Africa Winter 2012

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On the road again for our typical 450 km drive ,taking about 5 hrs to Windhoek the largest City in Namibia. Eight hundred thousand people. We treated ourselves by going to the Movie theater at the mall across the road from our Hotel. Very different customs here for the movie theatre. People talked all the time, without anyone asking them not to, and cell phones were used randomly throughout. Weird!



The next day we crossed the border into Botswana, through the Kalahari desert and it was back to the wilds. Numerous times, the bus had to slow down for cows in the road. Botswana is the largest beef producer for Europe. Some farms have as many as 500,000 head of cattle! Sure wouldn't want to be walking through those fields........

That night, we stayed in San/Bushman style huts. No hydro during daylight hours and generator power from 6pm to 10pm.You wanted to be sure to be in bed before the power went off! It's very dark !Here we had a swim in a lovely quarry late afternoon with a guided Bushman walk and traditional dancing after dinner. .The bushman have a very strange language, which includes clicking your tongue in the back of your throat. It's hard to explain of course- and very weird to hear! They took us on a hike to show us all the trees and plants they use for medicine and food.

The big joke at dinner was anticipating what you would find in your room when you returned, from rather large spiders- to rhino beetles and possibly little lizards. But- it was a bed, rather than a mattress on the ground, and a bathroom- altho there was no roof on this part of the room- a wonderful experience at 3 am- shining your flashlight all over to check for critters!!!!!

There were some more laughs in the morning, when we explained to everyone about the fight we'd had with the mosquito tent. A tent over a double bed is hard to fit- and we didn't know that we should have tucked it under the mattress. Each time Mark pulled it down on his side, so that it wasn't lying on his head, then my side was on my head- so I'd pull it- etc. etc. It was quite the battle – until finally, we decided to forget it- we slept with no net- and in fact, no mosquitoes to speak of anyway! There are more mosquitoes on a Georgian Bay summer night than we've seen here ever!



After the Bushman experience, G adventures tried to spoil us with our next stop at the luxurious Sedia Riverside Hotel in the Capitol City of Maun. This hotel was very nice, with a pool, and internet.

WE were entertained with more traditional dancing, and some of the guys got up to try it. Sad to say, Mark declined this opportunity!

I'll say no more for now, just enjoy the pics!

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