while. We didn't catch anything but gave it our best shot.
The next stop was to transfer further down the Delta to a house boat. The houseboat was owned by a Zimbabwe expat who brought his HUGE houseboat on a semi-truck to Botswana because of the horrible economy and corruption of the Mugabe government. It was interesting to see how many Zimbabwe people are working and living in Botswana and Namibia.
I'm now staying at a campsite on the Delta on our way to Etosha National Park tomorrow. We get to do some moonlit game drives there before we continue further into Namibia to a cheeta reserve! I'll update as soon as I can. Cheers!
