The Final Leg of Africa

After the beauty of Chobe, we continued our Botswana adventure by taking a 3 day trip into the Okavango Delta which is the world’s largest inland delta. The only way to reach our campsite was to be poled in using dugout canoes called Makoros. Pretty much we lazed back while some poor guy pushed us along with a big stick for an hour and a half, we would have felt like a king and queen hadn’t our Makoro keep springing a leak and getting our butts wet.

The campsite was in the middle of nowhere, you are surrounded by water that is filled with hippos and land with wild animals – mostly elephants, zebras, impalas etc, not too many lion sightings thank goodness. For the next few days we lazed around the campsite, purely because it was too hot to do anything else. We did frequent trips to the water to dip our t-shirts in and wear them just to get some respite from the heat. Chris tried his hand at the Makoro and I decided to trust his abilities, didn't end up in the drink so it all went well. Even the guides thought he could get himself a job if he wanted it.

In the early evening and mornings we went on bush walks to see what was about. Not the quantity of animals we had been accustomed to but still enough to keep us on our toes. We did come across a big herd of elephants which despite their size are easily camouflaged in the bush. With 1 click of a camera we sparked a stampede, fortunately in the opposite direction. We came across elephant prints in the sand on the way back to camp and this picture shows how mammoth these guys are!

We rounded off our Delta experience with a scenic flight, what a difference seeing it from the air. We flew quite low so got to see the animals in the delta, huge amounts of elephants, giraffe and buffalo could be easily spotted. Chris managed to convince our pilot that it would be a great idea to do a few erratic moves in the tiny plane much to my horror.

We left Botswana and headed into sand territory – Namibia. Sand isn’t the only thing Namibia has to offer though so off to Etosha National Park we went, our last real opportunity to spot the elusive leopard. Through the park we drove, leopard spotting eyes on high alert, we saw tons of animals all around watering holes and even got to see a family of elephants having an afternoon swim with their babies, but no stupid leopards to be seen.

In the evening by our campsite was a floodlit watering hole which we had heard reports of big animal kills and activity. We had our cameras poised on the tripod ready, but it was a quiet night at the hole with just rhino, elephant and a rogue hyena coming to drink. Thought at least the hyena could have eaten a rabbit or something but NO. Biggest thrill I got was getting my toe nibbled on by a lizard (which actually scared the crap out of me at the time) as well as spotting honey badgers rummaging through trash at the campsite.

Leaving the national park the next day we did get to see lions eating a zebra, the worst thing about that was his zebra friends just hanging out on the perimeter grazing like nothing had happened. Umm hello zebra, your buddy has just been put on the menu and you can’t bear to leave your tasty bit of grass? That is just wrong…zebras are bad people.

In the middle of Etosha National Park is a massive desert pan, which is kinda boring to look at but awesome for taking illusion shots.

From seeing animals in the wild we went to the other extreme and visited Cheetah Park which not only had 3 domestic cheetahs to pat they also had an enclosure for rescued cheetahs that we got to see getting fed. They are pretty feisty when it comes to getting meat, and for us who were standing on the back of an open ute it was all too easy to think that if they wanted to they could jump on the back and have you for dinner.

From cheetahs to seals, bit of a random change but they were on the way to where we were going to why not. Cape Cross is home to silly amounts of stinky seals, and boy did they stink. The best entertainment at this seal colony was idiocy of the british. Firstly 1 guy proclaimed that seals didn’t have big teeth after Chris bought a seal tooth for his necklace (maybe seals gum their prey to death?), then when Chris braved the freezing temperatures for a mid winter dip up the coast another guy said that he didn’t want to because the sea was full of seal poo and pee. Hmm, I think that there are a lot of things in the water that use it as their toilet, and perhaps it might be quite diluted consider that massive volume of water that a sea is!

