Kate and Jason's African Adventures

2007-02-23T16:46:00.000+02:00

2007-02-23T16:42:00.000+02:00

23.02.07 Garden Route, KwaZulu Natal, J’burg, St Lucia, HluHluwe NP, Kruger NP, Pilanesberg NP, (SA) ………HOME! HI there, how is everyone? Still keeping to your New Years resolutions, or have they fallen by the wayside already! Well here it is our last blog entry – for this trip anyway! It’s a touch woefully that I write this chapter, we have been having such a great time that knowing that our time is almost up is a little sad. However, what is great is that we’ll be home to see everyone and that more than makes up for it! So how have we been spending our last few weeks? Actually it’s been a bit all over the place due to the fact that we have had to incorporate selling the landy in to our itinery. We didn’t want to have to hang around in one place trying to sell it, so we put adverts on the web and in the national version of Auto Trader. This meant that we had people calling us from all over SA, and as you know SA is a very big country, so meeting up with interested buyers resulted in driving all over the place. Nevertheless, we still got a lot of other things done too! Firstly, we left CT and headed along the Garden Route (the East coast) which was a very beautiful area. We met up with some friends that we had met in Tanz, Cedric, Luc and Maria (the guys travelling in the 1949 landy), in a backpackers in Cintsa. It was great to see them again and exchange travel stories. They had done very similar routes to us, but had stayed in Moz for longer and had several typically African nightmare tales to amuse us with. Cedric is SA’n (from Durban) so knows all the great places to go around these areas and took us to some fab places. I mentioned it briefly last time that we were camping on beaches looking out to see the dolphins swimming around off shore, very nice! We stayed in some really lovely campsites that were totally off the beaten track. One in particular was near a place called Coffee Bay, called Bulangula. It took ages to get to and the last 10km was 4x4 vehicles only and we could easily see why. It was rocky, hilly, and very muddy (lots of rain recently) and there was no way anything other than a 4x4 would get through. The campsite has obviously taken this in to consideration and has it’s own transport link that picks people up from a village back on the easily accessible dirt road. We hadn’t done any real off-roading for awhile so Jas was very keen to get the landy dirty again and put the landy through its paces again! We managed to get a little bogged down, acouple of times, but nothing she couldn’t handle. Whilst staying in the various campsites on our trip, we have encountered many different ways of having a shower. Mostly it has been our great fortune to have your usual standard shower type, varying only in degrees of water pressure, and degrees of temperature. Some had hot and cold taps, which did indeed provide hot and cold water. Some had hot and cold taps, that provided cold and cold water! Some didn’t beat about the bush and just had the one cold tap, and some not surprisingly didn’t have the luxury of a shower at all! Sometimes great torrents of water came out, sometimes a wee trickle. Quite a few places used a ‘donkey’ method of heating up the water. This is where there is a wood burning furnace-type contraption that very efficiently heats up the water. The only thing is it takes a long time to get going and so you have to plan in advance when you want a shower and get the fire going plenty of time beforehand. There is a reason for me boring you with our bathing options and that is that at the camp at Bulangula, we were introduced to by far the most interesting and dare I say exciting mechanical shower that we have ever seen (trying not to sound too mad!). Apparently they are quite common around Africa, but this was the first time we had encountered them. They are rocket showers and are quite brilliant. It consists of a big metal pipe that the water runs up to the shower at the top, nothing amazing so far, I hear you say, but it’s the way that the water is heated that is cool. There is an opening at the bottom of the pipe where there is a pad of gauze. At the side of the shower is a bottle of paraffin, a measuring jug and some cigarette lighters. So you measure out some paraffin and pour it in to the opening so that it is soaked up by the gauze. Then you light the gauze and as the paraffin burns it heats up the water flowing up through the pipe. It makes this very funny rumbling rocket noise as it works and the whole bottom of the pipe lights up. The water is heated up instantly and you have to get on and shower pretty quickly because it only lasts 7 minutes before the paraffin burns off. The only down side is that the paraffin smell does get up your nose a bit! I thought it made the whole ‘going for a shower’ routine a little more exciting than usual, but you might of course say that I’ve been travelling for too long now and I really need to get a life! Anyway cleanliness aside let’s get back to other things! From there we made our way to the Southern end of the Drakensberg, which is an extensive mountainous area that is very stunning and is right on the border with Lesotho. We stayed at Sani Lodge BP which is at the bottom of a road that goes up to the top of the Sani Pass and in to Lesotho. We had planned to drive up there for the day, but the unpredictable weather was messing us around and the idea is to get to the top and see the great views, but we wouldn’t have been able to see much with all the clouds! Instead we went for some lovely walks around the BP, and enjoyed the views from there. Whilst we were there it was Jas’s birthday; we had a nice relaxing day and Jas spent it doing his most favourite thing……photographing! In the gardens of the BP were lots of lovely wild flowers which attracted some very pretty sunbirds, so Jas was ‘happy as Larry’! As luck would have it nearby there was an English style pub, so no prizes for guessing where we went in the evening to celebrate. The five of us had a slap up meal and the boys savoured properly brewed beer, a rarity in SA! On from Sani Pass we went to Durban. Cedric and Maria were at the end of their trip and going back there to settle down for a bit and get jobs again. We met up with some of his friends and stayed with them for a couple of days; a nice break to have a bed to sleep in and all the creature comforts of home again! By this time we had been contacted by a couple of interested buyers for the landy who were both based in J’burg. Knowing that we didn’t have a huge amount of time to spare, we only stayed in Durban for a couple of days and had arranged to meet the potential buyers. So after saying farewell to Cedric, Maria and Luc (who was now going on travelling by himself) we headed up to J’burg to see if we could get the landy sold. On the way to J’burg, we found another campsite to stay at in a different part of the Drakensberg. It was called Glengarry and was one of the nicest c/s we had stayed in on the whole trip. Beautiful setting, excellent views and very relaxing; there was only Jas and me there! We went out for some more walks and lounged around by the lakes, it was lovely. There was a 9 hole golf course there which we could use; for the small fee of £4 each we hired clubs, balls etc and could use the course as often as we wanted for the whole time we were there, pretty cheap eh! Jas likes the odd game of golf, and I have never played in my life, so here was the perfect opportunity to get me started. I wasn’t bad, but I wasn’t brilliant either! I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would and Jas was very impressed that I lost only one ball during the 3 rounds we played. We had a lovely few days there and really enjoyed the Drakensberg area. In J’burg, Dean, was very keen on buying the landy, but wanted to have it AA tested before he definitely said yes. That meant staying in J’burg for a couple of days and gave us time to get around a bit. Near J’burg is a World Heritage site called the ‘Cradle of Humankind’. It’s essentially a large cave that is millions of years old and was years ago used as a limestone mine. There were lots of gold mines in times gone by and in part of the processing of the gold, limestone was required. Therefore there were just as many mines for getting the necessary limestone. In this particular mine they found some skeletal remains and a after lots of investigating they turned out to be remains of Austrolapethicus africanus (don’t quote me on the spelling!), ie. our relations from about 1.8 million years ago. Then further inside the cave they found more bones that were even older, 3 million years! As you can imagine these were quite important discoveries and now the site is devoted to telling the history of those ancestors from the information they gained from these remains. Along with other bits and bobs they dug up from other sites around this area, they also found proof that people were using fire about 1.2 million years ago. It’s a very interesting place and they have done a very good job of presenting the information and taking you for guided walks through the caves to show you where things were found and tell you all about it. It was whilst we were in J’burg that we realised that we didn’t have too much time left and we decided to extend our flights. We were still in negotiations with Dean about the landy and were hoping to get to a few other places before coming home, and that clearly wasn’t possible if we stuck to the original date! With still a bit of play on our credit cards, we thought, ‘why not stay just a few more weeks’ and quickly sorted it out with the airline. So now without such a close deadline we left the bustling city and went back to the coast to an area of wetlands called St. Lucia. We knew that Luc was heading that way too so we arranged to meet him there and spend a couple of days exploring the area. There are lots of hippos and crocs around there and the usual signs warning against walking around at night are apparent. Sometimes the hippos even get on to the roads around St. Lucia, and I thought that would be quite fun to see, but no luck this time. Not far from St. Lucia is the Hluhluwe NP which is reputed to be the rhino capital of The World! It contains half the world’s population of rhino, which is quite impressive, and was definitely on our list of places to go. We were not quite sure how well it would live up to its name, but after two days driving around, it more than lived up to its reputation. Throughout the first day we saw 19 rhino, all up close, no that was a good start! There were a few of the usual other animals, but the rhinos really did steal the show. The next day we were sure we couldn’t beat 19, but would you believe it, we counted 24 rhino and at one point the landy was surrounded by a group of 10! As we drove around we saw to the left of us a rhino mooching along. Stopping to get a few pictures, and scanning around to see if there were more, we spotted two on the other side of the road. Two then turned in to four, then six, seven, and then before we knew it we had counted 10 rhino! They were casually grazing and plodding along, not in any rush. After a while they came closer to the road and began to notice we were there. It was amazing, they weren’t bothered by us, but just very curious and came right up to the landy to sniff us out! I was a bit concerned at how close they were, while Jas was just snapping away, saying ‘its OK they no going to bother us’, ‘easy for you to say’ I thought! However, he was right, they got bored with us and started to walk on. A few of them got a little feisty with each other and began to have a bit of a tussle, which was cool to watch. They eventually wandered off and were quickly lost in the scrub and you could easily believe that there was nothing there at all. From our short visit I think we can vouch for the rhino capital 100 per cent! As you can tell Jas and I do very much enjoy visiting the NPs here and there. So you won’t be surprised that during our last couple of weeks we have been getting our fill of them before we come home. We don’t know how long it will be before we come out to Africa again, so we’re making the most of them now. As we really enjoyed our trip to Kruger NP and we weren’t a million miles away from it, we decided to pop there again for a few days. The easiest way to do this was to drive up through Swaziland, which we thought would be good. I think quite a lot of people do this because it was by far the easiest border crossing we have ever had; the shortest time and the cheapest fee. It doesn’t take long to drive through Swaziland, only about 3 hours, and it’s a very pretty country. It’s not particularly different to other parts of Africa, but despite only being there briefly it was nice to have a quick look at it. Back in Kruger NP, and we had more excellent animal sightings, plus a few tremendous thunder storms. It seems that whenever it rains in SA, it doesn’t just rain, there is always thunder and lightning. One night the lightning seemed to be right over head and I have never heard such loud cracks of thunder. I was thankful that the landy has an aluminium body and was (hopefully) not going to attract the lightning strikes! When in the NPs we always keep an eye for the small things as well as the big. For example, there are lots of tortoises in Kruger which cross the road and we always stop to make sure they reach the other side in one piece – some of the SA’ns speed along the roads like nobody’s business. And if you happen across a really fresh lot of elephant or rhino poop, there will inevitably be several dung beetles getting stuck in to it, literally! They are great to watch and work extremely hard to get the dung nicely moulded in to round, easily ‘rollable’ sized balls. They can move the balls remarkably quickly and sometimes move them impressive distances. It was quite funny one time when we found some hard at work, and could see one trying to move a ball that wasn’t well rounded at all and rather squished on one side. He was struggling to move it around, putting in Herculean efforts, but every other time he almost rolled it over it would fall back on top of him! It was comical to watch, but also very admirable as he kept on trying and was slowly but surely moving the ‘odd’ ball to its destination. If only we could have told him to take note of his fellow dung beetles shaped balls (no rude comments please!), it would have saved him much time and energy! Another time we could see lots of birds in the sky and were surprised when we got closer to find that they were lanner and peregrine falcons, and kestrels all flying together catching insects. There were probably over a hundred of them swooping around altogether. It was spectacular to see especially as to see any of them in England is quite a rarity, let alone in such large numbers. There is also a very nice bird called the woodland kingfisher, that looks quite ordinary at first glance, but when it meets another one displays its beautifully coloured wings. Jas was determined to get a picture of one displaying and it was proving a little tricky. We could find them easily enough, but getting them to stay still let alone display was near impossible. To make the task easier, Jas had taken to mimicking their distinctive call in an attempt to get them to display and when we were anywhere near one would start tweeting out of the window! To his credit we finally got one to show off for us and Jas got some great photos, however, whether his bird impression was really the instigating factor or not is highly disputable! Amongst some of the other amazing things we saw were hippos play fighting in the water, hyenas chasing each other, a leopard eating a vervet monkey, wild dogs playing around, lions lounging in the sun, 4 cheetah cooling off under a tree, elephants strolling through the bush with very young babies, a buffalo having a heavenly mud bath (totally covered in mud), and plenty of zebra and giraffe. At one of the river crossings, there is a dam and the track follows the edge of the dam so that the water is about level with the windows of the landy. On one occasion there was a crocodile in the water right next to the edge of the dam and when we drove next to it you could almost touch it, it was that close. Jas took some photos, but not without firstly closing the window enough so that the croc couldn’t reach across for a quick snap! The next few days we had to go back to J’burg again to sort out the landy business. Dean and his girlfriend were definitely buying it and we needed to sort out transferring the money and ownership. This we thought was going to be a fairly straight forward process, but we were still in Africa right, and although we thought SA was a little more user friendly, we soon found out that was not the case! Basically to cut a very longer and arduous story short, the SA’n banks don’t like the idea of sending hard earned money out of the country for someone else to enjoy. Dean and Toni were having real difficulty getting the banks to authorise a transfer, and it was beginning to become obvious that it was not going to be easy to get the money. We discussed all sorts of options; giving us all of it in cash (not really a sensible idea, don’t want to carry around that much money), arranging for us to have it in travellers cheques (banks wouldn’t let Toni buy the cheques and then us to sigh them), us opening a SA’n bank account and then transferring the money later (still the problem of getting the money out of the country) and the ideas went on and on! Finally we realised that the money would be easier to move if it was going from a business account. So we contacted the people we bought it from in CT and asked them if they would act as go between. Toni would put the money in their account and they put it in ours. It seemed to be possible and so we arranged all the details and off we went. However, we know that things never run as smoothly as you want and so as I write the last bit of this blog (on the day we fly home!) we still have no money and now no car! We have to trust things will go through but we won’t know for sure until a couple of weeks time! It has all been a bit of a hassle for our last few days, but that’s Africa and we are used to it! Back to being in J’burg and knowing there isn’t much we can do here other than sit and wait, we made a last trip to another NP called Pilanesberg, only 2 hours away. It’s a much smaller park than Kruger, but is very nice and has all the animals there. We were very lucky to see 2 black rhino one day which was excellent. The black rhino are endangered and are much shyer than the white, usually staying hidden in the bush. But this morning they were wandering around a grassy area and we had a perfect view of them and Jas got some great pictures. We had a really great last few days safari’ing and saw more lions and leopards, elephants, rhinos, and everything else, a lovely way to end our stay. The campsite was very nice, swimming pool, restaurant and all that, but one thing it had that was not so good was a really naughty troop of baboons! They were constantly emptying the bins and trying to get food from the camps. We have a spare tent that we put our stuff in while we’re there so that the landy isn’t full up whilst we’re driving around. You remember from the earliest blog that we have several big black boxes to put all our things in, and these were in the tent too. Late one morning on returning from a drive, and find that not only have the baboons opened up the zips of the tent, but they have gone through some of the boxes and generally thrown most things around and made a huge mess! Luckily they didn’t find (or rather couldn’t get in to) the food boxes, ‘phew!’, but did scatter all our clothes around and tried to eat some soap! We have found that most of the campsite in the NPs we’ve been to have one particular animal that hangs around during the day and could be called the camp’s mascot. For example in the Kgalagadi there were lots of ground squirrels, and in Etosha lots of mongoose (we’re never sure what the plural of mongoose is; mongooses, mongeese, mongi, we haven’t ever found out), in Liwonde it was warthogs, Kruger had vervet monkeys and lizards, in South Luangwa it was elephants, in Chobe there were buffaloes, and in Pilanesberg there were ostriches. We were quite amused when we suddenly noticed two ostriches casually wandering around the camp, eating and drinking, not at all bothered by all the people and cars around them! It’s a nice little feature and we have very amused by the way they are totally relaxed by our presence and it makes walking around the campsites much more interesting! So now here I am on our very last day, finishing off this blog and thinking, by tomorrow morning we will be back in London and trying to get used to being cold again! It has been an amazing trip and we have done and seen so many things it’s hard to believe that we have done it all in just 10 months! It was a sad moment when we watched the landy being driven away, it has been our home and we have loved having it. I never thought I would enjoy sleeping in a rooftop tent so much! We love Africa and already know that we will be coming back again sometime in the future, but for now we have thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and are very happy that things have gone so well. We are really looking forward to coming home and seeing you all, and thank-you all for all the messages and emails you have sent us along the way. We loved hearing from you and sharing our tales with you, and hope that you have enjoyed reading the (lengthy) blogs and seeing the photos as much as we have enjoyed putting them together. Now I must end this chapter of our travels, bid you farewell from Africa and say this is the last blog for now, we’ll probably begin to plan our next trip in the not too distant future and we’ll be back on the website sometime soon! Bye for now and we’ll catch up with you soon! Love Kate and Jas xxxx

