The Long Goodbye

Sunday 24th July, 2005. Our Acacia African Adventure was over. My first 6 weeks on the road had ended, and it was time to attend to the slow but painful business of saying goodbye. But not quite yet - there were still a few things to sort out, a few things to attend to.

First of these was Table Mountain. On arrival, we had confirmed a rumour that had been doing the rounds as we got further south, namely that the Table Mountain Cableway (i.e. the cable-car up the mountain) was due to close the next day for 2 weeks, for maintenance. So, as soon as people had dumped their packs in their respective hostels (one large group in The Backpack, another in Ashanti Lodge, and various others, mostly couples, scattered across other places), and generally showered and cleaned up, we met back up at The Backpack, got in a cavalcade of taxis, and headed up to the Cableway for a late-afternoon ascent of Cape Town's imposing massif.

And, once again, things went basically fine to start with, although Kath and one or two others were a little bit nervous on the way up (despite having mostly got past my own fear of heights, I can certainly sympathise). Once up, people scattered over the top of the mountain and started doing their own things. And it was while taking on the unfamiliar role of birdspotter (I was looking at a black eagle, ok?), that I got approached by Kiri, who was visibly uncomfortable. She was one of those staying in separate accommodation from the main groups, and had made her own way up to the summit and, unfortunately, had not just gotten a little bit nervous on the cable-car ride up, but had a fairly serious panic attack, to the point of nearly being sick. Hence, she was now adamant that she would not take the cable-car back down, and wanted my help to find the way to walk back down.

Now, here I face a dilemma - the walk back down is at least 2 hours or so, and it's less than 2 hours pre-sunset. So Kiri, if she goes for this, is going to be doing at least part of it in the dark, down a 1000m+ mountain. And, while she has some water, she doesn't have walking boots, or even a coat or anything. But she insists she isn't going back down the cable-car. In the end, as I didn't have water or anything with me for the descent, I walked Kiri to the top of the main track back down the mountain, gave her my fleece, hat and gloves and set her on the way down. And immediately started worrying about whether I did the right thing, or whether I should have tried to bodily carry her onto the cable-car or something - it really isn't advisable to attempt the descent of Table Mountain on your own with night coming in. When I met back up with the others, they were similarly worried, but we agreed that there was basically nothing more we could now, except maybe ask the Rangers to keep an eye out for her coming down the track.

In the end, as it turned out, Kiri was fine - she made it back okay, and was reunited with the rest of us that evening, as we gathered (minus Kath and Yohan, our first departures) at The Backpack, before going on for a dinner at a nice little place called Arnold's. There, I kept up my usual eating habits and demolished some zebra steak. Mmmmm. After a pleasant dinner there, there were a few more of a long stream of tearful goodbyes and a bunch of us piled into taxis and headed out to the suburb of Clifton, and a little place called La Med. Which was at least half empty until we arrived, but gave everyone the chance to carry on drinking and have a bit of a boogie (I was relatively loath to indulge in the latter, given that the music was largely R'n'B, at least to start with). Around 1am, I joined the next bunch of those going home, leaving the die-hard maniacs to go on (to a gay bar, it later transpired) for further mayhem.

The next day, I took full advantage of having a bed and not having to put up a tent, and lay in until late morning. Then I got on with some of the inevitable domestic chores of getting my laundry done, reorganising the pack, going to the Post Office, lots of internet etc. And, in the evening, met up again with most of the remaining Acacia brigade and went for a very pleasant dinner down at the Waterfront of Cape Town, at a place called Quay Four. In the process I had my first pint of bitter in over 6 weeks (mmmmm, Bosun's Bitter) - not really the classic accompaniment to Cajun-blackened Cape Salmon, but it worked for me! After a very nice dinner (accompanied by some glorious wine, courtesy of Matt and Brandon, who had had an industry insiders' tour of some of the wineries that day), there were more tearful goodbyes, as we lost ever more of our group. This just reminded me once again that I really don't like extended goodbyes.

And the pattern was repeated to some extent the next day - lounging around in the morning, lots of internet time, went for a wander down to the old Castle of Good Hope, had a few drinks with my room-mates at Ashanti (including a mad Welshman, Richard, who I made the mistake of letting near my hair with clippers - I ended up with the most severe haircut I've had in over 5 years!) and then ended up diverting out for one last dinner with the remaining Acacians. Some of them came back to Ashanti afterwards, and hence cue yet more long goodbyes.

And then that was it. My Acacia experience was over. It was off to sleep, nice and early ahead of a morning departure for Stellenbosch. And that's where I shall have to pick up next time. Until then, my friends, goodbye!

Pat

Things not to do in a tent...

Hello again! Right, time for another attempt at a quick update on the old blog.

So, we had arrived at our campsite at Orange River, to be faced by a minor shock: grass. Lots and lots of grass. And other green stuff. And about the only sand was in the volleyball court. And there was a river. We were most confused by this. This was not a desert. Where had they hidden all the sand? It was also our penultimate night on the truck, so Paul asked us if we wouldn't mind brushing down all our tents.

Once we got over these acclimatisation issues, a few of us headed over to the aforementioned volleyball court (possibly to assuage our need to be covered in sand), where Yohan and I were given somewhat of a kicking by Roger and Dave. One amusing aspect of the set-up there is that one of the main shower-blocks is right next to the court, and the block is mostly bamboo fencing - so those who are quite tall can actually look out onto the court while they're having a shower! Of course, I wouldn't want to be a particularly tall lass trying to take a shower in there while a match is on...

Anyways, after a shower to clean off any leftover sand, we had a while to wait before dinner was going to be ready, so I tried ringing home, and promptly burnt what little credit I had on my mobile in talking to my Mum for about 2 minutes! Somewhat disheartened by this, I decided that it was about time I dealt with the bottle of gin I'd been lugging around since Heathrow, so got started on the gin and tonics, happily encouraging any of the others who were interested to have a drink too (I can remember getting Jon, Valdy and Paul to all have a drink with me). Meanwhile, Jon was repacking his entire pack in the middle of the camp, when he could take time away from yet another in an endless succession of campsite dogs, which was yapping around with typical enthusiasm.

After dinner, it was time to adjourn to the bar, where I ended up talking with some Germans and Afrikaners, meaning I missed the decision by the group to stage a mass brown-eye salute (probably a good thing, on reflection...). Eventually, my increasing inebriation persuaded me to hit the sack at a relatively decent hour, meaning that what I later found out about other activities that night was generally acquired second-hand. And, not for the first time, it centred on Heetan.

As I said, I only found out much of the action the next morning, and I was not totally flavour of the month with some of the crew after I overslept, and tried to make myself a sandwich for brekkie while the food crew were trying to clear things away. However, it turned out I was far from the last person to be ready to leave - I looked on in confusion as Heets put his and Leonie's tent back up and went in armed with a bucket. The gossip around the truck swiftly informed me that this was because Heets got slightly confused as to his location in the middle of the night, and used their tent as a toilet. It then proceeded to how at least Heets' ground-mat wasn't soaked, as he had dragged this into Jen's tent, where he had threatened to dance (due to her decision not to stay outside and dance with him). And then onto how we might be screwed for lunch that day, as Jon, Dave and Valdy had apparently gotten onto the truck and been throwing the pasta that was to form the basis of the salad around... At any rate, pretty much everyone was sat on the truck, engaged in the usual post-mortem analysis of a heavy night, while Heets scrubbed his tent clean, then took it down and packed it away again. And then we left.

And, to be honest, not a huge amount happened that day - it was largely just another day on the road, enlivened somewhat by our morning stop in the town of Springbok, where almost the whole truck gave in to urges for munchies in the form of KFC, and I spent half my time wandering around trying to set myself up with a new SIM card for my mobile (to connect it to a South African network). Our stop for the evening was a quiet campsite near a place called Citrusdal, which also contained hot springs - these proved popular with some of the group, but I have to admit that a combination of apathy about climbing up the hill to where the pools were, nervousness about getting wet and hanging around in the cold, and realisation that the last 6 weeks were catching up with me meant that I had a very quiet night down at camp, where I took the opportunity to transfer all my possessions back from being strewn through my locker to being crammed in my packs.

The next morning, we broke camp for the final time. Oh, what a sweet sensation it was, to know I would never have to erect Tent 42 again. Unfortunately, they were all covered in dew, and got covered in damp grass when we took them down, which somewhat undid all our efforts the previous evening, when we had wiped down every tent thoroughly to try and get them clean. Everything was stowed into White Nile, and off we went, down the highway towards Cape Town. After all the various dirt roads (sometimes verging on tracks) and the like we had encountered on the trip, doing the final stretch on an immaculate tarmac highway just seemed slightly wrong.

Anyway, on arrival in Cape Town we made a stop off in the northern suburbs, at a beach called Table View. Can anybody guess what you get a view of from there? So, we all got our Table Mountain shots (slightly spoiled by the amount of haze), and then various last-minute shots of the group (or most of them). The reality that the whole adventure was coming to an end was starting to hit home. And it got another kick into place when we arrived in the centre of town and, for the first time since some of the group went into Zim at Livi, people split up to sleep in different places.