Quite a few of our bush camps in Namibia were in magnificent rock valleys, havens for rock climbers and people that like to do a bit of bouldering. It was nice to be able to do a bit of exercise after such long periods of sitting around on the truck doing nothing, and the views were amazing.

What Queenstown is for NZ, Swakamond is for Namibia. It is an adventure playground, mostly based around sand activities of course. Not being completely flush with cash we chose our activities wisely. I opted for sand boarding and Chris went for quad biking. Sandboarding was pretty fun, I even attempted the jump a few times, then you get to lie down on a piece of polished ply wood and travel at speeds of over 70kms an hour – wicked fun. Chris thrashed the quad bike and did some pretty outrageous stuff and came away unscathed, unlike his mate who decided to launch the bike over a steep dune and land on his face.

Sossusvlei was our next stop. It is a clay pan in the middle of the Namib desert surrounded by stunning red dunes. There are various pans but the most interesting is dead pan in which literally nothing can grow due to lack of water being able to get through. Our guide here was brilliant, he could find spiders under the sand with ease and even found a little side winder snake. On the way out we stopped off at Dune 45 which is over 170m high and gets its name from being 45km from Sesriem Canyon. It was a stupidly windy day and if anyone has walked up a sand dune you will know how tough it is. All worth it for the view though, and then the big run down from the top. I had to stop half way to empty my shoes though as it was getting too painful with the amount of sand that got stuck.

Namibia is home to the 2nd largest canyon in the world behind the grand canyon so it would have been criminal not to visit. It is a sight to be seen. Absolutely immense and you feel so tiny standing at the top. We did the canyon justice by having a wine and cheese evening overlooking the beauty of it all.

Our time in Namibia was coming to an end as we crossed into South Africa the next day and camped by the shores of the Orange River. The river runs along the border from Namibia to South Africa so a few of us decided we would swim across to Namibia. The river was so low we could have actually walked across. It made me wonder how many people skip over countries each day – surely it cant be that easy?

We were well and truly in wine country now, South Africa being one of the leading countries for a lovely tipple. We did a full day wine tour in the Stellenbosch region with a lovely lunch thrown in there. It was a big day of wine…too big. I still stand firm that NZ beats South Africa hands down for wine however, we do it WAY better.

Hard to believe we were nearly at the end of our African adventure with only days to go before it was all over. On the way into Cape Town we stopped in Hermanus (which Chris would like to point out that if you take the letter M out of the name you get instant childish gratification) to see the whales sifting around the harbour. Pretty good timing for us to be there during the whale festival so we could see these mighty creatures so close into shore.

Chris wanted to get up close and personal to another species of beast so booked himself into a day of shark cage diving. I naturally opted out of this one. To be lowered into a cage that sits in the water and have great white sharks bashing into the cage is not something I would pay money for but for Chris it was an experience of a lifetime.

Our last few days of our African adventure were spent unwinding in Cape Town. A lovely city, much like Wellington I thought, gave us the few days of rest we needed after 73 days of full on overlanding truck life. We ate good café food, drunk fantastic coffee and just wandered the streets. Table Mountain was beautifully clear but unfortunately we tried to go on a public holiday so opted not to wait the 3 hours to get up and just admire it from afar.

Nearly home now…we are both looking forward to seeing friendly faces on our quick visits to Australia and Vanuatu.

The African Adventure Continues

From Malawi we endured a couple of long drive days before arriving in the capital of Zimbabwe - Harare. It was like arriving on a different continent, all of a sudden everything was a bit more western, including the prices! As we have said before we are not really fans of the big city and Harare was no exception although we did make the time to taxi into town to check out a local band which was well worth it.

It had been a few days since we had any animal contact so our next stop at Antelope Park gave us more than enough up and close personal contact with the animals. For any avid Animal Planet watchers, this park has a show about it as one of their prime objectives is releasing lions back into the wild from captivity. We decided that we would do a few of the activities including walking with the lions which is exactly how it sounds. You go for a stroll with 3 lions and have a chance to get up close and pat them.

