We spent a week in Bostwana enjoying the Okavango Delta and a whole lot of schnitzel. We stayed at Old Bridge Backpackers in Maun – a great laid back place with open air showers and toilets that you pull a rope across to signify that it is occupied. The owners were extremely helpful in organizing trips and there were 5 or 6 dogs to keep any animal lover satisfied. The drinks were cold and the conversation with other travellers interesting. One of our favourite places so far.
We took a scenic flight over the Delta on our second night in town at about 4:30pm. The light was beautiful and we were simply amazed at scenery. We saw a few animals from the air, but were more impressed with the channels and makoro routes through the reeds.
After a good nights sleep we decided to try our hand at basket weaving. Sadly our basket weaving skills are sub-par, but our coaster making skills are superb! The woman who was helping us out is one of the best basket weavers in the world, having won first prize at some big competition in the States. We were lucky she was there.
We also took a two hour walk through a local nature sanctuary and were able to see some zebras up close and personal rather than from a truck. The walk, however, was just a warm up to an amazing overnight makoro trip that we took through the Delta the next day.
We, and three other Canadians, packed up our camping gear and headed off into the middle of the Delta with three makoro pollers, some food and bug spray. We took a couple of nature walks and were given a safety lecture about what to do if we saw any of the Big Five animals charging at us. Basically it boiled down to run in a zig zag fashion and try to hide down wind, unless it was a lion coming after you, in which case we were to stand still and stare at it in the eye. Fortunately we only saw giraffes, zebras and hippos. A few elephants came about 50 meters from our camp at night, but we couldn’t see them but we certainly heard them and saw their footprints the next day.
We are now in Livingstone, Zambia. We left Maun on Sunday and managed to make it to Livingstone in about 12 hours. The trip here was awful, but me made it in one piece. Imagine the TTC at rush hour, stuff about 50 more people on the car, no air-conditioning, a bumpy ride and stand for 4 hours – that was our bus trip for part of the way. We got across the border okay, and had to pay $50 US for a Visa.
We took a cab into town from the border post which turned into one of the more interesting, if not more scary moments on the trip. Part way into town the cab driver turned off the main highway onto some dirt road in the middle of nowhere. We weren’t sure what was happening, but as it turned out, there were police check points along the main highway that our driver had to avoid because his license had expired and the car would have been impounded had he been stopped. Nice. So we took a scenic hour long route through the back roads of Livingstone avoiding the cops.
We went to Victoria Falls yesterday which was simply amazing. There were baboons everywhere which kept Gillian happy.
We are leaving tomorrow for Lusaka and then off to Malawi.
We will post more photos when we find a suitable computer…
Gillian and Ian
It sounds like you’re having a wonderful trip. if you are confronted by a lion, stare it in the eye? Really? I want to say “Let us know how that works for you” but it would be better if we just imagined that it would work marvy.
Glad to hear you are both well, we miss you here. John V