And that will have to do for the moment - the official end of the tour seems as good a point as any to end a log entry. From now on, I would be back under my own steam again, going at an independent pace. But that is a story for next time, my friends. Until then, farewell...

Pat

Bad Games, A Big Hole and The Last Border

Hello once more. Well, it's a bit late, but this entry will hopefully get us to the Namibia/SA border. Hopefully...

So, when last I had to be pried away from the machine, it was dinner time of our second evening in Sesriem. Which was potje time again, only this time, it was oryx potje. Mmmmm. That said, there's something bizarre from knowing that what you're having for dinner now is one of the things that you were happily photographing only a day or two earlier. I guess it's not usually an issue with pigs, cows or hens, but applies more when you decide that antelope or zebra or ostrich is the way forward (as indeed each of them is!). And then, post-potje, it was time to head off to the bar once more. Although the bar at Sesriem has to be one of the smallest and most pitiable attempts we saw in many a campsite.

Which actually makes it all the more surprising, then, that this turned into one of those occasional nights of drinking games when everything gets just a little bit silly. We had Brandon and Matt, our American buddies, teaching people how to play "Whales' Tails", a game involving a mythical inquisition by the Prince of Wales into who has slept with his wife (just DON'T ASK) that requires extraordinary powers of concentration, so is best done early in the evening (it also really screws over people who aren't that quick to work out things with numbers). Then we played that old standby, the Name Game, involving shouting out celebrities' names in turn as you go round the circle, which tends to mess up people who don't have a good memory (it punishes repitition and hesitation). Then Jo got us playing Whizz-Bang-Bounce, some variant of which is familiar to many people, and which tends to make life hard for those who've already got drunk in the previous games. And then that old classic, Bunnies, was wheeled out, which just confused absolutely everybody. At which point, some bright spark suggested the most evil incarnation of drinking games known to western civilisation: I Have Never...

Now, for those lucky souls not familiar with "I Have Never" (which also goes by the names Never Ever and Never Have I Ever), I shall summarise it as follows: going round the circle (most lethal drinking games involve a circle), everyone takes a turn to say "I Have Never Done X", where X can be pretty much anything. Often, at the start of games, X can be something harmless like "Done a bungee jump" or "Skydived" or "Been to 3 different continents". But, people playing drinking games being what they are, the tone very quickly descends to the gutter, down through the sewers and onwards, and you frequently end up finding out things about the people you're playing with that you would never have guessed (and often that you wish you'd never found out at all...). For this reason, it works quite well with backpackers whom you've only just met and are unlikely to spend much time with in the future, and is an exceptionally bad idea with good friends or family members!

The usual rules can also include the imposition of a "Circle of Trust" between those playing the game, such that nothing found out in the course of play can be passed on to anyone else. This is essential in the (obviously purely hypothetical) situation where you have one half of a couple playing the game while their other half is fast asleep elsewhere, and will be seeing other people involved the next morning... In any case, due both to this and to my occasional attempts to remain close to some standard of public decency, I won't be divulging any of the knowledge brought forth from the game, but I figured I might as well give a little background on it, as it pops up once or twice more in the course of my travels .

Anyways, after the late bout of I Have Never around the campfire (and an impromptu decision by the lads in the group to graffiti the desert...), it was a slightly owlish group who surfaced in the morning for our trip out of Sesriem, and further south through Namibia. This was another of those occasions where we just didn't really do much during the day, although for once we actually got where we going on time, so there were no issues with getting into the camp, finding our allocated spot etc. Some unkind souls remarked to Paul that they'd almost forgotten how to put up their tents during the daylight. Still, after setting camp it was time to hop back on the truck for a quick trip out to the rim of the Fish River Canyon, which is, Namibian tourist authorities reliably inform me, the 2nd Biggest Canyon in the World (after the Grand Canyon). Don't know on exactly what basis they do this, but I can reliably inform you that it is one bloody enormous hole in the ground. And we actually reached it in time to get photos of the sun setting, even more improbably.

After that, it was back to the campsite for dinner and the usual drink or two (although for once there was no campsite bar to help out proceedings, so we were entirely dependent upon our own supplies, and upon the Valdy Bar, an esky stocked with alcohol by our esteemed driver and sold on to us as the most convenient repository of cold liquor). That evening was enlivened somewhat by another broadcast of Leonie's DVD of her getting savaged by a lion cub in Vic Falls, by the seemingly dozens of copies being made of a CD of African music that Paul and Valdy had repeatedly used to greet the morning on the truck, and by the attempts of Scott, aided by myself and Paul, to finally fix the damned stereo on the truck (which was now happily playing in the back of the truck again, but not in the front, leading to our being plagued by horrible music at horrible volumes while Paul and Valdy listened to something else on a personal stereo in the cab...). Eventually, after much mucking about with electrical gubbins and me having climbed on the roof of the cab, we got all of it working apart from one speaker, which seemed a pretty decent effort given that a bloody "professional" electrician hadn't been able to get it working!

There was an effort to get another drinking game going, one involving each person in turn adding one word to the sentence underway, but it didn't really get going that much, and the night turned into a pretty quiet one. The next morning we were up and away again, on our way out of Namibia. It was actually a pretty late start, as we didn't have too much ground to cover to the Orange River border crossing point. What we did manage along the way, though, was one of those occasional unadvertised breaks, and this one was a doozie: some hot springs, at a little place called Ai-Ais. Now, the last time I'd been in anything similar was when I was over in Hungary last year, but this was vaguely similar: hot pools of various temperatures, some indoors, some outdoors, though the ones in Budapest didn't have a set of fountains that went off occasionally, and worked as a very effective back massage for those standing underneath them! They also didn't see their outside pool hijacked by a bunch of overlanders with a rugby ball (in defiance of the "No ball games" signs liberally plastered around), leading to much fun, amidst shrieking, splashing and generally scandalising the other (mostly German) holiday-makers there.

Soon enough, though, it was time to hit the road again, and head for the border, where it was another hassle-free crossing (you know, there I'd been, pre-trip, imagining all kinds of nightmares at African border crossings, and it was mostly so easy it was booooring!) and there we were, in our final country on White Nile, the good old Republic of South Africa.

And that's where this latest instalment will tail off, as the details of our final truly silly night on the truck will have to wait. Until then, dear reader, fare thee well!

Pat

Sand, sand and more sand

Right, time to cover a little more ground on the Blog, and see if I can finally get a bit nearer to the Namibia/SA border. Looking back on last time, we had just had our second night in Swakopmund...

Well, we were all up and ready to leave Swakopmund on the Tuesday morning, but unfortunately White Nile wasn't! Due to some issues we'd been having with the stereo, and a couple of other minor issues, she was being looked at by a mechanic. So we got a little time to ourselves, which most of us used either for catching up on net time, or for shopping. Eventually, an hour or so past our original departure time, White Nile rocks up and we all pile on. We then find out that the attempted repairs haven't fixed things, as they couldn't figure out what was wrong. Bugger. So, we head on, dodgy stereo and everything, down the coast to the town of Walvis Bay.

Now, Walvis Bay was the last town to join Namibia, as the South Africans didn't release it until 1994! The reason for this is that Walvis Bay was historically part of South Africa under the British, when Namibia was the German colony of South-West Africa, largely because Walvis Bay sits on the only decent harbour along the entire Namibian coast, so we Brits decided that was the only bit worth having (note that this was way back before anyone found diamonds...). These days, though, it's re-integrated with the rest of the country. And we were popping down there to go see flamingoes. You see, there's pretty big salt marshes along the coast there, which the dumb pink birds love, so there's thousands of the buggers just sitting there. I wasn't really in the mood to get that excited about them, but a few of the others went off determinedly up the beach, with a cunning plan to try and drive some of the hordes perched outside effective camera range back towards the waiting masses armed with cameras. Unfortunately, due to a shortage of time and the fact that distances on the beach can be deceiving, this came to nothing, which was a shame - I was rather looking forward to them jumping around trying to scare some of the birds into flight...

After that, it was back onto the truck for another long drive down through the Namib desert, enlivened as ever by the always-competitive intra-mural games of scrabble, Uno and chess which flourished on the truck. We also made a stop at a farmhouse, which I believe was called Solitaire, where many of our number had what Paul and Valdy promised us was the "best apple pie in Namibia". From there, it was on towards the campsite of Sesriem, the gateway to the greatest dunes of the Namib, and to Sossusvlei. Except that we got there late. D'Oh! They did let us in, but our original pitch had been sold on, so we had to share with a poor family on holiday. By this point, it was too late to make our scheduled trip to see sunset at Sesriem canyon, so we just settled in for the night at the slightly surreal campsite. You see, it's all sand, but then you have these big trees sprouting up out of the middle where their roots have found water way down - each pitch is generally around the base of a tree (vital for shade during the day). Another very early night followed, as we had to be up really early...

... because the next morning we headed off on what is an informal race across the park. As soon as the gates from the campsite into the park open, most of the 4WD vehicles of whatever stripe within head out in their very own version of the Cannonball Run, albeit over a much shorter course! In this case, they are all rushing for the base of Dune 45, which is basically the designated point for watching the sunrise from within the park (wily people that the Namibian National Parks people are, they provided road access, a car-park etc at one of the dunes, on the basis that if people are going to muck about with the dunes by climbing them, it's probably best to restrict it to one of them...).