2007-01-17T14:45:00.000+02:00

16.1.2007!! Cape Town, Stellenbosch, Gansbaai, Arniston, and Cape Town again (S. Africa) Hello All! A very warm welcome to the first blog of the new year! We hope you all had a great time over Christmas and New Year, and hopefully it doesn’t feel like a distant memory just yet! Jas, Tor and I had a fantastic festive time, although probably just like yours, it felt as if the time went by way too quickly and we ate and drank way too much! Now that you are getting over the shock of having another blog to read so soon, I’ll crack straight on with the news. We were waiting for Tor to arrive and remembering past experiences with previous visiting friends and their flight problems, we were also waiting for the news that the ‘curse of Kate and Jas’ had reared its ugly head again! Surely the chance of delays happening again were not really statistically possible, but Jas and I have learnt always to ‘be prepared’ and so we had found a nice campsite which we were happy to stay in for a few extra days if it was so required! It was only when we had a text from Tor saying that there was really bad fog around and many internal flights were being cancelled that we really did want to stuff the phrase ‘third time lucky’ down the toilet! Getting ready to pay for some extra nights and then put our feet up, we were very relieved to get another text to say she was on her way, no delays! Well that was music to our ears and once Tor was here and we discovered that other international flights after hers were cancelled, there were great sighs of relief that the curse had been broken this time!. We had already put together a plan of what to do whilst Tor was here and the first visit was to Stellenbosch wine region for a few days to stock up on some seriously tasty tiples for us to enjoy during her stay. We weren’t really in a rush to get there as it’s only about an hour from CT. So we were perfectly happy to stop off in a place called Strand first to spend the afternoon on the beach and warm Tor up a bit, knowing what temperatures she had been enduring only hours before! Nothing like sun, sea and sand to get you in to the holiday spirit, and that’s precisely where we were headed! Now Stellenbosch is definitely a more salubrious place than some we have seen. It is the second oldest European town in SA, and has many beautiful houses, lots of gorgeous estates where the wineries are, delicious restaurants, bars and boutique style shops. All this and it still manages to maintain its ‘quaint’ feel and has fast become one of my favourite places in SA. Obviously the main draw to St. is the numerous (and I mean that!) wineries/vineyards (which ever you prefer) that grace the land in and around it. You can literally be tripping over the different estates, which are found from merely a few kms from the town centre, to all the way in to the next district. Each one offers and comprehensive selection of wines, champagnes and some ports to taste from their collection, for the smallest of fees; I don’t think we paid more than £2.00 in any of them. I offered my services as appointed driver for the visits, as any of you who know me well, are well aware of my aversion to wine. I hate to admit it, but my wine appreciation extends only to cheap white wine that I can mix with lemonade to enjoy the odd white wine spritzer. I apologise now for such appalling taste, and my only justification of this uncouth behaviour is that I’m the perfect pal to have around when you are in the mood for wine tasting escapades; for a small fee, I’ll happily drive you anywhere! The next couple of days were spent selecting a range of wineries to cruise round and then deciding which were good enough to purchase from. I’m sure you can imagine, it wasn’t at all difficult for Jas and Tor to find several tasty whites and reds, which at their pleasingly low prices meant that on several occasions, two or three of them made their way in to the landy! I did have a little sip of a couple of roses and Bruts along the way, and amazingly enough I found that after a while even I was beginning to appreciate the subtly different flavours! All hope is not lost! So with a good selection of reds, whites and sparkling, we felt very content. Some of the estates have incorporated a few other things in to their repertoire to add to their lure. Quite a few have craft shops, farm shops, art work, and even offer beautiful settings for weddings. One we went to was particularly in touch with the ‘more the better’ concept providing all sorts of entertainment and aiming to appeal as a complete family day out. There were several craft shops, a deli shop, picnic grounds, the usual wine tasting, cheese tasting, market stalls for locally made handcrafts, pony rides for the kids, and to top it all off a cheetah park! Well you can immediately see the attraction for us. Tor enjoys the wildlife as much as we do, unfortunately on this trip we didn’t have enough time to drive to a national park, so this was the next best thing. They had several adult cheetahs each in their own enclosure, and by the main viewing area was an enclosure with 4 cheetah cubs in. For only 50p you could walk around and easily see the cheetahs, but if you were prepared to pay just over £5, you would be taken inside the enclosures for a totally ‘up close and personal’ treat where you could actually stroke and pet the cats! How’s about that! We were happy just to view from the outside, and although it was lovely to see them all, we each have to admit that it’s much nicer to have had the chance to see them in the wild and much prefer to see them that way. Another winery had its own selection of antelope; wildebeest, eland, springbok, oryx, and zebra, which we found were kept by the owner purely for his pleasure, not for the local restaurants! So Tor did have a bit of a safari after all. As I said, St. is a very up market place and it seems that this had influenced many things including the backpackers that we were staying at. We were staying right in the heart of the town, in a very nice flat with a TV, kitchen area and private bathroom! Much more classy than some of the backpackers we have stayed in I can tell you! It was only a short walk from there to some very nice restaurants which we felt duty bound to investigate! One evening we had a very nice Indian meal; it was quite an experience as it was apparent that Indian cuisine is a new thing to SA. The waitress took a great deal of care in explaining what the different types of food were, in particular what a poppa Dom was! We went along with it, not wanting to put her off by letting her know that Indian food is pretty much the staple diet of us English these days! Another place we went to was offering different types of ‘bush’ meat which we had been wanting to try for a while. On the menu was warthog, kudu, springbok and wildebeest as well as the usual steak. Jas settled for a conventional steak when we were told there was no warthog that night (we had been reliably informed that warthog is excellent meat), but Tor and I had the game meat platter that consisted of kebabs of springbok, kudu and wildebeest. Initially we were put off by eating the meat of stunning animals that we have loved to watch in the wild, but all too quickly our interest of finding out what they tasted like took over and the orders were made. The food was really tasty and excellently cooked, even Jas was disappointed that he hadn’t plumped for the platter as well. We savoured each of the meats and came to conclusion that of the three, wildebeest came in at number one, followed by a draw between kudu and springbok. From then on I think we were always looking out for more wildebeest on the menus! From St. we went back towards CT to spend Christmas on the beach in an area called Simon’s Town. This is an area just close to where the penguins are and we took Tor to see them. Even second time around for us it was still strange to see them hanging around the beaches and swimming in the sea. When we came to see them before, in SA’s winter, there weren’t many people around, but now with the beaches full of holiday-makers. So to see penguins sharing the beaches and sea with humans was very entertaining. They were happily moving around without any worries of all the people that were there, it reminded me of the ‘ppppick up a penguin’ adverts (and old one I know, not sure how many of you will remember it). We were staying in another backpackers here, in a room for the 3 of us, another nice place. Down the road we found a good old English style pub and needless to say we spent a few nights there. One night we were treated to live music (a guy with a guitar) which was very good, we were singing along to all sorts of things, even making requests! We spent sometime lapping up the sun on one of the lovely little bays round the coast, and we checked out which beach was going to win the vote for ‘Christmas Beach 2006’! Yep, the trauma of having to lie on the beach and swim in the sea on Christmas day was deeply ingrained. It was a constant worry, this beach, or that one? We chose a spot and as it was now Christmas eve, all that was left to do was get the food for the day organised. By now it was becoming quite clear to us that SA’s don’t work up to Christmas with nearly as much enthusiasm as the Brits do. It is a very casual affair and if we were worried that everything was going to be shut on the day and difficult to do things, we couldn’t have been further from the truth. It’s almost treated just like any other day of the year. That suited us fine as a key concern of ours was being able to keep the wine and bubbly cold on the beach throughout the day, and knowing that the garage on the corner was ‘open all hours’ selling ice was a real winner! So we were all set; lots of lovely food and drink, a nice beach to plonk ourselves on, a few presents to open (courtesy of Tor and Mum and Dad) and all we had to do was hope the sun shined! It did and I can say that we had a really fantastic Christmas Day! After a suitable lie in we started off with a little breakfast bubbly and Danish pastries to put us in the mood for present opening. Just before lunch we gathered up all the food and drinks, popped to get some ice to keep it all cool, and jumped in to landy to get to the beach. It was still a bit of a mystery as to how SA’s spend their Christmas Day, but it was soon apparent that they were planning exactly what we were. Luckily due to the vast amount of beachy coastline they have on their door steps, there was no need for fighting for a spot once we got there. There was just the right ratio of people to beach and we found a good spot in the sun and set ourselves up for the rest of the day….. lovely! In the evening we went pack to the pub, as we had been told it would be a busy night there. Jas, I have to say, had enjoyed rather a lot of red wine during the day and politely retired early, but Tor and I went for a couple more drinks and actually ended up staying until the early hours of the morning! It was a great day! On boxing day, again there was not much sign of it being Christmas, only the banks were shut. We came to the conclusion that as this is their summer holidays, the fact that Christmas and New Year fall occur during them, is almost coincidental. They treat them like any other day in the commercial sense because it is the holidays and no one wants to shut anything down and lose any money. We weren’t complaining! Now we had a couple of days where we hadn’t booked anywhere to stay and were going to play it by ear if Tor had anything she particularly wanted to do. You might or might not know that this area of coastline is excellent for whale watching and that another big draw is ‘Shark Diving’. This is where you go on a boat out in to the bay area, anchor up, chuck lots of mashed up fish’s guts and stuff, called chum, to make a ‘chum slick’ and wait with excitement for great white sharks to show up. There’s a good chance they will and when they do, you can put on a wet suit and mask, then get in to the cage that’s attached to the side of the boat and have a very close encounter with them! Tor told us about this crazy caper, saying she’d heard about it and fancied having a go and we were more than happy to oblige. So we found out where to go, a place called Gansbaai, which is not far from CT, and took a leisurely drive along the coast to check it out. Whale watching and shark diving is big business in that area, in fact it seemed to be the only business! The little town was totally geared up for that and not a lot else, but that was no problem, we knew why we were here! It didn’t take long to get us booked on a boat for the next day, and they reassuringly told us that there was no obligation to actually get in the water with the sharks, we could admire them from the boat if we wanted to. That was nice to know! I already knew that I was not at all entertaining the idea of getting in the cage, call me a wimp, but seeing the sharks from the boat was definitely going to be more than enough for me. Tor and Jas were more tempted by the idea, but each were leaving their final decision until we were on the boat and they could see exactly what it involved. That night at the campsite we were all quite excited about the prospects of seeing big, scary sharks, it’s not your every day kind of thing! Next morning we arrived for breakfast, courtesy of the trip, had a briefing about sharks and what we would be doing and seeing, got our life jackets and headed to the quay and our boat. The weather was sunny and clear, if a little windy as we set off, and there was about 20 of us, plus 5 people from the company on board. We only had to go about 5km from the coast and there we dropped anchor and the ‘chum slick’ was started. It took about 20 minutes to get there and in that short time the wind had really begun to pick up. The boat was rocking all over the place in the swells and suddenly I began to feel a little as though I would be seeing the scrambled egg I’d had for breakfast again, oh dear! I’ve not been seasick before, but I was having first hand experience of it now! Fortunately, embarrassing as it was, I wasn’t the only one and several other people were feeling a bit ropey, but we tried to not let it distract us from the reason we were here. The guys from the company did emphasize the point that as with all wildlife, they couldn’t guarantee the sharks would come, or if they did, how long it would take. So we had to just sit back and wait. They did catch a couple of smaller sharks for us to look at; the marine biologist who was with us, would hold these and tell us a bit about them before returning them to the sea, which was cool. However, there was no two ways about it, the big sharks were not coming out to play……. so far! Jas and Tor was happily messing about on the deck, enjoying themselves, but I was in a considerably less jolly state, sitting quietly on the very front of the boat, out of everyone’s way, trying very hard not to be sick (again, no other details will be given, I have my pride!). By now nearly half the tourists on the boat were reeling with seasickness, which had resulted in the crew radioing back to shore for a rescue boat to come and take those who’d had enough back to dry land. After a couple of hours there were still no sign of any sharks and many of the passengers just wanted to get back to dry land. I was determined that although I didn’t feel good, I wasn’t so bad that I needed to be ‘medivac’d’ off the boat, and I was stubborn enough to say that I had paid the money and was going to stay the distance. There was no way I would leave the boat early and then have Tor and Jas come back saying, ‘wow you missed some great sharks!’ Then out of nowhere, someone shouted ‘shark!’ and everyone moved to the side of the boat to see a great white chewing on some of the bait. It was an amazing sight and really took our breath away to see it so close. There were three of them swimming around, two were about 3 metres long and one was about 4! Well that set off a whole series of actions on board the boat. Some people already in wet suits and masks started to get in to the cage, Jas got his camera ready, Tor and I positioned ourselves in a perfect shark spotting spot on the side of the boat, carefully holding on as it was still really rocking, and the crew were making it their mission to keep the sharks around us. Oh it was all very exciting, and all thoughts of me being ‘green around the gills’ were gone in a second; nothing like great white sharks to the focus of your thoughts! It was at this time that the rescue boat turned up and about 10 people go off ours and on to it, which was no mean feat in itself considering how choppy it was. Not even the fact that the sharks had now turned up was enough to stop them going. I remained on board, my spirits totally lifted by the possibility of more sharks turning up! The people in the cage were having a real show, whenever the sharks got close the crew shouted ‘dive’ and they took a deep breath and went down under the surface to see the sharks get right up to the cage. It looked really amazing from on the boat, so I can imagine it was absolutely fantastic from in the water! Tor and Jas had already decided that they were more than happy with the ‘out of water’ shark experience, so the three of us were avidly watching and enjoying the show from where we were. Unfortunately it was so rocky on the boat that it wasn’t easy for anyone to get any photos of the sharks, so we can’t show you what we saw, you’ll have to use your imagination. We watched them for about half an hour and then, sadly it was time for us to return, other tours were booked for the afternoon run. It was fantastic to see them and we were all very happy that our long wait had been rewarded, me especially! From Gansbaai we made our way to another spot on the coastline called Arniston, which Tor had also heard was a particularly nice place, where we could have a relaxing day on the beach. On the way were stopped at Cape Agulhas, which is the actual, really really, no kidding, most southern point of SA, not the Cape of Good Hope, as we previously thought. So we had a look at where they indicate that the Indian ocean meets the Atlantic ocean, and where many ships have meet their rocky end. We had a look but couldn’t quite see Antarctica! We made our way to Bredasdrop about 20km from Arniston, where we found a campsite with space, and used that as a base. Arniston proved to be as lovely as the reports we had heard and we had no trouble spending the day there soaking up the sun on the beach, popping in to a very nice hotel for a couple of cocktails before enjoying a great meal in a little restaurant run by a ‘Londoner’! On the subject of food, we had planned to do a bit of cooking ourselves when we were camping. But we couldn’t drag ourselves away from all the nice restaurants we kept coming across; they were such good value that it actually seemed criminal to make the effort to cook our own food! Suffice as to say we enjoyed eating out throughout Tor’s stay; steaks, seafood, bush meat, we had it all and our gas hot plate never made it out in to the open once! After our little jaunt up the coast, we headed back towards CT to have a few days in the big city and get ready to celebrate the new year. We stayed in another campsite that jas and I had been to before when we first got to CT, called Ou Skip in Melkbos. The idea was to do a bit of the touristy bits in CT and also lounge around on the beach as well. Typically, the weather put pay to some of our plans! And you thought that was only an English problem! The skies became cloudy and rain reared its ugly head, bad news for us! This was the start of a short period of ‘things not quite working out our way’ beginning with us deciding to go to Robben Island, then getting to the ticket office to be told that it’s fully booked up until 9th Jan! OK not great but no problem we’ll go on the cable car up to Table Mountain, that’s a good idea. Not so! We get to the cable car station and I ask an official if they are shut any time over the Christmas period, and she confidently replies ‘No ma’am, we don’t shut for anything’. Excellent, we’re in luck here, and although it is a bit cloudy, showing true British grit and determination, we go to get tickets. We walk up to the same official I have just talked to and are about to move towards the ticket office when she stops us and says ‘Sorry, we’re shutting the cable car today because it’s too windy to run it’, I grimace, so much for not shutting for anything!! Feeling slightly dejected, and not sure what to do now, the beach option out of the window for that day, we ended up going out for more food and then going to the cinema to see ‘The Departed’ (Scorese film with Leo Di Caprio and Jack Nicholson), which we found to be very good, and so the day was not a wash out after all! New Years eve began with more of the same cloud and bits of rain, but thankfully it cleared up in the afternoon and whilst Jas did some photo editing, Tor and I wasted no time in getting beside the campsite pool and catching some rays. We were taking it easy before we headed in to the heart of CT for the evenings celebrations. To see in the New Year we were going to go to the ‘Waterfront, Victoria and Albert Quay’, where there are quite a few bars and lots of people go, with fireworks etc. Just 15 minutes walk away is the Big Blue Backpackers where we were staying at for the next two nights, so we checked in there and got ourselves glammed up the night. We made our way to a pub called the Ferryman’s, one of the few establishments that serve the kind of ales that Jas really likes, got ourselves a table and got ourselves a drink. It was only about 7pm and we set up for the evening. The quay got steadily busier, but the atmosphere started to really lift quite late on towards midnight. Again we got the distinct impression that SA’s are just as casual about NY as they are Christmas. There was not a huge buzz about, like in England, no large numbers of merry people wishing each and everyone a Happy NY and no ceremonious count down to midnight. At midnight everyone rushed out on to the quay to see the fireworks, which were really good, but only lasted about 10 minutes! The three of us wished each other a very good 2007, and then we back in to the pub! Well little did we know that soon we would be having a fantastic time and rubbing shoulders with a particular British rugby star that I hear through the grapevine has been entertaining you all with his fancy foot work! Shall I go on? ‘Please, please…’ I hear you cry, ‘don’t keep us in suspense!’ OK, calm down, here’s the lowdown. From the pub, by now it being about 1am, we decided to walk back up to the Big Blue. Tor remembered that someone in the backpackers had said they were going to go to a Cuban bar around the corner from there that evening. It’s quite an out of the way place, but Jas and I knew where she meant because we had eaten there a couple of times, and so we thought, hey lets go and see what’s happening there on the way home. That was ultimately one of the best decisions of the whole holiday! We went up to the entrance and casually walked in to find the whole place really buzzing with cool Cuban music, everyone dancing and the atmosphere was brilliant. A guy stopped us and said ‘Do you have tickets?’, but we didn’t really have time to answer before he said, ‘Ah go on in, no worries’ and without any hesitation we were at the bar! We think that it had been a private party type thing, with tickets only, but as it was so late on in the night they were happy just to have more people buying beer in there. It didn’t take us long to get in to the swing of things and we’re having a look round, enjoying the music, when I see someone across from me who looks remarkably like Matt Dawson a.k.a. England Rugby player and more recently star of Strictly Come Dancing! Right, remember I’ve had a couple of drinks and have only seen Matt myself on an occasional, ‘A Question of Sport’, (we’ve been away whilst Strictly has been on) and at this point I’m not convinced it’s not just my imagination. Knowing that Tor has far more knowledge in this field than I, I quickly inform her of my suspicions, and leave her to confirm or deny the identity whilst I go to the bar again. Well it doesn’t take a detective to see from the look on her face as I return, that I have indeed spotted The Matt Dawson, partying on with the rest of us! What a result! Obviously we (Tor and I that is, Jas is not at all fussed about some guy he doesn’t know of, but is also feeling the effect of more than enough ales and a double whiskey!) spend the next half and hour or more trying to get more of a view of him without acting like complete groupies (well me more than Tor!). The place is not very big and it’s easy for us to dance not too far from where him and his friends are sitting and dancing. Cool eh! We were amazed that a spur of the moment choice to go there, means we end up sharing the rest of the evening with a celeb! I did notice that although his friends and girlfriend were happily salsa’ing the night away, he was more interested in the drinking side and I put that down to the fact that he had probably had enough dancing for awhile considering his TV success! Anyway, Jas stayed for a while before his bed beckoned him home, but Tor and I stayed til the end and even then found it hard to drag ourselves away from the MD experience! I am very sorry to say that although we tried we had very limited success trying to capture the proof on camera. Tor did manage a picture, but aside from a funny looking Jas, it is very difficult to make Matt out in the background, however, I’m sure that employing the powers of police surveillance technology, we can enhance the picture to good effect! Watch this space! On NY’s day we again enjoyed a champagne start with pastries, and then whilst Jas was recovering from the night before, Tor and I went for a stroll around one of the hip’n’happening streets in CT. We were expecting shops and cafes etc to be open as usual, as has been the case so far, but this time we were caught out and not much was open at all. Typical! There was a very nice café that we found to have some lunch at, but not much else to see. As it was Tor’s last evening we went back down to the waterfront and had a meal in a really great restaurant that Tor’s Mum recommended to us, which she had been to when she holidayed in SA. So it was a treat for the end of the holiday and completely lived up to its reputation, and we had a very nice last night. Sadly it had already come around to being time to take Tor to the airport. Fortunately her flight wasn’t until later in the afternoon so we squeezed in a last spot of sunbathing and sea-swimming before her flight, a great way to finish the holiday off. It’s always sad to see people off home after we have had such a good time with them. Tor had a great time and we really enjoyed having her (thanks Tor we had a fantastic time, we’ll see you soon!). Having got in to the last month of our trip, we are now in the process of getting the landy serviced and in good order for selling it. We’ve stayed in CT for a few days to organise putting adverts up and around. Then we went up towards Durban for a bit to meet up with some friends we met in Tanz. and do some last minute touring around that way. We followed the coast along the Garden Route, which was very lovely, particularly Knysna and Plettenburg Bay. We've stayed at a couple of lovely backpackers which are right on the beach, we have been watching dolphins from the shore and also watching another couple of spectacular thunder storms. So that’s all for now, I’m sure this last few weeks is really going to fly by and we’ll be packing our stuff to come home before we know it! Obviously there’ll be a final African Adventure blog to come, but for now, cheerio, hope you are all well and it won’t be long before we’ll be seeing you in person! Bye bye, love Kate and Jas xxx

