Namibia – Botswana – Zimbabwe – Zambia : 8th April - 4th May 2001

I joined Worldwide's  'Southern Sun' overland truck tour in Cape Town on 8th April.  Our first activity was canoeing on the Orange River.  Our boats were called 'crocodiles'.  The river runs between South Africa and Namibia, although we were based on the South African side.  It was great fun, the water was warm, and my white t-shirt was orange my the time we'd finished!

Namibia is probably my favourite of all the African countries I’ve visited so far – it’s so diverse, and has some incredible sunrises and sunsets.

The first sunset was over the Fish River Canyon at Hell’s Corner.  It was near here that I spent my only night ‘under the stars’, or under a mosquito net and an acacia tree to be precise.  The sky at night in Africa is incredible, I’ve never seen so many stars, and you can see the ‘Milky Way’ most nights too!  We returned to the canyon the following morning for sunrise.

We headed north to the Namib Naukluft National Park (The Desert).  A very punishing but rewarding climb up Dune 45 to watch the sunrise, was followed by a nice easy descent.  I wanted to run down – but was a bit scared, so tried sliding down on my bum instead, but for some reason, you couldn’t slide.  It was fun regardless.  It had been marginally easier than climbing Deadvlei the previous afternoon during the heat of the day.  Fortunately, we weren’t invited to climb Sossusvlei too, although we did admire it from a distance.

We were scheduled to stay for 3 nights in Swakopmund, but on our first night there (co-incidentally the first night of the tour that we weren’t staying in our tents), they had more than a years worth of rainfall, and we all got rained out of bed at 6am on Easter Sunday.  We’d had enough and left a day early, and with the extra day, were fortunate enough to visit a traditional African tribe, The Himba Tribe.

We stopped off at the Cape Cross Seal Colony, on the Atlantic Coast, en route.  A lucky break - they'd just had all that heavy rain, so the smell was a fraction as bad as normal.  

The Himba village itself was small with maybe about 10 mud huts, constructed with thin branches of trees and the roofs thatched with grasses grown nearby.  The women and children had their bodies painted with a mix of ochre and butter fat, which 2 sisters were ‘busy’ making in a calabash.  They were dressed in ‘skirts’ which were animal skins, wore nothing on their top half except for a collection of jewellery, and had their hair braided and matted together with the same stuff they wore on their bodies.  Some wore a long coil on their ankles, about 4 inches deep.  The children all wanted to play – be swung around, or play football with something, or just to be carried around.

Many of the hats and sunglasses got transferred from visitor to Himba child.  Our guide told us that if you gave the people a can of coke, they’d try to open it with a knife.  They have no concept of a ring pull.  The men, we were told, were all out hunting, except the chief, who was very old.

The Cheetah Park at Kamanjab is a sanctuary for cheetahs.  Instead of shooting when a farmer catches a cheetah with his sheep, he'll catch it and bring it to the Cheetah Park.

Bushman paintings (or engravings) at Twyfelfontaine date back about 6,000 years, whilst the 'petrified' tree trunk is estimated to be about 260 million years old.  Although the tree trunk has turned to stone, you can still see the bark and rings inside the tree trunk.

Before leaving Namibia, we went had a 3 day stay in the Etosha National Park, although apart from Zebra, Giraffe and Springbok, we didn’t see many animals.

The highlight of our time in Botswana was our overnight trip into the Okavango Delta.

To get into the Delta, you have to cross a 7,000km fence into Foot and Mouth territory.  The fence runs from Namibia to South Africa.

It was hot – very hot, and we rode into the Delta in a Mokoro with a ‘poler’, with nothing to protect us from the heat of the sun – except some sunscreen and a sarong.

We camped in the wild, with nothing between our tents and the lion pawprints we spotted whilst on our gamewalks.  We didn’t actually see any lions, but did see an elephant, lots of zebras and springboks – and they tell me there was a snake in the campsite!  

During the drive to meet the mokoro, the little children would rush to the roadside shouting ‘White People, White People!’, and wave frantically at us. 

Our other destination in Botswana was Chobe National Park.  They say there are 45,000 Elephants in Chobe, but we didn’t see a single one.  We did see a hippo returning to her lake after a night's grazing and one buffalo.  

We drove into Zimbabwe on the same day that we didn’t see any elephants in Chobe, and passed loads along the roadside.  At the border, the Aussies all had to pay US$30 for their visa, whilst those of us travelling on a British passport didn’t have to pay.

Our first stop in Victoria Falls was for currency.  The official rate of exchange was US$1 = Zim$60, but we took the unofficial rate of US$1 = Zim$118 – and it was legal!  Their biggest currency note was Zim$100.

We didn’t visit the falls from the Zimbabwean side, but instead crossed in to Zambia. 

That evening, we had our last official night together and dinner at the Boma Restaurant, where they lay on entertainment and lots of courses.  When we left the restaurant – an elephant was drinking from the pool! 

When the tour finished, I wanted to get to the Great Zimbabwe National Monument at Masvingo.  I boarded my train at Victoria Falls, the guard made a bed for me, and I woke up the next morning – still at Vic Falls!  So a group of backpackers took a bus to Bulawayo, and, not wanting to be left alone, I went with them to Harare – hundreds of miles out of my way. 

Next morning, I met a couple of backpackers who were renting a car and heading to Masvingo – Perfect… except that 15 minutes along the road, the back window was smashed in an attempted robbery at traffic lights. 

My friend Nadine arrived the following day, and we visited the ruins.  Definitely worth the effort of getting there, but it was such a cloudy day that most of the ruins were in the clouds. 

It’s mind-boggling why anybody would choose to build such a place in such a location – not to mention how…  And how did they actually get along those narrow stone alleyways?  Incredible, but now it’s time to escape Africa and head down to Australia.

The cost of entering the falls on  the Zambian side was only US$3 compared to US$25 on the Zimbabwean side, so we walked over the bridge into Zambia – just for a few hours.  It was hot, and the spray from the falls made a very refreshing shower.  The Zambezi was running very high, and therefore the flow over the falls was very fast.  If you can imagine the heaviest rainfall, then double it – that was the spray from the falls – and that was when I realised that my waterproof wasn’t really waterproof.  It didn’t really matter except that I didn’t want to drown a second camera in the space of one month!!

However, having got into Zimbabwe for nothing with my European passport this morning, I now had to pay US$10 for a visa to get into Zambia, whilst the Aussies got in for nothing.  I guess it was worth it for another stamp in my passport.

It was kind of sad because it was our last official full day on the tour – although most of us actually stayed for at least an extra day.

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