RENAE:
Well let me just say that I love Africa. A lot. The best part of the trip I would say was meeting the people here my parents knew and talked about so much. They make such an effort to interact with people, putting it before work, sleep, or anything else that we would otherwise put before people. If you go to their house one day, the next day they’ll call you up and go to your house for tea. It’s just so different than the States. The scenery is also amazing. I’ve never ever seen anything so beautiful as the sunset over the Chobe River with hundreds of elephants crossing it. I hope to never lose that picture in my mind, ever. Some of the other highlights of the trip were: seeing the country where I was born, the hyena taking our cooler, camping wherever we felt like in the Bush, all the wildlife at Chobe, Moremi, and Etosha, white water rafting down the craziest river in the world, and trying to stay standing on a sandboard flying down a dune. Living in Botswana is definitely at the top of my list for what I want to do in my life in the future.
Renae
LISA:
It will be quite depressing to leave this place. It was really neat to finally see all of the places and people I’ve heard so much about and seen so many pictures of since as long as I can remember. I think everyone should someday in their lives put themselves into a situation where they are a foreigner in a developing country as the only person of their race in the whole town. Although extremely uncomfortable, it’s interesting for you and everyone around you to be so aware of the color of your skin, because you just don’t think about it at home. Also, seeing the immense amount of our possessions for a 6 week vacation next to the village huts that were used for a lifetime made me stop and think a little about the discrepancy between the way I live and the way much of the world lives. Some of my favorite parts were bush camping, the amazing amounts of wild game, interacting with the culture, meeting Batswana friends, sandboarding, the incredibly different types of scenic beauty from all 4 countries, the African sky at night, and Dad falling out of the white water raft. I was disappointed that we never got to attend a village church, because apparently that is quite an experience. Africa is definitely a continent I will hopefully be revisiting in the future.
Lisa
NICOLE:
So there’s no denying this trip is over. We will all go out for brunch later this morning together one last time before Travis, Erin and I will drop the others off at the Windhoek airport before beginning our journey back to Gaborone.
There is also no denying that this conclusion has to be written….I have come so far I would hate to have to pay for 1/7 of the trip now. I have been writing silly conclusions for the past few days, but nothing passes the critical eye of Dad. So here goes…
I would say one of my favorite things about this trip was the few times we weren’t just rich white tourists, but people who actually have ties to the country. Having contact with the local people and getting a glimpse into the culture by visiting friends of my parents in Gaborone and Maun have been unforgettable. These glimpses have definitely made me rethink my place in this world as the privileged white American I am. I too am jealous of Travis for getting to stay so much longer, but I’m not a big college grad yet so my time may come someday. I hope I have not seen Botswana for the last time.
Other highlights include camping in the bush in the middle of nowhere, watching the stars and the sunsets/sunrises, all the beautiful wildlife Botswana and Namibia have to offer, whitewater rafting the Zambezi, seeing that hyena steal our entire cooler, and of course just generally spending time with the family and Erin before we disperse to all corners of the world again.
It is sad to think that in just a few short hours this trip will be only a memory, but it had to happen someday I suppose. All good things must end. I am excited for the next part of this trip, which, for me consists of working at a day care for AIDS orphans and vulnerable children in Gaborone for three weeks. I a little nervous, heading to a city I don’t know, with a language I don’t know, to live with a woman I don’t know. But I am thankful to have the opportunity to have an experience like this, and glad to postpone my goodbye to Africa for a few more weeks.
Nicole
TRAVIS:
Well, I pretty much agree with everyone else’s conclusions thus far, and I’ll try not to bore you by repeating the same things that you have already read above. But I suppose I will keep with the tradition of listing some of my highlights: meeting some of the people that had only existed for me in stories, seeing the places were we had lived and comparing them with my memories, camping in the middle of nowhere and having campfires every night for a few solid weeks, spending some quality time with my family and Erin before they leave me here for good, whitewater rafting and seeing Dad lunge towards the middle of the raft to save it from capsizing as I fell off the edge, seeing all kinds of beautiful wildlife, the mokoro trip into the swamps….and many, many more of course. As Lisa mentioned, it has been difficult to come to terms with our position as wealthy white tourists here, even in one of Africa’s wealthiest and most stable nations. This was brought home to me in a real way when a lady came up to us while we were sitting in the Land Rover in a South African town, with all of our camping gear packed on the roof and in the back, and asked us where we were moving. No, we’re not moving. This is just all the junk that we need to “survive” for 6 weeks. As a counterpoint to that, I’m extremely excited to head back to Gaborone after this and settle down and actually live here. It will feel good to not be a tourist and to be able to feel more at home here with time. It will be interesting to see how it feels to be a white person living here rather than just passing through (although I suppose 15 months is pretty much “just passing through” also). In any case, the trip has been amazing and I have loved being here and seeing the places that we’ve been. Oh, and I think that I will try to keep a blog running while I’m here for family and friends and all that, so if you want to keep up with me while I’m with Flying Mission check it out. The address is fmtravis.blogspot.com Cool. Until later,
Travis
ERIN:
As seems to be the case with most good things in life, the end of this trip has come entirely too soon. It’s gone quickly…but what a six weeks it’s been. I thought at first that having a blog entry for every day was a little excessive, but I’ve been amazed at the way each one—at least to us (your views as blog readers are allowed to differ)—has been filled with significant happenings. Africa has been a more powerful teacher than years in a classroom could ever be in terms of the issues everyone else has already mentioned—racism, poverty, HIV/AIDS, post-colonialism, everything—and still I haven’t even scratched the surface of everything Botswana and southern Africa are about. Our travels here have forced me to think much more consciously about my place in the world and the incredible privileges I take for granted on an everyday basis. These are thoughts that will not be forgotten anytime soon. One of the highlights of the trip for me has definitely been making connections with people here. Traveling with people who used to live here has made this whole experience so much more meaningful than it would have been otherwise. Even though I’ve learned an awful lot and feel much more comfortable in this part of the world than I did a month ago, I still wish I could get to know the culture by living here instead of just passing through. I really do envy the chance Travis has to do that now, but soon I’ll be doing the same in Cambodia, so I can’t complain. The amazing experience of traveling through Africa aside, the chance to share in this family vacation has been the opportunity of a lifetime. In some ways, being part of another family caused as much culture shock for me as adjusting to a new continent. I have loved getting to know all of the Weavers on a much deeper level than I ever did before, and I give them a lot of credit for being patient with me as I’ve tried to figure out how I fit into this family. I am not looking forward to saying goodbye to most of them tomorrow, and to Travis and Nicole and Botswana in one short week. I can’t claim that this was ever my home like the others, but I share their sentiments that I want to come back. So goodbye, Africa. I hope we will meet again.
Erin
JOLENE:
It’s hard to know how to wrap this up. The kids have said things very well I think. It’s been a significant trip into the past for all of us and something we’ve all looked forward to for many years – basically since we’ve left. Highlights for me were connecting with the people we knew (everyone was so thrilled that we remembered them & made the effort to come see them when we were here) and the places we’ve lived, the gorgeous stars at night, the thousands of animals (especially lions), night sounds and spending time with my family before we disperse again for over a year.
Traveling in a Land Rover brought back many, many memories of the Land Rover we used to have while living in Maun and bumping over those roads in the sand & dust – I had thought I was done with that forever! What amazed me too were all the changes in Gaborone and Maun, and the whole country in general – so many paved roads that didn’t used to be, western type malls where there were just little shops before, Bokaa with electricity and telephones, and a paved road into it. So we couldn’t really show the kids how it used to be exactly. I’m excited for Travis (& Nicole for 3 weeks) to be able to spend more time in Botswana.
It was definitely a worthwhile trip and one we won’t soon forget!!
Jolene
ROGER:
Highlights: Reconnecting with a few of our Batswana friends, seeing the beautiful night sky without ANY ground light interference, sitting by a campfire many a night and getting it stoked back up the next morning for tea and breakfast (we went for a stretch of 18 continuous days - cooking on a campfire every night, and warming up to it each morning).
However for me there is nothing like bush camping and trying to think about how far away the closest human being might be. The night “jungle’ sounds are amazing. Hearing the roar of the lions, the laugh of the hyena, the grunts of the hippos, mixed in with the chorus of all the other night sounds is one of the sweetest sounds on earth. Folks, it doesn’t get any better than that.
Disappointments: It was disappointing we were not in a location to experience an African Independent Church service on any of the Sunday mornings. I really wanted the kids to have that experience. It was also a bit non-nostalgic to see Gaborone and Maun being so different. Gabs is now a real city – when we arrived they were so excited to have just installed the first two robots (traffic lights) in the country. Maun is totally different – they don’t have robots yet, but they now have paved roads and two round-a-bouts already. The wheels of development have been spinning and that is good. It went from one of the poorest countries in Africa to one of the wealthiest over the years, but one of the things that have also spun off is crime and violence, which was unknown before. Sadly one no longer feels as safe and carefree as before. Locked gates are everywhere – even in Maun. That was unheard of before. Our old place in Maun even has electric, and along with that electric fences surround the yard. Electric fences are installed around the tops of many walls in Gabs and Maun. What happened to the trust everyone had before? I do miss that, however in the rural villages it is like it always was. Hopefully it will remain that way for a while.
As was stated above – I love Africa – no doubt about it!
Roger
Sunday, July 22, 2007
July 22
ROGER:
Today is the day we each go our own ways. All vacations must come to an end I guess, and this one is no different. Nicole, Erin, and Travis will drop Jolene, Renae, Lisa and me at the airport to catch our long flight home – something I am not looking forward to. I do long flights like that often enough, but for some reason sitting in the front office is not nearly as bad as riding in the back.