2006-12-21T09:32:00.000+02:00

20.12.06 Mulanje (Malawi), Mozambique, Kruger NP (SA) Hello there, here’s a little pre-christmas blog for you to read whilst you are sipping another glass of mulled wine, eating yet more chocolate, or having that ‘it really is the last one’ mince pie! Happy Christmas to you all, and best wishes for the New Year! We hope you have a lovely time and Santa spoils you all! We left you last time enjoying the fantastic hospitality of Morag and Lindsay. Suffice as to say, our bellies are a little more rounded than before and by the time we left, the rooftop tent hadn’t seen the light of day for 3 weeks!!! In our defence, one week of that 3 was spent up the mountain where our food was greatly limited and our beds were the floors of wooden huts! So whilst we were in Mulanje we spent a couple of days visiting the hospital where we used to work and catch up with our old work colleagues and friends there. It was really lovely to see everyone again and they were very happy to see us after 2 years! They were so welcoming, it was quite emotional being back again and many of them wanted us to stay and work there again! The laboratory seemed to be running well and had stayed fairly much how we left it. This was a great relief, as we were wondering if it may have lost a bit of it’s momentum after we had gone. We were very pleased to find that the 2 newly qualified lab staff that took over from us, were still there and with Mr Kanyoza (our counterpart during our placement) they were maintaining a good standard of lab work. They experience the usual problems with getting reagents, lab materials, and having to work with very old and poorly maintained equipment. However, they manage remarkably well and can always look on the bright side of their situation! We asked them to make a list of things that they really need at the moment, and hopefully when we get back to the UK we can get some things to send over to them. We also gave the hospital money to contribute to their ‘Sponsor a Bed’ scheme with money that was raised at the L&D lab that we worked at before we came travelling, (thanks again to everyone who bought raffle tickets and donated money!). The scheme works by enabling you to (as it says) ‘Sponsor a Bed’ for a year by donating $500, which the hospital puts in to a fund. The money is then allocated to whatever particular expenses are required at that time, eg. it may pay for some new mattresses, or the electricity bill, or nutritional supplementary feeds for the paediatric unit, the list goes on and on. The key is that the money can be distributed in exactly the way the hospital needs to keep the whole place running on a day to day basis, rather than being earmarked for one thing in particular. This is an invaluable fund for the hospital and the money that we raised for the hospital was very gratefully received by the new hospital medical director, with many thanks. The next stop in Mulanje was the mountain! I’m sure you all remember the very large Mulanje Massif that we could see from our front garden, which we used to climb up. Well a trip back to Mulanje would not have been complete without us reliving the hard 4 hour slog up to the plateau, and a few days staying in the huts and climbing the odd peak. In fact we had loved being up there so much that we arranged to stay up the mountain for 8 days, visiting 5 different huts and climbing the illusive ‘Sapitwa’ (‘don’t go there!’ in Chichewa) peak. Of course the whole experience is made much more bearable by the fact that you hire porters and guides to go with you, and more importantly carry all you stuff!! So with Fred and File (yep that was his name), brothers that we were recommended to take up, we set off on our great hike! Like I said, the first day hiking up the steep slopes to the top of the plateau is pretty difficult going to say the least! I would describe myself and Jason as reasonably fit individuals, who, having been up and down the massif several times before, would find it fair going. Well, probably due to the fact that we have spent the last 7 months doing little more than sitting in the landy driving from place to place and spending more time sitting in there on safari, I should have expected the climb to be a bit more of a stretch on the old muscles! Admittedly we were going up in the hottest part of the year, but still I can tell you that the first day hiking was a slight shock to the system and we had a strenuous work out! Nevertheless, it was completely worth every drop of sweat, as the views and the scenery were even more stunning than we remembered. Once up on the plateau the walks between the huts are much less demanding, fortunately, and the extra exertion up one or more of the 25 peaks is entirely at you discretion! We went up two other peaks, but we saved the biggest, Sapitwa, til last. It stands at 3,000 metres (remembering that you’re already at 1,500m on the plateau, so you’re already half way there, thank goodness!) and the climb is mostly over large boulders and through little wooded areas. There is no pathway as such, you are utterly reliant on the guides you’ve got with you knowing the way. Without their knowledge it would take you forever to get to the top! It was tough going (well not so much for Jas, but I needed the occasional hand or push up from Fred!) but we made it! The sky was clear blue when we set out, but 3 hours later at the summit, sod’s law, we couldn’t see a thing as the clouds had gathered all around us! Hey ho, that’s life, and we had a good laugh about it. So we stopped up there long enough to eat some peanuts to restore our energy, have a quick photo and then off we went to make the journey down again! It was a bit easier on the way down, only taking us 2 hours! By the time we got to the hut again, my legs were definitely telling me they had had enough! It was excellent though to have conquered the highest peak on Mulanje which we hadn’t done before, and we felt suitably pleased with ourselves, despite not being able to experience the tremendous views from the top! The huts on the mountain are pretty basic. They each differ slightly in design, but generally have a room with a fire in for cooking and eating, and another room to sleep in. Quite often, however, it gets rather chilly at night and so you end up sleeping next to the fire. There are guys at each hut that are paid to stay there and make sure you have enough chopped wood for the fire and clean water available. If you’re lucky some of them have had the brainwave of having a few bottles of beer and soft drinks there too for sale, which does go down well after a long days hiking! There are lovely views around each hut and you really feel as though you are miles away from anything, without a care in the world. We loved our week up there and each days walks were through slightly different surroundings, all of which were very beautiful. I think we could have easily stayed up there 2 weeks or more! Back down we came though, straight back to the luxury of Morag and Lindsay’s, which was more spoiling for us. We went back to the hospital for a last visit to the lab, and to take some photos of everyone. Although we didn’t actually pop and see our old house, not feeling it was polite to intrude in someone else’s home now, we did manage to track down our old day worker, Arnold and night guard, Headson. It was lovely to see them again and they were very pleased to see us. They were both very well and we gave them a bit of a Christmas present, a big bag of maize meal which they use to make ‘nsima’, their staple meal, to help them through this time of year, which is called the ‘hungry season’. We were very happy to learn that our night guard’s dog ‘Tiger’, that we looked after as well, was also fine and still strong! We didn’t see him though, which is a shame, but just knowing he was OK (dogs have a pretty rough life in Malawi) was as good as we could have hoped! After spending a few more days in Mulanje (by this time we had needed to go to Blantyre to extend our visas, because we had already overstayed our 30 days!), we caught up with everybody we used to know there, who still lived there. It was a great time and it felt just like when we lived there, and as if we had only been away a couple of months. We truly enjoyed our return to VSO place, and I certainly could have easily stayed there for another 18 months, working in the lab again, and living with the mountain so nearby! Time was ticking on by now and we really did have to leave Malawi. We thoroughly enjoyed visiting it again, and we are practically certain that we’ll get back there again sometime! But for now we had to move on in to Mozambique, and we’re sorry to say that as a result of spending much too long in Malawi, we had to abandon our tour of Moz and reduce it to a whistle stop trip through to get back in to SA. We did try and work things out to stay in Moz longer, but after much deliberation we agreed that despite hearing very good reports on Moz, there was much more that we wanted to see and do in SA, so we preferred to get on down there again. We took 4 days to get through Moz and along the way we did find some very nice beach-side campsites to stay in. So at least we did get to swim in the sea and sample the great seafood a few times on the way through. Firstly we stayed in a little coastal town called Quelimane, which was quite nice, but a bit run down, not on the tourist route really. Then on to Vilankulos, where we had the best seafood so far, so we stayed for two days! Although on the way there at 7pm at night we were lucky to get anywhere, due to a ‘blow out’! Now before you start panicking, it wasn’t at all the sensational blow outs that you hear about. In fact, thankfully, as it was dark and the roads weren’t the best, we were going quite steadily, so there was no huge bang as the tyre burst, nor any skidding around in an uncontrollable landy! Actually quite the opposite. The tyre was getting a bit rugged around the edges, so we were planning on changing it in SA anyway. But we had gone over just one too many potholes and it decided ‘enough was enough!’ On the next bumpy bit we heard an unusual noise coming from the back of the landy and when Jas peered out he could see the tyre was no more! I could tell something was wrong and had already slowed right down and so we gently pulled off the road and came to a very graceful halt. It wasn’t at all like in the movies, no massive screeches, no slamming on of brakes and no somersaulting vehicles, I’m very glad to say! All kitted out with our high lift jack and spare wheel, we were sure we would soon be on our way again. Not quite so, as it wasn’t at all long before several Mozambiquians (not sure if that’s the right word) had found us and were hastily offering their assistance. Now, unfortunately we can’t say that our Portuguese is up to scratch, and their English was about the same, but through the universal language of hand gestures we were soon communicating reasonably well and the guys were happily helping us. They seemed to know what they were doing, but it wasn’t long before we were having a couple of problems, but we persevered and after an hour or so, we were back on the road and waving back to the very contented guys, (a little monetary thanks had been given in return for their hard work!). Arriving at Vilankulos a little later than expected, we found a campsite and could relax at last! From there we went to Praia de Xai Xai, and the most gorgeous beach of golden sand and blue sea that just went on and on and on! That evening we could see the weather was getting a bit stormy, and later we were watching the most amazing thunder and lightning storm I have ever seen. The lightning was flashing all across the ocean and really illuminating the whole sky. We could see it all coming closer towards us, and it eventually reached us and the rain just kept coming and coming, with such strong winds that I was sure the tent was going to get blown off the top of the landy! It was really cool to watch it all and it actually provided some much needed relief from the extremely hot temperatures we were having to endure in Moz. I know that Africa is hot, but really, the heat in Moz was absolutely incredible, the hottest we have ever been! Sweat, boy did we ever, especially as we were mostly in the landy driving. The landy was getting so hot that you couldn’t touch parts of it for fear of getting 3rd degree burns! Of the little that we did see, Moz looked a very nice country, and with the Portguese influence (from when they colonised it) it was quite different from the other countries we have been in. We would definitely go back to explore it properly, we’ll just have to use it as another excuse to travelling again! It was a quick and painless re-entry in to SA, and as soon as you are across the border you can tell you are back in a developed country again. There are shops everywhere, selling everything, and now the roads are full of other cars, not bicycles, kids, goats and donkeys! Our first port of call was Nelspruit, a city about 100km from the border. We planned to stay there a couple of days to do some of the more mundane things, get money, food shopping, laundry, oh and getting a new tyre to replace the spare! Now we were back in to a big and bustling city, we couldn’t resist a bit of a treat and so we went to see the James Bond film. I’m not sure how long it has been out in the UK, but it has only just come out here. The next day we didn’t waste any time in getting back on the road and going up to Kruger NP. It is such a famous park that we didn’t know whether it would live up to the hype, or it would be too commercial and too busy. After all the great parks we had been to already and the amazing ‘bush camping’ that we had done, we weren’t sure if being in a proper campsite with shops and restaurants, swimming pools and large numbers of people would be as rewarding. Going in with slight apprehension, we were soon to be very pleasantly surprised. Yes it was totally different from the very basic camps we were used to, and there were tarmac roads, with quite a few cars on. Nevertheless, the actual game viewing was outstanding and we never thought that we would see as much as we did. In the 8 days we were there, we moved around three different areas of the park (the size of Wales) and 5 of those 8 days we saw the ‘Big 5’ (lion, buffalo, leopard, elephant and rhino), plus hyena, giraffe, crocodiles, hippo, baboons, vervet monkeys, wildebeest, warthog, many types of antelope, many birds of prey, bee-eaters, sunbirds, oh the list goes on and on! But by far the best sighting for us here, only because we have never ever seen them before and were really hoping to find them, were packs of wild dogs! Might not sound particularly amazing, but they are quite rare and we were very happy to find them and watch them for long periods, on several occasions. With the wild dogs, groups of 5/6 rhinos at time, leopards eating impalas in trees, lions eating zebra and giraffe, huge herds of buffalo, and some of the biggest elephants we have seen, all in all we found Kruger to be as good as we had heard! It was 8 fantastic days and a place that we would definitely return to. Not overlooking the smaller animals that we enjoyed seeing as well, plenty of tortoises, chameleons, mongooses, tree agamas, terrapins, baby impala, baby warthogs, monitor lizards, dung beetles (in full dung rolling action), baby eagle owls, and last but not least glow worms! As you can imagine we had a hard time leaving there, especially Jas! Now we are heading down to Cape Town to met Tor, my friend from uni, who is arriving on the 21st and staying with us for Christmas and New Year. It’s going to be a busy 10 days with visits to Stellenbosch, De Hoop nature reserve, Table Mountain and Robben Island, plus lots of other things in and around Cape Town. On top of which we have to fit in Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve!!!! We can’t wait and are sure Tor is going to have a great time, as we will and we are really looking forward to her arriving. All that’s left for me to say, apart from ‘what a short blog this is!!’, is we hope you have a brilliant Christmas and New Year, and enjoy yourselves where ever you are and whatever you do! Take care and we’ll be in touch again in 2007! Best wishes from us and our love to you all. Love Kate and Jas xxx PS. We’ll do our best to put up with having xmas on the beach in lovely sunshine!!! PPS. I know that on the blog there are no paragraphs. This is not me being very slack, but for some reason when you up load on to the blog it gets rid of the paragraphs and I haven't as yet found out how to put them back in. So sorry that it's all bunched up in to one big sprawl, you'll have to imagine there are paragraphs there!

