Livingstone

We were fortunate to stay several days in Livingstone, the last night upgrading to a tent with beds (10 bucks a person).

The first day we went to Victoria Falls, easily the most magnificent waterfall I have ever seen, and one of the most amazing in the world. It was also incredibly huge, and wet... there was a small walkway in front of the falls (not too close) where it was just a constant downpour, felt like standing in the middle of a thunderstorm. I got drenched, but it was totally worth it. The bridge had a rainbow that circled the entire bridge, just due to the heavy amounts of water and the sun.

Afterwords we visited the wood carving shops that lined the falls entrance. I haggled really well, the stuff that the merchants started at 50 bucks I got down to 15, and Kait didn't fair too well :-(, I felt bad, but we have other places to get a good deal.

I bought myself a King's Scarf, a replica of the scarf worn by the previous king, got a free set of wood carved salad serving utensils, a free necklace (they gave small "gifts" to entice people who seemed interested in a lot of stuff, I lied and only bought 1 thing, getting a bunch of stuff for free).

Also,

I'm a Trillionaire! According to Zimbabwe at least. I have my hands on 2 50 billion dollar notes and 1 100 trillion dollar Zimbabwe notes (all real, that country is in shambles), but the money is actually worth less than the paper its printed on. Filth money to everyone in the country.

The second day we went White Water rafting on about 15+ rapids, which included 2 class 5s. I only fell out of the boat once, so it was great. The whole thing was a blast, but our guide could have been a bit friendlier to us. The river flows between Zambia and Zimbabwe, and on one side I reached out and touched a rock in Zimbabwe. Can I say I've technically been now? Or at least have illegal immigration status?

That evening was another sunset cruise, this time just for dinner, boozing, and boogie boogie. We waved goodbye to the people departing our group.

The next morning, we said hello to 5 new passengers.

Kait and I traveled to the Mukambi Village to do our own village tour. This village housed the chief which ruled over countless other villages and hundreds of square kilometers. We met with locals and chatted up about how the government helps them (not too much, they do well on their own compared to most other villages). They live relatively well and maintain a solid export of wood carvings.

Speaking of which

Went to the wood carving market and bargained again, everything I got was personally made by the person selling it to us (we saw them making it), and I didn't have to spend too much to get a lot.

Love that exchange rate!

And Kindle 1.0s suck major balls. And are cause for a lot of pain and frustration as they always break. Stay away from the first version of the kindle.

Chobe National Park

We finally arrived into Botswanna again, and now have 2 additional passport stamps to prove it. Felt like they were wasting pages.

Anyways.

The camp site we stayed at was really nice. Lots of western tourists, plenty of places to upgrade (we didn't), and a gorgeous lobby with a buffet dining area to the side.

Kaitlin and I did the buffet two nights in a row. The food so far on the trip has been great, but a buffet is...well, a buffet.

We woke up super early the first morning to do an early game drive. We saw more animals in this drive than in any other: Hippos, monkeys, elephants, mongoose, warthogs, fish eagles and baboons, all incredibly, incredibly, incredibly close to our 4wd car.

We stopped for tea time on the Chobe river, and enjoyed the light breeze and early morning warmth.

Our sunset cruise that evening (thankfully included)gave us much more to see. There were tons and tons of elephants playing around in the water, wrestling each other and diving under using their trunks as snorkels, plus plenty of crocs and hippos to be seen.

Also, the campsite had huuuge spiders and spider webs, nowhere near us, thankfully.

Bagani Camp

After the Okavango Delta and the UmVuVu camp (as it was called), we headed back into Namibia. See, there are no roads that took us from Okavango to our destination in Chobe National Park, so back to Namibia we went.

Staying 10 km from the Botswana boarder, we stayed at a camp site called Bagani. Having had enough of tents for a while, Kaitlin and I decided to upgrade to one of the huts (was 20 bucks a person, less actually). Our first room we got to we put our stuff in, laid down, until I notice Kaitlin said "I think there is a head moving up there".

Sure enough, a fruit bad had made its way to the top of the rafters and was spying on us. Not eager to get rabies, we were lucky to be able to switch rooms.

It was a pretty laid back day. That night we all went to the bar and turned Jenga into a drinking game. The bartender gave the loser a shot of this Chili flavored vodka. I lost one game. It was horrendous. I had heart burn for the rest of the night (or the back of my throat just burned like hell). No amount of water or beer or anything could stop its pain. And I wasn't the only one complaining.