Still, despite a slightly later start than we had planned, all seemed to be going okay. Then, on arrival, I made the critical error (perhaps understandable given my oft-stated aversion to the hours of morning) of mistaking the word "sandals" for "shoes" in the phrase "We don't recommend you wear sandals when attempting to climb the dune". So I went off to climb a huge red sand-dune in my besocked feet, despite the fact that said sand is bloody freezing first thing in the morning. Given my performance on the dunes during sand-boarding at Swakop, I was expecting pain, but even that didn't necessarily prepare me for the horror of climbing that bloody dune. I was halfways sure I was bloody dying out there, as I struggled along, trying to use others' footsteps as much as possible to lessen the amount that the sand slipped out from under me as I climbed. Still, I made it up the steepest part (the first bit) and was progressing okay along a ridgeline as the first glimmers of light started to show on the horizon. Time for the first pre-sunset photo.

So, out comes my camera, snap goes the shot, and then comes the whirring of it turning itself off. Bugger. Flat battery. Oh well, time to put in a spare. Except that one of the spares is flat, and the other one isn't there. Bugger. I put it in Roger's bag when we went sand-boarding, and never got it back. And Roger is way further up the dune than me at the moment. Nearly howling audibly with anguish, I stumble on up the dune to where the rest of the group are gathered, searching frantically for Roger and Chiara as the light grows brighter on the Eastern horizon. And then, having found them, discover that Roger doesn't have his bag with him. It's not even on the truck. It's back in the camp at Sesriem. Bugger bugger bugger! We're out in one of the most photogenic landscapes on the planet, and my camera is basically dead. Aaaargh! Eventually, I remember that I have a disposable 35mm camera in my daypack (purchased for those times when even I'm not daft enough to take my digicam out...), and manage to get some shots. I still don't know how they turned out, though, as the film hasn't been developed yet!!

Oh, and by this point my feet are not merely sore, but also rapidly going numb, standing in very cold sand (joys of the desert - it's totally bloody freezing at night...). After a short while to appreciate the beauty of the sunrise and the majesty of the ensuing view, it's time to make tracks back down the dune. Literally. I think all of our group made it down the main approach again (admittedly with much whooping and jumping), but some idiots from other groups on the dune just charged down the pristine faces of the dune, which seemed just a bit childish - there's a certain stark majesty to the sand dunes there, and a line of footprints running down the side just seems to desecrate it somehow. I know that when more sand blows over, it'll just get wiped away, but it just feels kind of disrespectful to the place.

Anyways, when we got back down it was to be greeted by two sights: first was Paul applying the finishing touches to a massive fried breakfast; the second was another (northbound) Acacia truck, laying out the chairs and tables for a champagne breakfast. We'd been trumped. Dammit. That said, once we were tucking into our brekkie, it was widely agreed that champagne at 6:30am was not a good thing, and we'd rather be stuffing ourselves with bacon, boerewors (S African "farmer's sausage" - very good) and scrambled eggs. Oh, and defrosting our feet, for those of us who went up barefoot or in socks. Soon enough, though, it was time to move on, heading to the main parking lot out in the middle of the desert, which serves as the base for trips to Sossusvlei itself.

Before arriving at Sossusvlei, Paul had been really selling us on the possibility of doing this walk with a bushman out to the vlei, which would show us all the life in the desert and that kind of thing. Only on arrival did he discover it now cost almost twice as much as he'd thought it did, so he offered to lead a trip through the dunes to another, nearby vlei, the Hidden Vlei. Now here I have to confess to one of the few possible regrets I have from my trip with Acacia - due to my tiredness, the soreness of my feet (which were recovering from some other cuts even before I nearly froze them) and my unwillingness to climb any more bloody dunes, I didn't join most of the others from our truck as they followed Paul. But I also, due to not having got enough cash out last time we were in a town, didn't fork out the 80 Namib dollars (or about 7.50 GBP) for the shuttle vehicle into Sossusvlei itself. Looking back, that's faintly ridiculous - to have come that close to what's regarded as one of the natural wonders of the world, and then stayed in the car park nursing sore feet for want of a few quid in local currency. Bloody stupid. Oh well, I guess I'll have to go back to Namibia some other time to remedy that!

Anyways, after all the morning adventures, we headed back to the camp at Sesriem, where we had an afternoon at leisure. Most of the group used it to chill out by the pool. I used it to resuscitate and then back up my digital camera. I know, I'm a geek, but it needed doing. Then, that afternoon, we had our delayed appointment with Sesriem canyon, which is surprisingly impressive. So much so that we wandered down into it, lost track of time, and came back up to find we'd just missed the sunset again! D'Oh! Then it was back into camp, and dinner time.

But I shall have to break off here, as my time is about to run out, and this entry is (once again) getting stupidly long. Take care and have fun,

Pat

Zooooooooooom!!

Hello again,

Shall we head back to the narrative, which cut off last time just as we entered Swakopmund, which seemed to be utterly dead...?

The good news here was that we were staying in a hostel again. Beds! No putting up of tents! Yay!!! So, we got everything settled into our rooms, then headed off for the obligatory videos outlining all the activities available to do in Swakop. The main ones of these are Sandboarding, Quad Biking and Skydiving, making good use of the sand dunes just out of town. For me, this was relatively unnecessary, as I already knew I was going to do Quadding and Sandboarding. No contest whatsoever. Various of the others umm-ed and ahh-ed a bit, but it was pretty similar sentiments form most people, although Roger and Chiara (our Canadian couple) decided to do the skydive as well!

Having decided on our activities for the next day, it was off to the bar (or back to the bar in a few cases...) to start our belated celebrations of Valdy's brthday - given that he didn't have to drive the next day, he was good to come out with us and start the mayhem. However, the early action was fairly brief, as we adjourned from the hostel bar to a pub/restaurant called The Lighthouse for another big slap-up meal (mmm, oryx...). Although, given the amount of wine and beer consumed alongside the food, matters were proceeding fairly energetically anyway. Once we finished there, we decided that, given the deader-than-a-morgue state of much of Swakop on a Sunday night in the middle of winter, it was back to the hostel bar again, where Valdy renewed his long-running relationship with shooters, aided and abetted by various of the usual suspects from the truck.

What followed was probably one of the daftest nights on the whole trip, and hence the memories are slightly more fragmented. Highlights included Belinda's seriously energetic dancing up on the tables, Dave's dogged pursuit of the barmaid, several games of pool that went on way too long, largely because I think some of the players could scarcely see the balls, and the classic comedy moment where I found myself chatting to one of the jump-masters for the skydive company, who'd had a few bevvies himself. It was partway through his trying to persuade me to sign up to jump the next day, that he pointed out a guy passed out on the bar. And told me that was the guy who packed the parachutes. What little enthusiasm I had at that point faded away pretty sharpish. By the end of the night, though, I'd apparently dozed off on the bar myself (classy, I know) before staggering back to my bed.

The next day was another bright and cool day, enlivened somewhat by the post-mortems of the previous night over fry-ups. And by Dave's smug appearance that morning in a tasteful T-shirt emblazoned with a variant on a certain Pizza restaurant's logo featuring the words "Pussy Hut". And no, he wasn't referring to a kitten sanctuary. Soon enough, though, it was time to load up into the Kombi vans associated with most good backpacker activity companies and head out to the dunes, ready for sandboarding. For those not familiar with the activity, this involves climbing sand dunes, then going down them either on a waxed-up snowboard, or lying down on some form of toboggan. The first bit (going up) is the painful bit. Really painful. Climbing up a mound of shifting sand whilst dragging a board of some kind is not fun. Not at all. Especially not when recovering from "the night before", as so many of us were doing (I will freely admit to having several thoughts along the line of "I am going to die" in the course of climbing the dunes that morning).

However, the going-down bit is great fun. I had decided, given my brief exposure to snowboards a few years earlier, to give the "stand-up" version of sandboarding a go. And, well, frankly I sucked. The only real benefit of quite how bad I was was that I made a couple of appearances in the video of the day (they always like good crashes...). After a couple of attempts, and a couple of gut-busting climbs back up that evil dune, I happily switched over to tobogganing. Now this was much more fun. Sliding down the slope at up to 80km/h on a sheet of waxed plywood is very addictive. I made one descent down "Lizzy" (the 2nd-fastest route down the dunes, and still a real eye-opener!), and then 2 further ones down "Dizzy", their fastest run, featuring a point where the slope drops away and you can get "air" under at least the front of your sheet. Absolutely superb fun. There's nothing quite like doing near enough 50 miles an hour down a sand-dune on a sheet of plywood, frantically trying to keep elbows and hands (gloved) from digging into the sand and causing a spectacular "wipeout", either screaming like a girl or giggling like a loon. I was still bouncing around a couple of hours later, when it came around to time to go out on the Quads.