All a bit surreal and scary to be honest, especially when one of our group stood on the male lions tail, not his best move! Also got a chance to see the lion cubs who were a bit sleepy but still super cute.

After being a bit lioned out and not wanting to favourtise we took the time to see the elephants being trained. They are extremely clever animals.

We left Antelope Park a little torn between deciding if it was a commercial gimmick or if they were truly all about the animals as there are still yet to be any successful releases back into the wild...we are still in two minds.

The excitement continued for us over the next leg of the journey as we were fortunate enough to go on a tour to track the rhinos with the most hard out safari dude ever. I have never met a person so into poo examining. Every minute or so he would stop the 4wd to pick up poo, break it apart and give us a 5 min spiel on what animal was pooing, when the animal did the poo and what the animal was eating before it pooed. I watched him closely at lunchtime to make sure his poo hands weren't touching the food we were about to eat! For all his poo obsession however he was very knowledgeable and trekked us straight to a massive white rhino who we ended up being about 30 metres from. Quite frightening to be that close but the poo man had his trusty gun with him and as we had heard his hunting stories on the drive there we knew we were in good hands.

After that adrenalin buzz we spend the rest of the tour driving to some ancient Sans paintings, which were actually impressive considering their age. The detail on the animals was brilliant. There was also a beautiful view back over the valley which topped off our day nicely.

Seeing as we had been up close and personal with the animals quite a lot it was fitting that our next few days were based at the natural wonderland of Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe's premier adventure playground. Having done most of the adventure stuff available in NZ we opted to simply take in the impressive sights of the falls on foot, both from the Zimbabwe and the Zambian sides. The falls are simply phenomenal, you get up really close, close enough to get a decent shower! On the Zambian side we opted to try something a little different and hired a local guy to walk us across the falls to a place called Angels Pool which is situated on the edge of the falls. We swam in the pool and Chris jumped off the rocks almost oblivious to the fact that if you made a wrong move you would be falls fodder. It wasn't until we viewed where we were from the other side that we realised the magnitude of what we had done.

We definitely needed a come down after that and what could be more relaxed than a spot of high afternoon tea at the Victoria Falls Hotel (where the royals stayed back in the day after the 2nd world war). We really had to dig deep in our packs to find suitable attire to wear (well make sure it was clean was priority no 1) and then spend a lovely afternoon overlooking the bridge across the falls whilst sipping on tea and eating sammies, scones and cakes.

Amazingly after we had finished Chris thought it would be a good idea to ask the reception what their most expensive room was in the hotel. Answer = USD 840 per night, I thought I was in for a treat but he quickly explained that he didn't want it...curses...however the friendly lady then said we could go and have a look if we wanted as it was the room where the royals had stayed, um why not! Now for 840 USD a night I was expecting great things, and albeit it was lovely the biggest thing I noticed was the size of the bathroom - tiny!! I think the royals were had...

To complete our Victoria Falls experience the last night we went to an all you can eat game meat restaurant. Tactics were discussed, the pact was made not to fill up on bread, and off we went. The options were good, kudu and warthogs steaks, eland and impala stews, ostrich kebabs, impala terrine, croc tail and of course good old fashioned steaks, chicken etc. The winner for the night was the warthog steak, it was tender, delicious and one of the tastiest meats I have tried. There was just enough room for dessert, only just. We definitely had the meat sweats going on that night in our tent.

We started to miss the animals after the falls so fortunately we were heading straight to Chobe National Park. This time we were viewing the animals from the water on a sunset cruise. This was the first time we got to see large numbers of elephants as they were all down by the water getting their daily drink and swim in.

Not only were there elephants but loads of crocs, lizards, hippos and bird life too. All of this topped off with a gorgeous sunset it was a day to remember.