Okavango Delta

After the San Bushmen camp, we headed on out into Botswanna and towards the Okavango Delta, a marshland full of crocs and hippos that reminded me of the everglades in Florida. The two nights we were there we overnighted away from the truck and any other conveniences.

We used small little canoes and the locals, called polers (very much like the people pushing gondalas in Venice), pushed our boats through the weeds and the water towards our first camp site. It rained during the boat ride there and I got considerably soaked.

Our personal guides name was Esbey, and he was very knowledgable about the various types of plants and anminals we saw, yet his English was still lacking a bit. After we set up camp, we attempted to go on a boat ride to do a nature walk, but bad weather prompted us to turn around and enjoy a thorough night of Bush camping. Much to my displeasure, we hadn't seen any hippos yet, but we could certainly hear their growls in the distance.

The second day we got up early and boated to do a nature walk. This was extensively in the bush (i.e. long pants and close toed shoes a must). We saw wild elephants, zebras, warthogs, wildabeast, and baboons on our journey. When we were looking out at the zebra, I noticed (what I thought at the time) was a bloody stick to my left. Turns out it was a half eaten Python. Ground hornbills snatch up pythons to great heights and drop them to kill them, then eat their insides. This one had been ripped to pieces below the head.

Our second night we went to a proper camp (our tents had beds! and spiders...) and enjoyed a relaxing evening. I even learned how to pole from our poler, and standing up doing it is a lot harder than it looks. Imagine taking a big stick and pushing yourself along trying not to hit anything or anyone. Yeah.

It rained horribly that night, and Kait almost got attacked by a spider. But all is well.

Rundu

Spent two hours in a town in Northern Namibia called Rundu to grab lunch and check e-mail.

Protip: Don't Google Rundu

The Gods Must be Crazy

After Etosha, we started heading towards the SanBushmen Camp (to anyone who has seen The Gods Must Be Crazy, its their tribe, exact same tribe. And yes, at the nearest gas station I did buy a glass coke bottle, but felt it would be rude to bring it to the camp).

Welcome to the 21st Century ladies and gentlemen, where even the most simple tribes surviving purely on their own are forced to modernize. The Namibian government has now made it illegal for the Bushmen to hunt (though some still do it underground anyway) and are trying to turn them into farmers. They now have some livestock, some plants, some shaddy built housing from metal material provided by the government, and only one buildling (the bar, of all places) has electricity. But I guess thats better than trying to use a coke bottle for everything...

When we arrived, about 30 kids came running up to the truck wanting us to play with them. So we played for about 30 minutes. They were extremely light, I was able to carry two on each arm (with them holding on and lifting their legs) for a while. They all wanted piggy back rides, to be swung, and were quite demanding of it too. They would take our cameras and play around with them (they were fairly knowledgeable and loved seeing themselves on pictures and video) and our sunglasses. They were quick to return them whenever we wanted them back. They also loved it when I videotaped them doing karate to the point where there ended up being a line of kids doing funny karate moves to see themselves doing it on video.

Anyway, we went on a "living museum" walk through their old village where they were wearing their old garments and doing old things. It was pretty neat, our tour guide, who was probably 19 years old, gave us a great demonstration of old ways to dig up for water and food and catch animals and whatnot. She was half topless breastfeeding her child along the way...but she gave a great tour. Some of the older men in the tribe gave us a demonstration of their old hunting methods by using poison tipped arrows.

Everyone was wearing barely any clothing. The only thing that was always covered was junk below the belt. You have to pay for this stuff in the states, usually.

So, afterwords we went to their shop where I bought a traditional (yet very small) hunting knife, which had many other benefits for the tribe as well. I felt good about this as the money directly went to the village.

After dinner we had a traditional dance performed for us, and the last one we joined in by sitting around them clapping. One of the old local doctors came around to each of us, made a sucking noise on both of our cheeks and our foreheads to drag away the evil spirits (it look like he kissed us in each spot, except a slurping noise followed), and put tobacco ash on our nose and throat. He seemed pretty high off of whatever they were smoking (wasn't tobacco, wasn't weed, but certainly smelled like something funky).

We went to the local bar afterwords (I grabbed a coke) and watched the locals dance the night away (and I thought I was an awkward dancer!). The younger crowd was the most wild, and was shocking to see some of the far to racy moves that those between 3-7 years old were pulling off...