I guess in a few days this trip will be nothing more than a good memory (and in a short time only a distant memory), but I am thankful I have a job that allowed me to accumulate frequent flyer miles so this could happen. It is good to have had the opportunity to visit the place that has had more of an impact on my life, than any other life experience I’ve had – by a long shot.
Roger
Today is the day we each go our own ways. All vacations must come to an end I guess, and this one is no different. Nicole, Erin, and Travis will drop Jolene, Renae, Lisa and me at the airport to catch our long flight home – something I am not looking forward to. I do long flights like that often enough, but for some reason sitting in the front office is not nearly as bad as riding in the back.
I guess in a few days this trip will be nothing more than a good memory (and in a short time only a distant memory), but I am thankful I have a job that allowed me to accumulate frequent flyer miles so this could happen. It is good to have had the opportunity to visit the place that has had more of an impact on my life, than any other life experience I’ve had – by a long shot.
Roger
July 21
ROGER:
Today was packing up day. We sorted through all our things – packing the things in bins to return with Jolene, Lisa, Renae and me, and putting the things back in Tau for Travis, Nicole, and Erin to take to Gaborone. After short jaunts to the shops for tape and rope, and shifting things around to make the weights stay within the limits we finally got it all reasonably organized and then headed out to a pizza joint for dinner. After eating we returned and sat around and talked, before finally going to bed a little after 10:00 PM – that may be a record for a late night for us!
Roger
Today was packing up day. We sorted through all our things – packing the things in bins to return with Jolene, Lisa, Renae and me, and putting the things back in Tau for Travis, Nicole, and Erin to take to Gaborone. After short jaunts to the shops for tape and rope, and shifting things around to make the weights stay within the limits we finally got it all reasonably organized and then headed out to a pizza joint for dinner. After eating we returned and sat around and talked, before finally going to bed a little after 10:00 PM – that may be a record for a late night for us!
Roger
Saturday, July 21, 2007
July 20
LISA:
We got up fairly early to watch the sun rise. It was a tad bit disappointing, since it was pretty much it’s normal old bright yellow self by the time it came up over the mountains. But, nevertheless, it was our last African sunrise in the desert. Boo and bullfrogs. We had a very tasty breakfast of sausage and soft-boiled eggs and potatoes and toast and mmm it was good. We packed up for the last time, and started the trek to Windhoek. We got there by early afternoon, and found one of the only places left in the whole city with available space. Dad and Mom got a double and the kids got a dorm with another lady. We needed Mom & Dad’s room for space to pack up all of our junk, since we decided not to try to jam all of our possessions into the dorm with that poor woman. So we unloaded everything from Tau’s filthy body and Dad took him to get him an extreme makeover at the local “Car Bath.” Some of us took a dip in the pool. It was slightly more conducive to swimming than the Okavango River Lodge pool, which was nice, although the sauna we ran into afterwards still felt good. We kind of started packing a little, but soon gave up when we realized how hungry we were. Since we pretty much had no food left besides some ketchup and chicken pot pie, we showered and started driving around looking for places to eat. Tau was a whole new beast, let me tell ya. We found this Chinese place that was really really great with one of those tables where the center spins. We got several dishes and spun them around for all to share. It was delicioso, although it definitely wasn’t the best thing for my screwed up stomach…
Lisa
We got up fairly early to watch the sun rise. It was a tad bit disappointing, since it was pretty much it’s normal old bright yellow self by the time it came up over the mountains. But, nevertheless, it was our last African sunrise in the desert. Boo and bullfrogs. We had a very tasty breakfast of sausage and soft-boiled eggs and potatoes and toast and mmm it was good. We packed up for the last time, and started the trek to Windhoek. We got there by early afternoon, and found one of the only places left in the whole city with available space. Dad and Mom got a double and the kids got a dorm with another lady. We needed Mom & Dad’s room for space to pack up all of our junk, since we decided not to try to jam all of our possessions into the dorm with that poor woman. So we unloaded everything from Tau’s filthy body and Dad took him to get him an extreme makeover at the local “Car Bath.” Some of us took a dip in the pool. It was slightly more conducive to swimming than the Okavango River Lodge pool, which was nice, although the sauna we ran into afterwards still felt good. We kind of started packing a little, but soon gave up when we realized how hungry we were. Since we pretty much had no food left besides some ketchup and chicken pot pie, we showered and started driving around looking for places to eat. Tau was a whole new beast, let me tell ya. We found this Chinese place that was really really great with one of those tables where the center spins. We got several dishes and spun them around for all to share. It was delicioso, although it definitely wasn’t the best thing for my screwed up stomach…
Lisa
July 19
NICOLE:
This morning after catching up on some internet at a local café, we packed up and said goodbye to Swakapmund forever, heading toward Windhoek and our final destination. Mom and Dad thought they had remembered that on the way there were some more huge dunes, and we had kept our boards, hoping to catch some more dune sliding fun. We were surely disappointed when the landscape turned out to look more like Utah than dune-laden Namibia. It’s so desolate and bleak—beautiful in its own way I suppose. We arrived in a little town in the middle of the desert named Solitaire in the late afternoon. It’s a big dot on the map, but it sure holds true to its name. It consists of a general store, bar, petrol store, lodge, and campground. I’m pretty sure the tourists greatly outnumbered the locals. There we set up camp, had some time to swim in the pool, lounge around in the sun and do some hiking before supper time. The last few days have been much more relaxing than before, which is a nice change of pace from the rest of the trip, although I usually am one that wants to keep moving. Now that we are on the home stretch and have everything planned out where we’re going to be when, we realize we have time to relax and have to keep reminding ourselves of that. The entire trip, Dad has been wanting to make bush pot-pie. Not to be confused with the regular kind. Bush pot-pie goes something like this: Dad asks Mom how much flour and eggs it takes to make a double recipe of pot-pie dough. Mom recommends 4 cups of flour and 4 eggs. Dad throws 9 cups of flour and 13 eggs in a dishpan, along with some water and whatever milk we happen to have left. Dad then takes two big logs from our stack of firewood and uses an axe to make a smooth, table-top surface on them both. No utensils allowed. We throw some water, potatoes, and chicken in a black pot and put it in the fire. Then Dad and I each use an axe to smoosh the pieces of dough Lisa and Renae give us before throwing them in the black pot. If it falls in the sand you’re not allowed throw it into the fire. Instead, you give it to Dad, who has a special method of blowing (/spitting) on it, thus cleaning it completely. If all the dough squares don’t fit in the pot, you just roll them up into balls, put them in a smaller pot with some boiling water, roll them in cinnamon sugar, and have them for desert. It’s quite a process, really. And quite delicious. We then sat around the campfire complaining about our stomachs, looking at the stars, and, realizing it was our last night of camping in Africa, decided to stay up really late. It didn’t work out-- we were all in bed before 10 once again.
Nicole
This morning after catching up on some internet at a local café, we packed up and said goodbye to Swakapmund forever, heading toward Windhoek and our final destination. Mom and Dad thought they had remembered that on the way there were some more huge dunes, and we had kept our boards, hoping to catch some more dune sliding fun. We were surely disappointed when the landscape turned out to look more like Utah than dune-laden Namibia. It’s so desolate and bleak—beautiful in its own way I suppose. We arrived in a little town in the middle of the desert named Solitaire in the late afternoon. It’s a big dot on the map, but it sure holds true to its name. It consists of a general store, bar, petrol store, lodge, and campground. I’m pretty sure the tourists greatly outnumbered the locals. There we set up camp, had some time to swim in the pool, lounge around in the sun and do some hiking before supper time. The last few days have been much more relaxing than before, which is a nice change of pace from the rest of the trip, although I usually am one that wants to keep moving. Now that we are on the home stretch and have everything planned out where we’re going to be when, we realize we have time to relax and have to keep reminding ourselves of that. The entire trip, Dad has been wanting to make bush pot-pie. Not to be confused with the regular kind. Bush pot-pie goes something like this: Dad asks Mom how much flour and eggs it takes to make a double recipe of pot-pie dough. Mom recommends 4 cups of flour and 4 eggs. Dad throws 9 cups of flour and 13 eggs in a dishpan, along with some water and whatever milk we happen to have left. Dad then takes two big logs from our stack of firewood and uses an axe to make a smooth, table-top surface on them both. No utensils allowed. We throw some water, potatoes, and chicken in a black pot and put it in the fire. Then Dad and I each use an axe to smoosh the pieces of dough Lisa and Renae give us before throwing them in the black pot. If it falls in the sand you’re not allowed throw it into the fire. Instead, you give it to Dad, who has a special method of blowing (/spitting) on it, thus cleaning it completely. If all the dough squares don’t fit in the pot, you just roll them up into balls, put them in a smaller pot with some boiling water, roll them in cinnamon sugar, and have them for desert. It’s quite a process, really. And quite delicious. We then sat around the campfire complaining about our stomachs, looking at the stars, and, realizing it was our last night of camping in Africa, decided to stay up really late. It didn’t work out-- we were all in bed before 10 once again.
Nicole
July 18
ERIN
Well, this could very well be my last chance to blog. I admit, I get a little tearful just thinking about that. But seriously, we are coming down the home stretch. Only three days now until Roger and Jolene and Lisa and Renae fly home, and Travis and Nicole and I make our journey back to Gaborone. Since we haven’t paid much attention to dates or days of the week, it comes as somewhat of a surprise that we’re nearing the end already. I, for one, am not ready for this to be over. But enough thinking about that.
Today we did not drive anywhere. That in itself is a rather momentous occasion. Since we decided to stay in Swakopmund a second night, we didn’t have to pack anything up this morning. We spent a leisurely morning making some tasty pancakes in the hostel kitchen, and then we piled into Tau for a duneboarding excursion. OK, so we did drive some places…but by now, anything less than five hours in the car is nothing to this crew of hardened travelers.