More African Wonders

With the first part of our trip, the Gorilla loop, over we had to say goodbye to some of our truck buddies. It was a sad moment but one with a silver lining as 13 new people jumped on board to start the journey south. I felt sorry for the new people as the first day they joined was the biggest drive day yet. We crossed the border into Tanzania arriving late at night to the snake park campsite. The campsite ran a Masaai snake bite clinic and had a snake sanctuary full of all the most deadly and dangerous snakes, very frightening to see how easy they are camouflaged in leaves and trees.

From the campsite we jumped into the coolest open top Land cruisers and started a three day safari covering Lake Manyana, Ngorogoro Crater and the Serengeti national parks.
Lake Manyana was amazing. What it lacked in animal numbers it made up for in stunning beauty. We spotted our first elephants which were pretty close to the truck. It isn't until you get close that you realise just how big and powerful they are. The highlight however had to be a pool of hippos which were fighting each other while zebras jumped around between them.

We stayed overnight in a campsite and had dinner cooked for us which is a nice change from truck life. We even had Milo and popcorn mmm mmm! At about four in the morning we started our trip into the Ngororgoro Crater. I had seen a documentary narrated by David Attenborough about the crater so had an idea of what to expect. I was not at all let down. It is like a lost world with thousands of animals trapped in a huge volcanic crater with plentiful water and food.

As we descended into the crater we were lucky enough to see a serval which is a rare medium sized cat having a poo on the road in front of us. Not even the guide had spotted one before. The crater was full of lions, zebra, buffalo, wilderbeast, hippos, heaps of birds, black rhino and so much more. We were lucky enough to see a lioness just after killing a wilderbeast which despite what the discovery channel might portray is a rare thing to see.

We headed out of the crater on our way to fenceless bush camp in the middle of the Serengeti. I found the experience amazing, like filling a childhood dream. At night we could hear hyenna's laughing around the campsite and in the morning found hoof prints and monkey hand prints all over the place. Scary but in all the right ways!

The Serengeti did not bring us the elusive Leopard as we had hoped but we did see Cheetahs, lions ambushing some food and well the list goes on. Our prized photo of the day was capturing the rare feat of a giraffe licking its own butt, wildlife photography gold. The place is huge and full of animals and well just totally blew us both away. We both feel so lucky to have been able to see such amazing places.
I didn't want to leave the safari and was sad to have to leave behind my real life wildlife documentary. It wasn't all bad though as we headed straight for Dar Es Salam an onto a ferry across to Zanzibar Island. On the way we saw flying fish and dolphins. Zanzibar was a pretty much a break from the relentless driving, sight seeing and activities. Like a holiday within a holiday. We had beds for the first time in months and were also staying for four nights rather than the usual one or two. The Island is beautiful with white sand beaches and crystal blue water.

We went snorkeling around an island which we sailed to on a traditional boat. After the snorkeling we had a whole tuna cooked over the coals. We only ate seafood while on the island and it was great. They had it all and it was fresh and cheap. Before we left our daily swims and sunset cocktails behind we had one more night in Stone town. We went on a spice tour which was very educational. I had no idea some of the spices you use everyday grew on trees or vines or under ground. We also visited the old slave markets where East African slaved were bought and sold then shipped around the world. It was a horrible place. We cheered ourselves up by visiting the night food market for our last gorge on seafood before we had to go back to truck life again.

Back on the mainland we stayed one more night coast side enjoying the luke warm Indian Ocean. The next two days however were spent driving and camping in the bush on the side of road. I really enjoy the bush camps as I always assume the position of chief fire starter. The fires are always massive and most of the time we have marshmallows.

Our last day in Tanzania lead us through Mikumi National Park. We saw some empala and some giraffes but all in all it was pretty bad animal watching. The scenery was still amazing though, as was the scenery in pretty much all of Tanzania, which for me is my number one African Country to date.