Now, to be honest, I love Quad bikes (4WD 4-wheeled motorbikes for those unfamiliar with them). I almost never pass up a chance to have a go on them, and this trip just sounded like it would be amazing, as we would be heading out through the dune fields, before "roller-coaster-ing" up and down the sides of the dunes. And doing so for about 2 hours. I won't bore everyone with all the details, but suffice to say that, at least after I had got clear of some of the more nervous riders near the back of the field and joined up with the over-enthusiastic idiots in the leading group, I was ploughing along at near enough full throttle for most of the rest of the trip. And the "roller-coastering" involves going at full speed, often down a slope, towards one of the dunes, driving as high up the side of it as you can then, just as you are losing traction and slowing right down, turning back down the slope to pick up more speed and (often) do it again over the other side of the dip. There was general agreement from those of us who did it that this was probably the single most fun activity on the whole damned trip, and for most of us that included rafting the Mighty Zambezi (TM).

We got back to Swakop itself after sundown, having caught dusk looking over the South Atlantic, and caught some air over a few of the bumps on the way back. Various of us were obviously disappointed when told that, no, we couldn't go and do it again, and yes, we had to give the quads back now. We then headed back into town to the hostel, and shortly popped over to one of the local pubs, to see the video CD from our sandboarding earlier in the day. I loved this so much that I gave in and bought a copy. I know, I'm weak, but it is quite cool, and I actually quite like the music too! Then it was back to the hostel, where my cooking team were to have our final shift making dinner on the trip, and rarely can there have been an easier one - chicken burgers. Fry chicken breasts, chop salad, get out bread rolls and sauces. Even the washing-up was pretty straightforward. Unfortunately, though, by the time we'd finished cleaning up, everybody's ardour for any further celebrations had dampened somewhat, and it ended up being a very quiet night.

And that will have to do for now. Until the next time, mis amigos, adios!

Pat

Fast beasts and smelly beasts

[From this point on, the untimely loss of my notebook in Pretoria means a few of the remaining posts are less detailed than they might have been (stop cheering at the back!). Still, I shall continue with the chronicles of my time in the Dark Continent. And so I return with you once more to the north of Namibia, and to Etosha National Park.]

And to another early departure, in search of yet more game. This, though, was to be our final game drive of the trip, on our way out of the park and back south again, on the first stage of the long descent towards Cape Town. And, to be honest, there wasn't really anything else to excite me on the way out. It was simply a case of getting back to the gate, having lunch at the campsite which had no room at the inn when we arrived, and then heading on south for what Paul assured us would be a quick drive of an hour or so to the Otjitongwe Cheetah Park (try saying that one after a few too many beers).

Unfortunately, for once Paul's knowledge of the route (which he hadn't been on for a year or so) failed him. It was significantly more than "an hour or so" to the cheetah park, such that we arrived there rather later than anticipated, and were hence unable to pet the cheetahs. Yes, you did read that right - I said "pet the cheetahs". As in, go and stroke them and generally sit next to the big predatory puddy cats. This is apparently possible because, alone amongst the Big Cats, cheetahs are not born with the hunting instincts, and so do not automatically see us as Food. The people who run the park rescued the 3 cheetahs in question as cubs. So they're like big domesticated housecats. That can run up to 100km/h or so. And have non-retractable claws (another little unique cheetah feature). Not going to go into the morality or otherwise of doing this, but the animals seem happy enough.

Anyways, as noted, we weren't able to do the petting that afternoon, so it was off to the enclosures further out in the park, where they keep the other cheetahs. These are generally wild adults who have been caught on farmland and would otherwise have been shot. So, instead, they are kept in enclosures and fed regularly. Again, not quite the same as having them free in the wild, but I reckon better than having them dead. Anyways, as you may have guessed, we were there for the spectacle of them being fed. Only we were late, and we weren't the first group, so we got to watch from White Nile. And I didn't think this was necessarily a bad thing, as the other intrepid visitors were in a little trailer, surrounded only by low railings, behind a bakkie (transl. = "pick-up", or "ute" if you really must). In an enclosure with half a dozen or so big, hungry cats. Protected only by a guy in the stereotypical Afrikaner costume of khaki shorts, check shirt and boots, wielding that known weapon of mass-destruction, the Big Stick.

The feeding ritual itself largely consisted of: Afrikaner oke (transl. = "bloke") goes to bucket in back of trailer and grabs large hunk of meat (another reason NOT to be in the trailer, in my book, though some of the others on the truck were loudly lamenting that they weren't out there); beckons to circling pack of cheetahs; waves stick at any that get too close (seriously); throws meat out into pack; cheetahs pounce in giant furball; one of them gets the meat and legs it off, sharpish, to a safe distance to feed; repeat until no more hungry cheetahs prowling around in enclosure; repeat for next enclosure. All pretty prosaic, were it not for the fact that a cheetah haring in at near-top speed in search of food is a pretty awesome sight, even if it is basically getting a steak served blue.

Anyways, after that it was back to another small square of dusty ground masquerading as a campsite (although this time in a cheetah park), there to pitch our tents and settle in for the night. Dinner crew made dinner. A bunch of the rest of us headed off to the bar. I know, it does seem like my alcoholic tendencies were coming to the fore again, but there really wasn't a great deal else to do. Although this bar did sell some pretty cool cheetah park T-shirts, one of which I purchased. Several others of the group also did so, and some of the discussions around colours were enlivened somewhat when Helen (who's training to be a makeup-artist) started suggesting what the most appropriate colour for various people would be. Before anyone asks, mine was apparently pink. Now, unfortunately, I actually rather dislike the colour pink, associating it as I do with pink-shirted, pin-striped, rah-rah City Boys (spot my pet prejudices) and several rather over-enthusiastic student Pantomimes on which I worked. So I got a rather fetching maroon/burgundy kind of number instead. STOP LAUGHING!

That was about all for that night, and the next morning dawned for us slightly less bright and early than Paul habitually liked (I wasn't complaining). The reason? Well, it was time to do our cheetah-petting. Those nice people at the park had offered to fit us in first thing (i.e. around 7:30, engendering something of a lie-in for us) and so we struck camp and drove over to the farmhouse at the entry to the park, where we went through the (rather substantial) chain-link fence into the front yard. There to be confronted by 3 adult cheetahs.

I have to admit feeling just a tad nervous when walking in there (in a daft-arse show of bravado, I'd gone in as one of the first in the group), but our true Afrikaner oke from the previous afternoon talked nicely to his pets and got them to lie down, and we then took it in turns to crouch down and pat and scratch them behind the ears (obviously with a barrage of cameras going off - luckily they're apparently used to all the bleeps, clicks and whirrs). The one I patted first even purred! I mean, it's logical for a cat to purr, but I'd never quite envisaged a scenario where a cheetah was purring right in front of me while I scratched behind its ears.

The roll-call of pictures was interrupted every so often, though, when the cheetahs got distracted by another family pet, a little vervet monkey, which would sit just out of reach in the bushes, or on the scaffolding around the water-tower, and chatter at them. We also had a comedy interlude when one of the cheetahs took a bit too much of a liking to one of Dave's flip-flops and went off with it! He got it back in the end, but now complete with cheetah bite-marks on it. And there was a slightly overly dramatic end to the session when the cheeky little monkey dropped down to the ground to taunt one of the farm dogs (who played quite happily with the cheetahs?!?), and took its eye off where the cheetahs were. And one of them pounced. Cue much shrieking, first by the monkey, and then by the lady of the house, whose pet it was. Eventually, the cat dropped the little rascal, who promptly climbed back up to the roof, and order was restored. Hopefully, the little pest may have learnt not to go around teasing the cheetahs, though!

And so, we were off again, down slightly more minor roads, heading SW for the coast and our next stop, the Cape Cross seal colony. Now, the origins of the name Cape Cross are faintly humourous, so prepare for long-winded explanation. Originally, it ws named because it's a cape, and the Portuguese (who were the first Europeans to reach the place, en route to their discovery of the sea-route around the Cape) placed a cross there, proclaiming how glorious it was in the eyes of God that they had found this coast, yadda yadda. All was perfectly fine, until sometime in the 19th Century, after the area fell under the control of the Germans, who, in a fit of sublime inspiration, called their colony "South-West Africa". Catchy, huh? Anyway, they apparently, for reasons known only to them, waltzed off back to Germany with the original cross, and erected one of their own in its place. As you do. ??!? Matters were then, however, further complicated after Namibia's independence from South Africa, as the Portuguese supplied a replacement replica of their original cross. So there are now 2 crosses at Cape Cross. And a lot of seals.

And, despite how cute people may find them, there is one overwhelming issue with seals: they stink. Absolutely reek to high heaven. Poo poo poo. Almost up there with hippos. (Almost). To the point where Paul advised us not to wear any fleeces or the like out of the truck, as they would take in rather too much of the odour, and he'd hate to have to throw them out the window (or words to that effect). You get the idea. They smell. They're also really rather noisy, keeping up a pretty impressive barrage of honks. And there's somewhere in the vicinity of 80,000 of them there. Covering the rocks, and the shoreline, to the point where you can barely see them. You get the idea. Lots and lots of smelly seals. Oh, and I saw a jackal wandering around, which was also kind of cool.

And then, not before time (I'd been wearing one of my bandanas as a mask over my nose and mouth to alleviate the aggression of the smell somewhat), it was back onto the truck, and further on down the coast to the little town of Swakopmund. Now, as you may be able to guess from the name, Swakop is a pretty Teutonic place. Kind of like a small Prussian town dumped in the desert by the sea. And we arrived on a Sunday night, when it wasn't exactly kicking. Actually, more than that, as we drove in, the consensus was that we'd arrived in a ghost town. It looked like the local tumble-weed was on a fag-break. Could this be the place described by some guidebooks as "the adventure-sports capital of Namibia"?

