Decided on Botswana Instead…
Hi everybody!
I am now in Maun, Botswana. It’s a strange city where you’ll find mud huts alongside internet cafes and stray donkeys wandering through town. I decided to join up with an overland group in Livingstone, Zambia after speaking with a few people. It sounded like Botswana and Namibia were a little bit more difficult to backpack through, not to mention expensive without a tent. So I changed my route, which was originally going to be to take the bus along the coast of South Africa. However, after seeing South Africa, I decided that I wanted something a bit more rugged. So about 12 hours before departure I signed up for the trip and in the morning I was taken across the border into Botswana where I met my group in Kesane. I’ve posted pictures of Zambia and Botswana so you can see what I’ve been up to.
Chobe River
Unfortunately, I arrived too late to take the game drive in Chobe Park, but it didn’t sound like I missed much. Later on in the evening we went on a sunset cruise along the Chobe river and the amount of animals we saw was just amazing! There were animals left and right, at one point we were surrounded in the boat. That was a really cool experience. Early the next morning we woke up and packed our tents for a 10 hour drive to Maun.
Okavango Delta
We arrived in Maun and stayed for one short night before heading off into the Okavango Delta, a large mass of water that blankets the land. Heading into the delta was a really neat experience. We went on two different game walks, one early in the morning and one late at night. We saw elephants, zebras, wildebeast, birds and loads of old bones. The trip into the Delta was cool in itself. You ride on a mokoro, which is a canoe made from a hollowed out tree. A person stands in back and pushes you through the water with a pole. I tried steering the mokoro and it’s not the easiest. I would imagine it’s much harder with a bunch of weight in it – there was only about 1 inch of wood on either side above the water with the mokoro fully loaded. Lots of the time during mid-day was spent reading because the sun gets so hot you can hardly leave the shade. However, at night we had some fun and the locals showed us some of their local songs and dances. It wasn’t long before they started asking for ours… Western culture is pretty bad with this kind of stuff and we ended up singing Row, Row, Row Your Boat and Waltzing Matilda?? (it’s a really popular Australian song – about 80% of the people on the trip are from Australia – I just kind of hummed along).
Anyways, everything is going pretty well. Tomorrow we are heading off to Namibia already and we’re going to Etosha National Park. We get to do a game drive there, so I’m really looking forward to that. Oh by the way, the trip I’m doing is a 3 week trip that takes you from Victoria Falls to Cape Town. It’s been pretty fun so far, however, I think I’ll probably just stick to traveling on my own without the overland trucks after this one. Getting lost and screwing up is just so much more fun…