Location: Royal Tunbridge Wells, Garden of England, UK
Covering our last few weeks, in which we take an organized overland expedition from Cape Town to Victoria Falls. NB there are also some more photos, see the link on the left.
The South African Part
This was brief, the itinerary said that we would be stopping in the Cederberg area, which we did. Luckily we had already spent a few days there, since this trip left us no opportunity to go walking in the mountains. It was quite pleasant to relax in some thermal waters for the afternoon, and there was little else to do at the place where we stayed. It certainly made us glad that we had made the effort to visit here by ourselves and spend a couple of days walking.
The Namibian Part
We stopped on the route north at the Orange River, which is the border between South Africa and Namibia. We had a swim and spent the morning canoeing downstream for about 25km, and it was thoroughly pleasant, if not hugely exciting.
The Namib Desert
The first real highlight of the trip was the Namib desert, a huge expanse of incredibly desolate, arid land on the coast. There are huge sand dunes (up to 300m high) near to Seisriem, and we were up at the crack of dawn to ensure that we had a wonderful sunrise view, to catch the sand changing colour in the early morning light. Sunrise was at Dune 45, so called since it is the 45th dune from the sea and 45km from Seisriem. We moved on to Dead Vlei next which is a remarkable dead swamp area. There are still a few regions that get flood water, in a good rainy season, and there are trees and more vegetation than you would expect in such a place. Dead Vlei (dead swamp) has been dead for a while, a large white region of a dried up lake, about 1km long. There are remnants of trees in the midst of this white expanse, sticking up like withered, gnarled fingers from the ground. The scenery here was wonderful, and ranks as some of the most spectacular we have seen in Africa. Sossousvlei, at the right time early in the morning, gives a classic picture of deep orange sand on the eastern face of a dune, with shadow on the western side. (Interestingly the difference in the temperature of the surface of the sunny and shady sides is very significant.) Unfortunately we weren’t able to get to see this classic image because Helmut the German had gone walkabout in search of other photos. As an obsessive photographer (with 3 cameras and 22 rolls of exposed film over 19 days) he was often a little world of his own, even if this meant everyone else had to hang around in the midday sun or miss other opportunities elsewhere. With little regard for anything but the present it was often difficult to get to him realise that there were other things on the agenda beyond that which was in front of him. Given this was only a few days into the trip it was shaping up to be a few weeks of frustration, however, although this wasn’t an isolated incident he did become more aware of the rest of us as time passed.
A little further up the coast, at Swakopmund (a very German town) are some smaller dunes, and this was the scene for a day of sand-boarding and quad-bike racing. Not having been snow-boarding we opted for the “lie on a thin sheet of chip-board” version, rather than the proper board and boots option. Great fun, and not as tiring climbing up thee dunes as it was the previous day at the crack of dawn. The quad bikes were fun, but with a slight weight disadvantage I was struggling to keep up with Phillippa as we went up hill.
Etosha
Between the desert and Etosha, the National park that is in the North of Namibia, we did go to see a few cave paintings and a petrified forest, but, in comparison to the wonder of Etosha, they don’t really require any commentary.
We had already had a wonderful 6 days in the Kruger park, we had seen very rare black rhinos in Mkhaya (Swaziland), would this not be more of the same? Yes, to a certain extent it was, but you can never tire of seeing some of the world’s most impressive creatures in their natural habitat. Although we had only 3 nights in Etosha it was a remarkable few days that exceeded all expectations. We were particularly lucky to have seen all that we did, and I shall not list it all here. But real highlights included: a leopard eating a springbok so close to us that we could hear the skin and flesh tearing; 6 lionesses with a zebra carcass; a solitary male lion having a siesta; giraffes drinking at waterholes; huge herds of zebras; black rhinos; elephants almost within touching distance. It was, again, like being in a BBC documentary. It was a real privilege to have seen so much, so close.
The Okavango River
The river forms the border with Angola and on a sunset cruise we stopped briefly on an island that is, technically, in Angola. The advantage of a 20 minute visit is that you don’t have to worry about the civil war that is raging or the Marburg virus (similar to Ebola but with a higher mortality rate). We then headed into the delta, a slightly odd eco-system where the heavy rainfall from Angola’s highlands just disappears once it arrives in Botswana. A staggering amount of water is lost through evaporation and the rest just fades away into the dry sandy region around the delta. In the central parts are some of the best game areas in Africa. But these are about US$1,000 per night and our budget overland trip didn’t take us here. We went to the western part of the pan handle, where there are some islands with large mammals, but most of the attraction is birdlife, with the chance of seeing crocs and hippos. We heard hippos fighting in the evening, but didn’t see any here. Very relaxing being taken around the network of channels among the reeds and water lilies on a mokoro: a dug out powered by a chap with a pole, not dissimilar to punting on the Cam, though without all those pesky students and bus loads of American OAPs.