We stopped on our way to the dunes to buy five duneboards—flat rectangles of wood that you use to slide down the sand dunes. While Roger and Jolene went off on an unsuccessful quest for internet access, the rest of us spent a few hours climbing the dunes and zooming down on our trusty dune boards. The procedure goes something like this: rub wax into the smooth side of the board, lug it up to the top of the dune, lie down on it on your stomach, pull the front edge up with your hands, and take off down the slope. (You must remember, of course, to keep your mouth closed, or suffer the consequence. Eyes, naturally, are a little trickier, as keeping them closed means you’re likely to hit an unexpected footprint and take a faceplant into the sand.) All in all, maybe one percent of our time was spent duneboarding, and the other 99% trudging up the never-ending mountains of sand and painstakingly scraping the ever-present grains out of parts of our bodies that we didn’t even know existed. It was so worth it. In fact, we liked it so much that we went back in the evening for more of the fun and brought the parents along with us. Highlights included watching Roger take his first run down the hill, stacking Travis, Nic, Lisa, and me on top of each other on three boards for a wild ride, and trying to stand up on our boards and sandboard down. We got some sweet video footage of us flying down the slopes and taking some crazy falls. Fortunately, only minor injuries were incurred when we ran high-speed into some unexpected little (and not-so-little) rocks at the bottom of one dune. Even Lisa, who’s still feeling a little under the weather, wouldn’t hear of missing out on the fun and succeeded in being the only one to stand up on her board the entire way down the hill without falling. We watched the sun set over the ocean from the top of a dune, boarded down one last time, and headed back to the hostel, exhausted, for showers, band-aids, real beds, and some hard-earned sleep. Another beautiful day in Africa.
Erin
Well, this could very well be my last chance to blog. I admit, I get a little tearful just thinking about that. But seriously, we are coming down the home stretch. Only three days now until Roger and Jolene and Lisa and Renae fly home, and Travis and Nicole and I make our journey back to Gaborone. Since we haven’t paid much attention to dates or days of the week, it comes as somewhat of a surprise that we’re nearing the end already. I, for one, am not ready for this to be over. But enough thinking about that.
Today we did not drive anywhere. That in itself is a rather momentous occasion. Since we decided to stay in Swakopmund a second night, we didn’t have to pack anything up this morning. We spent a leisurely morning making some tasty pancakes in the hostel kitchen, and then we piled into Tau for a duneboarding excursion. OK, so we did drive some places…but by now, anything less than five hours in the car is nothing to this crew of hardened travelers.
We stopped on our way to the dunes to buy five duneboards—flat rectangles of wood that you use to slide down the sand dunes. While Roger and Jolene went off on an unsuccessful quest for internet access, the rest of us spent a few hours climbing the dunes and zooming down on our trusty dune boards. The procedure goes something like this: rub wax into the smooth side of the board, lug it up to the top of the dune, lie down on it on your stomach, pull the front edge up with your hands, and take off down the slope. (You must remember, of course, to keep your mouth closed, or suffer the consequence. Eyes, naturally, are a little trickier, as keeping them closed means you’re likely to hit an unexpected footprint and take a faceplant into the sand.) All in all, maybe one percent of our time was spent duneboarding, and the other 99% trudging up the never-ending mountains of sand and painstakingly scraping the ever-present grains out of parts of our bodies that we didn’t even know existed. It was so worth it. In fact, we liked it so much that we went back in the evening for more of the fun and brought the parents along with us. Highlights included watching Roger take his first run down the hill, stacking Travis, Nic, Lisa, and me on top of each other on three boards for a wild ride, and trying to stand up on our boards and sandboard down. We got some sweet video footage of us flying down the slopes and taking some crazy falls. Fortunately, only minor injuries were incurred when we ran high-speed into some unexpected little (and not-so-little) rocks at the bottom of one dune. Even Lisa, who’s still feeling a little under the weather, wouldn’t hear of missing out on the fun and succeeded in being the only one to stand up on her board the entire way down the hill without falling. We watched the sun set over the ocean from the top of a dune, boarded down one last time, and headed back to the hostel, exhausted, for showers, band-aids, real beds, and some hard-earned sleep. Another beautiful day in Africa.
Erin
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
New Pictures
I have uploaded more pictures onto my webshots page again, but unfortunately they were added onto the end of the first album I made instead of in a new one like I wanted. More pics later.
Travis
Travis
July 17
RENAE:
Honestly nothing much happened today. We got up and saw another beautiful sunrise, ate breakfast, and packed up. There are the cutest, adorablest little kids EVER here. I tried to talk to them but they don’t know English and just waved and laughed at me. Well, we left into the most desolate country I’ve ever seen in my life. No water, no trees, and hardly any wildlife besides a few gemsbok here and there. It’s so boring that all anyone does much is sleep in the car, although we did get to the coast and stopped at Cape Cross to see the seal colony there. That I must say was pretty neat, but they were all swimming. All you can see are the tons of seal heads bob under the water when a wave comes, and let me tell you they are the smelliest animals I have ever smelled—even worse than pigs and chickens combined, and, believe me, I have experience with both of them. I also really miss good water. This treated crap doesn’t taste that good. We got to Swakopmund and stayed at a hostel there. The padres went out to eat while the rest of us made our own supper of mac and cheese, mashed potatoes, and sautéed veggies. And now it is tomorrow morning and we are on our way to go sand boarding on some humungo dunes and I’m really excited.
Renae
Honestly nothing much happened today. We got up and saw another beautiful sunrise, ate breakfast, and packed up. There are the cutest, adorablest little kids EVER here. I tried to talk to them but they don’t know English and just waved and laughed at me. Well, we left into the most desolate country I’ve ever seen in my life. No water, no trees, and hardly any wildlife besides a few gemsbok here and there. It’s so boring that all anyone does much is sleep in the car, although we did get to the coast and stopped at Cape Cross to see the seal colony there. That I must say was pretty neat, but they were all swimming. All you can see are the tons of seal heads bob under the water when a wave comes, and let me tell you they are the smelliest animals I have ever smelled—even worse than pigs and chickens combined, and, believe me, I have experience with both of them. I also really miss good water. This treated crap doesn’t taste that good. We got to Swakopmund and stayed at a hostel there. The padres went out to eat while the rest of us made our own supper of mac and cheese, mashed potatoes, and sautéed veggies. And now it is tomorrow morning and we are on our way to go sand boarding on some humungo dunes and I’m really excited.
Renae
July 16
JOLENE:
We left our campground just outside Etosha gate this morning (the tent was actually set up on grass! and not sand) and headed toward Skeleton Coast. These roads in Namibia aren’t paved, but wide gravel ones which are really quite smooth, but the dust is something else! By the time we stop at night we are feeling very grimy and it’s hard to get a brush through our hair. That’s when a shower feels so very good. And without the air conditioner working it’s of course that much worse.
We were heading to a small town – which looked on the map like it was pretty big so we were thinking we could get our groceries there, use an ATM (we were getting low on cash), etc. Well, after asking when we got to a small store if they took credit cards and they assured us they did, I went through the check out line with a couple days worth of food only to be told at check out that their machine did not work. AND the ATM did not work either so we couldn’t get more cash. I left all my groceries sitting there & we went to another little store (the only other one in town) where their credit card machine did work but they did not have nearly the selection of groceries the first place did. Anyway we won’t starve, but I didn’t get what I wanted to. Basically all the town was were these couple little shops.
We kept on driving and driving & saw a very desolate, brown, dry landscape but also drove through some beautiful mountains and saw some zebra, gemsbok, and signs of elephants, (their poop), but didn’t see actual elephants. We arrived at the gate to Skeleton Coast National Park at about 3:30 and were told it was too late to keep going – the gate closed at 3 – because after 3 you don’t have time to drive out of the park and you can’t spend the night in the park. Anyway, they had a very nice place set up for people like us, and we camped free right there at the gate. They had beautiful new showers (cold) and brought us firewood and everything. That’s probably the earliest we’ve stopped for the night on this trip and it was very nice to do most of the cooking in the daylight for once. Some of us washed out some dirty clothes (you wouldn’t believe the dirty people we’ve become) and took showers.
And we had a little scare with Lisa. We didn’t know it but she wasn’t feeling very well most of the day, and when we stopped she said she was dizzy, had some trouble breathing, had diarrhea and just felt weak. Roger talked to the guy at the gate and the closest place to a doctor would be Swakopmund which is a 4 hour drive away through the park which they would allow us to do, or 6-7 hr drive back the way we had come. There were clinics closer with a nurse, but no doctors. The scary part was the trouble breathing part. I thought maybe with all the dust it was getting too her, but I don’t really know. Anyway after she drank quite a bit (we also figured she might be dehydrated) and laying down she felt better and we decided to stay there.
I think one of the hardest things for me on this trip is the constant dirt and dust and not being clean. We hadn’t brought many clothes with us so we wear the same thing day after day and haven’t had much time to wash them. I’m hoping in Swakopmund to maybe have a washing machine & do a few loads. The last we had a washing machine was in Gaborone.
I don’t think anyone has written about the weather in this blog. The only rain we had was back the day we left Cape Town. We knew Botswana would be sunny skies all the time and it did not disappoint. It’s the dry season and so knew there would be no rain, which is nice for camping, but not for the dust or growing things. Nights get quite chilly but mostly we’ve been warm enough with our sleeping bags. Roger & I get the tent on top of the truck and have our bags zipped together & stay warm, and the kids all have good sleeping bags that are for colder weather, but sometimes they’ve been a bit cold. A couple hours after the sun is up we’re taking off our sweatshirts and it’s a nice warm day. Don’t know temps, but the weather has pretty much been perfect. Some days have been pretty hot, and I tell Travis to remember this is winter, and to be prepared for when summer comes!
After talking around the fire it was another early to bed night.