Well, this post is long enough now, so you'll have to wait for the next one (possibly as soon as tomorrow) to find out. Awww, ain't I a tease?

Until then, taraa!

Pat

Bloody hell, leopards DO actually exist...!

[Thankyou so much to Yohan, for sending on the best leopard picture from our truck, gratefully reproduced here]

Hello again my friends,

After a spate of horribly expensive internet in Durban, and non-existent internet during my sojourn in the Drakensberg, I am now in Pretoria, with cheap-as access, so it's time to try and bring the story a little closer to the present day, so let's pick up where last I left off, in Etosha:

This being a national park, you can guess how we started the next day. Yep, dark and early (5am or so, again...), loading onto White Nile for further chasing off bloody antelope. Or at least, that was how I felt at the time. As predicted by Paul back up when we were in East Africa, I had been getting fairly game-fatigued. Once you've seen all these animals a certain number of times, you do find yourself saying things like "Oh no, not another bloody giraffe", and people making jokes about only wanting to see another hippo if it was fighting a lion at the time. Combine this with my usual aversion to early mornings, and you'll have some idea that I was in not the most happy of moods.

This wasn't helped by the fact that the seat-rotation policy on the truck had now brought me right back to the back again, and when we did stop to see things, our driver Valdy tended to line us up okay for those near the cab, while unintentionally leaving some of the rest of us looking at bushes, which was mildly frustrating. Still, we were seeing a fair bit of game, which kept quite a few of the newer occupants happy. As it was, though, I was fairly tuned out and having a conversation when we stopped to look at another giraffe. So I wasn't the first to react when Dave and Heetan, from opposite ends of the truck, both made comments along the lines of "Are those spots in the bushes there?".

Indeed, it turned out, they were. Finally, after over a month on the road, I could see a leopard, the most elusive of the "Big 5" of Africa! Incidentally, not sure if I mentioned it back in my musings from Kenya and Tanzi, but the Big 5 are named not for their actual size (there are much bigger creatures than the leopard out there) but for their danger to hunters - hence, the Elephant, Rhino, Buffalo, Lion and Leopard were the 5 most dangerous things for big-game hunters to take on back in the 19th century. Anyways, there was much frantic photography, as everyone tried to get a decent shot through the undergrowth (unsurprisingly, their camouflage is pretty effective...) - the best of ours was Yohan's, which he kindly sent on arond the group afterwards (and I have shamelessly used here). And then, there was astonishment as another leopard loped out of the undergrowth just behind it.

Now, leaving aside London bus-style jokes about waiting forever and two turning up at once, this is incredibly rare - adult leopards are solitary creatures, and only ever pair up just before mating, splitting up again just afterwards. Neither Paul nor Valdy had ever seen a pair of them at once before, and it's not many people who have. Understandably, this completely rejuvenated me and got the enthusiasm back up, so I was a very happy bunny when we got back to camp for lunch. Most animals being sensible enough not to wander around much in the heat of the day in the deserts of Namibia, we were not due to head out again until later in the afternoon and so had a few hours of leisure around the campsite, which any of us put to good use by jumping in the pool. Or at least, those of us with a certain tolerance for chilly water - compared to the hot desert air, the pool was really rather cold, and it was notable that the Brits were rather more ready to plunge in than the Aussies in the group.

Much splashing around in the pool with a ball (and a much-needed ice-cream) later, it was back on the truck for more beastie-spotting. Amidst the hordes of springbok, and quite a few kudu, we managed to get a glimpse of a lion, much to the joy of the crew who had joined up in Livi, as this was their first leonine sighting (and completed their entire Big 5, all within Etosha!). We also went out briefly onto the Etosha pan itself, a huge salt-flat. This gave us a chance to get out of the truck in the middle of a park for once, as there were more than enough sight-lines for safety. We put this unaccustomed freedom to typical use - taking photos of one another, kicking balls around and general horseplay (e.g. Dave deciding to lick the salt-pan, and Amanda deciding to ride on his back while he was doing so...). And in all the excitement, we nearly lost track of time, and so were left at the mercy of Valdy's driving once more as we raced to get back to Halali camp and avoid being locked out! This time we managed to cut it even finer, as we drove through the gate and almost immediately passed the guard heading over to lock it. Phew.

It was then back up to the waterhole for most of us, where we saw elephants, hyenas and jackals again. The highlight, though, was definitely when rhinos came back down again. And this time, the mummy rhinos brought their kids, leading to a situation where we had two adult females and two juvenile rhinos all clustered around the waterhole. Absolutely mesmerising, and really lovely for Helen, whose favourite animal they are, and who had missed the rhino the previous evening. Eventually, though, it all got pretty quiet and it was time for bed again.

And that is where I must leave you now, as I have spent way too long on the net today. Adieu, mes amis!

Pat

Beer Halls, Funky Labs, Bakeries and Waterholes

Hello once more. Or should I say Guten Tag? For our travels had now taken us to Windhoek, the capital of Namibia (Africa's youngest country) and probably the most German city in Africa, though it actually feels more like a colony of South Africa. Most noticeably, Windhoek is very "first world" in the centre, with banks, takeaways, shopping centres, supermarkets, buses, and everything else, all looking clean and modern. The roads are also excellent, and the vehicles are largely in a decent state of repair. Botswana had been similar, but the contrast with Malawi, Tanzania or Kenya was very pronounced.

At any rate, our stop on that first night was in Windhoek where, joy of joys, we would be staying in a hostel (the wonderfully named Cardboard Box), meaning dorms and beds! I was, by this point, getting fairly sick already of the tents (especially the whole hassle of pitching and striking camp almost every day). Windhoek also meant the opportunity to go out to a nice restaurant for dinner, and go on drinking in bars afterwards. After an hour or two at the hostel (used by the boys mostly for playing pool or drinking beer, and by the girls apparently for straightening their hair...), and the fun of breaking into the back of the truck (the bolt on the door had slipped on due to the steep slope we were parked on!), we headed off to Joe's Beer Hall, a much classier establishment than the name might suggest, for dinner.

Now, Joe's is one of those wonderful places, found in many large African cities, which offers a good variety of game meat on the menu. I had a truly divine Kudu steak, while Belinda, sat to my right, had Zebra, and various of the others dined on other antelope, or on ostrich or crocodile. With the beer and wine flowing, this made for a very agreeable environment (despite the dents it was putting in our individual budgets), and a fair few of our number were still in the mood for a party. Hence, we headed on to the Funky Lab, a gloriously-titled drinking den, in a motley cavalcade of taxis.

At the Funky Lab, Matt amused himself by claiming that Paul was a famous pop-star in Europe, and that he was his manager, in order to blag the "VIP Room" of the bar for us. This served the additional purpose of giving us somewhere slightly more private where we could celebrate when midnight chimed and Valdy's birthday began. Eventually we were moved back out to the main bar, where I had one of my occasional sulks that the music was mostly R'n'B (which I enjoy dancing to almost as much as I enjoy trips to the dentist), and amused myself by watching some of the other antics (Helen attempting pole-dancing by the bar, Brandon swaying gently whilst looking confused, Belinda boogeying away furiously on the dance-floor, etc etc). I joined the second exodus back to the Box aroud 1am, while various of the die-hard party crew (mostly those who actually liked the basic) moved on to another bar, Chez Ntemba. I might have been tempted to go along, but was determined to make at least reasonable use of having a nice soft bed to sleep in.

Given the state some people were in the next morning, I felt I'd probably made the right decision to bail out when I did. After fairly relentless progress south and west since Dar, we were now headed back northwards, up across Namibia towards Etosha National Park. Namibia being mostly desert, this wasn't the most visually stimulating of trips, but that didn't really bother that many people, as most of us were either snoozing or engaged in the usual games of Scrabble, Chess, Uno, etc. We made a couple of stops in the few little towns along the way, one of which was used to grab cakes for Valdy's birthday. We also encountered the rather bizarre sight of a "Baeckerei mit internet" (Bakery with internet, for those unfamiliar with German, which wasn't a combination I'd ever considered particularly likely).

Unfortunately, all these little distractions meant that we were running quite late as we entered Etosha. Our problem was that the campsites in the Park close their gates just after sunset, and people are liable for hefty fines, on top of probable loss of their camp slot, if they arrive late. Paul had been hoping to get us into the campsite closest to the southern gate, but this was fully booked up, so we had to race across the Park to the Halali site, attempting to cover around 80kms in under an hour. That we did this is testament to the determination of Valdy, who pushed White Nile about as fast as he possibly could, and got us to the camp with barely minutes to spare.

After pitching camp yet again, the dinner crew (Jo, Jen and Belinda this time) got to work on the night's food, while the rest of us headed up to the water-hole. One of the attractions of Etosha is that the water-holes tend to bring a lot of the animals in the park into places where they can easily be seen, and each of the 3 campsites has its own floodlit water-hole. Hence, we arrived at ours to find an elephant having a very lengthy drink. During the course of the night, we would also see hyenas, jackals, kudu and, best of all, black rhinos. This more than made it worth sitting out, braving the cold. It also made me really appreciate the little tripod I had bought from Jessop's before leaving, as without it I wouldn't have got anything but blurs on the night pictures. Hence, I was a pretty happy bunny when I snuggled down under my blankets to sleep that night.