Chobe National Park in Botswana
Chobe was, if I am honest a little disappointing. It is one of Botswana’s star attractions, but we had a very short time there and were in a busy, traffic-ridden corner of the park, so did not see it at its best, which was a shame. On the way out of Botswana, across the Zambezi into Zambia we spent about 40 minutes watching as a bus got grounded whilst driving up on to the ferry. It was from the “Zambia-Botswana luxury bus company” so presumably they have been on these ferries before, but to see the huge cock-up progress it was as if it was a novelty for them.
Botswana is certainly one place I would very much like to go back to at some point, to spend more time in Chobe, to get to Moremi in the delta and to go to the central Kalahari region.
We ended up in Livingstone, on the Zambian side of Victoria Falls. The Zambezi is quite high at this time of year and the spray and mist thrown up by the waterfall does mean that the views are very limited. It may be very impressive when visible, with slightly less water flowing, but from what I saw it was a little disappointing. Certainly nowhere near as impressive as Iguaçu in South America.
And so here ended the overland trip. Despite having not really wanted to go on an organised tour, sacrificing our much cherished independence, it was a great trip. Much of this was due to the enthusiasm and hard work of our guide, Odette. Her knowledge, cooking and willingness to do whatever it took to keep us all happy made a big difference to the whole experience.
After a couple of days in Livingstone (we didn’t venture over into Zimbabwe) we headed back to Cape Town. We revisited the Boulders Bay colony of penguins that we saw 5 years ago but aside from that did little else. Our last night was interrupted by getting up every few hours to have a look on Sky News to see the latest stories and results from the General Election.
On the very last day we had a fantastic long lunch at Constantia Uitsig, great food with a view over the vineyard. Ending, in fine fashion what has been a remarkable year. Strictly the round the world adventure has yet to end, since we have not yet got back to our flat. However, I’m not sure that a few days in Royal Tunbridge Wells and then a few more in Farnham will be as uniquely interesting as some of the other places we have been to.
It was a year that involved…
* 366 days, 5 continents, 17 countries (excluding Antarctica which is a continent but not really a country, 20 minutes in Angola and a change of planes in Madrid), 9 capital cities, myriad cultures and languages
* 60 passport stamps, 31 take-offs in aeroplanes (though only 30 landings), 1 helicopter ride
* 1 kidnapping and 1 mugging
* 17 nights spent aboard boats in open oceans, 31 nights under canvas
* 41 vineyards in 12 wine producing regions of 5 countries
* 5,100km in a minibus in Africa, 8,000km driving ourselves in SA, 4,700km in NZ about 1,000km in Hawaii and more kilometres, hours (and nights) than I care to recall on buses in South America
* 41 novels, including some monsters, like War & Peace and Don Quixote, plus the worst book I have ever read (The Possession of Joel Delaney, only 25p from a second hand book shop in Montevideo that carried a fairly limited selection. Don’t worry you are unlikely to come across it, I believe it has been out of print for about 30 years.)
We now have so many photos, both digital and film (and slides, thanks to a shop in Bolivia) that it will be a mammoth task to organise them all. But rest assured there will be some albums at some point and they will be available for viewing!
Without wanting to end with a paragraph that reads like an Oscar acceptance speech, I would like to thank a few people.
Many of you wrote to offer help in the days immediately following our infamous spot of bother in the Peruvian Andes. Thank you, I was touched by how many people offered so much.
Since so many of our friends and family have been to quite a few of the places we have been to (in particular in Southern Africa) I did ask some of you for suggestions of places to go. I had a flurry of replies with a wealth of information, so thanks to those of you who helped with that piece of the planning.
Thank you to those friends and family with whom we stayed in LA, Sydney and Jo’burg.
It would have been nice, at this point, to thank our sponsors, but sadly we had none!
Finally, and most importantly, thanks to Phillippa, without whom none of the last 12 months would have been as fun.