Jolene
We left our campground just outside Etosha gate this morning (the tent was actually set up on grass! and not sand) and headed toward Skeleton Coast. These roads in Namibia aren’t paved, but wide gravel ones which are really quite smooth, but the dust is something else! By the time we stop at night we are feeling very grimy and it’s hard to get a brush through our hair. That’s when a shower feels so very good. And without the air conditioner working it’s of course that much worse.
We were heading to a small town – which looked on the map like it was pretty big so we were thinking we could get our groceries there, use an ATM (we were getting low on cash), etc. Well, after asking when we got to a small store if they took credit cards and they assured us they did, I went through the check out line with a couple days worth of food only to be told at check out that their machine did not work. AND the ATM did not work either so we couldn’t get more cash. I left all my groceries sitting there & we went to another little store (the only other one in town) where their credit card machine did work but they did not have nearly the selection of groceries the first place did. Anyway we won’t starve, but I didn’t get what I wanted to. Basically all the town was were these couple little shops.
We kept on driving and driving & saw a very desolate, brown, dry landscape but also drove through some beautiful mountains and saw some zebra, gemsbok, and signs of elephants, (their poop), but didn’t see actual elephants. We arrived at the gate to Skeleton Coast National Park at about 3:30 and were told it was too late to keep going – the gate closed at 3 – because after 3 you don’t have time to drive out of the park and you can’t spend the night in the park. Anyway, they had a very nice place set up for people like us, and we camped free right there at the gate. They had beautiful new showers (cold) and brought us firewood and everything. That’s probably the earliest we’ve stopped for the night on this trip and it was very nice to do most of the cooking in the daylight for once. Some of us washed out some dirty clothes (you wouldn’t believe the dirty people we’ve become) and took showers.
And we had a little scare with Lisa. We didn’t know it but she wasn’t feeling very well most of the day, and when we stopped she said she was dizzy, had some trouble breathing, had diarrhea and just felt weak. Roger talked to the guy at the gate and the closest place to a doctor would be Swakopmund which is a 4 hour drive away through the park which they would allow us to do, or 6-7 hr drive back the way we had come. There were clinics closer with a nurse, but no doctors. The scary part was the trouble breathing part. I thought maybe with all the dust it was getting too her, but I don’t really know. Anyway after she drank quite a bit (we also figured she might be dehydrated) and laying down she felt better and we decided to stay there.
I think one of the hardest things for me on this trip is the constant dirt and dust and not being clean. We hadn’t brought many clothes with us so we wear the same thing day after day and haven’t had much time to wash them. I’m hoping in Swakopmund to maybe have a washing machine & do a few loads. The last we had a washing machine was in Gaborone.
I don’t think anyone has written about the weather in this blog. The only rain we had was back the day we left Cape Town. We knew Botswana would be sunny skies all the time and it did not disappoint. It’s the dry season and so knew there would be no rain, which is nice for camping, but not for the dust or growing things. Nights get quite chilly but mostly we’ve been warm enough with our sleeping bags. Roger & I get the tent on top of the truck and have our bags zipped together & stay warm, and the kids all have good sleeping bags that are for colder weather, but sometimes they’ve been a bit cold. A couple hours after the sun is up we’re taking off our sweatshirts and it’s a nice warm day. Don’t know temps, but the weather has pretty much been perfect. Some days have been pretty hot, and I tell Travis to remember this is winter, and to be prepared for when summer comes!
After talking around the fire it was another early to bed night.
Jolene
July 15
LISA:
I have been informed that Mom and I have only blogged 4 times, while everyone else has blogged 5 times, besides Dad, who has blogged 8 times. So here I am. I guess I will blog (blog is not included in the Microsoft Word dictionary. Therefore, it should not exist) as I sit here soaking my foot. I had the good fortune to step on a thorn that went ½ inch into my left foot today. It’s really grand.
Anyway, I would say that Namibia is not so very bad, although Travis is generally a whiny character. Tehe. No, actually I was pretty asleep yesterday, but not today. We got up and packed in record time (literally). The hour time difference helped. We got into Etosha pretty early, and then found a waterhole with some zebras and 2 jackals trying to catch birds. They weren’t very successful. The Park was actually very good, as well as much more developed and full of people than Moremi. We saw tons of things. Some of the game highlights of the day were 2 springbuck fighting (which I spotted), 5 jackals surrounding some type of antelope carcass, which was difficult to see exactly what was going on (something I also spotted), 3 lions way out in the distance, and a mating pair of lions that backed up a bit when the stupid and inconsiderate guy in front of us decided to get out for a picture with the thing. Too bad it didn’t chase him. So the grand total for the lion count is 9. I’d say that’s pretty impressive. I am happy with that.
So I liked today a lot. It was probably our last opportunity to see large quantities of impressive game, which is kind of sad. We stopped at a waterhole and saw some elephants splashing themselves, and before we left the park we stopped at one more waterhole. We found our campground just out of the gate, and that is where I remain by the fire.
Lisa
I have been informed that Mom and I have only blogged 4 times, while everyone else has blogged 5 times, besides Dad, who has blogged 8 times. So here I am. I guess I will blog (blog is not included in the Microsoft Word dictionary. Therefore, it should not exist) as I sit here soaking my foot. I had the good fortune to step on a thorn that went ½ inch into my left foot today. It’s really grand.
Anyway, I would say that Namibia is not so very bad, although Travis is generally a whiny character. Tehe. No, actually I was pretty asleep yesterday, but not today. We got up and packed in record time (literally). The hour time difference helped. We got into Etosha pretty early, and then found a waterhole with some zebras and 2 jackals trying to catch birds. They weren’t very successful. The Park was actually very good, as well as much more developed and full of people than Moremi. We saw tons of things. Some of the game highlights of the day were 2 springbuck fighting (which I spotted), 5 jackals surrounding some type of antelope carcass, which was difficult to see exactly what was going on (something I also spotted), 3 lions way out in the distance, and a mating pair of lions that backed up a bit when the stupid and inconsiderate guy in front of us decided to get out for a picture with the thing. Too bad it didn’t chase him. So the grand total for the lion count is 9. I’d say that’s pretty impressive. I am happy with that.
So I liked today a lot. It was probably our last opportunity to see large quantities of impressive game, which is kind of sad. We stopped at a waterhole and saw some elephants splashing themselves, and before we left the park we stopped at one more waterhole. We found our campground just out of the gate, and that is where I remain by the fire.
Lisa
July 15
TRAVIS:
If anybody tries to tell you that driving through Namibia is exciting, immediately unbefriend them. Because they’re a liar. I think I drove over 200 kilometers without moving the steering wheel more than a half a degree or so from center, and that was to pass a slow-moving pickup packed with people. 200 kilometers without a curve or a hill. As much as I rag on Kansas and Nebraska, they got nothin’ on Namibia. And, unfortunately, we didn’t do much else today but drive across this God-forsaken country. Before leaving Shakawe and, with it, Botswana, we went into town to find the post office and to visit the bakery that we’d heard about, where we picked up some delicious rolls and fat cakes. If nobody’s told you before, fat cakes are basically just fried balls of dough that, like everything else that is fried, taste pretty darn good. Then, once again, we crossed a border and entered the final country of our trip, Namibia. And then began the above-mentioned tedium, interrupted only by a grocery stop and a puff adder. The puff adder was definitely the highlight of my day, as I’ve been searching furiously for cool snakes since we got here and hadn’t seen any snakes at all until today. Dad didn’t see the snake until he passed right over it (without hitting it – it went smack between the wheels), so of course we stopped and backed up to see what it was. It turned out to be beautiful puff adder about 4 feet long that had apparently been hit before and was pretty seriously injured. We thought he was done for, but as we watched, the snake slowly inched its way across the other side of the road moving painfully, like a caterpillar instead of in the usual zig-zag motion. We hoped it might make it (well, all of us but mom hoped it would make it), but as we were watching a car blasted up from behind us and passed us, hitting the snake as it went. The snake writhed around and headed for the edge of the road, where it coiled up and, we think, probably died. It was a sad day for me, and I hated to see that beautiful snake die. Of course, the villagers (along with mom) probably appreciated the death of the poisonous thing. Anyway, we ended the day by arriving at the gate to Etosha national park about 30 minutes after dark, and, since the park closes at dark, we spent another night camping in the bush a little way off of the main road near the park. Maybe tomorrow Namibia will redeem itself.
Travis
If anybody tries to tell you that driving through Namibia is exciting, immediately unbefriend them. Because they’re a liar. I think I drove over 200 kilometers without moving the steering wheel more than a half a degree or so from center, and that was to pass a slow-moving pickup packed with people. 200 kilometers without a curve or a hill. As much as I rag on Kansas and Nebraska, they got nothin’ on Namibia. And, unfortunately, we didn’t do much else today but drive across this God-forsaken country. Before leaving Shakawe and, with it, Botswana, we went into town to find the post office and to visit the bakery that we’d heard about, where we picked up some delicious rolls and fat cakes. If nobody’s told you before, fat cakes are basically just fried balls of dough that, like everything else that is fried, taste pretty darn good. Then, once again, we crossed a border and entered the final country of our trip, Namibia. And then began the above-mentioned tedium, interrupted only by a grocery stop and a puff adder. The puff adder was definitely the highlight of my day, as I’ve been searching furiously for cool snakes since we got here and hadn’t seen any snakes at all until today. Dad didn’t see the snake until he passed right over it (without hitting it – it went smack between the wheels), so of course we stopped and backed up to see what it was. It turned out to be beautiful puff adder about 4 feet long that had apparently been hit before and was pretty seriously injured. We thought he was done for, but as we watched, the snake slowly inched its way across the other side of the road moving painfully, like a caterpillar instead of in the usual zig-zag motion. We hoped it might make it (well, all of us but mom hoped it would make it), but as we were watching a car blasted up from behind us and passed us, hitting the snake as it went. The snake writhed around and headed for the edge of the road, where it coiled up and, we think, probably died. It was a sad day for me, and I hated to see that beautiful snake die. Of course, the villagers (along with mom) probably appreciated the death of the poisonous thing. Anyway, we ended the day by arriving at the gate to Etosha national park about 30 minutes after dark, and, since the park closes at dark, we spent another night camping in the bush a little way off of the main road near the park. Maybe tomorrow Namibia will redeem itself.