2006-11-28T16:52:00.000+02:00

24.11.06 South Luangwa (Zambia), Liwonde and Senga Bay (Malawi) Hi there to you all! How’s things? Sorry it’s been a long time since our last entry, but the internet is not very reliable here in Malawi, and we’ve had a bit of trouble getting access to the weblog site. As I began uploading this blog I was shocked to realise that we are already almost in to December. It’s difficult to imagine you are probably getting in to Christmas mode, whether you want to or not, with xmas music, decorations appearing and all the rest of it. Out here there’s not a sniff of the festive season, which, along with the increasing heat, ensures that we have almost completely forgotten about what time of year it is! Once we get back in to SA I’m sure the Christmas preparations will be well under way, and we’ll get in to the swing of it a bit, although it will feel a little odd having Santa come in the middle of the summer! Anyway Santa thoughts aside, we hope you are all very well and the shortening nights are not making you too depressed! So we were in Malawi spending for a couple of days by the lake before going back in to Zambia to pick up Kev and Zoe. We had also popped down to Liwonde NP for a few days beforehand, and while we were there we had a very lucky encounter with one of the rangers who worked in the rhino sanctuary there. Jas bumped in to Dzimba in the men’s loos and got chatting to him about the various joys of animal tracking. Jas asked what animals Dzimba spent most of his time tracking and he replied ‘Rhinos’! Obviously Jas was very impressed and couldn’t begin to hide his excitement. Dzimba was so delighted with Jas’s interest and enthusiasm about his job, that in no time at all Dzimba was inviting us to join him and his fellow ranger Christopher the following day for a trip in to the rhino sanctuary to track the black rhino, on foot!!! Well what a result! Not only do you normally have to pay to go in the rhino sanctuary and we were going in free, but more importantly, the general public can only drive around the sanctuary, and we were going to have our own personal walking safari to find the rhinos! We tried not to get too excited just in case it didn’t actually happen, after all Dzimba wasn’t supposed to take any old people in there. But when we bumped in to Christopher later on and he quite confidently said, ‘Ah you must be Jas and Kate, you are coming with us tomorrow, we will find some rhinos for you’, we started to get very excited! At 5.30 the next morning Dzimba and Christopher arrived in the campsite ready to set off in to the sanctuary. If there were any remaining doubts at all that we were going to be walking with rhinos, these were immediately dispelled by the presence of the assault rifles they were carrying with them! No messing about there, they were ready for any trouble the rhinos might throw at us. We found out later that the guns were also for use against poachers. The rhino sanctuary is dedicated to rearing black rhino, and other endangered species in Malawi, and the Malawian government is so dedicated to this mission that they will not tolerate poachers in there at all. Poachers are still a problem in Liwonde and if they are found in the rest of the park they are arrested and sent to jail. However, such is the concern that they will try to kill the rhino, that the rangers are given a ‘shoot to kill ‘ policy if they discover poachers inside the sanctuary. The hope being that the possibility of this drastic action will stop the poachers going in there. So in to the sanctuary we go, the back gate just to keep a slightly lower profile, with Christopher searching through the windscreen of the landy for any signs of the rhino. There are 7 rhinos in the sanctuary at the moment, 4 adults and 3 young. Dzimba and Christopher have over 38 years experience of rhino tracking between them and having worked at Liwonde for 23 and 15 years respectively, we had every faith that they new whereabouts they should be looking! It wasn’t long before Christopher had us park the landy and start walking through the bush. They gave us a little pep talk before we started so we knew how to conduct ourselves once on foot, and although I knew they knew exactly what they were doing, it was still a little nerve racking as well as being very exciting! It was fascinating how they tracked the rhino, following sounds, smells and tracks that half the time I couldn’t make out at all! They were always taking in to account which way the wind was blowing so that we were downwind of the rhino, and our smell didn’t give us away. We spent quite a long time walking around, but were steadily getting closer to one rhino and her calf, finding spots where they had slept the might before, stopped for a drink and even areas they had been playing. We came to an area where Dzimba and Christopher were sure the rhino were very close by and told us to stay at one spot while they circled around to check. They hadn’t moved more than a few metres either side of us when we heard a loud rustling of bushes about 10 metres away, along with a definite rhino sounding snort. Jas and I looked through the bushes and low and behold there in front of us was a mum rhino and her calf! They gave us a little scare by making a small mock charge towards us, getting our adrenalin going and our feet moving to the sides of Christopher and Dzimba, and the safety of the guns! But they are very shy animals really and were not at all interested in getting close to us, and after only a few moments they ran off in the opposite direction leaving us no chance to catch up with them. Wow, what can I say, it was really fantastic to get that close to black rhinos on foot! We were very lucky to see them on our first walk, it was a very special treat for us and one that we might never have again. After that we went back to the landy and drove around the rest of the sanctuary to see some of the other animals they have in there, which aren’t found in the rest of the park. We saw zebra, hartebeest, roan, sable, and eland, a full house as far as we were concerned. It had been an excellent morning! Dzimba and Christopher were very pleased we had seen everything too and had enjoyed showing us around and telling us all about their job. They asked us if we wanted to go in again with them the next morning and needless to say we didn’t hesitate in saying ‘yes please!!!’ We went in again and as quickly as the day before we had found fresh tracks and were hot the rhino’s trail. Luck wasn’t with us this time and although we got close to where they were, we scared them off way before we could see them. Dzimba and Christopher we very disappointed that they hadn’t got us closer, and wanted us to go in a third day, but we had to explain that we couldn’t stay any longer this time, but would be back in about 10 days with our friends. As Kev is the one who got Jas in to his tracking, we asked if there was any chance that they would take us in when we came back. They were absolutely thrilled that we were coming to Liwonde again and said that they would take us rhino tracking as many days as we liked, as long as it wasn’t on a Saturday when their bosses from Blantyre came! So all was set for a great treat for Kev and Zoe. We met a nice Australian couple (Mike and Julie) in Liwonde, and they joined us in the landy for some drives. They were planning to go up to the lake next and as it was on our way we said we would give them a lift. They had been travelling around using public transport and were very happy to squeeze in the landy with us and all our stuff, as a break from the minibuses! We also found out that Christopher (our rhino man) was going home for a few days and his house was in a village called Sharpvale, also on the way to the lake. Seeing if it was possible to get him in as well, lots of luggage manuovering involved, we offered him a lift too, much to his delight. As we neared Sharpvale we asked Christopher how far from the main road his house was. He told us it was only 1/2km and would we like to come and meet his family. We said that would be lovely and so we drove right to his front door and were greeted by his wife and 7 children, plus numerous relatives and what seemed like half the village! Christopher was very keen to show us his home and fields, and share some home grown pawpaw with us. We stayed for awhile and all the children found us very fascinating, and when Jas did some juggling and a magic trick we were a real hit. Unfortunately we still had a way to go to get to the lake, so we said our goodbyes and off we went with the whole village waving us off. We took Mike and Julie to Cool Runnings and stayed for 2 nights and then it was time to go into Zambia again to pick up Kev & Zoe from Lusaka. It was a 2 day journey which we had done several times now and the border crossing in between. No problems there we thought…….little did we know! We arrived at the Zambian border and for the first time EVER, we were asked to show our yellow fever certificates. It was quite a surprise and as we hadn’t been asked to show them before we had to think about where they actually were. Luckily I had mine with me, but we realised that Jas’s was in amongst some luggage that we had left at ‘Cool Runnings’ (by the lake) until we got back there with Kev & Zoe, so we had a bit more room in the landy. We began to explain this and say that we had been in to Zambia before and never been asked to produce the certificate previously so did they really have to see it this time. Unluckily for us, the official had decided that he was not going to be at all helpful and told us that without it he had every right to refuse us entry in to country. We suddenly were left with the options of a days drive back to the lake to find it, or go back to Lilongwe and find a doctor to give Jas a new vaccination with a new certificate! Neither of these really appealed to us, plus we had to get to Lusaka the next day for Kev & Zoe. This was becoming a real problem and we suddenly realised that we were at this man’s mercy if were wanted to get across the border now, which we needed to do! It dawned on us that the way to go was be a nice to the official as possible, profusely apologise for our stupidity, beg for his assistance in the matter and offer any other grovelling that might help. We even contemplated slipping him a few dollars! After a good half an hour of ‘sucking up’ on our part and ‘showing whose boss’ on his, we were eventually allowed through without the certificate (any thankfully no money was required). After we thanked him many many times, we crossed in to Zambia and breathed a huge sigh of relief! Kev & Zoe were arriving at midday on the 20th, so were had plenty of time to get to the airport that morning. Remembering the hick-up with Helen’s flight we thought it was best to quickly check the email to make sure all was well this time. Would you believe that we had a message from Kev & Zoe’s son, Joe, saying that their flight had been cancelled!!!! Now as you can imagine we were gobsmacked, this surely wasn’t happening again! They were trying to get another flight the next day, but it wasn’t confirmed yet and they would email as soon as they knew. Well Jas and I spent the next hour sitting in a café with a drink just trying to get this news to sink in. We just couldn’t believe it. Obviously we had no problems waiting around Lusaka until they arrived, but we knew that they were tied to coming whilst it was the school’s half term, and had things arranged for looking after their kids and dogs. So if they couldn’t get another flight straight away, it might mean that they couldn’t come at all! That would have been awful for them and us as were we all looking forward to the trip. All we could do was wait and check the email the following day. Eagerly we logged on to the internet the next morning, praying that they had managed to get a flight already, and much to our great surprise, and total relief they had. Fantastic! They were on their way now and fortunately were only a day later than expected, so it wouldn’t affect their time here too much. Off we went to the airport to await their arrival, and seeing them come through the doors was great, considering that 24 hours ago we weren’t sure if we would! Now we were a little behind time, we had a quick shop for food etc in Lusaka and then wasted no time in getting on the road to go up to S. Luangwa NP. This time we choose to go via the ‘back roads’ as it were. A few people had said that it was a much nicer route and fewer kms, although it took the same amount of time because it was a dirt road and had some 4x4 only bits. We thought Kev would like this as he has a landy and would appreciate being able to do some proper off-roading. It was possible that along the way we would see some animals too, as the road went up the side of the NP and they roamed freely around this area. The journey was long and very very hot, but it was worth it when we bumped in to some buffalo, giraffe, warthogs and elephants as we got closer to the park! We stayed at the lovely ‘Flatdogs’ campsite alongside the Luangwa river (this being mine and Jas’s 3rd time here!), ‘flatdog’ being the local name for crocodiles. Over the next 3 days we went for drives in to the park, and saw lots of animals, and as this was Kev & Zoe’s first time on safari they thoroughly enjoyed it. One morning we were told that there was a dead buffalo in one of the watering holes that was being eaten by crocodiles. We made a beeline for the place hoping that it was still there, and were amazed to find the buffalo being pushed around in the water by a group of very large crocs, with many more smaller ones hanging around the scene as well, we counted about 25 altogether. Finding a nice spot to park in the shade and enjoy the show, we sat there enthralled as the crocs played around with the carcass for awhile although not making much attempt to eat it. Then to our utter astonishment several hippos from a nearby pod came and scared the crocs off and started to move the carcass around themselves! It was quite odd to see the hippos doing this and we were trying to work out why they were, they are herbivores so there was not intention of eating it, but they wouldn’t leave it alone and were determined to keep the crocs away. Eventually we concluded that the hippos thought the buffalo was another hippo and they were trying to protect it, but we’re still not really sure. After some time the hippos decided to move away and immediately the crocs were back with avengence! This time they were straight in with their teeth and they attacked the carcass without hesitation. All we could see were masses of crocodile bodies writhing around, tearing bits of meat and snapping their jaws, with an occasional buffalo foot or ear popping up in to sight. It was incredible to watch and totally absorbing, so much so that we didn’t even notice a herd of elephants come out of the trees behind us and start to drink and have a mud bath in the same waterhole, only a few metres away!!! There was so much happening we didn’t know which to look at! It was really fantastic. We went of a couple of night drives from Flatdogs, and were hoping to see a few of the nocturnal animals like genets, porcupines, mongooses, civets, plus of course hyena and leopard. However, much to our disappointment, they kept completely out of our way and we didn’t see much at all. It was a real shame for Kev & Zoe, but they knew that you can never guarantee to see wild animals and were more than impressed with all that they had seen so far. We also tried very hard to find some lions, but these too were not on our side this time, and K&Z decided that it just meant that they had to come back another time! From S.L. we went back in to Malawi, no troubles with yellow fever certificates this time thankfully! We stopped in Lilongwe for fuel and a few bits and bobs, then started on the rest of the journey to Liwonde, stopping only to buy a small handmade wooden Landrover, expertly carved by some guys by the side of the road. A must have for us landy enthusiasts! Towards Balaka (thinking of you Rach and Jas!) which is only 30km from Liwonde, we noticed that it had been raining recently, and we had seen some rain clouds along the way. But it was only when we actually reached Liwonde township that we found it still drizzling, and not thinking anything of it we carried on to the NP gate. Admittedly we were rather later than we had planned and when we got to the gate it was already dark. We should have stayed outside the park for the night, but we really wanted to get to Mvuu Camp that day, as we were running a day late (due to the flights). So we asked the guy who had just closed the gate if we could go in, as we knew the park very well we knew we wouldn’t get lost and it would only take about 30 minutes to get there. He was not really happy to let us, but we convinced him by saying we had to meet Dzimba and Christopher that night because we were ‘working’ with them in the rhino sanctuary the next day, which was almost the truth! You are not supposed to drive around by yourselves at night through the park, but we thought that we could think of some good excuse to give when we got to Mvuu if they were not happy about it. Little did we know that soon we would have the best excuse we could possibly need! Everything started off OK, we had our extras spotlights on and there were no animals about. But after a few kms I found that the road was quite wet and getting a bit slippery. No worries, we just slowed down (ie. from 30km/hr to 20) and carried on. Then suddenly I felt the back wheels go and we were in a full on skid, which I managed to hold without too much trouble and get us to a halt, now straddling the road! It took my breath away for a minute, not having skidded in a car before, but still we didn’t think to much of it, had a laugh and went on. It wasn’t long before we realised that in fact it had been really really raining in the park and this normally straightforward road was now a quagmire of clay fairly rapidly our progress along it got slower and slower. We kept getting stuck it ruts along the side of the road, and as soon as I managed to get out of one and back in to the middle of the road, the landy would slip down in to the rut on the otherside! It was becoming apparent that getting to the camp was going to take considerably more time than we had anticipated! Jas took over driving to give me a break and was having the same trouble, but having lots of fun at the same time! At this point we weren’t too worried about things, we just accepted that we wouldn’t get to the camp for awhile, but at least now we had a ‘real’ good excuse for being late! There were a couple of times when we really thought we were stuck and would have to get out and use the high-lift jack to help us out. But the landy kept up her perfect ‘not stuck yet’ record and kept on going, just got completely covered in mud! We were only about 10km in to the park when we saw some tail lights ahead of us……not moving……someone else was in this mess and by the looks of things STUCK! We managed to get to them and found 2 American girls (Mai and Hope) who work for Wilderness Safaris (the company that own Mvuu Lodge and Camp) who had been stuck for 2 hours! They we so pleased to see us, especially as they thought the gate had closed and no-one else would be coming that late at night! We conveniently forgot to mention that the gate was closed, we just persuaded the guy to open it again for us! They had phoned Mvuu to tell them they were stuck, but now had lost mobile coverage and didn’t know what to do. Plus they could hear strange animal noises and were getting a little nervous about being there. Kev offered to drive their Toyota Landcruiser (a nice new one) and see if he could get further, as they we very quick to say they didn’t have any experience driving in these conditions, or in a 4x4 car. So Kev set off and we followed, still at a very slowly pace and sliding all over the place. We came across a few large puddles and Kev and Jas we happy to wade in to them to see how deep they were! And before you ask, we were all keeping an eye out for the animals whilst they were doing this, luckily Mai and Hope had a couple of big torches with them. So far it was all still a bit humurous and Jas and Kev were having a great time rally driving their way through the park. The progress was slow but steady until we reached a really big puddle, well a mini lake really, across the road. Kev and Jas went to assess the situation, and after awhile came back looking less happy. This ‘lake’ was really too wide to try to drive through without knowing how deep it was or what was on the other side. They were also seeing several large spiders and scorpions and were rather more reluctant to traipse through it to find out how deep it was, which we could all appreciate! So following much deliberation about what to do next, we decided that perhaps the best plan was to stop there for the night and wait until morning before doing anything. It was not a particularly good idea to keep wandering about in elephant country in the dark – we had heard them around, and noises of what we thought were a hyena – and once it was light again we would be in a much better position to determine how to tackle the lake. It was now about 9pm and we were all getting very tired since we had started off from SL at 8am that morning and been in the car most of the day. So having to skip tea, although none of us were that hungry, and having watched an episode of Red Dwarf, to keep spirits up, we tried to get some sleep. Jas and I clambered a little less gracefully than usual in to the roof-top tent and Kev and Zoe struggled to find a half comfortable spot in the landy. Surprisingly quickly we all fell asleep and were remarkably refreshed when dawn arrived the next morning, considering our predicament. What a difference light makes! Now we could see all around the lake and found that we could cross it in two stages by going off the road and through the trees. It was still going to be tricky and it was all hands on deck to gather up some big branches to lay in front of the tyres to try and give us some more grip. Kev was still in front and although he looked as though he was getting badly stuck at one bit, managed to get through without too much hassle. Jas followed his route and also made it through, again wheel spinning on a few parts, but not getting completely stuck. We were all very relieved to have got past the lake and knew (now that we could see where we were) that it was only another 4 or 5km to the camp. But just as we thought the worst was over we came to slight hill where the rain had cut very deep ruts down each side. It was going to be very tricky to stop the cars slipping down on either side and getting well and truly wedged! With a bit of slipping, a lot of manoeuvring and some hairy landy 40 degrees leaning moments, we made it (full praise to Jas’s driving here)! Eventually we got to the camp and were met with apologies from the staff for our ordeal, and explanations of how they tried to come and find us (once they knew that Mai and Hope were stuck) but couldn’t get very far from their end and had to turn back. We assured them we were all fine and that the whole thing was actually quite an adventure which we would enjoy telling all our friends about! Indeed we told them that some people pay a lot of money to bush-camp in a national park! As a thank-you for rescuing them, Mai and Hope insisted that we joined them for breakfast at the camp which the company would happily pay for. Since the last time we’d had a proper meal was more than a day ago, (we hadn’t ate much on the journey, planning to cook a big tea when we got to the campsite, but we never made it!) we accepted very gratefully and each ate a hearty breakfast! We had two lovely days at Liwonde (finally!) and met up with Dzimba and Christopher again, who were very pleased to see us as they had heard we were stuck in the bush for the night! The rain didn’t come back which was very good because we were afraid it would prevent us from doing game drives and going in to the rhino sanctuary. So the next morning they took us rhino tracking and although they both put in their best efforts, we didn’t get to see them this time, but we saw most of the other animals in the sanctuary which was great. One morning we went on a boat safari and saw some very large crocs and some elephants right up close, along with loads of birds and hippos, it was all very good. A spot of swimming in the pool was also very good, and is undoubtedly the best way to keep cool in between game drives! As a thank-you for Dzimba and Christopher for taking us tracking, for free, and being so helpful, we wanted to get them something to keep rather than giving them money. They had previously told us that one aspect of their job was to monitor all the herds of animals in the sanctuary to ensure there were no problems with health or poaching amongst other things. However, as the sanctuary is 50km sq, and they have no means of transport, it was quite hard to do this efficiently on foot. It would help them a lot if they had bicycles, but the government and private organisation involved in the sanctuary project hadn’t provided them with one. Jas, Kev, Zoe and I thought it was a nice gesture for us to buy them each a bicycle to say thank-you for their hard work, which would be something they wouldn’t be able to afford themselves, and would make their day to day jobs a little easier. So we suggested this to them and they were over the moon with the idea, and were so pleased that we would do this. After the morning tracking, we drove them to a nearby trading centre, near but still a good 2 hours drive away on dirt roads, with the intention of getting a couple of strong mountain bikes. What was essentially a straight-forward mission ended up being a complete round the houses goose chase, in true Malawian style! We couldn’t find any mountain bikes in the shops, but found a man who said he had two at his house, which we could buy from him. We told him we wanted brand new bikes and he assured they were and once we had agreed a price, he said we should take him there. So another hours drive and we arrive at this village in the bush and he says he has to go and get the bikes. ‘From where?’ we ask, as we were expecting them to be at his house, and find out that his has hidden them elsewhere so that nobody steals them. OK we think and Dzimba and Christopher are happy that things are fine, so we wait in the village, gradually attracting the locals attention and soon becoming the centre of attention ourselves! We wait and wait and wait! Then after an hour we’re beginning to have some doubts about the actual existence of these bikes. Dzimba was very apologetic, and was trying to find out exactly what was going on, to no avail! As we were just about to call it a day, luckily no money had changed hands yet, one guy turned up with an obviously second-hand bike with a broken saddle. We told him that we were expecting brand new bikes and two of them, not what he had produced! So we told him the deal was off and unfortunately after a whole afternoon of searching and waiting, we had to go back to the camp empty-handed! It was a real shame, as we had wanted to be able to get the bikes before we left Liwonde and have a photo of us with them. Nevertheless, it is Malawi and we remember from living here that you never assume things will run smoothly. Our hastily put together plan B was to buy the bikes from Lilongwe when we took Kev and Zoe to the airport, and then return to Liwonde with them later, we didn’t have any problems with coming back again to one of our favourite places! We left Liwonde with Dzimba and Christopher looking forward to our return, and drove up to the lake to stay at Cool Runnings, another of our favourite Malawian spots. We had a couple of nights there for Kev and Zoe to relax in the sun and swim in the lake before their flight home from Lilongwe. We went out in one of the boats there to Lizard Island, not far from the lakeshore and did some snorkelling to see the ciclids which are famous for being endemic to Lake Malawi. It was a very restful end to the holiday and we enjoyed lovely food and drink, in a great setting. Sadly the end of Kev and Zoe’s holiday arrived too soon! We all had a really wonderful time and were very sorry that it couldn’t have been longer. Still we managed to fit a lot in and have some great memories of all the things we got up to including the odd unplanned adventure! (Thanks K&Z, it was excellent having you here, look forward to catching up back in the UK!). Now that it was just the two of us again, we had a tentative plan to spend another few days at the lake, then head down to drop the bikes off to Dzimba and Christopher. After that we were going on to Mulanje where we used to live and see our friends and work colleagues there in the hospital, and climb the mountain. But our plans are always likely to change and this again to be the case. Whilst we were in Lilongwe, Jas thought he would go to Wilderness Safaris head office and show them some of his photos and see if they would be interested in using any of them. We met up with Mai (who we’d rescued in Liwonde) and she introduced us to Mike another guy there. He was very impressed with the pictures and said that he would tell his managing director, Chris, about them and get him to give us a call. By the end of the afternoon we had a meeting with Chris arranged and Jas was busy putting together a slide show of his best stuff for it. There was no way of knowing how it would go or what would come of it, but it was very exciting anyway. Jas obviously made a very good impression because Chris was very complementary of his photos. He said that although he already had a photographer working for him, he was happy to put us up in Mvuu Lodge (the really posh part) for 3 days, and Jas could try and get some particular shots for him which he made a list of. What a treat!!! Not only would we stay in complete luxury, we would have wonderful meals morning, noon and night, and we would having our own guides to take us on drives and boat safaris whenever we wanted! Can’t get much better than that eh! It didn’t take long for Jas to accept this wonderful offer and all we had to do was phone up the lodge and arranged when we wanted to be there. All that we had to do was provide some pictures at the end of it and give them exclusive rights to use them if they wished. Well as we were already planning to go back with the bikes we couldn’t have timed it better and when we called to arrange when we could stay, they said the next few days were fine. So quickly we collected all our things from Cool Runnings, and went straight back to Liwonde! When we arrived (this time well before dark and not in the rain!), we drove past our usual campsite area and on to the very discrete lodge, reserved for only the more wealthy tourists. As we were shown to our chalet, we couldn’t believe how lucky we were and how lovely it was (hopefully the photos show you a bit of what it was like)! Then we found out that they had put us in the honeymoon chalet, which is the best of the best; it was a really special treat for us, and a far cry from our ‘top of the truck tent’!! But we didn’t forget that we were there to work as well (well Jas was!) and we went out as much as we could to get some great shots for Chris. In fact we were up at 5am every day to go out on the boat! Not too much of a hardship when you get a hamper of coffee, hot chocolate and nibbles brought to the chalet to help you get out of bed, and then have a full breakfast of whatever you want when you get back at 9am! We had time to relax in the chalet during the middle of the day, and could arrive for lunch at any time between 12 and 1pm. Then after a little snooze, back out on the boat or on a game drive at 3.30, after tea and snacks on the veranda. To finish the day we had a fantastic dinner under the stars at 7.30 and a few drinks with the other guests and then off to a luxurious bed to sleep off all the food! What a life, it sure was hard to put up with!!! So we had 3 days of being utterly spoilt and it was fabulous. Jas did work very hard to make sure he got some great pictures for the company and we’ll go back to Lilongwe to show Chris in a week or so. After our luxury stay we went back to the campsite for a couple of days to catch up with Dzimba and Christopher and to give them their bikes. They were ever so pleased with them, the pumps, locks and mirrors that went with them and couldn’t thank us enough. It was so nice to see how happy they were, and we got some nice photos of us with them and their new set of wheels! We had become very good friends with them in a short time and it was sad to say a final farewell to them both, but we have promised we will stay in contact with them, and will of course come to see them when we come back to Malawi again some day. Now we are in Mulanje staying with Lindsay and Morag, a really lovely couple who live and work on one of the tea estates here. Tomorrow we are going to stop in the Mission Hospital where we used to work and say hello to all the people we knew and worked with, which we are really looking forward to. It will be interesting to see if things have changed much and how the lab is getting on these days. Then we’ll climb the mountain for several days, something that we always enjoyed doing when we lived here. So that’s as far as we have got to now. Thank-you for logging on to the weblog again and taking the time to read my mammouth entry, which is the longest so far, sorry about that! We send you all our best regards and hope that you are well and everything is going fine. Take care and we’ll be in touch again before you know it! Love Kate and Jas xxx

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2006-10-13T09:59:00.000+02:00