And the wonders of our second day in Etosha will have to wait, as I have other backpackers circling around, wanting to use the computer. Until next, my friends, goodbye!

Pat

Delta Blues

Hello again, my friends. Back to Botswana, and the day we headed into the Okavango Delta:

Well, the day started on a bit of a surreal note, as I arrived by the truck for breakfast to hear Paul conversing with Valdy. The latter, however, was not to be seen. At first, I assumed he was the other side of the truck, and his voice was carrying through the open storage lockers. In fact, the explanation turned out to be rather more straightforward: Valdy was underneath the truck. To be more precise, Valdy had slept underneath the truck. Having failed, for once, in his efforts to get friendly with a young lady (not from our truck) the previous night, he had apparently realised that he had no idea where Paul had pitched their tent, and so had elected to sleep underneath his trusty White Nile!

Anyways, humorous episodes involving Valdy aside, we had to break camp yet again, as we were taking our own tents, mats, sleeping bags etc for our little overnight jaunt into the Delta. This was pretty well automated by now, even for the new guys who had only joined us in Livi, so we were all ready when the time came to pile onto yet another truck to head out to the mokoro launching point. Due to the early morning chill, I was very glad that I had brought along my trusty blanket, which I had acquired for the princely sum of 2 quid at the PEP store in Kasane (PEP is a kind of cheap clothing store in South Africa, which also has branches in Namibia and Botswana - I had also finally succeeded in my long-running sandals quest there!), even if it did have a slightly unfortunate habit of molting on me!

Our arrival at the mokoro launch point was unfortunately something of an exercise in chaos - there seemed little or no rhyme or reason in the way pairs of us were allocated to mokoros or their polers, with some pairs of light people placed in the high-sided fibreglass boats whilst heavier people ended up in the older, shallower wooden boats. As you can probably tell, Jon and I ended up in a wooden one, which promptly started shipping water over the gunwale amidships (largely because the cross-breeze through the delta was whipping up a low swell), getting Jon soaking wet and quite upset!

From this point on, matters ranged from the mundane to the farcical, as Jon and I ended up being dropped off on a mudbank while our canoe (and poler) was taken back and swapped. This helped matters slightly, but we were still dealing with quite a lot of spillage into the bottom of our mokoro, which was soaking the ground-mats (on which we were sat). And we were some of the luckier ones. Tony and Stacy (the Kiwi couple who'd been on the truck since Uganda_ were going along with only about 1cm of freeboard above the waterline (we had maybe 3cm...) and Stacy was lying flat out in a "luge" position, trying not to think about dropping into the water. Roger and Chiara (the Canadian couple who joined us in Livi off the Jo'burg truck) had also had to be swapped out, as had Dave (London wideboy) and Amanda (American lass), two more of the Jo'burg brigade.

The worst fortune, though, was reserved for Brandon and Matt, the two American lads who'd joined up with the truck to start with in Livi - their mokoro sank. Twice. Apparently the first time the water started coming in on Matt, who was sat in the middle of the boat, and they just slowly subsided. After this, their bags were transferred into another boat, and they headed off again. Only for, a few minutes later, the prow of the boat to disappear into the water (leading with Brandon's feet), and another impression of a submarine to begin. At this point, the polers decided to transfer the boys into one of the fibreglass mokoros, to ensure their safe arrival at the campsite. So, what did they transfer into probably the most un-sea-worthy vessel in the fleet? Our tents. One of which apparently fell in the water during the transfer. Which later turned out to be Matt and Brandon's tent. Honestly, you just couldn't make this kind of thing up.

By the time we arrived at our campsite for the night, it was to find that many of the tents were at least damp, and about 3/4 of the ground-mats were somewhere between soggy and totally sodden. Admittedly, it was still only early afternoon, so we laid these out to dry, along with various sleeping bags (mine included) which had also got slightly closer to the delta than intended. Feeling mildly disgruntled at all this, we then headed off on game-walks with some of the polers. These were, it must be admitted, more than a touch disappointing for many of us. The game appeared to have all decided to hide for the day, such that we saw a couple of antelope and a brace of warthog (all at a distance) and that was about it. Apart from all the poo - our guides were, in fact, very good at pointing out and describing the dung of the absent creatures.

As you can most likely tell, I wasn't really that bowled over by our little adventure in the Delta, although it was partly salvaged by a gorgeous night-time vista of the southern skies. Quite a few of us, either prompted by a sense of adventure or by a wet mat or tent, ended up sleeping out around the campfire, in the company of our polers. Unfortunately, either they or Valdy turned out to be responsible for some pretty energetic snoring and this, combined with a biting cold wind, served to severely restrict my ability to sleep. So much so, that I had only had about an hour or so when dawn came around and people were getting up for another game walk. Dispirited by the previous day's anticlimax, and seriously knackered, I decided to opt out of this and get another couple of hours' sleep.

Soon enough, though, it was time to get up, eat some breakfast and reload the mokoros for the trip back through the delta. Having evidently learned something from the previous day's misadventures, this time all the heavy people, along with the cameras and other things sensitive to water (Brandon having seen his MP3 player ruined in the sinking incident) were piled into the high-sided fibreglass vessels. Unsurprisingly, this severely reduced the number of water-related accidents and upsets, and we made it back with little or no trouble (although I did feel slightly sorry for the poor lass who got lumped with myself and Yohan, the two heaviest guys on the truck, in her mokoro). All in all, I was very happy to get back on terra firma again and head back to the campsite at Maun.

After a very welcome lunch, most of us took the opportunity to catch up on diaries and the like for the early afternoon (though there was also the usual game of frisbee going on), before a bunch of us headed back into Maun to go for scenic flights over the Delta. You might have thought, from the above, that I was sick of that damned river, but I was actually pretty excited to be getting a flight over it in a light aircraft, so as to get a view from something other than a few cms above water-level. And view-wise, the flight didn't disappoint - from up there, I could actually grasp the watery green and blue majesty of the place, as well as seeing a hell of a lot more game. My only slight regret was that I ended up on a plane with two nervous fliers, so our pilot kept it mostly very slow and level, whereas some of the others were apparently doing all kinds of low-level tricks and banked turns. Ah well, you can't have everything!

Given the antics pre-Delta, it wasn't that surprising that it was a relatively quiet night back at the campsite, with only a few of us adjourning to the bar after dinner for a drink or two and some more anarchic table-tennis. Unfortunately, it wasn't the best night's sleep for me, as it turned out that the ground-mat I had grabbed from the pile was one of those with a hell of a lot of damp still inside, which had seeped up onto the bottom of my sleeping bag. I threw the mat out of my tent in irritation and slept (badly) on the floor, only remembering in the morning that I actually had my own little travel-mat in my locker on the truck. D'Oh!

The next day was another of those long ones spent on the road, as we lumbered our way south-westwards across Botswana to our next overnight stop, outside the little town of Ghanzi. This was a very rocky, dusty campsite overall, with little to recommend it apart from the pleasant little pub (amusingly entitled "The Rampant Aardvark") and the patch of greenery behind, which a few of us put to good use for an impromptu game of 3-a-side footie. This pressed home to me just how unfit I'd got, as I was staggering around short of breath after about 15 minutes. When I finally get back to doing regular exercise again, it's going to be painful.

The next day, we were up and off bright and early again, for the drive westwards through the outskirts of the Kalahari desert to the border crossing point on the highway from Botswana to Namibia. Another uneventful, visa-waivered, crossing later, we were into my 6th country of the trip, the Republic of Namibia. And that is where I shall pick up the narrative in the next posting, as otherwise this has the potential to turn into an absolute monster of a post.

Until then, fare thee well!

Pat

Playing With Fire

Hello again once more. Time to attempt another quick update.

So, where were we? Oh yes, heading south-west across Botswana, from the border town of Kasane to the boom-town of Maun, by the edge of the Okavango Delta. Now, the Okavango Delta is pretty much unique, as it's basically the only delta in the world which terminates inland - all the others (so far as I know, though I wouldn't be surprised if some of you go try and dig another example out...) flow into seas or, occasionally, lakes, but the Okavango flows down from Angola into Botswana, spreads out across the flat pans of the northern Kalahari desert and, through a combination of seepage and evaporation, just kind of dies away. Bizarre.

Anyways, Maun is the nearest town to the most accessible bit of the delta, and hence has become the headquarters for trips out into the waterways, usually conducted by mokoro, a type of canoe/punt made out of (traditionally) local wood or (increasingly) fibreglass, and poled along using a branch. Unfortunately, Maun is quite a way from Kasane, so we spent much of the day (yet again) on the truck. During this time, it was suggested that we could have a Punch Party when we arrived in Maun (i.e. everybody chip in and make a big batch of punch for that evening). We decided this was an absolutely spiffing idea, and pretty much everybody pitched in, such that, when we arrived in Maun, a few of our number were dispatched to the Bottle Shop armed with a large wad of cash and told to set us up for a par-tay.