Another boarder another country. This time Malawi which is pretty much taken up by a massive lake. Malawi is famous for its wooden crafts of which Julie and I rushed for. We did some hard bargaining and scored some pretty good deals. In Malawi they will take anything as payment from your dirty socks to a packet of half eaten biscuits . We headed to a local bar that night and watched some crazy local dancing which was a mix between elvis and forest gump before he could walk.

We drove on the next day still following the lake to another beach campsite with more wooden crafts. This was pig day which started of with me and a couple of others going of to choose a pig then watching as it was killed and prepared in a tiny village with cute children stuck to arms and legs waiting to eat the blood and organ meats. I had some heart which was fried just after the pig was killed. It was tender and yummy. We brought the pig back to the camp and started the spit roast. Before it was cooked we played beach olympics in fancy dress. I lucked out and had to wear a yellow leotard. Not a pretty sight. The next day Julie went on a painting lesson which she really enjoyed. I have to say that her final products was easily as good as the locals.

We have now finished the second part of the trip and are again saying good bye to some great friends who we have got to know very closely. We will spent the next few days in the capital Lilongwe and then continue our mission south.

Game Parks and Gorillas in the Mist

We arrived in Nairobi in the middle of the night and our first experience of Kenya was having our taxi run out of petrol in the middle of nowhere with our driving telling us that petrol stations don't serve people in the early hours of the morning for fear of being robbed. Luck was on our side though as there was a petrol station 100 metres from where we broke down so our driver used his starter motor to get us the last bit of distance and fill up the car enough to get us to our camp - welcome to Africa!

The first part of our African adventures took us to Lake Nakuru game park in Kenya. This morning we first learnt the phrase "This is Africa" which can relate to all manner of failures, including our safari drivers being 1 1/2 hours late picking us up and having our safari van get stuck in a massive hole in the ground. We were too excited about the safari to care anyway. Our first safari was brilliant, our initial glimpse of Lake Nakuru was a pink haze of flamingos on the shore line with buffalo and other bird life sifting around. From there we feasted our eyes on Zebra, Empala, Warthog, Lion, Rhino and other prancing hooved animals that I cant even remember the name of! It was beautifully surreal to finally be up close to these animals in the wild. We had ticked off 3 of the big 5 for Kenya with only the Leopard and Elephant to go.


From Kenya we moved on to Uganda, passing through the Rift Valley and the Equator towards the Nile River in a town called Jinja. This stop was purely for the adrenaline junkies as this was the place you could do the grade 5 rafting. Being a complete baby I was not interested in all in this option and left Chris to it . I did however offer to stand at the first grade 5 rapid and take photos of him coming down it instead. All reports from Chris was that it was awesome and he survived it which is also a bonus.


We stayed around Jinja for a few days and got addicted to visiting the local chapati man, buying his "Rolex" special on a daily basis, sometimes twice. This constituted a chapati with an omelet filled with tomato, onion and avocado rolled inside, all for about 30 cents US. Delicious.

We also hired the worst mountain bikes in the town for a ride around the local village. The guy insisted that Chris needed to wear gloves for this ride and then swiftly produced a pink pair of Hello Kitty gloves that he must use. The local children were some what baffled at this Muzunga (white person) waving at them in pink gloves. The children in Africa pour out from everywhere just so they can wave and shout "hello, how are you, I am fine" and at some stages we had an entourage running beside us for kilometres trying to hold our hands.


From Jinja we started the big drive towards Rwanda, we were gorilla bound. We stopped in the capital Kigali to visit the Genocide Museum to learn a bit more about Rwandas tragic past. It still astounds me that this happened only 16 years ago, but it has to be said that the Rwandan people are heroically pushing forward positively with their lives and have learnt from the tragedies of the genocide but are not letting it destroy the future of their country.