2006-10-12T14:23:00.000+02:00

11.10.06 Selous NP, Kilwa Kivinje, Zanzibar, Lake Natron, Ngorongoro Crater, Kilimanjaro (Tanzania) – watch out this is a long one, so get comfortable! Hi there! Here we are again, back with more news, it must feel to you that it wasn’t long since the last lot, but it’s over a month already! We have really enjoyed all you emails and messages on the blog, so thanks a lot for taking the time to type! As we are over half way with our trip now, it’s lovely to know that you are still keen to read our travelling tales and that we haven’t lost your interest along the way! So let me get on, we’ve been pretty busy since we last talked to you, and first and foremost you’ll be very pleased to hear that Helen arrived without further delay and we were able to start her mini tour of Tan. with no problems…HOORRAYYY!!! Before Helen’s feet touched Tan. ground we whisked her off to the really fantastic beach resort called Kipepeo, where we had been staying. Don’t be fooled by my use of the word resort though, it’s not a tacky, busy Butlins resort as we know it in England. It’s a simple bar and restaurant on the beach, with a campsite next to it on one side and small, simple but effective bamboo huts on the other side with beds. Then behind all this some really gorgeous chalets with en suite bathrooms and a balcony with table, chairs and hammock!! All budgets catered for. The food is excellent and cheap too, the bar fully stocked, and the people very welcoming which all adds up to a haven for rest and relaxation, with the white sands and beautiful blue Indian Ocean finish things off very nicely! So Helen had a gentle first day relaxing on the beach watching the dhows sail past, swimming, enjoying the sun and of course chatting and catching up with us – perfect! The next day we went briefly, well as briefly as you can, in to Dar to stock up on money, fuel and food so that we could set off to Selous NP. Dar is a very busy, noisy and all together hectic city. It takes forever to do things regardless of whether they are simple or not so simple, and that’s even taking in to account the African pace of life! We went in one day to do some emailing and the round trip from the campsite (8km away from town) to the city centre and back again, including an hours internet use, took us 4 hours!!!! We were prepared for this and left Kipepeo about 9.30am, but still didn’t actually get on the road to Selous until 1.30pm, which by our reckoning was pretty good!! So off to Selous we went, better late than never! The first part of the journey was along a fairly well maintained tarmac road, ‘good good’ we said. Then about halfway we turned off towards Selous and waved goodbye to the tarmac. The road from then on was a badly bumpy sand and dirt track and we welcomed Helen to the world of 4x4 off-roading! A few hours later, with battered bums and close to twilight we arrived at the Mbega campsite about 15 minutes from the NP entry gate. It was a basic campsite with toilets and showers next to the Rufiji river, with a lovely view, and plenty of hippos to hear. We positioned ourselves next to a handy thatched open sided shelter and go straight on with cooking tea. The local men looking after the camp did say that animals sometimes walked through the camp at night, and as Helen was having the pleasure of sleeping in our ground tent, we took the time to decide where would be the best place to put it. Jas and I regard ourselves as bush-camping pros now considering the range of close encounters we have had already, and have become quite blaze about where we spend the night. Nevertheless we were conscious of the fact that not only was this Helen’s first time sleeping in the wild, but as she would be on ground level, and not up above things like us, the idea of animals moving around beside her would be a little unnerving! This in mind we put the tent under the shelter, with the river bank on one side and the truck parked close to the other and a couple of chairs and a table strategically placed around the edge of the shelter. Hopefully any bigger animals wandering around would not be able to get too close, and the smaller ones wouldn’t be a problem anyway! We went to bed with parting words of advice, ‘If you’re worried about anything shout up to us and we’ll sort it out’! As it was there were no intruders from the animal kingdom, but we were kept awake for most of the night by loud drumming music from the nearby village which we found out the next day, was having a ‘Coming of Age’ ceremony that would last for 3 days!! We spent the whole of the next day in Selous, not quite what we had planned as the idea was to spend the morning there, return to the campsite for lunch and go back in later in the afternoon until dusk. The early morning and late afternoons are by far the best times to go animal spotting. It is cooler then and the majority of animals are more likely to be moving around, and predators are more likely to try to make kills as the soaring heat during the middle of the day keeps them in shady places for much needed snoozes! Plus the light for photography is much better, a rather important point for Jas! So when I say we didn’t plan to stay the whole day, I can hear your inquisitive minds uttering ‘Why did they?’ The simple truth of the matter was that we got lost! Now let me expand on this a bit, we had acquired a map at the gate and with this to hand, eagerly set about driving around this way and that. We saw quite a lot of things, especially giraffes (more about that later) and were happily getting further and further in to the park. At one point we decided to head for a particular place on the map. However following about an hour and a half’s searching, resigned ourselves to the fact that the map wasn’t really worth the paper it was written on and the best thing to do was try and head back to the gate just in case it took us 3 hours to find that again!!! We eventually got back and made the proviso that tomorrow we would take a little more notice of where we were going and try to match the roads on the map to those in the park, if indeed they did match! Apart from the map malfunction we had a great days viewing (all the usual suspects, although no cats yet) and we were ready for a good nights sleep. The animal-free night before had lulled us in to a false sense of security, so being woken by breaking branches and loud munching was a bit of a surprise. An elephant had entered the camp and I watched as it made it’s way over to us and quickly called down to Helen to see if she was aware of our new friend! No flies on Helen, she was well aware of the ele and bravely called back that she was fine, but what should she do if it got closer. ‘Just keep still and don’t make too much noise’ I called back, easy for me to say from the rooftop tent! The ele was eating the seed pods that had fallen from the trees around us, and came quite close to the truck. I keenly kept an eye on it and gave Helen up dates on it’s exact position, attempting to reassure her that it was nearer us than her and was relieved when it decided that it had had enough of the offerings and walked away out of the camp. Phew, that was close enough for Helen, she was certainly interested in seeing the animals, but at night and through flimsy canvas was not quite what she had in mind! Just as we were making light of the ele’s late night snack stroll, the sounds became louder again and before we could say ‘Nelly the elephant’, it was back and this time closer than before! It went around the truck and down a steep bit of bank towards the river and this time was much closer to Helen’s tent. We hadn’t expected it to go so close to the river bank and understandably Helen was now concerned about it’s intentions as she was only a couple of metres away! It still seemed to be only interested in sniffing out the seed pods and so I said to Helen, ‘Don’t worry it’s not interested in you, just the goodies from the trees, it’ll soon get bored and move away’; I hoped this would be the case! After quite a few nervous minutes the ele did turn back and left the campsite for good. I was straining my ears for a long time afterwards to check if I could hear it coming back again, but it didn’t. In the morning Helen was pleasantly amazed at what happened in the night, in the comforting light of day she admitted that although she was pretty scared at the time, she appreciated that it was an amazing thing to see and it was a great experience, but hoped that the ele wouldn’t return that night as well! We had mixed luck in the park that day. In the morning we succeeded in not getting lost, but didn’t see many animals, only more giraffe. The endless giraffe encounters ended up being quite a joke. For some reason we saw far more giraffe than anything else and by the end all we could say was, ‘Is that a tree over there, on no my mistake it’s just another giraffe!’ However, in the afternoon we had a top tip that some lions had made a giraffe kill (no wonder seeing as there were so many around!) and they were by one of the roads. Off we trot to where the guide had said and we couldn’t see a thing, no big surprise, the animals do wander around a bit, and we were about to move on when we saw a couple of safari vehicles about 200 metres off the road. We strained through the binoculars and low and behold there were three lions lounging under a tree, a male and two young cubs. Now in most parks you are not supposed to go off the obvious tracks, but seeing these proper lodge vehicles over there we were very tempted to join them. Another vehicle came towards us and when it stopped we asked them could we follow the others. The guide said that they shouldn’t have gone off the road and if the park rangers found them they would have to pay a $50 fine. So we thought for a minute and decided to stay where we were. Just then 3 other lodge vehicles came along and without hesitation drove straight off in to the bush towards the lions. I’m afraid my desire to get closer then outweighed my worry of a fine and I used the age old argument, ‘If they can, then so can I’, and with a quick, ‘OK go on then’ from Helen and Jas, and throwing caution to the wind, off I went! We found when we got to the lions that there were in fact 9 of them, one male, 3 lionesses and 5 cubs of varying age. Fantastic! It was obvious they had recently had a real feast, as they all had huge tummies and were lazing around looking very contented. There were lots of vultures around which suggested that they had eaten the giraffe in that area, but there was no evidence left for us to see. The lions we not at all interested in our presence, but occasionally the cubs would get up and play fight with each other. If the vultures got too close to them they would pretend to stalk them and chase them off, which was very funny to watch. We happily stayed and watched them for over an hour, but were forced to leave eventually because it was getting late and we needed to get back to the campsite before dark. It was a great end to the day, and even better, no $50 fine!! Back at the campsite we saw some Colobus monkeys, found mainly in forested East Africa areas, so a first for us. They are quite large, black and white, and they mostly stay up in the trees, so it was cool to see them. That night there were no animals knocking at our tents, only the loud snorting and grunting of…..no not Jason, just hippos in the river. The villagers were back to the all-night partying though and it was that, not elephants that kept us awake, for awhile at least. We saw more elephants in the park the following day strolling along by the river. We drove over to get closer and positioned ourselves by a bush towards the way they were walking. They came close by, but not too close! There was a very nice lake that we went to as dusk approached, the light across it looked very nice. It was full of hippos and whilst watching them one evening we saw one of them messing around. He/she was doing complete sideways rolls in the water and appeared to be having a great time. It was very amusing to see 4 stumpy legs and feet rotating through the water over and over again! After 3 great days at Selous, it was time for us to move on. Our next stop was further south along the coast to a place called Kilwa Mosoko. It’s a small town from which you can get a boat over to the island of Kilwa Kivinje. The island was home to a very wealthy sultan back in the 13th century who came upon the island and liked it so much he made his home there. He built a palace, grand court, fort, several mosques of differing sizes and burial tombs. The island became it’s own state and the sultan was King of Kilwa, they even produced their own money. Over the years the island succumbed to invasions of one kind and another and now the buildings are only ruins, but they are amazing to see and some of them still look very majestic. We spent the morning wandering around the island (it’s not big at all) with a guide telling us all about it (how touristy!), and we met some of the people who live on the island. It was a really lovely place and well worth the 2 hour drive along one of the worst roads we have ever been on!!! We stayed in a lovely place in K. Mosoko which served some of the best food we have had so far (gorgeous lobster!), had very nice chalets overlooking the ocean (Helen stayed in one) and a campsite with a rather large population of ants (where we stayed – horray for rooftop tent again, it saves us from the little animals as well as the big, no chance of them climbing up there!). From Kilwa we went back up to Dar, again staying at the lovely Kipepeo, which as well as being very nice (as already mentioned!) allowed you to leave you vehicle there while you popped over to Zanzibar, very handy! So we found out about getting the ferry over to Zan, there was a quick one (1 ½ hours) or a slow cheap one (at least 3 hours). We plumped for the quick one (not much more in price) and booked places for mid morning the next day. There are no campsites on Zan, but plenty of places to stay with varying degrees of expense. Luckily we had some insiders already on the case to find us a good place to stay. Whilst staying in Kipepeo waiting for Helen we met a SA guy Cedric, who was travelling with a Swedish girl, Maria, and a Swiss guy, Luc. They were great and we spent quite a bit of time with them and they were heading over to Zan just before we were with Helen. They very kindly sorted out a couple of rooms for us in the hotel they were in, which was in the main town on Zan called Stone Town. All set we turn up to the ferry raring to go but were only met by disappointment! The fast ferry had broken down and there wouldn’t be another ferry until midday, and that would be the slow ferry and that meant getting to Stone Town at about 4.30pm. Hmmm, not a great start, and the thought of wasting the day was a little annoying especially as Helen was limited time wise. As we were debating what to do, the ferry guy said that for extra money he could organise for us to fly over. A great idea, but we immediately thought uh oh, that will surely cost us much more. Surprisingly not! He could get us on a flight in a hours time and it would only cost us an extra $15 each. Well on this occasion we decided to be very flash and say blow the money, we’ll fly!! Not only would we be able to go straight away, but also it only takes 20 minutes, brilliant. So without further delay we were rushed by taxi to the airport, tickets sorted, boarding passes provided and we were off; we were in Zan for lunch! We got to the hotel and met up with the others and they took us to a great restaurant on the quay where we enjoyed the first of several very good meals. We spent the afternoon wandering around the little streets of the town and looking at the curio shops and then watched the sunset over the Indian Ocean with a cool beer, very nice. The next day we arranged to go on a spice tour, as you may or may not be aware, Zan is very famous for it’s spice trade and this is how much of it’s money has been made. We went out in to the spice farms and we shown and informed about many different spices; what they look like, how they grow, what they are used for etc. It was very interesting and many of them look very different to what you would expect. They also showed us many exotic fruits as well. We had a taste of a few, but I don’t think we overly taken with their different flavours! At the end of the tour we had the opportunity to buy some spices and we couldn’t believe how cheap they were, especially saffron. To buy it here is about 50 times cheaper than in England! You can imagine that we were very seriously considering sneaking a whole load back with us to sell, we’d make a nice little profit! The next couple of days we hung around Stone Town. It was such a fascinating place that you could easily stroll around the tiny streets for hours. Many of the building have very ornately carved wooden doors which were incredibly intricate and looked stunning. They could make a fairly dull building look absolutely magical. It was lovely to walk around the town and find all sorts of nooks and crannies with things in. Helen and I stumbled upon a fantastic souvenir shop which we spent ages in, luckily for Jas he wasn’t with us at the time otherwise I’m sure he would have been bored stupid! Zan has mainly Arabic and African influences which makes for some wonderful materials, arts and crafts. Helen and I had to put a limit firmly on our spending! Zan is also famous for having gorgeous beaches which are on the other side of the island to Stone Town. As we were having such a good time in the town, and we knew that we were spending the last couple of days of Helen’s holiday in our favourite place, Kipepeo, we decided not to worry about trying the beaches on Zan, but stay in the town. So we made the most of the lovely restaurants, one night even had a traditional Zan meal in the home of a local family near the hotel which was excellent. Unfortunately time was ticking on though, and as much as we wanted Helen to be able to spend longer with us, the flight home was getting closer. We flew back to Dar and spent the last couple of days forcing ourselves to relax more, eat more and enjoy some more sunshine. At this point I must mention that we had been getting some rain whilst Helen was with us. Now this was unusual for the trip so far, if you remember we had rain in SA, but from Nam onwards we hadn’t had a drop. However, in Tan it rained the first day we got here, and has done so on and off ever since. So Helen did have plenty of sunny days, but a few wet ones too! We can’t complain too much because it is coming up to the rainy season and no doubt we will be seeing more of the wet stuff from now on until we get back to SA where the sun will be shining constantly as it will be their summer! Anyway back to end of Helen’s holiday, a very sad time! After all the moving around, Helen treated herself to staying in the luxury chalets at Kipepeo. She had a twin room and very kindly offered for me to use the other bed, so I got to stay in luxury too! We did check that Jas was still happy in the tent, and he was, and he was probably glad to have it to himself for a bit! It was a real shame to know that Helen’s visit was coming to an end and we didn’t want her to go and she wanted to stay. We had a really fantastic time whilst she was here and we managed to do a pretty good range of things in the two weeks. She was very pleased with how everything went and had a great time too, I think she would recommend the ‘Kate and Jason African Tours’ Company without hesitation. Back to travelling solo now, and our next destination in Tan was Lake Natron. It’s up towards the Serengeti and we thought we’d stop there to see the hundreds of flamingo it’s home to and also a still active volcano nearby called Lengai, which you can climb. On the way we stopped at Arusha for a day to get supplies and some maps. We went the back way to get to the lake, ie. 4x4 roads, right through the heart of Maasai country. At one point we saw a huge mountain in the distance off in the opposite direction and realised that of course that was Kilimanjaro. We planned to stop off there on our way back down to Malawi. We did pass it on the way up but there were so many clouds you couldn’t see it, but more about it later. Our journey to the lake took us past several Maasai villages and they were very happy to see us and very friendly. We had to occasionally check we were going the right way and they were over the moon to help us. The landscape around Lake Natron is very arid with not much growing there at all. It is the dustiest place we have ever been to and when were arrived at the campsite the landy was green no longer! Jas and I were now the proud owners of a dust beige TD5, with matching dust interior, roof-rack and accessories!!!! You couldn’t imagine how much dust was on the landy, in the landy, on and in us!!! I remember telling you about finding sand days after being at Sossuvlei, well this surpasses that by miles! But despite all the dust the area looked amazing. Our plan was to spend a few days here, explore the lake a little and climb the volcano. However, after everything so far going mostly to plan we should have known that glitches were only round the corner. Firstly, we had heard a funny noise under the landy on the way and when Jas looked, he found that the extra super duper suspension we had, had broken on one of the back wheels. That was a pretty big problem, particularly as we had to do more 4x4 driving to get from lake Natron to Ngorongoro, the next stop. What were we going to do? We were practically in the middle of nowhere, with no easy access to spare parts or a mechanic. ‘We’ll be here for a while’, we thought. The Maasai who was in charge of the campsite saw that we were having trouble and came to offer his help. We were pleasantly surprised to hear that not only was there a mechanic how worked nearby, but he might be able to get a replacement part from the village as well! How’s about that for luck. Only an hour later and the mechanic had been to see us, said that he could easily fix the part and new that he could get one. The down side was that it was going to cost us quite a bit, and the part was second hand, but at the end of the day, what choices did we have, we needed to be mobile again. It was around this time that Jas was starting to feel pretty ill. He was suffering from a cold for a few days, which had been getting steadily worse and now was in it’s element. That night he had a bad fever and his cough was very bad. This was the first time on our trip that unforeseen circumstances dictated our next move. We had little money left (not enough to hire the guide to take us up the volcano) and no banks nearby to get some, a temporarily fixed car that needed a new permanent replacement part sooner rather than later, and Jas was feeling terrible. So we decided to cut the stay in Lake Natron short and leave that day. It was a real shame that we couldn’t do the things there that we wanted, but all in all it wasn’t the end of the world. We did however, choose to make a quick day trip to the Ngorongoro Crater before we went back to Arusha, as we were fairly close to it. It is about 350 square km big and has a great reputation for not only being full of animals, but also a stunning scenic area too. It is one of the top highlights of Tan, and as a result has lots of visitors. They are now trying to limit the numbers of vehicles going in to the crater, to preserve it more, and to do this they have made it really expensive to get in. For a day permit, you pay entrance per person, per vehicle, and an extra $100 for the privilege of going in to the crater. So the day cost us $200!!!! This is more than we have had to pay anywhere else, but it was worth it, the crater was amazing. The place was stunning and we saw so many animals it was quite unbelievable. The range of animals was not quite as great as other places, but the herds of zebra, wildebeest and buffalo were so big we were in awe. We also saw some elephants, warthogs and Thomson’s gazelles. The best was seeing a black rhino (very rare), admittedly it was just lying around not doing much bet we saw it none the less. Then we found some lions, then some more, and then some more! In total during the day we saw 4 prides of lions, we counted 21 altogether, that’s pretty impressive eh! We really enjoyed the day and thought it was money well spent. Next to Ngorongoro is the Serengeti, another very famous place as you all know. Unfortunately it is also much more expensive to get in to and to camp there costs $30 each to bush camp with no facilities! After much debating and calculating that for a 4 day stay there it would cost the same as visiting Kruger NP in SA for at least 10 days, we made another hard decision to miss out the Serengeti. We did really want to go there, but with the landy still needing a new shock (couldn’t rely on the second hand part for too long) and still having the chance to see lots of animals in other cheaper parks, we thought it was the best thing to do. So regretfully we made a course for Arusha, but we very happy with our Ngorongoro visit, and consoled ourselves with the thought of stopping at Mt Kilimanjaro in a few days. At Arusha we got a proper ‘Old Man Emu’ (as they are called) shock for the landy, and got the landy completely cleaned and de-dusted, which was a job and a half! Back on the road and off to Kili, which we were particularly looking forward to seeing in close up. Little did we know that we would almost be denied the pleasure of seeing the mountain at all! As we approached the mountain we couldn’t believe it but as on the way up, the whole things was hidden by clouds! The weather was against us and rain was rearing it’s ugly head again. We found a lovely campsite in the foothills of the mountain which cheered us up, but we were worried that we could only stay here a day or two at a push before we had to start heading south again, and if the weather stayed bad, we would have to go without seeing the mountain. The phrase ‘So near and yet so far’ seemed to reverberate around my head! The next morning we awoke to more clouds and drizzle and the mountain remained invisible much to our disappointment. The day was spent in a little social room on the campsite watching DVDs and reading, not quite what we had in mind! We had to leave the following day, but we kept our fingers crossed that the weather would break and we could get a quick glimpse of Kili before we left. It would have been awful to say we had been past Kili twice and not seen it either time! To our great joy and relief, when we looked out of the tent the next day, there were a few clouds, but blue sky too! We had never got up so quickly, we weren’t going to miss the mountain this time and we walked a short way to a view point and sat to take in the view. Some clouds were still around the top of the mountain, but they moved along at a fair pace so you could see it in between them, and it was fantastic to finally see it all! We were not going to climb it, again too expensive I’m afraid, but just to see it close up was great (photos on next blog). Now I’ll have to finish up, after writing way too much! In a nut shell we are now back in Malawi spending a few days here before we pop back to Zambia to meet our friends Kev and Zoe who arrive in Lusaka on the 20th (Hi Kev and Zoe - looking forward to seeing you both very soon!) Hope you are really well and everything is good at home. Thanks again for your messages, take care and we’ll be back soon! Love Kate and Jas xx