This they duly did, and one of the cool-boxes/eskies/chilly-bins (delete as appropriate, based upon nationality) was washed out and disinfected before serving duty as a punch mixer. Worryingly, the stuff seemed to be made up of about one part hard alcohol to one part wine to one part soft drinks. More worryingly still, when tasted it turned out to be really rather pleasant. Some effort was made at restraint, by attempting to wait until dinner was ready, but the collective willpower just wasn't there, so people ended up already stuck in by the time dinner was up. I honestly can't remember at this remove what we had for dinner (I would guess it was probably pasta and sauce or lasagne...), but it all seemed to be going pretty well - everyone was quite happy and chilled out, and looking forward to our trip into the delta the next morning (even if not to the bush-camping the next evening). Everything had started to be cleared away, and we were all sitting around the fire, as usual, chatting away with whoever our neighbours happened to be at that point.

What happened next was slightly confusing, as most of us only turned at the sound of a disturbance, but it seems that Heetan and Jon had been joking around a bit, and somebody had started to throw drinks. Heetan swore blind straight afterwards that Jon had thrown one at him first, although Valdy and several others reckoned he had been the one to start it. Whatever happened, the next thing we realised Heetan was diving for the kettle, on the edge of the fire in the middle of the circle. As some of us looked on in horror, he seemed determined to throw the boiling contents at Jon. Luckily, Paul was rather faster on the uptake than most of us, and jumped on Heetan, forcing him to drop the kettle and pinning him to the ground. After struggling for a while, loudly proclaiming that Jon had started it, Heetan eventually quietened down, and headed off to bed. Most of the rest of us just sat there, anywhere between surprised, shocked or horrified at events.

Surprisingly, this didn't put a real downer on the rest of the evening. Everyone decided that there was no point in letting this spoil an otherwise fun night, so we cracked on, eventually finishing up the punch and heading over to the campsite bar, where matters progressed further, thanks in no small part to reuniting Valdy with a Shooters menu (the drunken table-tennis probably helped as well). Eventually, though, even the most hardened, party-starved idiots amongst us decided that enough was enough, and we all traipsed our ways back to bed.

And here I will have to pause again in the narrative, as my hour on the net is up. Until next time, dear readers, fare well!

Pat

Heffalumps

Here we go again, back to the narrative and Botswana. Our first stop was at the Thebe River Safari Camp, which is just outside Kasane, which is just over the border. So there wasn't far at all to drive before setting up for the evening, which was lucky as, as has already been noted, we were running late for obvious reasons. Unfortunately, this meant making camp in the dark again, but I'd been at this log enough by then that it wasn't really an issue. The evening was pretty muted, as a few of us went to the bar and watched the latest news from London on the TV. Then it was off to bed for an early night, ahead of a dawn safari drive in the nearby Chobe National Park.

Now, we did a few game drives in the course of my trip with Acacia, and quite a few of them were dawn ones (dawn and dusk being the best times to see animals, and often the best light for photos as well). But I don't think we ever did one that was anything like the anticlimax of that Chobe one. We saw a few hippos at a distance, a hyena, several of the ominpresent antelopes (I'm pretty certain there was an impala among them), and one elephant. Which is both pretty pathetic for several hours driving in the freezing cold (the nights in Botswana actually made it feel like winter in Africa), and astonishing given that Chobe is near-enough infested with elephants - there's apparently something like 15 or 16 per square km, as part of one of the biggest elephant populations in the world. The one we did see was pretty good value, though, as it was an old bull elephant who was "in musk" - basically, we had stumbled upon a horny grandpa heffalump! Valdy had informed us that you never forget the smell of an elephant in musk, and he wasn't wrong - it's not particularly easy to describe, but it's very distinctive! It almost got a little hairy, though, when our pachyderm pal decided to wander forward and challenge the land cruiser next to our truck (it promptly got out of the way, and he ambled off into the bushes). So that enlivened things a little bit near the end, but it was generally agreed that this was a bit of a damp squib.

Back at the camp, we had a bit of down-time, and people could just catch up on their diaries or do their washing or whatever, while lunch was prepared and we waited around for the afternoon's scheduled sunset cruise (this time, NOT a booze cruise!). One good precedent was set when we got a couple of the balls (a football and Scott's Aussie Rules football) out of the truck and a few of us had a bit of a kickabout - thenceforward, the balls would come out at almost every stop (including our frequent stops at the side of the road for people to water the bushes), which probably saved me from getting even more unfit in the course of the trip than I already would have.

After a quiet afternoon, we were taken back down to the Chobe River (which forms the northern border of the park, as well as the border between Botswana and Namibia at that point) and loaded onto our boat for the afternoon's cruise. We were quite glad to have gotten there moderately early, as we managed to bag some seats - in the end, there were several other groups on there as well, and it was pretty cosy. A few of us were indulging in quiet sundowners, though most people were happy to leave this at the stage of a beer or two rather than anything too exotic (there were plenty of dodgy memories of what happens from mixing alcohol and boats to go around). And the cruise more than made up for the morning's disappointments - plenty of elephants, bunch of hippos, whole load of antelope (including Kudu, which we hadn't seen many of yet), and we saw it all from so close up. This is the joys of these river cruises, which use shallow-draft catamarans to get in really close to the wildlife, most of which is now habituated to having humans nearby. Combined with a gorgeous sunset, this was a really nice end to the day.

Back at the camp, it was potje (POY-key) for dinner - can't remember if I explained about it before, but this is a South African speciaility, a stew cooked in a cast-iron pot over the fire. If you get the chance, do try it, as it's reeeeally nice. After that, I took advantage of having a campsite with power, and backed up another load of my photos using Paul's laptop (having a guide with a laptop he is ready to lend you has to be one of the most best things you can have on one of these trips - saves a fortune on getting it done at camera shops, and is often more reliable given some of the experiences people had, especially in Tanzania). Again, though, it was a relatively early night, as we had another early start and another long drive the next day, as we headed down across Botswana to Maun, the gateway town for the Okavango Delta. That, though, will have to wait for the next instalment, as I've already burned up a lot of time and money online today (damn MSN Messenger...)

Take care and have fun y'all,

Pat

How to Regain Your Perspective

Okay, not much of a cliffhanger from my last post, as I'm writing the answer the very next day. I'm obviously more of a soap opera than a quality drama.

Well, at first nothing much seemed to go wrong that evening. We had beautiful weather yet again, and our new crew, accompanied by Paul, Heetan and I, were having a great time. The booze was flowing and we were all getting to know one another, as well as enjoying the sights of the mighty Zambezi (sorry if I belabour this, but every single time we heard anyone from the compay that owned our campsite, Safari Par Excellence, describe the river, it was as "the mighty Zambezi"). Admittedly, we hadn't managed to steal most of the bowls of snacks the way we did the previous time, and there was looking likely to be a serious queue for dinner as we were on the larger of the company's two boats this time, in company of a good deal of other people, some of whom were less likely to be viewing the exercise as a booze cruise than us (if only because they were severely underaged!). I ended up getting the tail ends of dinner, as I stayed behind on deck to get as many piccies as possible of the sunset - the previous cruise, I had decided against taking my digital camera with me, and so had ended up with just a couple of pics on a disposable 35mm job, and I had resolved to remedy that this time.

Our issues for the evening started off fairly soon after I returned to the table, when Heetan got near to the end of his dinner and decided he wanted to have a food-fight with Paul. It started off fairly harmlessly with a couple of crusts of bread flying, but then escalated, and was obviously irritating the people sitting around us, plus creating mess for the crew to clean up. At this point, I made the mistake of suggesting to Heetan that it might be a good idea to stop. For my pains, I was informed that I was condescending and in danger of wrecking his holiday, and that he really wished he didn't have to hate me.

This was something of a surprise to me, as I had thought that Heetan and I got on okay. I promptly apologised to him for anything I might have done to upset him, and considered the matter closed. I was also distracted as, around this time, a quartet of elephants swam across our wake, on the way back from one of the islands to the mainland. For me, the spectacle of an elephant swimming is just that little bit unnerving, as it seems unnatural that something that big and heavy should be able to, but I guess if I can then there's no reason why an elephant shouldn't be able to, too!

Throughout this, I had also been attempting to get people going with the old Zambezi Surprises, but there was significantly less interest than on our original trip - I think the absence of Valdy at this point may have influenced proceedings. Hence, most of us were in a fairly reasonable state when we returned to shore. I say most of us because, in retrospect, I have to admit that I was relatively trolleyed - I had been hoovering up people's unwanted Surprises, and that left me just a little bit woozy. Hence, I reckon I probably didn't make the best of impressions on the remainder of our new crew when we got back to the truck - I was probably slurring slightly, rather owlish, and realised a couple of minutes after I got back that I hadn't got my camera. Five minutes of panic (and a trip back to the boat) later, it turned out one of the others had picked it up and brought it along, much to my relief (the same, unfortunately, did not turn out to be true for my fleece when I realised the next morning I had left it behind - oops...). I also didn't remember a single name of anybody I met that evening, which is most unlike me.