Travis
July 13
RENAE:
Last night we camped for probably the last time in the bush along a sand road with no city noises or people near us. For miles and miles and miles. And actually, now that I think about it, there weren’t any animal noises either. It was slightly eerie, seeing as every other night there were the roaring of lions, barking of baboons, coughing of monkeys (they sound exactly like Gollum), bulling of frogs (?), and whistling of doves to put us to sleep. I really extremely love the bush. I will miss it a bunch. I think I’m gonna cry when I leave. I love this land.
Anyway, as Travis said we went to Tsodilo Hills to see a bunch of old Bushmen paintings on the rocks. There are over 4,500 discovered so far, but we obviously didn’t see them all. They’re pretty amazing, seeing as they were here for thousands of years and just painted on with berries and bone marrow and whatever else they had. So yes it was a very eventful day—we hiked into the hills to view these masterpieces, visited a small Bushmen village nearby, and then headed on our way to Shakawe to meet some of my parent’s old friends. Then we went to a pretty high-class campground along the river here (in Shakawe). Monkeys infest this place as well, but are a good source of entertainment, especially the babies that sometimes don’t make the jumps from tree to tree. I’m pretty sure they throw things at us too, but no one else believes me. We also learned that there is a hippo that likes to come out of the water at night and walk around the campground. I hope he doesn’t sit on our tent and smush us.
Renae
Last night we camped for probably the last time in the bush along a sand road with no city noises or people near us. For miles and miles and miles. And actually, now that I think about it, there weren’t any animal noises either. It was slightly eerie, seeing as every other night there were the roaring of lions, barking of baboons, coughing of monkeys (they sound exactly like Gollum), bulling of frogs (?), and whistling of doves to put us to sleep. I really extremely love the bush. I will miss it a bunch. I think I’m gonna cry when I leave. I love this land.
Anyway, as Travis said we went to Tsodilo Hills to see a bunch of old Bushmen paintings on the rocks. There are over 4,500 discovered so far, but we obviously didn’t see them all. They’re pretty amazing, seeing as they were here for thousands of years and just painted on with berries and bone marrow and whatever else they had. So yes it was a very eventful day—we hiked into the hills to view these masterpieces, visited a small Bushmen village nearby, and then headed on our way to Shakawe to meet some of my parent’s old friends. Then we went to a pretty high-class campground along the river here (in Shakawe). Monkeys infest this place as well, but are a good source of entertainment, especially the babies that sometimes don’t make the jumps from tree to tree. I’m pretty sure they throw things at us too, but no one else believes me. We also learned that there is a hippo that likes to come out of the water at night and walk around the campground. I hope he doesn’t sit on our tent and smush us.
Renae
July 12
ROGER:
I just became a porter for my clients. Yes I am back at camp after putting them on a boat to spend the day on a Mokoro. My job now is to clean up, pack up, and do all the camp grunt work. HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?
We were planning on spending two nights here, but it is more expensive than camping in the wild (it’s hard to beat free camping). As they sat in the boat to take them across the lagoon to get on the mokoros, we “ran a vote”, and decided I should be packed up and ready to push on when they return around 4:00 or 5:00 (that is PM). I may have something ready for them to snack on when they return – (remember I am now the porter). Usually most are ready to push on, but Jolene sometimes needs some persuasion to “get onboard”. It works out fine and she doesn’t mind, but she needs to have some prodding at times to get her thinking about moving on and not sitting too long.
When I got back from the boat dock I found monkeys had invaded our camp again. We had most of the food packed up, but left the eggs and some cereal out, and they had that all cleaned up and had rooted through some things looking for more food. As I write this I must go chase the ones back that are trying to sneak in behind me to steal something. These are more cautious than some (the workers must use sling shots or something to chase them) so I can keep them at bay pretty easily.
Well I better get to work – actually I have all day. I better explain how I became the porter – I did volunteer. Two people can go on a mokoro, and since there was an odd person, (and not that cheap) I stayed back. I have done many mokoro trips in the past and although I do enjoy them, I know what it is like. Jolene only did one before, and the others don’t remember them at all. The last one Travis and Nicole did was when my parents visited in 1986 and Nicole was only two weeks old! It seems a bit odd now – taking a two week old baby on an overnight mokoro trip in the swamps – but back then we didn’t think anything of it. We used to take all our things and camp overnight, but today they are only doing a day trip.
I will let one of them tell you about the experience.
Roger
TRAVIS:
Today was our day to just sit back and relax. Not only did we have a porter back at camp to take care of packing up, but we got to sit in the bottom of mokoros all day while being pushed through the swamps by our polers. What a life, eh? That must be what it’s like to be with one of those safari groups that we see at campgrounds and stuff all the time…have your tent packed up for you, your meals prepared, and all of that. Now we’re back in the real world of having to earn our keep. Oh well. But I’m supposed to talk about the mokoro trip, I guess. Which was pretty awesome, I must say. We got on a motorboat to start, and were zipped along across Guma Lagoon and then through a maze of small channels that the boat barely fit through. We kept coming up on what looked like a solid wall of papyrus reeds at what I considered to be a slightly excessive rate of speed, only to have the driver whip the boat around a tight corner to keep us in the narrow channel. After about 30 minutes, we got a small island in the middle of the swamps, where we moved to mokoros and continued along with our three guides. Let me just say that every time one of those mokoros gets to where it is trying to go successfully, a small miracle has occurred, because those swamps are the most confusing maze of similar-looking grasses and islands that I could imagine. Anyway, we started out and headed lazily through the swamps, gliding through narrow channels and pushing new channels through the grasses as we went. One of the best parts was seeing all of the bird life; there were birds everywhere, many with beautiful, brilliant plumage. It was fun to be on the water, and to see so much water and so much green after being in the dry, desert-like areas of Botswana for so long. Around noon, we landed on an island, where we did a short 45 minute game walk and ate our lunch. The guides walked us around the island and showed us some of the plants and fruits that have been traditionally used for various things in Botswana. We saw a few warthogs and a bush buck (a small spotted antelope), but the best part of the game walk was the elephants that we saw. It wasn’t that exciting to see the elephants for the sake of seeing elephants, since we’ve seen so many already, but the exciting part was being on foot and getting fairly close to the huge beasts. It’s much more fun when you don’t have the safety of a car to retreat to. After lunch and playing a bit of catch with a palm fruit I picked up, we climbed back into the mokoros and took a bit of a more direct route back to the island from which we started. From there, we climbed back into the motorboat and arrived back at camp to find all of our things packed and ready to go. All in all, it was a great day, and it was a lot of fun to see the beauty and abundance of plant and animal life that is in this part of Botswana. After mom got a shower, we headed out towards Tsodilo Hills, a place where you can hike around and see a bunch of bushman paintings from centuries ago. We won’t make it the whole way tonight, so we’ll be spending another night in the bush tonight and getting to Tsodilo Hills tomorrow.
Travis
I just became a porter for my clients. Yes I am back at camp after putting them on a boat to spend the day on a Mokoro. My job now is to clean up, pack up, and do all the camp grunt work. HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?
We were planning on spending two nights here, but it is more expensive than camping in the wild (it’s hard to beat free camping). As they sat in the boat to take them across the lagoon to get on the mokoros, we “ran a vote”, and decided I should be packed up and ready to push on when they return around 4:00 or 5:00 (that is PM). I may have something ready for them to snack on when they return – (remember I am now the porter). Usually most are ready to push on, but Jolene sometimes needs some persuasion to “get onboard”. It works out fine and she doesn’t mind, but she needs to have some prodding at times to get her thinking about moving on and not sitting too long.
When I got back from the boat dock I found monkeys had invaded our camp again. We had most of the food packed up, but left the eggs and some cereal out, and they had that all cleaned up and had rooted through some things looking for more food. As I write this I must go chase the ones back that are trying to sneak in behind me to steal something. These are more cautious than some (the workers must use sling shots or something to chase them) so I can keep them at bay pretty easily.
Well I better get to work – actually I have all day. I better explain how I became the porter – I did volunteer. Two people can go on a mokoro, and since there was an odd person, (and not that cheap) I stayed back. I have done many mokoro trips in the past and although I do enjoy them, I know what it is like. Jolene only did one before, and the others don’t remember them at all. The last one Travis and Nicole did was when my parents visited in 1986 and Nicole was only two weeks old! It seems a bit odd now – taking a two week old baby on an overnight mokoro trip in the swamps – but back then we didn’t think anything of it. We used to take all our things and camp overnight, but today they are only doing a day trip.
I will let one of them tell you about the experience.