2006-09-07T11:25:00.000+02:00

2006-09-07T11:12:00.000+02:00

2.9.06 Okavango Delta (Botswana), Vic Falls and S. Luangwa (Zambia), Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) Hello everyone! Hope you are well and having an excellent summer. I know you are still recovering from the lengthy account of last time, but we’ve got more to tell you already! Firstly though I must let you know that Jas got an email to say he made it through to the semi finals of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition! Isn’t that brilliant! He was really really pleased, as was I, and the news has spurred him on, and showed him (as we all tell him) that his photos are very definitely excellent! When we left you we were at Kasane after visiting Chobe NP and were on our way back down to Maun for a delta trip. Nothing difficult about that, just a 6 hour drive from one to another. Well it can be difficult if you haven’t got any diesel! Yep we had planned our diesel consumption through the park, safari drives and all, (an important task here as you don’t want to find you’re on empty whilst in the middle of a game drive!) and were planning to fill up again in Kasane. Everything was going to plan until we arrived at the garage and were told there was no diesel and they did not know exactly when the fuel tanker would be arriving, ‘maybe tomorrow, maybe not’ was all the attendant could tell us! This obviously put a stop to any further movement for the time being and meant we had to stay put until fuel arrived. Fortunately the campsite we were staying in was very nice, part of a posh hotel, so we could at least enjoy their facilities for as long as we needed. The tanker did show up the next afternoon and we could get on our way with out too much of a delay, but it just reminded us that nothing is guaranteed out here! Once at Maun we met a very nice lady (Susan) who organises trips in to the delta and with her mother writes guide books for travelling around Botswana, so she was the person to ask about a lot of things! We wanted to go deep in to the delta as the further you go in the more amazing it is. Most of the mokoro trips don’t go too far because as you can imagine it’s a long old slog for the poler and you can’t get too far too fast by hand! So we were looking in to going in on a motor boat and Susan knew exactly who would do it and booked us a 4 day trip with Martin and his motorboat. We were told that Martin has been doing trips for the last 7 years for Prince Harry and a few other royals!!! He has lived in the Delta all his life and knows it inside out and apparently Harry won’t go with anyone else and even his girlfriend Chelsey goes too!! OK so I thought this is probably not quite the truth, but it sounds good, still I thought I’d ask anyway and guess what, he does and he was telling us all about it!!! Can you imagine that, we were being taken on a delta trip by the very person who takes Prince Harry! It’s a pretty basic trip though and apparently Harry and the rest are perfectly happy with the limited facilities and the log drop toilet etc! So we knew we must be in for a great time if Martin can boast those credentials! The trip was fantastic. We glided effortlessly around the delta tributaries and saw giraffe, elephants, red lechwe, waterbuck, loads of herons and storks, fish eagles, marsh harriers, pied and malachite kingfishers, and many other lovely things. We came across a baby crocodile lying on the reeds and Martin casually said to Jas ‘Go on pick it up’ and without even thinking Jas lent over the side of the boat and grabbed it. It was only about a foot long and wouldn’t have done us any harm, but it still had very powerful jaws and really sharp teeth! We all had a hold of it and it was quite cool feeling it’s scales and staring in to it’s little evil eyes. We camped on one of the many little islands found in the delta and it was lovely. As the trip included all our food and drink, and Martin brought his helper, Makadi, along and they put up our tent, did all the cooking and sorting things out (eg. digging the toilet) we felt as if were being really spoilt and having a holiday in our holiday! We spent the evening chatting, drinking and listening to the hippos in the lagoon in front of us, bliss! The next day we went further in to the delta and did some fishing. Well if you can call it fishing! We were pretty good at casting our lines but were sadly lacking in the art of actually hooking a fish! Even with Martin’s words of encouragement, ‘You’d better catch something, this is our tea tonight!’, we still couldn’t quite follow through! We stopped at one of the permanent camps in the delta – would you believe there are over 50 in the delta - called Gunn’s Camp for a drink, and it was a lovely place. A great place to stay for a few nights, but at their rates we were happy to be bush camping! We saw another couple of posh lodges along the way, they really look stunning and are in the most lovely sites. Some of them you can only get to by flying in, which astounds me that you can actually have a landing strip in the delta. These are for the more wealthy tourists though and not quite in our budget this time round, but still nice to see how the other half lives! We moved on further to find another island to camp on that night and found a beautiful one with a steep bank on one side where lots of kingfishers had made their nests. There were about 30 birds all flying around and fishing, it was lovely to watch. It reminded us that we were still on a mission to catch our own fish, but by now Martin was making alternative arrangements for tea (ie. defrosting the chicken he’d brought with us), still he took us to one last place just as dusk was approaching to have one last go. Apparently the best times to fish are early morning and late afternoon, so with time on our side and Martin’s superior knowledge of the best spots to fish, we surely could between us make a catch! Well the long wait was certainly worth it! This place was teaming with fish and Jas and I couldn’t believe when within minutes we both had catches and (more importantly) successfully kept them on the lines and in to the boat! We were thrilled, two lovely big bream were on the menu for tea! We cast our lines again and without hesitation the fish were tugging and we were reeling them in. I tell you, honestly, we couldn’t get them in the boat quick enough, it was excellent. We were astounded that we were doing so well and it was quite addictive, the more you caught the more you wanted to catch! Jas then caught a huge catfish, which was putting up a real battle and definitely did not want to see the inside of the boat. Following several minutes of good fighting by Jas and the fish, the brut force of Jas forced the fish to yield and we had it on the boat and had to take a picture of his prize! We did put it back though as we had so many bream to eat already. In the end Jas and I had caught 27 fish!!! Martin was as amazed as we were considering we were first time fishers, and had quickly put the chicken back in the freezer! We dined on fresh (very fresh!) fillets of bream, which Martin cooked to perfection, with chips and salad. It was a feast and the best meal we’d had since our trip began, maybe it was made all the more tasty for the fact that we had caught it! The rest of the fish Martin was going to take back to Maun for his friends! We went for a walk around one of the bigger islands in the morning and although we didn’t actually see any big animals, we found all their tracks and came across a small herd of red lechwe. We lazed around a bit until the fishing hour came around again and then out we went hoping for a repeat of the night before. As I said before, nothing is guaranteed and the fishes just weren’t in the mood for us this time. We only caught a few and they were too small really so we put them back. We did find a lovely fish eagle and when we caught another couple of fish we threw them out for the eagle and he swooped down and picked them up. I didn’t think we would see that at such close range, Jas took some pictures and I managed a bit of video too. After another great tea we were treated to a night boat drive. The delta tributaries are even more active at night and using the spot light we could see hundreds of fish below us of many different types, along with frogs, and the best bit, a huge crocodile! Now when you see crocs in the daylight on the banks, the general course of action is to spot it and then as you approach it, watch it quickly slide in to the water. You don’t really get to see the whole thing for very long and once below the surface of the water you loose it completely. The beauty of being in the boat at night is that although they still rush in to the shelter of the water, you can get right up close and shine the light on them and see them in all there glory as they swim around under the boat. It was amazing and reassuringly safe! It was a lovely evening and we stayed on our island for another night and fell asleep to sounds of lions roaring! We reluctantly left the delta the next day. We had such a lovely time and Martin and Makadi were excellent companions who looked after us really well. We felt so relaxed and comfortable that we really could have stayed for another week! But we needed to get on, and have promised ourselves if we ever come back we will do it again. Martin does a longer trip all the way through the delta and we fancy that next time! So onwards we go up to the top of Botswana to cross the Zambezi river in to Zambia. The river is the border and the control posts are on either side, naturally. They use a ferry system to cross, with two ferries working side by side. They chug along quite happily, with pedestrians, cars, 4x4’s and huge big lorries all squashed on together! The crossing itself only takes about 15 minutes, the problem is queuing to wait to get on the ferry as they aren’t very big! Depending on how unlucky you are you can be waiting a couple of hours! Fortunately for us we arrived at just the right time, not much small traffic and we went straight on to the next ferry. We were feeling smug about how quickly we were getting through it all, but were soon brought back down to earth by the border control in Zambia which was very laborious and ended up taking about 2 hours!!! It’s about an hours drive from the border to Livingstone and Victoria Falls. We found a nice backpackers called Jollyboys to stay at for a couple of days. We went to the David Livingstone Museum, and although it was not very big it was interesting, and I now know who actually said ‘Doctor Livingstone I presume’! Of course the main attraction is the falls and we made an effort to get up early to see them, before all the rest of the tourists start herding in! They are stunning and you are easily captivated by the huge cascades of water. It’s also very nice to see the bridge between the Zambian and Zimbabwian sides of the falls. It’s pretty old and has a lovely structure which looks very picturesque nestled between the two sides of the gorge. From the falls we were heading up to Dar es Salaam to meet my friend Helen who is coming out for two weeks. We stopped at South Luangwa NP along the way for 7 days to check out some more wildlife. It’s one of our favourite parks and we came here with Tor and Karen when we were living in Malawi, and in October we’ll be back with Kevin and Zoe (friends from Luton) who are coming to visit us for 10 days (looking forward to seeing you, the park is great, you are going to love it!). I was writing some of this by the river whilst watching 7 elephants going across and having a play in the water, not that I am trying to make you jealous or anything! We met up with our Swiss friends Markus and Tanja again which was great and had some fun and games with more elephant encounters during the night. One night the SA couple next to us had a bit of a to do with a young bull elephant. We had been told upon arrival at the camp that the elephants were getting quite cheeky and to avoid giving them any temptation to play up we had to put all our food in a building away from our vehicles. Well this couple had done so, but had accidently left a couple of Tupperware boxes with biscuits in the back of their 4x4. So I awake in the night to the breaking of branches and chomping of leaves knowing that an ele cannot be far away. I, being unflustered by this nightly occurrence now, roll over and try to sleep again. Still I can hear the ele and realising that he’s getting closer, decide to carefully peer through the front of the tent, you can never see too many eles! Through the mosquito netting I see the ele walk in front of the tent with what seems to be a mission in his stride. Wow I think, that’s close, but already I am lying down again. Moments later I hear the loudest crack and banging very close by. I immediately stick my head out of the tent to see around the side and can clearly see the ele breaking in to the canopy on the back of the SA’s truck. The noise soon woke them and they began trying to shoo the ele away from the tree house they were in above it. But no, ele was far more interested in locating the goodies in the truck and wasn’t about to give up that easily. I have woken Jas by now and we are both watching in amazement as the ele picks things out and tosses them aside, banging its tusks against the truck. The SA’s are making a lot of noise now and the guy is throwing things at the ele to get rid of it. At one point the ele backed away, almost in to our truck and you can imagine I wasn’t too pleased about that! It wasn’t long before the night guards came and managed to move the ele out of the camp. The SA’s came down to inspect the damage and luckily it wasn’t too bad, but they got a bit of a telling off from the managers of the camp for not making sure there was no food in the truck! A couple of nights later Markus and Tanja had a small brain failure and forgot to close the back of their canopy before they went to bed, AND had their coffee and sugar in there for the next morning! No prizes for guessing who we had visiting us later that night! Yep another ele was more than happy to help himself to these offerings, especially with an open door invitation! The first we knew about it was when we heard Tanja screaming out ‘Help, help, elephant, someone help!’. Jas and I sprang up and looked out the tent (these rooftop tents are great, you get the best views of everything!) and saw the ele with it’s trunk right inside their trunk, as it were! He was having a good old rummage, not content with coffee and sugar, and was giving the truck a bit of a shake. Unfortunately there wasn’t a lot we could do to help from our tent, but the night guards were on the scene very quickly again and took care of the matter with out any problems. You can imagine that Markus and Tanja were a bit shaken by such an intimate encounter, but were also mortified that they had been so foolish as to leave the canopy open with stuff inside! Nevertheless, this served as an interesting insight in to the preferred tastes of this elephant, as he had devoured the pot of sugar, but left the coffee untouched with just a smear of elephant spit to prove that he had tried it but not liked it! So for future reference, an elephant will not be interested in stealing your morning coffee unless it’s got some sugar in it! We saw lots of animals in the park, the usual suspects as we say, plus two lovely male lions who were having an afternoon nap under a bush. One of them was lying down like dogs do, with his legs in the air and his tummy ready for a tickle! It was a funny sight and really made us giggle when one leg started to twitch and jerk, just like dogs’ do when they are dreaming of chasing cats. I think we can safely assume the lion was dreaming of chasing an impala or warthog around the bush! At Flatdogs you can go on night drives and as we hadn’t been on any so far, we jumped at the chance. You get a totally different experience going around the bush at night and also see different animals. Our guide was very happy when he found a leopard in a tree, and so were we! It was pretty well hidden so not very good for photos, but still very lovely to see. We also saw several genets, porcupines, hippos out for a nightime stroll, elephants, and herds of impala. Our stay at S.L. was excellent and we are looking forward to our return trip in October. Then we decided to go up through Malawi in to Tan. because Zambia has got very expensive and diesel is twice the price compared to anywhere else. So we popped over in to Mal. and spent a couple of days by the lake in our favourite place Cool Runnings, which we used to frequent in VSO days. We arrived after dark one night and found to our great surprise that the Onian’s family were there too (the one’s we did Van Zyl’s Pass with)! It was a fantastic re-union, we were regaling each other with all that we had done since we had parted ways. What a coincidence that we would both be there at the same time! They were just staying there one more night before they left for Lusaka, and we had at the very last minute decided to stay there with Markus and Tanja for a night before starting the long trek up to Dar. Fate that’s what you call it! We chatted long in to the night and joined the kids for a swim the next morning before they left. It was really great to see them again and catch up (have a fantastic time with the rest of your trip, we’ll see you next year!). We then stayed another night at CR which was our last night with Markus and Tanja. They were going to go south in Mal and on to Mozambique and we were going up to Tan. It was very sad to say goodbye to them also, we had a brilliant time with them and have already planned a trip to Switzerland to see them again! Now we are in Dar and waiting for Helen, but her flight has been cancelled!!! Some problem with the baggage carousel in Heathrow, would you believe! She has got another flight in a couple of days luckily (looking forward to having you here with us soon Helen!) and hopefully she’ll be able to get a later flight back. We are not in any hurry, so it’s not a problem this end and have found a lovely beach campsite with bar and great food to hang around at whilst we wait for her! The plan when she is here is to go to Ruaha NP and do some major animal watching. It’s supposed to be a real gem of a park which not too many people go to which will be very good. Then spend a few days in Zanzibar which I am really looking forward to. We’ve heard lots about it and I can’t wait to see it for myself. I thought each blog I’d throw in a little interesting fact about things we have seen whilst travelling along. Obviously African countries generally have a different way about them and it’s wonderful to see examples of these as we are moving around. So here’s the first one….. donkeys were one of the things we were first aware of. In Namibia and Botswana they are everywhere, you could never go for more than a few metres before encountering some! They look kind of sweet grazing at the side of the road, but boy are they stupid, with no road sense what so ever! Donkey populations here are in serious need of ‘The Green Cross Code’ schooling! They are used mostly for pulling carts around and ridden for herding cattle, but sadly no joyrides along sandy beaches! However, move in to Zambia and Malawi and the lack of donkeys is what draws your attention. Why should they suddenly become such a rarity? Well if what we have been told is to be believed, then it’s not good…… apparently they were taken in to Zam and Mal, but they were used for food and nothing else, poor things, so not many are left to see! As you realise the donkeys are no more, what you do find is an excess of bicycles! My, my what a lot of them, and what’s needed here are a few cycling proficiency tests! No lights, no gears and sometimes no brakes, it’s scary! Where as in Nam and Bots your main concern when driving was not to bump the backside of a donkey, now we are in fear of slamming in to a cyclist! Well that’s all of our titbits for today, next blog will hopefully start with Helen’s arrival!! So our love to you all and we trust all is as it should be with you. Cheerio for now, Kate and Jas xx

2006-08-09T15:32:00.000+02:00

Hi everybody - my turn to get a word in edgeways!!!! Here are a few photographs that go with the text underneath - I hope that you like them. The Lion Kill was a something that I would never dared dream that we would see - let alone so close. I also saw a Black Egret later that day which I had really wanted to see after watching a BBC program on the Okovango Delta many years ago!!! Off into the delta in a couple of days and then on to South Luangwa in Zambia - We'll try to post a new blog then.

2006-08-08T10:51:00.000+02:00

6.8.06 Skeleton Coast, Epupa Falls, Van Zyl’s Pass (Namibia), Moremi and Chobe NP (Botswana). (Unfortunately no photos today as the computer is having trouble uploading them so we'll try to put them on next time) Well hello there all of you! I know we’ve been out of touch for a long time now and you’ve probably forgotten who we are, but never fear we are still here!! We have been travelling around the very north/western parts of Namibia and then already crossed in to Botswana. The internet access has been either non-existent, present but server always down or present but so tortuously slow that we don’t have the time or money to wait for it! So that means that we have done rather a lot since our last blog! I will firstly reassure you that I will put a tight rein on my verbal diarrhoea and endeavour to keep this instalment to the usual length! I’ll cover the real highlights of the last few weeks which are more than enough to write about. So you last found us in Windhoek and about to go over to the Skeleton Coast. We drove to Swakopmund which is quite a nice town, the second biggest and most popular place in Nam. And from there went north up through the Skeleton Coast National Park. We were hoping to see lots of stunning shipwrecks, but found out that they are south of Swakopmund and not easy to get to nowadays. As it was, we did see one shipwreck (a little disappointing I can say) but one is better than none ‘n’est pas!’ However, along the way we did stop at Cape Cross where there is a huge seal colony. Wow you have never seen so many seals, the noise is amazing and the smell is less amazing! They we great fun to watch and you could get really close to them. The landscape on the coast was very dramatic, all stones and a few rocky hills, a uniform grey all round, it felt as if we were driving around on the moon. It was just a day’s drive and from there we headed up to a town called Opuwo where we were to meet the English family (the Onians - hi there Gavin, Beccy, Oscar, Billy, Robin, and Jago – how are you all, and how is your travelling going? Hope you are having a great time and look forward to catching up with you soon!). Opuwo was there last port of call before we went right to the north and it would be the last place for us to stock up with fuel and food for the next 10 days. It was a very interesting place where people from several different backgrounds all interact together. There were modern Namibians who were very western in their style, then Herero people whose style has a German influence from when many Germans lived in Nam. and the women wear big Victorian style dresses and funny hats. Then the Himba people who wear clothes made out of animal skins and the women don’t wear anything on their tops half other that fancy jewellery, and the men wear frilly skirts! It was fantastic to see all these people all in the same place. The eight of us then started our arduous journey along the Kunene river to Epupa Falls. We were told the track was completely 4x4 only and you should be with at least one other vehicle just in case you get stuck. It was really lovely scenery along the river and a few crocodiles to see as well! We had a great time driving such a dodgy track, there were quite a few times when we would get to a particular bit, get out to look closely at it, and then say ‘we’re never going to make it up/down that!’ But our trusty landy always came up trumps, she had no problems at all (phew!) and once we knew what she was capable of we could relax and enjoy the ride! At Epupa Falls we spent a few days relaxing in a very nice campsite, tired after our tough 2 day drive! The falls are very nice, not quite as big as Victoria Falls, but just as pretty. We went to visit a Himba village to see how they lived and it was very interesting. The women do all the work in the village, even building the mud huts they live in, while the men go out with the cattle and goats finding grazing land for months at a time. It is very important to the women that they look nice and they spend a long time braiding their hair and putting mud on it to protect it. They make beautiful jewellery and headwear from leather and metal, but the most striking thing is that they cover their skin in a mixture of goat fat and ground up ochra (reddy/brown stone). It is all part of their beauty regime, and it gives them a rich brown, smooth appearance, which looks lovely, but stinks a bit to those of us who aren’t used to it! From there our route to take us down south again to Purros for the desert elephants, was again 4x4 and we would come across a very well known (in these parts) pass called Van Zyl’s Pass. It’s notoriety stems from the fact that a- you can only go one way along it, which is down, because it is too hard to drive up, and b- many people turn back because it too hard for them, and c- it is known as the ‘car-breaker’ because if you do make it down, you can end up needing a mechanic at the bottom! Of course there is an alternative route for those who do not wish to attempt such a brutal challenge, but we decided that we were tough enough to try it and we had heard some people say it wasn’t as bad as all that!!!! The majority of the pass was fine and no harder than what we had already covered to Epupa. However, the particular section that we had been warned about proved the myths to be right! We got to the top of a hill and the track took you straight down in to the Marein-Fluss Valley the other side. The view from up there was stunning, but the realisation of how you got down was very sobering! The whole downward section went over about 3km, but near the top was a small bit only about 20 metres long, but very very steep and there were huge rocks, loose rocks, tight corners, big crevasses and the road went close to the edge of the hill so you had a sheer drop next to you! We all got out to walk the route, as if we were horse riders walking a course! But you really needed to check what you were going over, which was the best way to do it and strategically place a few extra boulders in parts to help you on your way. After lots of intense discussion and analysis, brave Gavin went down first (they had a landrover too) and watching him do it nearly brought tears to my eyes – it looked really bad!!! It was my turn then (Jas and I had been sharing the driving, but I thought I should do this bit having more car experience than him), but I found that I was just too worried that I might make a mistake and lose control of the landy. No matter how much the others reassured me that I could do it, my nerves got the better of me and I decided that discretion was the better part of valour and let Gavin take the wheel (thankfully he was happy to do so!). To his credit, Jas did want to carry the gauntlet, but I didn’t want him to do it either, and Gavin had much more experience with landrovers and off road driving. Gavin made it look much easier the second time and both Jas and I were a little annoyed we didn’t try it ourselves after all, but better to be safe than sorry, especially as we were miles and miles away from anybody, including a mechanic and a hospital!! But once that small section was done, Jas and I carried on driving the rest of the pass and there were more almost as hairy bits to come, which we tackled bravely ourselves! At the bottom of the pass was a pile of stones which people who had successfully completed the pass had written their names and put the date on, to signal their triumph of reaching the bottom, just like putting up flags at the top of Everest! It was very gratifying when we placed our stone on the pile and could say that we too had conquered Van Zyl’s Pass!!! From there we drove through the valley, spotting the occasional oryx, springbok, and zebra, and sped on to Purros. It was a nice change to get the landy moving at more than the average of 10km/hour that we had been doing! Purros is a small collection of brick houses in a desert valley area with high hills around. We stayed at the only campsite there, which is next to a dried riverbed and has elephant visitors from the desert. We awoke one day to the sounds of breaking branches and peeped out of our tent to see an elephant having his breakfast not far from us! We went for a drive in the surrounding area with a guide who helped us track down a family of desert elephants with young, which was very nice to see. There is not much that distinguishes a desert ele from any other ele, just it’s adaptation to living in the desert. But they are very rare and apparently in this area there are only about 50, compared to several thousands in other parts of Africa. Whilst in Purros we came upon the opportunity to buy a goat to eat. It’s a long story but in a nutshell, the guide we had hired said that if we wanted to we could share a goat with him and he would organise for us to go and get it and then he would kill, skin and gut it and we could have half the meat. Now I imagine you are thinking this is not a particularly nice thing to do (especially the vegetarians among you), but we thought about it for a while and decided that it was an experience the Onian’s children would not easily get anywhere else and it is an important lesson in life that if you want to eat the meat in the shops you need to know how it gets there and what cute animal it was before. So we were taken to a farm about 5km away, where they had chosen a goat for us, ‘Frank’ as the kids had named him, and we transported him still alive back to campsite on the top of our landy. It was a very odd scene! Back at camp, our guide (Burtus) swiftly and humanely killed Frank with a couple of other guys. They very efficiently skinned Frank in a couple of minutes and then proceeded to remove the insides and divide the meat. Watching the process was saddening but also very interesting for all of us. As we tucked in to leg of goat that evening we said a tribute to Frank and toasted his life! In fact we toasted him for the next four evenings as we made our way through various parts of him! From Purros we travelled back to Opuwo, to re-stock and re-fuel. We had spent a really lovely 8/9 days with the Onian’s family, we all had a great time. But we were now to head in opposite directions so we said our goodbyes and they went south and we went east towards the Botswanan border. We passed relatively easily in to Botswana, in fact it was so simple and quick that we were almost disappointed! We went straight to Maun to find out about going on a mokoro trip in to the Okavango Delta. It’s one or maybe even the highlight in Bots. so unfortunately it is very expensive to do. We decided to take a couple of days to think about it and relax in the very nice hotel that we were camping at. We did treat ourselves to a scenic flight over the delta, which was quite cheap especially when we found a German couple who we shared to cost with. It was fantastic to see it from this perspective and we saw elephants, giraffe, springbok, crocodiles and buffalo. Back at the hotel campsite we met a Swiss couple who we had previously seen in Windhoek, Markus and Tanja (hello you two, hope you are well and continuing to have a great trip! Hope to see you in S. Luangwa soon!!). They were on their way to Moremi NP and as we still weren’t sure what to do about the mokoro trip we decided to go with them for a few days whilst we made up our minds. We were told that the campsites in the NP were very basic and because there were no fences around them, often had wildlife visitors during the night, so we had to be very careful. The first site we stayed at was called Third Bridge and after a fairly non eventful drive to it we settled down for the evening and began cooking. It was not long before we had our first really wild encounter in the form of a very big spotted hyena which came out from behind the landy to check out what was for tea! Of course we were all stunned and Jas and Markus quickly picked up some sticks and scared the hyena away with relative ease. From then on it regularly came to see us and none of us were worried about scaring it off! It wasn’t particularly menacing by itself! Later on though after we had gone up in to our tents, the hyena came back with 2 friends and were running around the camp, howling and whooping and cackling, scratching around trying to find food leftovers and fighting between themselves. They made lots of noise and showed us how a group of them meant business with teeth showing and hackles up. We were glad to be up in the tent, as they moved around right below us and we could see the whites of their eyes!! They eventually left us in peace, but it was an incredible sight, we only wished we had taken our cameras up in to our tents that night! The next camp we stayed at was Xakanaxa and again we didn’t see much during the day, but were treated to more animal magic at night! We had camped near a river and again whilst eating tea, we heard the unmistakeable sounds of a hippo in the river. Slowly we realised that it was getting closer and so when checked on its position with the spotlight and made plans for a quick retreat if necessary! The hippo decided he wanted to come out of the water right up by our landy and was not really bothered that we were in his pathway. So whilst we were safely positioned behind the landy he casually walked past us on his way to some more water the other side of the camp. That was close encounter number two, but the most dramatic was yet to come!!! Moremi was not as great as we had hoped so we and the Swiss, and a German family who we had got to know as well, made our minds up to travel further on to Chobe NP where we had heard better animals reports. It was a day’s drive from one park to the other and we stopped at Savuti camp, again a fenceless site open to all!! We saw many animals during the day including a cheetah which was great, but little did we know that the night was yet again to provide us with the most drama! In the middle of the night we awoke to the sounds of an elephant eating a tree nearby. Jas and I watched it from up in the tent and so did the others. Then he began to come closer to the vehicles, and closer and closer. Soon he was right beside our landy and Jas and I had to move back inside the tent because we were a bit nervous that he was so close! We could hear him sniffing our table and chairs and we were as quite as mice so as not to disturbed him! Then he went over to the Swiss guys truck and he was so close to them that Markus touched the elephant through the mosquito netting of their tent!!! He moved over to the German’s tents (Andreas, Hieke, Nicholas and Nina – greetings to you all, hope you are well and the rest of your trip was great!) and spent what seemed like ages peering in to their tents. Then he found their rubbish bag and rummaged through it to see what he could find to eat! We were all getting a bit tense now just in case the children got really scared and at one point they wanted Jas to climb down in to the landy and start it up to try and scare the elephant away, but luckily he then moved away for more tree tea! It was about 4am and we were all so wide awake we got up and dressed quickly and were talking about how amazing this all was, when the elephant decided he wanted to check us out a bit more. So we hurried back up to our tents, but Jason chose to get in to the landy. The elephant came over to have a scratch on the tree beside the German’s and then through the front of our tent I could see he was heading towards us again!! He came right up to the landy and was nudging against it so it was rocking!!! I was pretty scared now and was in the tent, on my own, being as still as possible and not making a noise in case his trunk came to investigate me!!! He was sniffing around the top of the landy and Jas was below me watching his trunk move around above and then along the side of the landy!! We could hear the tusks scraping along the landy and Jas was quietly calling up to me checking that I was alright! My goodness we were both quite tense and I lay in the tent really willing the elephant to move along and go back to his trees! The seconds felt like hours but eventually he got bored and moved away to some trees and finally we could breath again! I can safely say that is the most nervous I have ever been and I wouldn’t want to be quite that close to an elephant again! As you can imagine we spent ages talking about the night’s adventure the next morning! Whilst driving around Chobe we spotted a lion drinking at a nearby waterhole. We hurried over to get a closer look and found to our joy and amazement that it was in fact a pride of fourteen (yes – 1,4) lions - wow what a spot!! We watched them drink and some nearly mature cubs play around for at least an hour, it was brilliant! We saw lots of elephants amongst other things and generally had a great time around Savuti. We moved on to another camp called Ihaha and it was to be here that we have had the treat of our stay so far! One morning while out scouting around, Jas was using our extra big binoculars to search the horizons for anything interesting and he spotted a lion further along the riverside. As quickly and quietly as we could we made our way over to it and found a pride of 7 lions, one of which was a cub about 1-2 years old, 2 young males and the others females. They were happily lounging under a tree right by the track and we manouveured in to a good position about 15 metres away. They we relaxing and not doing too much but we thought if we hang around here long enough they will eventually get up and go somewhere and then we will be right on their tail. Well what was about to happen we wouldn’t have guessed in a million years! Suddenly one of the females got up and was intensely looking to the bushes her body in the ready to stalk position. Then another female moved around to the other side again staring in to the bushes. I looked towards the bushes to try and see what they had spotted and was surprised to see a warthog heading directly for them. The warthog suddenly realised there was danger and began to move away, but the two females came towards him from either side and the only way the warthog could run was through the middle of them. Tragically for the warthog he didn’t know that waiting in his path was the other 5 lions and as soon as he began to run between the females the others were ready for him! They all surrounded him and without hesitation attacked with their claws and teeth, pinning him down as they started to tear him apart, literally! Now try to imagine all this unfolding right before our eyes no more than 15 metres away, we were so fortunate that the lions didn’t move at all, this poor warthog had run straight in to them, so we had ringside seats for the whole kill. The warthog had no time to think about what was happening and in just a few minutes he was ‘no more’ and the lions were gorging themselves with noisy enthusiasm! Obviously whilst this going on Jas was taking as many pictures as he could and I had quickly got my camera and was videoing it too. We carried on until the lions had finished devouring the warthog and were ready to lie in the sun for a snooze after all the activity. Then we had a chance to appreciate what we had just witnessed and couldn’t believe our luck and knew that we had seen something that many people only dream of seeing, it was absolutely amazing!! Not long afterwards they went to have a drink and then moved away from the river in to some scrubland and we lost sight of them. But we had spent about 3 ½ hours with them and we would never forget it! Also that day we found around 60 vultures taking it in turn to eat a dead buffalo calf, which was also an incredible sight. They were constantly fighting with each other over whose turn it was! And Jas had another one of his dreams come true when he spotted a black egret, which is quite a rare bird that sits in marshland and wraps its wings around in front of it to form a canopy that makes a shadow over the water so it can see the fish better. It’s quite lovely to watch and Jas was very pleased to have seen one at last. We are now on our way back to Maun to do the delta trip which we were supposed to do a while ago!!! After that we’ll be heading up to Zambia and Victoria falls. Sorry that yet again I’ve written far too much, but it’s very hard not to!! Hope you are all very well and are enjoying yourselves whatever you are up to. Bye for now, K and J xx

