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.