Still, all seemed to be going okay, as I rather idiotically got started on the first of several more beers while waiting for the others to finish up dinner and come over to join us at the bar. And it still seemed okay for the next half hour or so, until I turned around from the bar at the sound of my name to be confronted by Heetan, who promptly repeated his earlier allegations that I was wrecking his holiday, along with a few further choice riffs around the theme, this time in front of the entire bar. I apparently just sat there flabbergasted for a couple of minutes, before getting rather upset. As far as I was concerned, I had thought any disagreement we'd had closed on the boat, especially as I'd offered to try and make sure I didn't do anything else to upset him. I think eventually Jon and Brandon managed to calm me down and make sure I went off to bed without doing anything stupid (something for a which I'm not sure I ever thanked them properly - in case I didn't, I'd just like to say that I owe you guys!). I only found out a few days ago, after the trip had finished, that Heetan apparently gave something like a 5-minute monologue to Brandon's video-camera that evening about how unpleasant I was. So, not the best of endings to the evening.

Against this background, the fact that I slept in the next morning, and did not join the new crew on their trip down to see the Falls (as we'd done a couple of days earlier) was fairly understandable. It was also remarkably stupid, as I neglected to get my camera off the truck before it departed, and I was lined up for a helicopter flight over the falls that morning. Luckily, Jon came to my rescue again at this point, lending me his own digital camera so that I could at least take some photos from the flight. The flight itself was extraordinary - I'd never been in a helicopter before, and this one went zooming along through the gorges at low level for a while, before popping up and flying around the falls - I had thought they looked spectacular from ground level, but only now realised just how small a section of them I had seen, and how incredible they were. It was an expensive little excursion, but an eye-opening one. However, my eyes (and any minor sense of injustice I might still be feeling about the previous night) were to get a rude awakening when I returned to camp.

I had left for my flight at 10:00am, which corresponds to 9:00am in the UK, and returned about an hour later. And this was Thursday 7th July, 2005. When I got back and went to give Jon his camera back, he mentioned that he had seen on the BBC News site that there had been some kind of an accident or power failure on the Tube, and we both remarked how typical this was the day after London had been awarded the Olympic games for 2012. I then went downstairs and noticed the TV behind the bar, tuned to Sky news. And the words "multiple explosions", "possible terrorist attack" and "London" plastered across the bottom of the screen. For me, this was a case of seeing something I had dreaded but halfways expected for the last few years, softened by the fact that none of my family were in the capital (although there were still a couple of my friends I was worried for, who luckily turned out to be okay). For some of the others, it was altogether more personal, and there were a lot of worried people heating up the phone-lines back to the UK, trying to work out what was going on. All the rest of us could do was watch, and hope that they got the right reply in the end.

Unsurprisingly, our lunchtime departure that day was delayed, and the drive down to the border (the Zambezi river crossing into Botswana) passed in a fairly sober mood, as people exchanged what little they knew of what was happening. After all the anticipation I'd had of what the atmosphere would be like on the truck with our new passengers aboard, this was not at all what I'd expected. By that evening, when we knew that nobody had got the bad news they feared, and the body counts were coming in (unpleasantly high, but could have been so much worse), things started to perk up a little more and get back to a little more like normality. It was to be a recurrent background theme for the rest of the trip, though, whenever we got near a TV - we would always be confronted with the latest news of the bombings and the aftermath. I have to admit that a selfish part of me was just really glad that I wasn't in London any more.

Anyways, my time is coming to an end again here, and I think I've probably depressed people enough for this posting. I will pick up the story in Kasane, Botswana, with our adventures in Chobe National Park, the next time write. Until then, I hope that you are all well.

Take care and have fun,

Pat

Make new friends, but keep the old...

Howzit, Bru!

Yes, I've settled down in front of another internet terminal, so it's time for a fresh instalment of "What I Did This Time On My Holidays...", picking up again from Livingstone/Vic Falls, as I encountered some of my new travelling companions (and finally saw the Falls themselves).

The morning brought a wake-up at what seemed a comparatively civilised hour of 7:30am. Now if ever I were to worry that overlanding might be a bad influence on me, that would have to be it. 7:30am is NOT a civilised hour to awaken and face the day. 9:30 is just about acceptable. Just about. Anyways, enough belly-aching, those of us who had not chosen to cross over into Zim headed off down to the National Park entrance on the Zambian side, where we went for a delightful walk through the forests on the section of peninsula (and a small island) facing the Zambian section of the falls. Now, I've been to Niagara, and the falls there are pretty impressive (well, the horseshoe ones on the Canadian side anyway), but Vic Falls blows them away. These are the world's biggest, and I would bet most impressive, waterfalls. Something like 1.8km across, with often over 500,000 litres flowing over them per second!

Still, after an hour or two wandering along taking photos (for which I took the opportunity to hire a waterproof kagoul which might just as well have been one of our bell-tents with a hole in the top to make a poncho!) it was time to move on - we all trekked through the border point, and down to the bridge marking the actual border with Zimbabwe. At this point, I have to 'fess up that I did actually make it into Zimbabwean territory, but only on the bridge (and I didn't bloody pay for it!). And why did I do this? Well, in one of his more amusingly crazy moments, Heetan had decided he was going to do the bungee off the bridge.

Now, I am not a fan of the idea of bungee at any time, so I was quite content to let him take as much pleasure as possible from jumping off a 114m bridge with an elastic band around his legs - I just wanted to watch, along with the rest of the truck crew that morning. Given that Heetan's voice can stray into disturbingly high registers when he just gets moderately excited, I was intrigued what the reaction might be. The answer, surprisingly, was remarkably little. In fact, I've rarely seen someone looking quite so nervous - Jon took a brilliant photo capturing this, with Heetan having his head in his hands. When it came to the final jump, the jump masters had to pry his hands off the poles and near enough push him out! And when he came back up on the cable, he was almost totally silent, but his eyes were as wide as dinner-plates. Even after he walked to the end of the bridge and came back up, he was surprisingly quiet and still very wide-eyed.

After a brief scare at the border post on the way back, when we temporarily lost Valdy (he'd apparently legged it through because he'd actually forgotten to bring his passport that morning...!), it was back to the campsite, and cleaning up the tents etc ahead of our first consignment of new passengers joining on. It was quite amusing to sit through the pre-Departure meeting a second time, this time knowing what was going on (though, embarrassingly, I ended up correcting Paul on the route at one point, which brought back memories of my 6th-Form History classes), and to meet our new complement.

Having lost Barry and Jeff (en route back to Canada), Glenn (off back to Australia) and Mark, Laura, Ian and Emma (all heading down to Jo'burg), we were due for an infusion of new blood. This took the form that day of Brandon and Matt (2 American lads, celebrating their last burst of freedom before entering the hell that is the American world of work - how can anyone get by on 10 days' paid holiday a year??), Scott and Jen (Aussie couple on their way home from London) and Kath and Yohan (another Aussie couple on a few weeks' break from back home). We were told we would also be getting 10 more passengers who had come up from Jo'burg and were joining our little jaunt down to the Cape, but that they were off on their booze cruise that night and would have their meeting the next day.

Given the state of the previous two nights' booze cruises (including our own), it would have been amusing to have met the guys off there, but duty intervened, in the form of the cooking roster. Yes, I was up for chef duty and, joy of joys, it was Chilli Night. This was great fun all the way through to the point where I ended up scrubbing all the pans (I prefer my family's arrangement, where the cook doesn't have to clean!). Anyways, by the time we had finished clearing up it was half eight or so, and much of the festivities from the booze cruise had more or less collapsed. I adjourned to the bar and had a few drinks with our crew and Helen, the guide of the upcoming Livi-Jo'burg trip, who was rare in Acacia terms for being not African at all, but Welsh. She'd lived out in Aus and SA for a while, though, and you've rarely heard as weird a combo as what happens when the Welsh, Aussie and Saffir accents get mixed up.

The next day was one of the occasional quiet ones, at least to start with. Went into town, in an attempt to get some shopping done (okay, to hunt for Size 11 sandals...) and go to the post office. For it was getting on quite rapidly for my dear Mum's birthday, and half of her present, acquired in Kenya, was still travelling across Africa with me, as was assorted other junk of various grades. Sadly, I had reckoned without the joys of African bureaucracy. After a diversion to a stationery store to get a padded envelope (for Mum's pressie and a CD of photos), I had a frustrating exchange with a guy in the PO who informed me my other parcel could not simply be stuffed in a tube (as his colleague had told me earlier), but needed to be wrapped up by me. So I had to go and get wrapping material and prepare that other package. When I returned, shortly after midday, it was to be informed by his more helpful colleague that the irritating sod had gone on lunch-break and would not be back until at least 2. Oh, and he's the only guy in the Livi post office who can handle parcels. I was quite pleased that I didn't actually scream at anyone at this point. However, given that I wanted to head back to the campsite with Paul, Kath and Yohan in a cab, I had to abort my attempted postal errand. And I hadn't found any suitable sandals either. Still, my mood was pretty positive heading back towards the camp, as I had signed up to do the booze cruise again that evening, in the company of my new friends from the previous day, and I would then get the chance to meet the other new crew afterwards. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, that's going to have to be a story for another time, as my time has run out on this computer. (Gosh, my very first cliffhanger - how will my devoted readership cope...?)