Roger
TRAVIS:
Today was our day to just sit back and relax. Not only did we have a porter back at camp to take care of packing up, but we got to sit in the bottom of mokoros all day while being pushed through the swamps by our polers. What a life, eh? That must be what it’s like to be with one of those safari groups that we see at campgrounds and stuff all the time…have your tent packed up for you, your meals prepared, and all of that. Now we’re back in the real world of having to earn our keep. Oh well. But I’m supposed to talk about the mokoro trip, I guess. Which was pretty awesome, I must say. We got on a motorboat to start, and were zipped along across Guma Lagoon and then through a maze of small channels that the boat barely fit through. We kept coming up on what looked like a solid wall of papyrus reeds at what I considered to be a slightly excessive rate of speed, only to have the driver whip the boat around a tight corner to keep us in the narrow channel. After about 30 minutes, we got a small island in the middle of the swamps, where we moved to mokoros and continued along with our three guides. Let me just say that every time one of those mokoros gets to where it is trying to go successfully, a small miracle has occurred, because those swamps are the most confusing maze of similar-looking grasses and islands that I could imagine. Anyway, we started out and headed lazily through the swamps, gliding through narrow channels and pushing new channels through the grasses as we went. One of the best parts was seeing all of the bird life; there were birds everywhere, many with beautiful, brilliant plumage. It was fun to be on the water, and to see so much water and so much green after being in the dry, desert-like areas of Botswana for so long. Around noon, we landed on an island, where we did a short 45 minute game walk and ate our lunch. The guides walked us around the island and showed us some of the plants and fruits that have been traditionally used for various things in Botswana. We saw a few warthogs and a bush buck (a small spotted antelope), but the best part of the game walk was the elephants that we saw. It wasn’t that exciting to see the elephants for the sake of seeing elephants, since we’ve seen so many already, but the exciting part was being on foot and getting fairly close to the huge beasts. It’s much more fun when you don’t have the safety of a car to retreat to. After lunch and playing a bit of catch with a palm fruit I picked up, we climbed back into the mokoros and took a bit of a more direct route back to the island from which we started. From there, we climbed back into the motorboat and arrived back at camp to find all of our things packed and ready to go. All in all, it was a great day, and it was a lot of fun to see the beauty and abundance of plant and animal life that is in this part of Botswana. After mom got a shower, we headed out towards Tsodilo Hills, a place where you can hike around and see a bunch of bushman paintings from centuries ago. We won’t make it the whole way tonight, so we’ll be spending another night in the bush tonight and getting to Tsodilo Hills tomorrow.
Travis
July 11
ROGER:
This morning most slept in later than usual, since they went to bed at such an ungodly hour of 9:45 (that is PM), so we loafed around for a few hours as we were originally planning on staying another night in Maun. We had done what we wanted to in Maun, except clean the truck up, and hit an internet café briefly. Tau is coated with mud, dust, and grime (inside and outside), and I was going to take it to a local “car wash” and get it thoroughly cleaned. I did get to see who I wanted to in Maun and we ended up getting finished there quicker than we thought we would, so after wasting about 2.5 hours in the AM it was finally decided to push on and head for Guma Lagoon to do a Mokoro trip. A mokoro is a traditional “dugout” type canoe (hewn from a solid tree trunk), and pushed through the Okavango Delta with a long wooden pole. Anyway we had to hit an internet café briefly to pay bills etc, (to decide if we had enough money to get back home), and do a little grocery shopping. We packed up quickly and cleaned to truck out “sort of” – just enough so we could sit on the seats and not hit our heads on the roof when we hit a bump, due to the layer of dirt on the seat – anyway you get the picture – it was dirty.
At the internet café I got quite a surprise – I just gave Mugabe $399.30 in Zimbabwe. OK I admit it – I was stupid. As you probably know the inflation rate is horrific in Zimbabwe, and the local people are just begging and getting foreign currency any way they can. Their money is pretty worthless and they will beg for any foreign currency. The exchange rate on the street is from 100,000.00 to 150.000.00 Zimbabwean Dollar to 1 US Dollar. The shops that are “licensed” to take foreign currency will give that exchange rate, but they cannot exchange extra money – that must happen at the bank. There are warnings that it is illegal to exchange on the street, but of course it happens all the time. I asked someone what the exchange rate was at the bank and they said around 25,000 to 1 – which is 4 to 6 times worse than buying with US Dollars (only where allowed), but I thought I will go to an ATM and just get 1 million or so Zim Dollars. When I tried it said that was over the legal limit, so I got $100,000.00 only. That is worth about $0.67 on the street. I told the others it was crazy I could only get that amount at the ATM – it was worthless. Today when I checked my bank balance online I saw the debit for $400.00 for the ATM at Vic Falls. I wrote and email to the bank and told them there had to be some mistake – I was expecting about $4.00 – worse than local rates, but I wanted to compare it. Before I sent the email I went online to get the official government rate to explain what it should have been, and was shocked to see it was 1 to 255. I couldn’t believe it – that is the government controlled rate – so I just paid $400.00 to get local currency that was equal to 67 cents at a shop. Our bill when we ate out for 7 was 7,500,000.00 Zim Dollars with a tip. It cost us $50.00 USD with the exchange rate they used. If they would have used the official exchange rate that meal would have cost us $29,411.77 US Dollars. It’s good I checked the exchange rate there before we ordered! How could I be so stupid – next time I’ll do my homework FIRST. I am still mad at myself for that one. I talked with many people on the street, and everybody is so upset at Mugabe and just waiting for his death. It is so sad to see a country like that – one that had a bright future 20 years ago.
Anyway I get accused by the others of my rambling – so here is the rest of the day: We drove to Guma Lagoon and camped at a “luxury” lodge in the Delta – we didn’t camp in their luxury tents, we self-camped. We ate supper. We talked. We went to bed. We went to sleep hearing the hippos snorting. Good Night.
PS – I did NOT snore.
Roger
Jolene
HAHA
This morning most slept in later than usual, since they went to bed at such an ungodly hour of 9:45 (that is PM), so we loafed around for a few hours as we were originally planning on staying another night in Maun. We had done what we wanted to in Maun, except clean the truck up, and hit an internet café briefly. Tau is coated with mud, dust, and grime (inside and outside), and I was going to take it to a local “car wash” and get it thoroughly cleaned. I did get to see who I wanted to in Maun and we ended up getting finished there quicker than we thought we would, so after wasting about 2.5 hours in the AM it was finally decided to push on and head for Guma Lagoon to do a Mokoro trip. A mokoro is a traditional “dugout” type canoe (hewn from a solid tree trunk), and pushed through the Okavango Delta with a long wooden pole. Anyway we had to hit an internet café briefly to pay bills etc, (to decide if we had enough money to get back home), and do a little grocery shopping. We packed up quickly and cleaned to truck out “sort of” – just enough so we could sit on the seats and not hit our heads on the roof when we hit a bump, due to the layer of dirt on the seat – anyway you get the picture – it was dirty.
At the internet café I got quite a surprise – I just gave Mugabe $399.30 in Zimbabwe. OK I admit it – I was stupid. As you probably know the inflation rate is horrific in Zimbabwe, and the local people are just begging and getting foreign currency any way they can. Their money is pretty worthless and they will beg for any foreign currency. The exchange rate on the street is from 100,000.00 to 150.000.00 Zimbabwean Dollar to 1 US Dollar. The shops that are “licensed” to take foreign currency will give that exchange rate, but they cannot exchange extra money – that must happen at the bank. There are warnings that it is illegal to exchange on the street, but of course it happens all the time. I asked someone what the exchange rate was at the bank and they said around 25,000 to 1 – which is 4 to 6 times worse than buying with US Dollars (only where allowed), but I thought I will go to an ATM and just get 1 million or so Zim Dollars. When I tried it said that was over the legal limit, so I got $100,000.00 only. That is worth about $0.67 on the street. I told the others it was crazy I could only get that amount at the ATM – it was worthless. Today when I checked my bank balance online I saw the debit for $400.00 for the ATM at Vic Falls. I wrote and email to the bank and told them there had to be some mistake – I was expecting about $4.00 – worse than local rates, but I wanted to compare it. Before I sent the email I went online to get the official government rate to explain what it should have been, and was shocked to see it was 1 to 255. I couldn’t believe it – that is the government controlled rate – so I just paid $400.00 to get local currency that was equal to 67 cents at a shop. Our bill when we ate out for 7 was 7,500,000.00 Zim Dollars with a tip. It cost us $50.00 USD with the exchange rate they used. If they would have used the official exchange rate that meal would have cost us $29,411.77 US Dollars. It’s good I checked the exchange rate there before we ordered! How could I be so stupid – next time I’ll do my homework FIRST. I am still mad at myself for that one. I talked with many people on the street, and everybody is so upset at Mugabe and just waiting for his death. It is so sad to see a country like that – one that had a bright future 20 years ago.
Anyway I get accused by the others of my rambling – so here is the rest of the day: We drove to Guma Lagoon and camped at a “luxury” lodge in the Delta – we didn’t camp in their luxury tents, we self-camped. We ate supper. We talked. We went to bed. We went to sleep hearing the hippos snorting. Good Night.
PS – I did NOT snore.
Roger
Jolene
HAHA
July 10
NICOLE:I must say, I do agree with Erin. While it does feel nice to sit on a toilet, take a hot shower, and not have to worry about rationing food, I could have stayed in the bush quite a while longer. After all, it could be awhile until the next time I get to ride on a bumpy dirt road on the roof of a Land Rover watching the colors of a sunset such as I will never see in the States, all the while passing hundreds of elephants, zebra, impala, giraffe, warthogs, hippos, and countless other African animals. Ah well. Back to civilization, and with it, very friendly Batswana, begging for contact information or marriage proposals, and a promise to help them come to America.
