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Published: February 7th 2008
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Major road kill
There are 70,000 elephants wild in Botswana. They often cause crashes by running on to the road. Revenge
And so to Zimbabwe whose border we strolled across without incident. This was the second border where a visa for Tracey was TWICE the price of David’s. A little revenge against the old colonial masters! In fact David joked about this to the immigration guys (as only he would) and they all agreed that this was the case.
Zimbabwe was fantastic and depressing all at the same time….… but all of this will be described in greater detail in our next blog, for this visit was little more than a short cut across the north western tip in order to reach Botswana and the world famous Okavango Delta.
We're going to need an Ark
After crossing the border we encountered the first example of why we have given this blog the title “The Kindness of Strangers”. Needing to travel a long way south we discovered we had missed the only daily bus, so out we went to the motorway, out went the thumb and hey presto we got a free ride with a South African safari driver on his way back to Cape Town. Kindness number 1.
The Okavango Delta (OD
Rush hour on the Delta
Our mokoro meets another as we drift through the Okavango Delta from now on) is one of the world’s largest inland water systems. It’s basically a gigantic flood of water that starts in Angola and spreads south through Namibia and Botswana. “So what?” you’re thinking. Well…what makes this so fascinating is that for 3 months of the year the land it flows across is mostly dead, dry, Kalahari dessert. Then, when the rainy season begins in Angola it starts a flood that takes 9 months and 450 kilometres to reach Maun (our destination), and eventually covers over 16,000 square kilometres. In doing so it also creates a totally unique ecosystem that survives in both hot dry savanna and many months underwater.
There are two ways to visit the OD. The first is to fly into one of the many very expensive lodges deep in the interior and then explore in a guided canoe, called a Mokoro. Very cool, but too expensive.
Option two is to travel to the point where the water begins and take a Mokoro trip in from there. Thus we found ourselves floating gracefully through a watery jungle of reeds and flowers as we spent a day being guided through the OD's outer edge. The few
Hippo's eye view
Plenty of lillies for the hippos and crocs to hide under! centimetres of wood between us and the water were our only protection against hippos and crocs that live in these waters. Luckily we didn’t have to test its toughness but we did see giraffes meander past as well as countless beautiful birds. In all it was an ok day, but we think that seeing it from the air is the only real way to appreciate its splendor.
Kiwis can fly
While we were there we met a pilot from New Zealand who flies one of the little six seaters into lodges. He said that nearly all the pilots flying out of Maun are Kiwis because there are very few jobs in NZ for recently qualified pilots and this lets them build up the money and hours required to move onto bigger planes.
Locals to the rescue
The Delta done, we headed north east to Francistown on the border with Zimbabwe. As we arrived late and it was raining we took the unusual step of phoning a cheap hotel (there were no hostels) to see if they had a room. Nope… “Fully booked”… and so was the next one we rang… and the
Hell of a sign post
This aardvark marked the turn off to one of the campsites. one after that. Not good. As we were starting to get desperate and we didn’t fancy sleeping behind the pizza restaurant we were sheltering in, Tracey went out to look for a solution.
And thus we had Kindness number 2. Just 5 minutes later Tracey returned with a female security guard she had got talking too. The security guard had called over a friend who was meeting a guy who had a car who he thought would be able to take us to a cheap hotel outside town. So the five of us and our bags piled into the car and as promised we were delivered to a hotel about 10 minutes from the city centre. We offered them some money but they wouldn’t take it. They simply wanted nothing more than to help us out.
Then, having checked into this place, it turned out that they wouldn’t take US dollars and we didn’t have enough Kwacha. So the only thing we could do was leave our bags, put our jackets on and venture out into the dark and wet suburbs to try and find a cash machine. And thus we encountered kindness number 3.
While standing
Sir Rosis of the River
Genius name of the boat at our campsite in Maun given all the locals seemed to spend all their evenings at the bar then drive home hammered. on a street corner trying to get our bearings so we could get back home, a white lady pulled over in her car and asked if we needed some help. We explained the situation and she very kindly offered to drive us into town to get some cash and food. Then after we got talking about who we were and what we were doing she invited us to stay at her lovely house and also offered to drive us into the bus station in the morning. And so it was we spent a wet and windy night in the wonderful company of Jane and her many dogs and parrots. Jane if you ever read this blog, once again, thank you very much.
And finally
It is a sad state of affairs that in our own countries we have become skeptical and scared about accepting offers from complete strangers. In fact both of us were rather nervous at first, wondering what we were going to be asked for in return. Yet all these offers were nothing more than just pure kindness, something with which this wonderful continent continues to surprise and delight us.
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Daniel W
non-member comment
all I can say is WOW! Reading your blog and seeing the pictures...WOW