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Published: September 8th 2008
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Overland truck
"Breaker Pigpen this here's the Rubber Duck, and we're about to put the hammer down." Even though I’d already had a spring break at Albion, when my family and I visited my cousins in Washington D.C and North Carolina, my spring break in South Africa started with a 6 am flight from Cape Town to Johannesburg. The name ‘Johannesburg’ has a negative connotation in many Americans’ minds due to the xenophobic attacks that took place in the city in the spring before I’d left, but the airport was clean and modern, as if it was the airport in a major U.S city. The domestic airport in Cape Town is tight and crowded, and even though they are adding on to the airport, they’ll need to work on the logistics for the 2010 World Cup, because there are going to be a lot of cranky travelers if the domestic airport doesn’t increase on time.
Throughout the entire trip, I either thought of Indiana Jones, The Lion King, Jurassic Park or Lost. Upon arriving in Jo’burg, we piled into big, blue overland trucks complete with roll-up plastic windows and trekked across northern South Africa into Botswana. We faced two solid days of driving across the deserted Botswana landscape, and during the long, hot drives the Indiana Jones
theme music played in my head as a red line dotted our travels across a map of southern Africa.
After our two long travel days we finally reached the Okavango Delta. Now our previous two campsites had bathroom facilities, including showers, a swimming pool and a bar, so we were essentially cheating nature and not “roughing it.” At the Delta, however, we took only our backpacks and sleeping bags, and piled onto mokoros, which are wooden, hollowed out boats similar to canoes. Guides stood on the back of our canoes with long sticks and pushed us through the weedy waters of the delta. The mokoro is essentially the old cinderblock car phone of water travel, one of the most primitive forms of transportation and the ideal way to get smacked in the face by weeds. Royal Princess Cruise Lines might offer midnight buffets, but only on a mokoro can you swallow mouthfuls of water bugs or mosquitoes. The mokoro ride lasted an hour and a half, and our guides pulled us ashore on one of the many islands within the delta. Now we were officially roughing it and in the middle of no where. There isn’t a sign that
Herd of wildabeast & zebras
The wildabeast and zebra travel together to lookout for lions. says “Welcome: You are now in The Middle of No Where,” but the mere fact that you’d have to mokoro 90 minutes back to the main land speaks for itself.
Naturally (literally—naturally), there are no toilets in the delta, just a wooden shovel, rolls of toilet paper brought from camp and plenty of tall grass, thick-trunked trees and thistle shrubs. There is something very humbling about squatting in the bush going number two, and a variety of thoughts enter your mind. Firstly, you think of the American stereotypical spring break, which consists of all-inclusive resorts, sandy beaches, bikinis and plenty of booze. “This is MTV live at Spring Break 2008! We’re here in the Okavango Delta in Botswana, and as you can see, this young man just took a major dump right in the tall grass!” Your mind also uses the Wicked Witch of the West’s crystal ball and you think about what your family and friends are doing right now back home in America. Surely no one would give a shit about your shit, right?
As was a theme throughout the entire trip, the best things in life happen before 6 am. We woke up before sunrise
in the delta and went on a long game walk. This was the real Africa I’d wanted to experience. We walked past a herd of wildebeest and zebras, and saw an elephant hiding in the trees from a distance. The Okavango sky was flawless. The clouds must not venture into the middle of no where, either, and the blueness gave our walks that traditional, brochure-like game walk feel that I wanted. Whereas at zoos, the animals are the visiting team, in the delta they had home field advantage, and it was exciting to walk on their own home turf and view their natural life without bars, cages, or those stupid 25 cent metal binocular things that are always positioned right in the center of the exhibit blocking the best view.
In the evening we had a traditional African meal called pap, which is a doughy substance that looked exactly like KFC mashed potatoes at first glance. My American blood started flowing when I first saw our meal, thinking that it was indeed mashed potatoes, and I was disappointed when I discovered that it was a doughy substance that you ate with your hands. Regardless, the pap wasn’t bad and
it added to the authenticity of the trip. I’m sure in a few years there will be a KFC or McDonalds in the Okavango Delta, it’s only a matter of time.
In the evening we also went out in the mokoros and saw hippos swimming in the delta amidst the sunset. Hippos are dangerous, my friends. Their jaws will break every bone in your body and they’re a bigger danger than lions. Yeah, they’re fat. Yeah, they’re primarily vegetarians, but don’t insult them, or else your bones become sawdust.
Upon returning from The Middle of No Where to Somewhere, we spent the rest of our time in Botswana in Chobe National Park. Chobe National Park is bigger than England, and during our sunset river cruise down the Chobe River, we saw tons of animals. We saw buffalo, crocodiles, horny hippos, warthogs, gemsbok, kudu, baboons, zebra and, walking across the horizon against the sunset, herds of elephants. Seeing all the elephants was my “Welcome to Jurassic Park” moment, and John Williams’ violin suite played in my mind as the massive elephant families drank from the river and crossed the horizon. Africa is famous for the Big 5 animals: elephants,
buffaloes, rhinos, leopards and lions, and we’d seen two of the five during our cruise. I don’t know why the buffalo and leopard are part of the unique group, because I think the giraffe and zebra are well-associated with Africa, but that might just be the westernized American in me. Perhaps there is a heritage committee that oversees the Big 5 and I can petition them to create a Magnificent 7 that includes the zebra and giraffe. Although, the Big 5 is an elite group, similar to the Great Lakes or Ivy League, and they don’t just let any schmuck animals join. You have to earn that spot.
On our final morning in Chobe we went on another pre-dawn game drive and saw more elephants, baboons, hyenas and a giraffe at a distance. We also saw vultures scavenging off of an elephant carcass. During the game drive, our driver kept yelling out Lion King names such as “Pumbaa” at the warthogs and “Zazu” at the birds. At first we thought he was dumbing-down the animals for the Americans who only knew about African wildlife from the Lion King, but these were in fact the animals’ names in the local
languages. One Lion King name, “Rafiki,” means “friend,” and not “baboon” or “hideous monkey” in Swahili.
So we said goodbye to Botswana and headed for Zambia. I was looking forward to Zambia the most, specifically the white water rafting. In Botswana we’d seen plenty of Mother Nature’s children, but on the Zambezi River I was going to understand exactly what happens when Mother gets angry.
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Grandma
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You are creating memories for a lifetime. Love reading your narratives. Love, Grandma