This morning we all woke up at 7:00 (in Dad’s case, hours before) to go into town with Dad, while he took poor Tau to get looked at. From the fix-it shop, us kids walked the mile or two to the downtown area, which didn’t seem like much, but, according to the parentals, way more built up than it used to be. We were lucky enough to find a large pharmacy where we were able to find what we’ve been looking for for weeks--contact solution, which costs about US $20! After that we spent most of the time walking through the village part of town, where the locals lived, waving to naked kids in the yards and women washing clothes in a tub or walking from town with bags of oranges or wood balanced on their heads. Dad and mom picked us up a few hours later, and after a quick picnic lunch on the banks of the Okavango, we began the search for our old house. It took at least an hour before we came to a part of the village where Mom finally thought she recognized where she was. It took some convincing from Dad to decide that the house we were in front of was indeed the house we used to live in. There were a few houses built around it, and the house was a different color, but the h/f radio pole that Dad had installed was still there. The only part of Maun I remember was being chased by our geese, Harry and Lydia, so I didn’t have much to say. We took a quick tour around our mud and thatched roof house before walking down the street to see if our next door neighbors were still around. There lived a woman named Bessie, who had 9 kids, one of them being a boy Travis’ age named Tayopa. We weren’t expecting to find much, but sure enough, Bessie’s oldest son was still there, and told us his mother was in Mochudi (which is only about 30 kms from Gaberone. Travis, Erin, and I plan on looking her up once we get back there) and Tayopa was still around, only at work downtown at the Ngami Times newspaper office.
So we headed downtown to find Travis’ long lost playmate. After asking for him at the front desk, and he came out, looking confused and a little scared at the sight of 7 white people who somehow knew his name, waiting for him expectantly. (He tells a pretty amusing story about what was going on in his mind at this point). As soon as Dad said “Roger,” his face lit up and he said, “Father of Travis!” Then we all pointed to Travis and he turned around and gave him a big hug, and started getting a little emotional, exclaiming how he can’t believe we remembered him. He remembered Travis very well, even remembering the name him and the other neighbor kids used to “mock” him with, “Xarae” (that “X” is a very special, very specific click of the tongue), which means “San,” which is the name given to the bushmen, who are very light in complexion, thus, just like Travis. In true Motswana fashion, Tayopa got our phone number and called us up a few hours later, inviting himself over for supper. It was quite a treat. He could not get over our supper of baked potatoes we wrapped in tin foil and put into the fire, (“you are burning them! If my father saw me do that he would whip me.”) the fact that we would put cheese on our hamburgers, or the way he had to “drink” his vegetables of broccoli and cauliflower, which he ended up throwing into the fire. (Apparently, he had never had cooked vegetables before). We also learned that he watched the Lion King at least once a week and it is one of his favorite topics of conversation. At the end of the night, when it was time to go, he told us he just didn’t have words to tell us how grateful he was, that we would remember him and come back to Maun to see him. It seems to be the same with every Motswana we go back to visit—they get very emotional and they are just blown away that these rich, white, Americans would some day come back to Botswana to see them again.
It was later than our usual bedtime (which really isn’t saying much) when Tayopa finally pulled himself away from us and we retired once more into the tent, to the sounds of the nightclub across the road and the bleating of the donkeys and goats wandering around our tent.
Nicole
This morning we all woke up at 7:00 (in Dad’s case, hours before) to go into town with Dad, while he took poor Tau to get looked at. From the fix-it shop, us kids walked the mile or two to the downtown area, which didn’t seem like much, but, according to the parentals, way more built up than it used to be. We were lucky enough to find a large pharmacy where we were able to find what we’ve been looking for for weeks--contact solution, which costs about US $20! After that we spent most of the time walking through the village part of town, where the locals lived, waving to naked kids in the yards and women washing clothes in a tub or walking from town with bags of oranges or wood balanced on their heads. Dad and mom picked us up a few hours later, and after a quick picnic lunch on the banks of the Okavango, we began the search for our old house. It took at least an hour before we came to a part of the village where Mom finally thought she recognized where she was. It took some convincing from Dad to decide that the house we were in front of was indeed the house we used to live in. There were a few houses built around it, and the house was a different color, but the h/f radio pole that Dad had installed was still there. The only part of Maun I remember was being chased by our geese, Harry and Lydia, so I didn’t have much to say. We took a quick tour around our mud and thatched roof house before walking down the street to see if our next door neighbors were still around. There lived a woman named Bessie, who had 9 kids, one of them being a boy Travis’ age named Tayopa. We weren’t expecting to find much, but sure enough, Bessie’s oldest son was still there, and told us his mother was in Mochudi (which is only about 30 kms from Gaberone. Travis, Erin, and I plan on looking her up once we get back there) and Tayopa was still around, only at work downtown at the Ngami Times newspaper office.
So we headed downtown to find Travis’ long lost playmate. After asking for him at the front desk, and he came out, looking confused and a little scared at the sight of 7 white people who somehow knew his name, waiting for him expectantly. (He tells a pretty amusing story about what was going on in his mind at this point). As soon as Dad said “Roger,” his face lit up and he said, “Father of Travis!” Then we all pointed to Travis and he turned around and gave him a big hug, and started getting a little emotional, exclaiming how he can’t believe we remembered him. He remembered Travis very well, even remembering the name him and the other neighbor kids used to “mock” him with, “Xarae” (that “X” is a very special, very specific click of the tongue), which means “San,” which is the name given to the bushmen, who are very light in complexion, thus, just like Travis. In true Motswana fashion, Tayopa got our phone number and called us up a few hours later, inviting himself over for supper. It was quite a treat. He could not get over our supper of baked potatoes we wrapped in tin foil and put into the fire, (“you are burning them! If my father saw me do that he would whip me.”) the fact that we would put cheese on our hamburgers, or the way he had to “drink” his vegetables of broccoli and cauliflower, which he ended up throwing into the fire. (Apparently, he had never had cooked vegetables before). We also learned that he watched the Lion King at least once a week and it is one of his favorite topics of conversation. At the end of the night, when it was time to go, he told us he just didn’t have words to tell us how grateful he was, that we would remember him and come back to Maun to see him. It seems to be the same with every Motswana we go back to visit—they get very emotional and they are just blown away that these rich, white, Americans would some day come back to Botswana to see them again.
It was later than our usual bedtime (which really isn’t saying much) when Tayopa finally pulled himself away from us and we retired once more into the tent, to the sounds of the nightclub across the road and the bleating of the donkeys and goats wandering around our tent.
Nicole
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Well, Blogger, we're through with you....
That's right, we have finally given up on Blogger for pictures, and have decided to upload pictures to Webshots instead. So some pictures are in the process of being uploaded as we speak, and you should be able to view them soon by clicking on the link on the right to "Travis' Webshots." They will be in a folder called "Africa Trip 2007" or something like that. Enjoy!
July 9
ERIN:
Sadly, we have now left the hyena antics and sand roads behind us and returned to the civilized world. I much prefer the roaring of lions to the rumbling of trucks on the road, but it had to happen sometime, I suppose. In the morning, we packed up all our things once again and decided, with another family vote, to leave Moremi National Park. We headed for Maun, where Roger and Jolene and Travis and Nicole had lived for 2 ½ years until just after Lisa was born. On the way out of Moremi, we gave our eyes one last workout looking for game. Since some of us were disappointed that we still had not experienced an elephant charge, we tried to provoke a bull elephant, but succeeded only in making him shake his head and let loose a foaming flood of elephant pee in the road before running away. Ah well; we’ll give it another try in Namibia. After 100 more kilometers of being jounced around in the backseat of Tau, we all cheered the long-awaited arrival of paved road and marveled at how comfortable driving suddenly became. As much as I miss the wildness of Moremi, it is nice to see normal people from Botswana again. In the parks, the only black people are the guides driving herds of white tourists around in safari vehicles. A significant part of this trip for me has been coming to terms with the position of undeserved privilege that light skin and money automatically give me. It’s easy to ignore it back at home, where I can surround myself with people like me and convince myself that I am normal. Here we are reminded every day, in big ways and small ones, of how incredibly privileged we are. Anyway, in the afternoon, we arrived at the Okavango River Lodge, where we enjoyed our first hot showers in days and realized that the tans we thought we had were really only layers of caked-on dust from the previous week. Renae and Lisa and Nicole and I decided to test out the tiny swimming pool here, screaming bloody murder when it turned out to be the temperature you would expect of a pool in a Pennsylvania winter, not a Botswana one. Then there was another tasty supper around the fire, followed by quite an entertaining conversation about the games the Weaver kids used to play when they were little. By 9:45, which is far later than our typical bedtime, we were all exhausted and fell asleep to the sounds of the next-door night club instead of the music of the baboons.
Erin
Sadly, we have now left the hyena antics and sand roads behind us and returned to the civilized world. I much prefer the roaring of lions to the rumbling of trucks on the road, but it had to happen sometime, I suppose. In the morning, we packed up all our things once again and decided, with another family vote, to leave Moremi National Park. We headed for Maun, where Roger and Jolene and Travis and Nicole had lived for 2 ½ years until just after Lisa was born. On the way out of Moremi, we gave our eyes one last workout looking for game. Since some of us were disappointed that we still had not experienced an elephant charge, we tried to provoke a bull elephant, but succeeded only in making him shake his head and let loose a foaming flood of elephant pee in the road before running away. Ah well; we’ll give it another try in Namibia. After 100 more kilometers of being jounced around in the backseat of Tau, we all cheered the long-awaited arrival of paved road and marveled at how comfortable driving suddenly became. As much as I miss the wildness of Moremi, it is nice to see normal people from Botswana again. In the parks, the only black people are the guides driving herds of white tourists around in safari vehicles. A significant part of this trip for me has been coming to terms with the position of undeserved privilege that light skin and money automatically give me. It’s easy to ignore it back at home, where I can surround myself with people like me and convince myself that I am normal. Here we are reminded every day, in big ways and small ones, of how incredibly privileged we are. Anyway, in the afternoon, we arrived at the Okavango River Lodge, where we enjoyed our first hot showers in days and realized that the tans we thought we had were really only layers of caked-on dust from the previous week. Renae and Lisa and Nicole and I decided to test out the tiny swimming pool here, screaming bloody murder when it turned out to be the temperature you would expect of a pool in a Pennsylvania winter, not a Botswana one. Then there was another tasty supper around the fire, followed by quite an entertaining conversation about the games the Weaver kids used to play when they were little. By 9:45, which is far later than our typical bedtime, we were all exhausted and fell asleep to the sounds of the next-door night club instead of the music of the baboons.