2006-07-10T11:05:00.000+02:00

Sossusvlei and Etosha 10/7/06 Hello everybody! How are you all? We hear the English weather is back to it’s usual trick for Wimbledon! And we didn’t quite make it in the World Cup! Before I forget, Jas has up dated his photography website if you want to see many more of his pictures. Well you’ll be glad to hear that we have now made it in to another country, WHEY HEY!!! ‘Took you long enough!’ you say, I know! We had a straight forward enough border crossing from SA, which only took us 3 hours, not bad for this territory! Once on the other side, we were heading straight to the famous sandunes at Sossusvlei. We stopped for the night on the way in a smallish town called Skeetmanshoop which is famous around here only for having the most petrol stations per km2 than any other place in Namibia! Which really sums up what most people do there, fuel up on the way to somewhere, and not a lot else. From SA in to Nam. we leave the smooth tarmac roads behind (there are only a couple of main tarmac roads in Nam.) and enter the world of gravel roads, which to be fair are very well maintained, and have only the occasional rough patch. Of course our landy is raring to get the rugged terrain under her wheels and she is quite at home! She can’t wait to get to the sandunes! Scenery wise we are travelling in semi arid desert areas, with large hilly parts popping up regularly. It is visually dramatic, but as with anything, after a few hours of the ‘same old, same old’ it becomes pretty monotonous. Good job we’ve good lots of music to listen to! As we drive to Soss, it doesn’t seem as if we are heading towards anything and thoughts of ‘I hope this is as good as they say’, and ‘Why does it have to be so far, my bum aches’ do creep in to the mind. But I can safely say, now that we’ve seen them, they are definitely worth the wait! The dunes are stunning and really one of the most impressive landscapes we have seen. They are a deep orange colour and majestically rise from the very flat desert around them. It is recommended that you see the dunes at sunrise and sunset. Well those of you that know us well will understand that getting up before the sun rises it quite alien to us. However, when a suitably amazing reward awaits us even we can defy nature! So one morning we decide to be ready for when the gates open at 5.45am and make our way down to the dunes for day break. Well, we made a little mistake which threw our plan out just slightly! We do have a few grey cells between us, I think, but we both failed to realise that the clocks might change between SA and here, as they are on the same meridian line. So we turn up to the gates an hour early!!!! AARGHHH! We got the poor guard up to let us in and he scratches his head and says ‘But is only 4.45, no open gate now, must wait to 5.45’! Oh boy do we feel like complete idiots! After profusely apologising to him for getting him out of bed and blaming our foolishness on the fact we are silly tourists, we then have to sit there and wait in the pitch black, cold, starry night – oops! So at (the real) 5.45am, when other people are now turning up (we did wonder why we were the only ones around earlier on!) we are now back on track and get down to the dunes as the sun rises and the dunes do look amazing in the morning sunlight! Part of Soss is the Deadvlei, which is a large flat pan with lots of dead trees in it, surrounded by the dunes. This area really was the highlight for us. Imagine the scene, clear blue sky, deep orange dunes, white pan and black dead trees. It feels like you are in a Salvador Dahli painting it is so surreal! A fantastic sight and one for great pictures, we could have stayed there all day! As the sun rises over the dunes the pan is lit up and the shadows of the trees are very striking. Jas’s pictures will show you what I mean. We also walked up one of the dunes, which is actually a lot harder than you would think. It’s not a great height, but it is very steep and trying to walk in the sand is so tricky! Your feet sink in to the sand so much that it feels like that for every 2 steps up, you sink one step down again! And the wind doesn’t exactly help! It blows against you and whips up the sand constantly, it’s in you mouth, eyes, gets everywhere and I think I will be finding sand in places that I didn’t know existed for many weeks to come! The views were fantastic though and we really did enjoy being there, I would love to be able to go there again one day. It has definitely been a highlight of the trip so far! After leaving Soss we headed to Windhoek for a stop off for a few days. It’s a fairly regular capital by African standards, plety of shops and eateries and well stocked supermarkets. It’s very nice to stay in a backpackers again and be able to have a long hot shower to get rid of the Soss sand! We met quite a few people in the BPs and got chatting to a really great English guy, Stu (Hi Stu, how ya doing? Hope the conference is going well), who now lives in NZ. He was heading up to Etosha and was looking for a lift, so as we either going there or the Skeleton Coast next we made the choise to go to Etosha first. So we have just spent a week up there and it was brilliant. The first few days we spent at a campsite called Namutoni with Stu and had a fantastic time driving around spotting things. Again I’ll list what we saw, with a few details in a minute. Kudu, ostrich, lion, leopard, cheetah, warthog, giraffe, wildebeest, eland, impala, springbok, elephant, rhino, hyena, steenbok, zebra, pale chanting goshawk, battleur eagle, stork, flamingo, terrapin, chameleon, oryx, lilac breasted roller, hornbill, eagle owl, fork tailed drongo, pigmy falcon, hartebeest, snake (not sure what type, but big!). The Etosha pan is a massive dried out ancient body of water, and looks very formidable in the scorching heat. There are very few waterholes to see, even after apparently the most rainfall Namibia has had for a few years! So it is hard to believe the area is home to such large herds of grazing animals. It was lovely to see so many zebra with young and watching numerous giraffe regally parade across the grasslands makes you feel like you’re in Jurassic Park as they look very dinosaur-like! We had several highlights which I’ll keep short, firstly we saw a big male lion wandering towards us through the grass and he sauntered pretty close before disappearing in to bushes. We took a chance that he might be headed to a waterhole nearby and drove there to await his reappearance. Never did I think we would be that lucky, but Jas was right and after about ½ hour he strode down to the waterhole and had a good long drink before walking round it and off again. It was amazing to see him so close, we were very pleased! We then left Stu to join the tour he was meeting and went to another campsite called Halali. On the way there we were getting close to time the gates shut and we thought we would just drive around a little more and round a corner there was a leopard lying in the road! She moved off as we approached but only a short way to the side of the road and we happily watched her watching some springbok. At this campsite there was a beautiful waterhole that you could walk to. We had heard it was a good place to see stuff so we spent the afternoon and evening there and after a few hours of nothing, our leopard showed up and had a drink, very nice! The next day we drove to another waterhole and were very glad to find 3 cheetah there, a mum and 2 older cubs. We watched them for ages, the cubs were running and around playing, the mum keeping an eye on them. They eventually went on their way and we decided to try the ‘predict where they are going’ technique which had worked so well before. This time is was not to be, they must have gone the other way! At the waterhole that night we had a fantastic time watching a herd of over 30 elephants (adults, kids and babies) drinking and playing. It was the best thing I have ever seen (elephants are my particular favourites) and we were mesmerised for ages. They left and we thought nothing could top that, but to our amazement shortly after a rhino and her calf turned up for a drink. Before we could get over the sight, the mother gave a big snort and we heard another snort further away in the dark. Moments later another mother and calf joined her. Now we were really counting ourselves lucky! Never did we expect what happen next……three more rhino came through the bushes and it was a sight to behold, 7 rhino around the waterhole only metres away all quite calmly drinking and grazing. ‘Oh what a night’ as the song goes!! We spent another couple of days there, although nothing topped what we had already seen apart from coming across a chameleon in the road! Then we said good-bye to Etosha and came back to Windhoek. Tomorrow we are off to Swakopmund to the west and will drive up through the Skeleton Coast. We are then going to meet up with an English family we met in Etosha, to go to some areas in the very north of Namibia where it is recommended you go in convoy as the terrain is pretty rough! We will go through a section where desert elephants live, whether we see them or not is another thing, but we’ll keep our fingers crossed! So that’s us done for now, another lengthy instalment I’m afraid, but as you know I’m not good at short and sweet! We wish you all well and hope you are having fun whatever you are doing!

2006-06-21T18:02:00.000+02:00

2006-06-21T17:10:00.000+02:00

20.6.06 Upington (Very north of S. Africa) Hi there one and all! Before I get on to anything else I want to say a very big THANK-YOU for all the birthday greetings you sent me. It was really lovely to get them and I had a fantastic birthday the details of which I will tell you later on. Once again thanks for your messages it was such a nice surprise to get on the internet yesterday and see them all! Here as promised is the complete Landy introductory tour!! And yep we can fit all of this stuff in to the landy and still see out the rearview window! The Landy – A Recipe For Fun? (By Jason Gallier) As we are now the proud(?) owners of a Land Rover we (Jason) thought we ought to give you a couple of pics and tell you what we have kitted it out with. I must admit that the idea of a large 4x4 while being wildlife enthusiasts is a conservationists nightmare. There are many arguments for and against but after lots of deliberation and consultation it does seem to be the tool for the job and at least this Landy will get dirty and see considerable off road use. Kate and I are not the into naming vehicles but for those of you who are we are open to suggestions – a couple of possibilities could be: The Green Goddess or The Jolly Green Giant but we call it (her) the “Landy” with perhaps a hint of affection (Until something goes wrong that is!) Sadly we don’t have any green wellies! So, take a Land Rover Defender Td5 (2.5L Turbo Diesel) 110 (wheel Base in inches) remove rear bench seats, simmer, then add…………… Long range fuel tanks (Total 130L which is good for 1000+ km)............................ Water Tank behind rear wheel arch (40L)................................ Front and rear spot lights.......................... Full roof rack (aluminium).............................. Awning (to provide shade when we breakdown!!!! Oh that should be when camping) ................................ Roof top tent (with thick mattress, blankets and duvet to keep Kate warm and comfy).................................... Dual battery system (under passenger seat) – second battery is a leisure battery to power Laptops and recharge camera batteries etc..................... Power invertor (turns 12v into 240v to run all of the equipment)......................... Bull Bar (essential to putting up tent and to look as menacing as possible!)......... High lift jack and hand winch (to get us out of trouble when we get stuck).................... Draw (which sits in the back holds a surprising amount of stuff)................. Pioneer sound system (500w amp with 2 - 6”x9” speakers)................. Then Open up and Stuff with…………............. Lamp and torches (we opted for a lead acid battery lantern, a spot light and a couple of head torches with a box of candles as back up)....................... 3 Low energy bulbs for camping (plus 3 spares as they are glass an.d extremely difficult to get hold of).................................. Cooking stove (cast iron double burner)................................. 2 gas tanks (9kg main tank and a small 4.5kg for reserve)............................... Table (complete with table cloth – very civilised you know)................................... Chairs (Fold away - very comfortable ones too)......................... Pots and Pans........................... Cutlery.............................................. Food.......................................... Wine and beer plus cider while available (I use beer as a loose approximation)... 4 x 70L boxes to put it all in!!........................................ Add some stock and choice ingredients.......................................................... Laptop and disk drives, a DVD burner and a bunch of DVDs..................... Camera(s) and lenses, tripod, window mount and other fun bits of equipment......................................... MP3 player (played through the sound system – sounds good and it’s loud!)........ Binoculars (10x50 and 20x80).................................. Books (Lots of them – no surprises there)......................... Clothes and stuff (Kate has a lot more than I - no surprises there either!).......... Towels and washing bits and bobs..................... Washing up stuff........................ Medical kit (plasters and paracetamol)........................ Juggling balls and clubs..................................... Tools (I just hope somebody knows what to do with them!!!)............. Axe and Saw (for my caveman moments)....................... Tow rope (To help others out of trouble!)................ Tracking bag............................ Compressor (for tyres)............................. Extra Spices and Flavours........................................... Shock absorbers and springs (Old Man Emu – the mutts nuts apparently)................ Black Box (monitors the oil, battery and engine temperature)......................... Spare fan belt....................................................................... Oil, air and fuel filters............................................................ Triangles (in case of breakdown)..................................................... Finally sprinkle on top (roof rack).................................................. 5 x 30L boxes (Full of odds and sods from above)..................................... 2 x 25L Water containers............................................................. 2 x 25L Diesel Jerry cans............................................................ 8 (or so) straps and ratchets (to hold every thing down)............................. Finally bake for several months in hot African sun.................. Quite a lot of stuff but we are completely self sufficient and can probably survive well for 10 days – possibly up to 20 days if we rough it – break down in middle of no where. Considering some of our destinations we will probably need it and if anything goes wrong at least we have most things covered. As it is our home for the next 8 months or so the extra creature comforts should help us keep costs down by meaning that we don’t have to treat ourselves to mega expensive lodges – well that’s the idea!.................... Please note: the break down comments is to a – placate those who dislike land rovers before they get to say “told you so”; b – because my vehicles always tend to break down; and c – worry our parents!! ................................ Now back to where we are. As you can see from the top of this log we are still currently in SA. ‘What!!?!’ I hear you cry, ‘Aren’t you supposed to be out of there by now and seeing the sights and sounds of Namibia?’ Well in a word YES, but there is a good reason for our delayed departure from SA and that in a word is the Kgalagadi Transfrontier National Park (OK 4 words!). We left CT a week ago with the purpose of travelling north to get into Namibia. We had got everything we needed to leave the bustling city behind and begin our trip in to the unknown. Then we remembered that we had heard very good things about the Kgalagadi (try saying that when you’ve had a few beers!!), the birdlife and wildlife was excellent and Jas had really wanted to go there. The park is right in the north of SA and is actually part of the Kalahari so crosses in to Namibia on the left and Botswana on the right. So naturally as we were heading north we decided that we would ‘pop’ there for a few days to check it out. My my what a treat it has been, we have been there for 5 days and it’s been absolutely amazing! It was a long old drive to get here, and this far up some of the roads are no longer tarmac, but well worth the effort. I know lists of things are a bit boring but you’ll have to excuse the following as it’s the easiest way to tell you what we have seen. Oryx, springbok, wildebeest, hartebeest, giraffe, hyena, lion, cheetah, leopard, jackal, bat-eared fox, Cape fox, secretary bird, lanner falcon, marshall eagle, pearl spotted owl (one of the smallest in the world), pale chanting goshawk, hornbill, slender mongoose, yellow mongoose, ostrich, kestrel, black shoulder kite, phew I think that’s about it! You can imagine we have been having a fantastic time spotting all of these! Admittedly, there are a fair few of the springbok, oryx, wildebeest and hartebeest wandering around, you’d be hard pressed not to see them. As for the more elusive creatures, leopard, cheetah, lion and hyena, seeing them was brilliant and each was in superb settings. We first saw the cheetah the day before my birthday in the late afternoon. One ran past the landy on the side of the road and when we pulled up to see where it had gone, we were excited to see there were two and they were in the veldt (grassland to you and me) not far from us. Then from behind us three more ran across the road to join the others and they all meandered through the slowly away towards to hills. Jas and I were ecstatic and took the opportunity to climb out the back of the landy on to the roof to get a real look at them. And before you all cry in horror at us getting out of the vehicle we did wait until they were a suitable distance away!! We drove on to a watering hole and stayed there a while just before we had to set off back to camp and watched various animals come to drink. Jas noticed something coming along and firstly we thought it was a jackal, but as it drew closer we realised it was a brown hyena. They are really ugly looking things and they do have an air of menace about them! We were very content to sit and watch him move around the waterhole and then trot past the landy and go on his way. Wow what a days viewing! On my birthday we were awoken in the early hours by the roaring of lions all around us which was incredible to hear and once the lions had finished the hyenas took over with their cackling and laughing!! Imagine that as your alarm call in the morning! During our morning drive we found a pair of gorgeous male lions having a lazy time in the shade of a tree again on the roadside. We were able to get close so they were only a couple of metres away. Needless to say no rooftop views this time, we wouldn’t have wanted to go outside with them quite so near! We stayed with them for ages, they were not in any hurry to move on and they would occasionally get up and move slightly to find a more comfortable spot to lie in! It was wonderful to see them and we could have stayed there all day but we decided to move on and see what else was about. We saw more of the other animals and had a lovely afternoon driving around and spotting things. In the evening Jas cooked a meal and we had a few drinks to celebrate my birthday and finished they day off with a big bar of chocolate which we had been saving for the occasion – a real treat when you’re on a campsite in the middle of nowhere!! These couple of days were spent in the middle area of the park at a campsite called Nossob. On the morning drive we found our cheetah again lying under a tree, but unfortunately they were quite far away this time. We found out that they were a mother and 4 almost fully grown cubs, and that’s quite unusual for a mother cheetah to successfully raise 4 offspring. Then we drove to Mata Mata another campsite on the Namibian border, along the way we came upon some oryx with young calves which were very lovely. They adults are grey, white and black, whereas their young are a lovely reddish colour. We also nearly ran over a yellow cobra!!! I thought it was just a stick in the road, OK so a brightly coloured stick, but I wasn’t really thinking in snake mode! Then as we got close to it the head came up and the classic cobra hood was clearly visible. I managed not to actually drive over it, but by the time I stopped and reversed up to get another look it had already slithered off in to the veldt and out of sight. I have to say that it was a very impressive size and I’m mighty glad we were several inches off the ground when we saw that one! On our drives around the Mata Mata camp we saw more of all the usual animals and the evening we got there we were setting up our tent and we noticed a spotlight pointing out of the camp towards something. We went for a look and found ourselves face to face with a spotted hyena! Yep we were that close you could make out it wets shiny nose. Yes you’ve guessed it there was a fence between us! It looked like a very pregnant one (either that or she had really gorged herself recently) and she was sniffing around and scavenging anything she could find, then after a while she curled up on the ground to see the night through. As with the other hyena she wasn’t the prettiest of creatures but we won’t hold that against her and she was great to see so close! The next day met a couple who we had seen back at Nossob, they had spotted a leopard and were watching and waiting to see if it went anywhere. We hung around too and were really impressed to see such a lovely female. She decided to go for a wander and we took a chance by leaving the road we were on and go around the back of her and hope we would meet up. We found the right area, waited for ages and just when we were thinking we had missed her, to our great satisfaction she came over the ridge and walked gracefully in front of the landy and on to the other side of the road. She was eyeing up a small herd of springbok, but wasn’t really interested in making a dash for them, so we happily watched her, watching them for a while. It was time to go back to camp and we had to leave her there, but we thought we would go back the next morning and see is she had caught anything. With all these amazing sightings we thought our luck would soon run out, but our final day’s safari – in true cliché style - turned out to be better than we could ever have imagined!! Leaving the park we thought we’ll take a leisurely drive straight back, but oh no that’s not how it turned out at all! Firstly we bumped in to some people who had spotted two cheetah on a ridge (different to the 5 we saw before) and we followed them for a while. Realising they were staking out a couple of springbok we could see they wanted to get in to action. We didn’t think we would be lucky enough to see a chase, but lady luck came through and the cheetah picked out a young springbok and off they went! It was fantastic and Jas got a great couple of pictures. We zoomed after them in the landy but soon the cheetah gave up and the springbok lived to see another day. We continued to follow them around for a while and then decided we needed to push on. Driving away from the cheetah we spoke to another group of spotters who had found a leopard with a jackal kill in a tree near the Mata Mata camp. What could we do but go back and try and find it – maybe we weren’t going to leave the park today! The leopard wisely chose a tree right by the road to snack on the jackal, so we could again get right up close! As Jas’s pictures show, what an incredible sight! The leopard was really crunching away at the jackal and was not in the least bit interested that we were there! After awhile we said again, ‘right we need to leave the park now’ it was going to take us a good 5 hours to get back to Upington!!! We left the leopard and promised not to get distracted by anything else along the way! But we did stop briefly to see a group of 8 giraffe, with young ones chewing on some trees. Then we found a springbok who had minutes before given birth! I kid you not, she was actually eating the placenta and licking the newborn in to shape. The baby could hardly stand, but mother was encouraging her as it is so important for them to be able to run as soon as possible. What a stunning sight! As you can see we had an amazing final day in the park and we still cannot believe all the things we saw over the last few days. The Kgalagadi NP certainly gets our thumbs up and we might go there again when we get back to SA at the end of our trip! Now we are back in Upington and tomorrow we will set off to the Namibian border and finally get in to another country!!! Thank-you for patiently reading this really long weblog, we hope you have enjoyed it! We are not sure how long it will be before we get to post another log, so keep checking and we’ll get something on as soon as we can. Cheerio for now, take care and we hope the sun is still shining in the UK! PS. The weather in the NP is gorgeously hot during the day, but at night it goes down to minus 3-5!!! We’ve had to wrap pretty well in the tent!