After that sobering experience we pushed on to our base camp for Gorilla trekking. We have been looking forward to this for a really long time and had paid a big amount of money for it as well. Only groups of 8 people can visit any one gorilla family per day and for no more than 1 hour. Our family to visit was Susa and just our luck this family resides on Rwandas biggest volcano and Africa's 5th largest mountain. Wouldn't you know it, they were pretty much at the top, and this certainly meant they were gorillas in the mist! It was a stunning jungle to walk through though, the smell and look of it took your breath away, that and the altitude of course. After 3 1/2 hours we finally found the Susa family and spent the next hour sitting and watching them get on with their daily lives. We were so close to them at times, within an arms distance but they were not aggressive, more playful in fact. This experience cannot really be described in words, it was magical and worth every penny.


Unfortunately for me my tolerance for being at high altitude failed me again. After being at 3500 metres for over an hour my crushing headache got me again so the decent was not so enjoyable. It also started bucketing down so for 3 1/2 hours we slid our way down the steep mountain which would have been fun if I didn't feel like I wanted to die. Chris had a great time skating his way down holding onto the bamboo as he went!

From Rwanda it was back into Uganda and straight to Lake Bugayonyi a tranquil place which helped us to recoup and clean up after our muddy trekking. We spent a couple of days and on the first afternoon decided to wander through the local village. We came across a group of local woman and children who desperately wanted to show us their dance moves and also to teach us a song. It became apparent that missionaries had taught THEM the song as it was in English and about "Making melodies in my heart" for the King of Kings. It had some pretty snazzy actions with it though including thumbs up, chest out, buttocks up and turning around - hilarious.

The next day we hired a local dugout canoe, let me just say that maneuvering those things on your own will lead to a full scale tantrum out in the middle of the lake. I just kept going around in circles! Later on I did the wise thing and went with Chris so he could steer. We got a local fisherman to come with us in the afternoon with intentions of catching a massive catfish, but when we saw our rods (a stick with a thin bit of plastic as the line) we knew we would only be catching the equivalent of spotties. It was fun though as they were definitely biting and we got told we could eat the little guys whole after char coaling on the fire which is exactly what we did.

Reluctantly we left the Lake and headed back to the capital Kampala. A slum tour was on offer in the city so we thought we would give it a bash. Well it was an eye opener for sure. We didn't know what to expect when we were given a big box of condoms each before we set off for our walk. Most of the people that live in the slum are either HIV or AIDS victims including the children which is heartbreaking as you see their smiling faces and realise they are the innocent victims. Some of the kids are not allowed to play football as they cannot expend too much energy as they will get sick. The conditions they are living in is simply vile. Rotting rubbish and open sewers emit a horrible stench and right next to an open drain children and playing in the water as well as collecting it for drinking. We also realised that we would be going through the sex industry area of the slum and were expected to hand out the boxes of condoms to the prostitutes who snapped them up quick smart. There are so many people in this world in need, especially children, that is almost overwhelms you. You see how much kids have in the western world and what these kids have, we saw 1 ragged doll the whole day which was very well used and grubby but apart from that no other toys. We came away from the tour glad we went and saw, but with a big heavy heart.

Back into Kenya again and our stop off point was Lake Navaisha. Great campsite with its own resident hippos and monkeys. Fortunately the camp put up an electric fence every night to stop the hippos wandering through the camp as they are aggressive animals and not ones I would like to face on my midnight run to the loos. We spent our time here doing a mountain bike tour through Hells Gate National Park, it was good to not be on motorised vehicles as the animals don't get scared off much. Nothing that we hadn't seen before but definitely a lot closer to zebra, giraffe, warthogs and empalas. The national park is also a geothermal area so we ditched the bikes for a bit and walked through the gorge to a natural hotspring. Not up to Hells Gate in Rotovegas' standard but lovely nevertheless.

Finished the first leg of our African tour back in Nairobi where it all started. Had a quick visit to the giraffe sanctuary where you can feed them, or if you love them that much get a big slobbery kiss from them like Chris did. One of the giraffes also got a bit grumpy with one of the girls and gave her a decent headbutt which was pretty funny.

The time is flying already and tomorrow we set off for Tanzania to continue our adventures.