A night in the Kalahari

Part three of my 'Wild dog' safari was Windhoek to Livingstone. The route took us quickly out of Namibia and into Botswana, and across the (somewhat grassy) Kalahari desert. We camped, coldly, near Ghanzi, and the next day drove on to the Okavango Delta.

It was interesting to see a different part of the delta. This time we were at the upstream end, to the North-West, where there were rivers rather than just streams. We slept in a proper camp and just further in to the delta by mokoro for a day trip. Again, we poled through reedy channels of ever-decreasing size. On an island we walked, ate the fruit of the baobab tree, and failed to see any animals at all. Of course it was still a fabulous day out, and I even learnt a couple of new trees. And slowly, slowly, I'm getting the hang of a few more birds!

On our little truck for this tour, the average age is about 79, which is, well, interesting. Four elderly Americans, who are the absolute epitomy of everything you expect from elderly American tourists. And one English woman of indeterminable age, but definitely one of those people who was over 50 at birth. She has one of those deepish penetrating very british voices, posh pronunciation with absolutely no social grace, and always sounds rather slow. A problem not helped by her habit of throwing totally unrelated comments into conversations, repeating her inanities endlessly and always, always, asking questions that had just been answered. And interrupting. She also had an amusing habit of getting lost in campsites, and even when right by the fire being unable to find her own tent out of the six that we had there. And then there was the issue with showers. We all made do with luke warm, cold, or no showers, but Carol had to moan on a daily basis about how long it had been since she'd been able to wash her hair. And ask everybody how hot the shower was, how long it was likely to remain hot (is there some way I can tell whether a shower that had hot water an hour ago will still have some now? Why did she think I had this power?) . When our guide told us that Livingstone would be expensive, he said "For example a burger and chips is about eight dollars," and immediately Carol piped up with: "Well I don't want a burger." I could go on... Luckily all us youngsters found that we could dissipate our irritation by having a giggle about it instead.

The elderly Americans: Herb videos everything, Anda loves everything, Zoltan's game for everything - even whitewater rafting. Eva is the perfect homely grandmother type - and quite the sweetest person you could ever meet. She has an interesting history too, having fled Hungary as a child in 1948 and eventually reached the States via Austria and Germany. In fact, she even crossed the mountains into Germany on foot and recalls running down the hillside. You can draw your own Sound of Music parallels here. Once in the states she lived for some time in an orphanage until the family was all sorted out (I got a bit lost at this point in the story) but all in all an amazing life.

I pity whoever has to watch Herb's video of shakily shot animals with a wonderful commentary which seems to involve him barking, for example, "Impala!" but nothing else. At one point he picked up a seed from the ground and filmed it on the palm of his hand for over a minute. He was also obsessed with checking the temperature with his watch's thermometer, insisting that it was "6 below" on a morning when clearly the dribbles of water in cups and half inch of water in a metal kettle left out all night in camp had completely refused to freeze. When I pointed out the unfrozen evidence and the fact that it certainly didn't feel that cold, he grunted and prodded his watch repeatedly while waving it in my face. I was moved to suggest that his watch might not be 100% accurate...

Also on our truck are two nice German girls and a lovely American guy, Alex. The Germans seemed good fun, great company and quite a laugh, but we never persuaded them out to a bar. Alex and I have been on a bit of a nightlife mission, hitting campsite bars whenever there is one, but generally we are the only people there - but the nights were about to get a little more exciting, so lets get back to the story...

After the delta we crossed back into Namibia (details of placenames may follow on editing) and spent the next couple of days driving East, into the Caprivi strip. The National Parks in this area were great, lots of elephants and so on. Impala.... Somewhere along the way we had a really good sighting of a honey badger, there were lots of lilac breasted rollers around, kori bustards, ground hornbills, in fact too many birds to mention...

There was a rather grim visit to a tourist, I mean traditional, village, with the obligatory demonstrations of basket making and dancing performed by people who looked as if they'd rather be anywhere else. A far cry from the wonderful trip to the Himba village last week.

Then we hit the border again and went back to Botswana. This flitting in and out is getting heavy on passport space! We camped near Kesane, at the same campsite where a couple of months ago I'd stayed with the overlanders. And like last time I went on the sunset game cruise on the Chobe river, and again marvelled at elephants. This time we also saw a huge raft of hippos, lots of buffalo and now I'm a birding geek, there was even more to get excited about. We met some nice people on the boat from another overland truck, who happily were staying at our campsite. So at last, Alex and I walked into a bar full of people and had a lively night! Hurrah. And guess what? They're all here in Livingstone too.

So, from Kasane to Livingstone... Kasane is only minutes from the border. After being stamped out of Botswana, a very short drive took us to the Zambezi where we waited for a spot on the little ferries plodding back and forth across the river. One get stuck, but was refloated by moving the trucks around. On the other side of the river, it was chaos. Multi-direction traffic, some aiming to cross to Botswana, but mostly stationary, a few stuck in the mud, most waiting for processing at the border post. Boys wandered around selling hard-boiled eggs, it was dirty and dusty and utterly peaceful in a disorderly haphazard, chaotic way. We queued for an hour or so to get passports stamped and visas sorted, but I loved it all - I was back in Africa.

The old brit looked horrified, the Americans unflustered, and Alex and I perked up with excitement - Namibia and South Africa are just too neat and tidy! Proper Africa and the end of the organized tour in sight....

We had a quick trip to see the Victoria Falls, which was great as I hadn't seen the Zambian side at all last time, but unfortunately there wasn't enough time to take the path down to the Boiling Pot or to hang out just enjoying the view for a while.

The evening went rather downhill with our guide getting drunk. Once drunk, he became very pushy, trying to get us to change our evening plans for dinner in town to suit his plans for more drinking in the campsite. Once we'd escaped, locking our valuables in the truck which he had assured us would be safe in the campsite, we ended up at a cheesy overpriced tourist trap restaurant, with lots of dancing by people scantily clad in grass skirts and bits of zebra skin. Then our guides turned up there. When we realized that the truck was now parked on some roadside in town, things got less friendly. Eventually, we got our things out of the truck, the guides got very aggressive, but eventually drove off. We decided to have just one more drink then go back to camp as nobody wanted to wander around town with their valuables. Luckily it was just us four young folk (yes, I know, but all things are relative!) as the oldies hadn't come out with us. The restaurant staff were quite understanding as we ran in and out in varying states of alarm and anger, generally trying to leave one person inside so it didn't look as if we were doing a runner. We crept back to our camp with some trepidation, saw the truck had made it and the guides had presumably gone to bed - a big sigh of relief. Alex and I leave the trip here, supposedly tomorrow, so today we looked for alternative accommodation for tonight, but Livingstone is bursting at the seams. The nice overlanders have offered to squeeze us into their tents for the night. Nothing like a bit of drama...