2006-06-09T16:57:00.000+02:00

9.6.06 Stellenbosch, Robertson and Oudtshoorn Hello and a warm welcome from the wine regions not far from CT. We’ve escaped the big city for the time being, and it certainly is nice to have a change of scenery! We decided to take the landy for a bit of a warm up run around to give us a better chance to see how she moves and what little niggles she might have and we can iron out any faults and really make sure she is ready for the big off. So we thought for the time being we would move in country and try to escape the rain a bit! By the way sorry if I confused you before talking about a campervan and then the landy, we haven’t bought both, we hired the campervan just for a week whilst sorting out the landy. We couldn’t resist the pull of the wine regions (that is Jason couldn’t!) and we were told that the routes and scenery out there were lovely too. Stellenbosch is only about an hour’s drive from CT and we stayed in a hostel called the Stumble Inn! Well I mean we stayed in the car park in the rooftop tent!! I guess that will be a common problem for us in the urban hostels, their camping areas are quite often behind the hostel building and we just aren’t going to get the landy through the front door!! But hey we’ll cope and it’s actually quite helpful because they don’t charge us as much for staying, but we still use all their facilities! Now Stellenbosch is a lovely little town with big hills all around it, it’s a beautiful setting. It has a very small American town feel to it, which is quite strange, but it’s lovely old style buildings make it a very attractive place. Obviously the most important focal point are the many wineries in the area and all of them are open for wine tasting (yum yum!). We met a great couple in the hostel (Ben and Karen, from Australia and America) and they were travelling around like us and we hooked up with them for an afternoon’s slurping (checking out some good ones for you Tor!). Driving to the wineries is really picturesque, lovely rocky outcrops with miles of vineyards at the foothills. It is a nice time of year to come because all the autumnal colours are out and when the sun is setting it really sets off the colours. The wineries are set around stunning estates and look very idyllic and Jas, Karen and Ben had a very good time testing lots of different wines. I’m the first person to admit that I’m not a wine drinker so I was more than happy to be the driver and let them indulge! I was lucky that at one of the tastings the vineyard had developed their own special chocolates to have with some of the wines to bring out the flavours more. They certainly were different, dark chocolate with rock salt in it, dark chocolate with ginger and chai (Indian tea), and milk chocolate with Turkish delight. Apparently they did go particularly well with the wines, but I’ll just take their word for it as I just ate mine neat! After a couple of days we moved on to Robertson, another wine area which we were told had a ‘Wacky Wine Weekend’ on. We thought we’d see what that was all about and amongst other things each of the wineries offer FREE wine tasting all weekend, there’s lots of food tasting and live music, boat trips, ghost tours and more! The highlight we have heard is that one of the wineries fills a 10,000 litre plunge pool with red wine and then drops a 4 carat diamond in it!!! Then for 50p you can have a swim in it and have a look for the diamond (how though I can’t imagine!) and if you find it you keep it! Jas has said he might have a go, not for finding the diamond mind you, just for the chance to swim in the wine!!! As it turns out he didn't go in, it was way too chilly for it, but it was fun watching other people freeze in there! We also found an amazing maze and cactus farm with over 2,500 different species! Sounds dull but it was surprisingly interesting!! Jas got some good photos too, every day's a camera day!! Then we moved further up to Oudtshoorn which is the major region for ostrich farming. Yep it is very odd seeing large fields full of ostriches, mile after mile. They are rapidly turning into one of my favourite animals, they look really funny running around. To see a truck load of them driving past with just their heads bobbing up and down is quite peculiar!! This are is also well known for it’s mountain passes and we drove through one called Swartberg Pass which was absolutely stunning and very very high up. The pass ends up following a gorge and that was beautiful! We also visited Cango caves which are Africa’s largest show caves and one of the seven wonders of Southern Africa. We went on the longer adventure tour which involved crawling around and squeezing through parts of the caves with names such as the Tunnel of Love, Devil’s Chimney and the Letterbox!! It was great and the big chambers with lots of stalactites and stalagmites were really lovely. Well you now find us back in CT finalising the mechanics on the landy and checking that we have got everything (we hope!) for setting off to Namibia on Monday! Yes I know we have spent a while in S.A. where all is still relatively civilised, but you’ll be pleased to hear that as of next week we are embarking on the more adventurous parts of our trip. At last we will be heading in to the relatively unknown (for us anyway!) and we will be regaling you with tales of wild animals surrounding the landy, 4x4 white knuckle journeys and other African high jinks!! For now though we will relax during our last few days in CT and I promise that the next weblog will be a landy special with an insight to all of our gizmos and gadgets and pictures for you to see us and it in full glory!! Bye bye for now and we’ll be back soon!

2006-05-27T16:45:00.000+02:00

Cape Town 20.5.06 Hello there! How are you all? I hope everyone is well and the summer in England is beginning to take shape. Is the male population getting in a frenzy over the world cup yet? So what have we been up to? Well after living it up pretty well in the Big Blue hostel and swanning around in the nice Nissan, we were still in search of our vehicle and realistically new that money doesn’t grow on trees! That meant we needed to reduce our spending on wheels and digs for the foreseeable future while we were still getting the truck organised. As if by magic the perfect solution was found in the Big Blue, stuck on the notice board. So we are now in possession of an ageing VW campervan with camping equipment included which we have parked up in a campsite in Muizenburg which is about half an hour from CT. Now just to get the picture clear, we have a bed in the van, a little gas cooker, pots and pans, and essentially all that we could need to be self sufficient for awhile, plus a means by which we can still get around. Excellent! Admittedly ‘Suzie’ as named by the owners, has seen better days (sho is over 20 years old), but she does go from A to B quite adequately if a little nosily, with a dodgy handbrake and only 4 gears! The only down side to this little treat is that after the initial hot start to our time in SA - which we have found out was not the norm for this time of year and even S. African’s were bowled over by how hot it was - only hours after we had found a nice spot in the campsite, the real weather started. All I can say is it doesn’t rain here it pours!!! Imagine the scenario (a common one in England!), cold winds, persistent torrential rain, grey skies, trying to cook outside and soggy clothes and shoes! Yep that’s what we’ve been enjoying for the last 5 days! Camping…..we love it!! We have been very impressed at how much it can rain here. Honestly we’ve had a couple of dry spells for less than an hour each since Monday! Stay tuned though as we have had a real turn of fortune which you’ll hear about in a minute. Now back to the truck bits. Up ‘til now we had seen quite a few things and had a good idea of what we could get, and all in all we were fairly confident we could find something suitable. We ended up looking at a landrover (the one vehicle I had said I didn’t want to have!) which was all kitted out with virtually everything we could need for our trip. Now it was quite abit more money than we wanted to spend, but considering it was such as good truck, only a couple years old and we wouldn’t have to spend further time getting the extras it already had, we thought it needed some consideration. We took it for a test drive and the guy who was selling it (a landrover mechanic called Mark) also took us to a 4x4 off road drive track to show us what it could do, which was very impressive! So after immense discussion and deliberating we decided to say yes (like the man from Del Monte!) and arranged for the bank transfer to start. There were a few bits and bobs that Mark needed to do to get it completely ready and so we arranged to go back on Thursday and finalise things, as well as go through some important maintenance tips. All is good and we can get excited about nearing the point where we can set off! YEEHHAAA. But we all know life can take unexpected turns when you are least expecting it! And this was just such a turn, on Thursday we get a call from Mark saying could we go and see him straight away. HMMM ominous we thought, but didn’t think too much of it. We get there and he tells us that he’s had a problem with the guy who he is selling the landy for. It appears that the guy who owns the landy hasn’t actually finished paying the finance for it and if we buy it, the bank still really owns it and can take it away, so he can’t sell it to us. Boy what a bombshell, especially as the money is winging its way into his bank account as we speak! What are we to do? Luckily Mark is a really nice guy and has been really helpful right from the start, and he says he is very sorry, and to make it up he is going to get us another landy of the same spec and fit it out with all the bits the other landy had and all for the same money. He also says that his mother owns a B&B in a posh part of CT’s coastline (Camp’s Bay) and he’s arranged for us to stay there until it’s all done (4/5 days) free of charge so that we don’t have to stay soaked through in the campsite anymore! So we are now, living it up in a really lovely apartment overlooking the ocean, with TV, on suite, big lovely bed and out of the rain! What a turn around in such a short time! Mark is hopefully going to get this other landy up together and we could actually end up with a better deal than the first one because all the bits he is adding are going to be brand new, not second hand! But being cautious now we’ll wait and see if it all works out before sitting back and celebrating! We’ll let you know how it goes!...... ……Well we are now the proud owners of a green giant of a landy with lots of nice kit on it! In the next blog we'll tell you all about it and have some snazzy pictures aswell! So we will be back in touch in a while to give you an up date before the adventure really starts and we get on the road to Namibia! Take care all and we hope to hear from you soon! Love Kate and Jas xx PS. We have managed to do a few non truck things too!! In between the rain we have climbed up Lion's Head, which is a very big hill across from Table Mountain. Seen The Davinci Code, very good! Gone back to the penguins a couple of times, still very cute! And been to a huge shopping centre called Century City for a little look (you know how girls are!!). PPS. The weather is still wet and cold, but we are getting used to it!

2006-05-12T21:50:00.000+02:00

NB. Have you read the post from Pretoria 6.5.06 Cape Town 11/5/06 …… We have arrived in CT save and sound! We hired a nice Nissan saloon and spent a day and a half driving down. We stopped at a place called Kimberley which was very much a stop, sleep and go situation, so we can’t really tell you much about it! It was dark when we arrived and just dawn when we left – you can tell we were on a mission to get to CT super quick! The scenery as we drove was very flat and arid semi-desert, which did get a bit monotonous after awhile. However, our interest was greatly lifted as we spotted our first really wild animals of the trip! Lots of rock dassies (very large hamsters who live around the rocky bits) out in the early morning sun, and then ostriches hanging about just off the road (they are pretty big birds I can tell you), then a meerkat exhibiting its ‘on hind legs looking around’ pose perfectly! So from then on we were driving around as if on a safari drive straining our eyes to see what we can see! As we got further on towards CT the landscape becomes more mountainy and the road twists around the rocky outcrops, we like that, makes the driving much more interesting! Then we find ourselves in some of the wine making areas and for miles there are lovely vineyards with people selling grapes along the side of the road, very nice! The plants are all very luscious now and it is a beautiful region and we will come back this way to see more and taste some too! Now in CT we are staying in a hostel called the Big Blue (Rach and Jas know this place!) which is right near the coast and we can walk down to the Waterfront in 10 minutes where there is a lovely area of shops, restaurants, cinema (Hoorayyy got to see MI:III yesterday which I am very pleased about!) and generally a nice place to hang around. We’ve got straight on to the truck hunt and have been driving around all over the place to look at what’s available. Three days in and things are going quite well, we’ve found a Landrover Discovery that is completed kitted out with everything we need for the whole of our trip and we are going to take it out for an extensive test drive to see how it goes. Fingers crossed it works out because it would save us the hassle of buying everything separately. It’s early days yet though and there are a few other options as well but this is by far at the top of the list at the moment. This morning we took a rest from the hunt and got up a 5.30am!!!!!! Jas’s idea to go right down towards the southern most part of the Cape and see the sunrise over the bay where the penguins are. I was a little dubious about the early, early start, but was totally impressed when we got to Simon’s Town and parked up near a sign for penguins and got out of the car to see one of the little things running around the car park! They are very cute and we walked along to the waters edge where there were loads of them bobbing in to and out of the water. There were also a few that had chicks and they were lovely to see. You could sit and they would walk right past you it was great! After Jas managed to drag me away from the cuties, we went on to Table Mountain National Park where the actual Cape of Good Hope is. It’s a lovely drive through the park, lots of greenery and rocky hills and cliffs. We went down to the sea and did some expert tracking of Cape clawless otters (those of you who know about Jas's odd week-end habits know about this!)and while we walking along the beach enjoying the sun (it is really hot and the locals are saying it is very unusual because it should be quite cool this time of year – so much for acclimatising, we’re straight in to hot hot hot!) when there were suddenly 3 baboons joining us! They casually trot by not bothering to give us a second look, whilst we stare at them completely impressed at how close we are to them! Then we went for a walk to the Cape and took some touristy photos of us to prove we were there and during the walk back saw some elands (big antelope) and ostriches, that we decided to give a good berth just in case they wanted to come and see us up close! It was quite an odd sensation walking about when they are only 20 metres away! By the way before you all get worried, this park doesn’t have any of the big 5, so walking around is quite safe, we just need to check around our feet for the snakes!! Now we’re going to head out for some well earned grub, an excellent Mexican is just down the road, we went there yesterday and suffice as to say we’re going back again tonight! Love to you all, hope you are all very well and hope you’ve enjoyed the first ‘in country’ instalment of Kate and Jason’s on tour tales!!

2006-05-12T21:45:00.000+02:00

Pretoria 6/5/06 Hi everyone! Welcome to the first S. African instalment of our ‘on tour’ season! We have only been away for a couple of days but it has already been an interesting start and we are instantly finding ourselves in situations that we can only put down to being in Africa! Let’s begin with our flight. What a palaver that turned out to be! Firstly we were 11/2 hours late leaving Gatwick and as all the shops were shut in the airport that late at night we were getting rather hungry as well as being tired. So we depart at 12.30am and everything going fine until about half way through the flight the captain tells us that the oil pressure in one of the engines is too low and we have to make an unscheduled stop in the Central African Republic for it to be looked at. He is very reassuring and says that there is nothing to worry about but we do need to stop. Well no need to panic just yet and I do reassure Jas that we don’t need to worry until the air-stewards start panicking! Then we were trying to think actually where we are, we hadn’t even heard of the Central African Rep (a bit embarrassing eh!) but as we were flying we could see nothing but trees and a river, and we thought that we could be over the Congo and the captain did confirm this. We landed in CAR and were very pleased to find that the whole of the runway was made of tarmac! We were in the middle of nowhere and the airport buildings seemed to be the only things around. We were not allowed to get off the plane and now we were just hoping that our pit stop is not going to take too long. As time goes by we realise that the plane is not stocked with much extra food or drink and the longer this wait is the harder it’ll be on our stomachs! Not good! Well after 2 hours the captain tells us the engine has now been fixed and we will just refuel and then we’ll be off and that is certainly music to our ears. However, all is not well in the land of CAR. We are told next that the captain carries a BP fuel card to pay for unexpected refuelling, but the fuel suppliers here are Total and the airport will not accept any other payment apart from cash! Naturally the captain hasn’t got quite enough cash on him and we are informed that until an agreement can be reached over how to pay, we will be staying put! The lack of food and drink torture is taking hold fast and people are getting restless now, understandably! We carry on sitting around and sleeping if we can, while the time ticks on, slowly. After another hour the captain says that he isn‘t getting very far with the officials and that in fact some UN officials that were in the area have come to try and assist us! Wow we’re in a country where the UN is, is that good or bad news we’re not sure! Awhile later the captain, who is sooo apologetic tells us that the computers in the airport are having problems, one is not attached to a printer and the one that is has a different set up and they are having to sort this out too. He gracefully says ‘Welcome to deepest darkest Africa!’. Finally after 41/2 hours amid rapturous applause the plane takes off and we’re back on our way. Its all looking good now, only another 4 hours of flying ‘til we get to J’burg! Boy are we all tired, ready for our breakfast meal at 2pm and glad to be airborne again! So we land in J’burg 6 hours later than expected! We are hurried through customs etc and Jas and I are so tired and distracted by the whole thing that we forget to collect up one of our bags! We get right out and have met the people who are picking us up and taking us to the hostel (who found out we would be late and came back later for us – thank god!) and as we put things in the van I realise that oh my god we have left my bag with all my clothes and stuff in the baggage bit! How could I forget the most important bag of all! I was obviously too busy worrying about whether Jas’s camera equipment was all there – won’t let that happen again! So I race back through explaining to the staff whats happened and thankfully get to the place just as they are carrying my bag off never to be seen again! So I get it back – phew, and then we get off to the hostel in Pretoria at last! The hostel is lovely and just what we need to rest and relax after our arduous journey! The weather is lovely and warm during the day, but a little chilly at night. We have found some nice places to eat not too far away, and we can now sort out getting our train tickets to Cape Town. Well that’s what we thought….. the sleeper train that we planned to get, we find out stopped running from Pretoria last week! It only goes from J’burg and we have been told it’s not wise to go into central J’burg at all and we should find a different way of getting to CT. So you find us now investigating the other options. We can get a bus that takes 16 hours and costs twice as much as the train, not an appealing alternative. We can fly but that means waiting a few more days here and again costs a lot more money. Or we can hire a car here drive to CT and leave it there. We’ve been looking in to this and it seems that this might work, it will cost us a bit more than the train, but means that we can get to CT in our own time and a lot more comfortably. Plus we’ll have a car to drive us around CT for a few days to have a look at some 4x4’s. So this is as far as we’re got and tomorrow we’ll check out prices and hopefully is they are ok we’ll set off to CT in the afternoon!.......

2006-04-28T13:29:00.000+02:00

One week to go. Kate has been busy working out the nitty gritty bits and I've been researching and buying toys (electronic necesities!!). Just about sorted although a couple of spanners in the works thanks to internet ordering and bank holidays. Jas