The next morning we went to the local government school and brought toys and school equipment as gifts. We taught them (and I finally learned) how to play cricket with this little cricket set, and we brought some soccer balls. They were all relatively well behaved. I went into a class room (wasn't too shabby, but certainly was falling apart) and looked around. They were studying African Slave Trade routes, as there was a huge class-made poster about it above the chalk board. This was probably a 4th or 5th grade class room, and riddled around the room were posters promoting the use of condoms (seriously, fuck abstinence only education, IT DOESN'T WORK) which was great to help stop the spread of HIV and the spread of babies (an environmental killer), posters about TB and posters that promoted equal rights for women (also a plus for the new African generation).

It was certainly a trip I won't ever forget

So, I should have posted this earlier, but Spitzkoppe was easy to forget...

After Cape Cross, we did a bush camp in Spitzkoppe, where there were cave paintings that ranged from 200-1000 (or more) years old. Quite frankly, even with a guided tour from a local, the cave paintings were largely unimpressive. They were faded (no ones fault but nature, of course) but simple, and were not done for any artistic purpose.

Nomad travellers would paint warnings and symbols saying whats in the area so people in the future would know whats around. Thats all, an ancient text message to visitors. Most of you get those on your phone when you arrive in a new country (or the Caribbean, for those of you who have yet to travel abroad).

The camp site was very pretty, and we climbed this huge rock and watched the sunset, took us about 15 minutes to climb up, and we were pretty high up too. I do remember dinner that night being great, it was this spicy Indian dish with a good side dish of a bread similar to Naan.

Bush toilets suck.

Its a Game...and a Drive! (Etosha National Park)

After Spitzkoppe, we headed toward (what used to be) an incredibly incredibly large game reserve in Namibia. Starting off at around 100,000 square kilometers, is now down to about 27,000 square km.

The game drives were really cool, as we were in Etosha for 2 nights. There were 3 campsites, each spread out at even intervals in the park. We first started out seeing loads of birds (birds are boring) and a monitor lizard (quite possibly more boring), but soon after we ran into a pregnant Lion who had moved away from its Pride to give birth. It was slightly injured, from possibly anything, but seemed to be doing fine. It had blood dripping down its right front leg, but looked alright.

Anyway, so interesting fact about Lions. The gestation period is 90 days, and once the female learns its pregnant, it leaves the pride to give birth and raise the cub for a few days after. Prior to returning, the dominant male (aka big daddy, P.I.M.P, gigilo, whatever, the one that gets EVERY female in the tribe pregnant) meets the young cub and the female to determine if the cub is actually his (a paternity test, really) and if he somehow decides its not, he mauls the female to death and then kills the cub. Cute story. More like a real life Maury or Jerry Springer episode. Go men!

Anyway, we saw a ton of zebra, giraffes, and even a few elephants, which were all astounding, and the elephants were some of the most amazing animals of the trip.

Each night the place we stayed had a waterhole that was lit up for viewing, but we only saw Springbok (and the bloody springbok are everywhere, have to now be the most boring animal we've seen just cause there are thousands of them).

Etosha probably wouldn't exist now if it wasn't for humans. Nature tried to take its course and the main lake dries up, but now most of the watering holes are maintained by the park in order to ensure there is water (so, they have underground pipes to a lot of watering holes).

One up for America, by the way, as apparently there was oil discovered somewhere in the park, and the park is now, according to our trip leader, owned by the United States. Either way, Springbok is delicious, so not all animals will go to waste.

Cape Cross

After Swokopmund, we headed out towards Cape Cross, not too far from the town. This is where the first European (a Portuguese Sailor, I believe) set foot in Namibia. He erected (hehe) a big cross at the cape, hence, Cape Cross.

The reason we went here was because of the Seals. There were thousands and thousands and thousands of seals, young, old, pregnant, dead, giving birth, whatever, just laying around on the rocky beaches of the cape. They were feeding and just being lazy bums. They also smelled.

In fact, the smell was almost unbearable. After we jumped out of our truck, it was like being punched in the face with a smell similar to the Elephant section of the St. Louis zoo, except (at the very least) 3 times worse. Kaitlin gagged, and I held my nose every so often.

Either way, it was really cool to see a natural resting and feeding of all these seals.

Next stop, Spitzkoppe!