Erin
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Picture
Here we are (minus Erin, who is taking the picture) with Maria and her family in Bokaa, way back when we were in Gaborone. It was a lot of fun to reconnect with her, and she was overjoyed to see us, sending us off with a song and a prayer.
(More pictures to come later, probably on Webshots, because blogger is being ridiculous and not letting me do anything.)
July 8
July 8
ROGER:
This morning I did get the gang up a bit earlier, and we went for a morning game drive. We didn’t see much exciting – a few of the normal elephant, giraffe, zebra, and antelope, and returned for breakfast. We decided to laze around camp today. Third Bridge used to be completely wild and remote, and most times we used to be the only ones camping there, but today they have a small ablution block, and a standpipe. The roads and wooden log bridges in Moremi are the same as they always were. We didn’t get stuck, but got close to it a few times – so sadly Travis didn’t get to experience the high-lift jack and cutting branches to get out (I think he and several others were secretly hoping to experience that – but I had enough of those experiences in the past). There are supposedly 7 campsites at Third Bridge now, and they were mostly full of Afrikaners. Every place we went people spoke to us in Afrikans and assumed we were also from the RSA. Our Capetown license plates didn’t help either.
In the afternoon we washed a few clothes at the river, and then the kids all took a game drive. After they retuned we all went out except Jolene to look for game just before sunset, but did not see any lions or cats that we hoped to see. While we were gone Jolene was trying to chase some baboons away that were trying to sneak in to grab some food, and when she turned her back to chase two away, another one snuck in from the other side and stole her cauliflower head she was cutting. We still have plenty of food, even though the hyeana stole all our meat, and we threw away most of the veggies that were in the cooler when he dug the meat out.
Later in the evening we heard rustling in the bushes behind where we were sitting and shone the flashlight and sure enough there was the hyena trying to sneak up on us. We chased him away and he went over to the only other people who were camping with us. We yelled at them to warn them, and we got him chased away. A second smaller one was also after him, that we had to chase away. We used to always have trouble with baboons, they can be sneaky and learn quickly about food, but never with hyenas. I guess with all the extra people here and people feeding them or leaving scraps they learn quickly. It is sad, because they will probably have to be shot.
We went to bed real early to the beautiful night sounds again. As I drifted off I heard hippos snorting not far from our tent. What a great place!
Roger
ROGER:
This morning I did get the gang up a bit earlier, and we went for a morning game drive. We didn’t see much exciting – a few of the normal elephant, giraffe, zebra, and antelope, and returned for breakfast. We decided to laze around camp today. Third Bridge used to be completely wild and remote, and most times we used to be the only ones camping there, but today they have a small ablution block, and a standpipe. The roads and wooden log bridges in Moremi are the same as they always were. We didn’t get stuck, but got close to it a few times – so sadly Travis didn’t get to experience the high-lift jack and cutting branches to get out (I think he and several others were secretly hoping to experience that – but I had enough of those experiences in the past). There are supposedly 7 campsites at Third Bridge now, and they were mostly full of Afrikaners. Every place we went people spoke to us in Afrikans and assumed we were also from the RSA. Our Capetown license plates didn’t help either.
In the afternoon we washed a few clothes at the river, and then the kids all took a game drive. After they retuned we all went out except Jolene to look for game just before sunset, but did not see any lions or cats that we hoped to see. While we were gone Jolene was trying to chase some baboons away that were trying to sneak in to grab some food, and when she turned her back to chase two away, another one snuck in from the other side and stole her cauliflower head she was cutting. We still have plenty of food, even though the hyeana stole all our meat, and we threw away most of the veggies that were in the cooler when he dug the meat out.
Later in the evening we heard rustling in the bushes behind where we were sitting and shone the flashlight and sure enough there was the hyena trying to sneak up on us. We chased him away and he went over to the only other people who were camping with us. We yelled at them to warn them, and we got him chased away. A second smaller one was also after him, that we had to chase away. We used to always have trouble with baboons, they can be sneaky and learn quickly about food, but never with hyenas. I guess with all the extra people here and people feeding them or leaving scraps they learn quickly. It is sad, because they will probably have to be shot.
We went to bed real early to the beautiful night sounds again. As I drifted off I heard hippos snorting not far from our tent. What a great place!
Roger
July 7
July 7
ROGER:
Travis and I removed the shock in the morning and did our regular maintenance of filling the transfer case with gear oil. We have had a leak since we left and have had to keep filling it with oil regularly – today it was my turn to get dirty. Removing the shock went smoothly – thankfully I brought a basic tool kit along. If only I had my welder to also fix the shock bracket!
Roger
TRAVIS:
As we were sitting around the campfire tonight, just after finishing up our evening meal of Potjie, Renae all of a sudden yelled “there’s a hyena!” We all looked, and sure enough, there was a hyena by the front of our tent, just about to sink its big, ugly teeth into our cooler full of food. I immediately grabbed the large stick I was sitting on and raced towards the hyena (who I will henceforth refer to as “Jerko”) along with the rest of the family, yelling loudly in hopes that we could scare the living bejeezus out of the thing and get it to leave without all of our food. We must not be quite as scary as we thought we were, because Jerko proceeded to grab the cooler in its huge jaws and carry it off so quickly that we couldn’t even really see where it went. While we shone the flashlights all around and marveled at the strength of the beast (the cooler was hard for one person to lift up into the truck by themselves), Jerko was somewhere enjoying the hamburger and whole chicken that we hadn’t yet eaten, along with all kinds of other goodies. We basically gave the cooler and its goods up for lost, and began weighing our losses. Dad, however, noticed a water trail from the cooler’s drain, which had been opened, and followed the trail a little way down the road, where off in the bushes he saw the eyes of the hyena as it chomped on its booty. He booked it back to the camp, yelling at us to jump in the Land Rover, and we took off towards the hyena. We drove into the bushes where Dad had seen it, and saw Jerko standing guard over the opened cooler next to food and ripped wrappers scattered all over the ground. It was a brave beast, but when I revved Tau’s engine and headed for it, he scampered into the bushes. Dad got out to retrieve the cooler and what was left of the goodies, while I charged towards Jerko with Tau every time he lurked around the bush and tried to come back for the food. Dad (moving as quickly as is possible for a man of his size) shoved all the food into the cooler, threw the cooler into the back of the Rover, and jumped in again. Hyenas can be pretty vicious, and apparently (according to Lonely Planet) some of them killed a young boy at this same campsite in 2000, so we were pretty wary of Jerko. Anyway, that was our excitement for the day. Other than that, today we moved from our makeshift campsite right outside the gate of Chobe to the campsite we are staying at tonight in Moremi National Park. The road into Moremi was beautiful, and we saw a lot of wildlife as we followed along the banks of the Khwaii (sp?) river. We spent a while watching some hippo antics by the river and raving over the cute little hippo babies. After we got into Moremi, we headed towards Dead Tree Island, where a pride of lions had recently been seen, and spent quite a while trying to find it. When we finally got there, there was a lion and a lioness lazing around in the shade and generally being boring. It was pretty cool, but we had been hoping for the whole pride. Oh well. Then it was getting late and we rushed towards our campsite, barely making it through several little muddy/marshy/pondy areas and having to turn around where the road went into some larger pools. Tensions ran a little high at the road conditions and at not knowing exactly where we were (we kids and dad were loving it), but we finally pulled into our campground a few minutes before dark. Another good day in the bush.
Travis
RENAE:
And now we have teeth marks in our cooler for a souvenir.
ROGER:
Travis and I removed the shock in the morning and did our regular maintenance of filling the transfer case with gear oil. We have had a leak since we left and have had to keep filling it with oil regularly – today it was my turn to get dirty. Removing the shock went smoothly – thankfully I brought a basic tool kit along. If only I had my welder to also fix the shock bracket!
Roger
TRAVIS:
As we were sitting around the campfire tonight, just after finishing up our evening meal of Potjie, Renae all of a sudden yelled “there’s a hyena!” We all looked, and sure enough, there was a hyena by the front of our tent, just about to sink its big, ugly teeth into our cooler full of food. I immediately grabbed the large stick I was sitting on and raced towards the hyena (who I will henceforth refer to as “Jerko”) along with the rest of the family, yelling loudly in hopes that we could scare the living bejeezus out of the thing and get it to leave without all of our food. We must not be quite as scary as we thought we were, because Jerko proceeded to grab the cooler in its huge jaws and carry it off so quickly that we couldn’t even really see where it went. While we shone the flashlights all around and marveled at the strength of the beast (the cooler was hard for one person to lift up into the truck by themselves), Jerko was somewhere enjoying the hamburger and whole chicken that we hadn’t yet eaten, along with all kinds of other goodies. We basically gave the cooler and its goods up for lost, and began weighing our losses. Dad, however, noticed a water trail from the cooler’s drain, which had been opened, and followed the trail a little way down the road, where off in the bushes he saw the eyes of the hyena as it chomped on its booty. He booked it back to the camp, yelling at us to jump in the Land Rover, and we took off towards the hyena. We drove into the bushes where Dad had seen it, and saw Jerko standing guard over the opened cooler next to food and ripped wrappers scattered all over the ground. It was a brave beast, but when I revved Tau’s engine and headed for it, he scampered into the bushes. Dad got out to retrieve the cooler and what was left of the goodies, while I charged towards Jerko with Tau every time he lurked around the bush and tried to come back for the food. Dad (moving as quickly as is possible for a man of his size) shoved all the food into the cooler, threw the cooler into the back of the Rover, and jumped in again. Hyenas can be pretty vicious, and apparently (according to Lonely Planet) some of them killed a young boy at this same campsite in 2000, so we were pretty wary of Jerko. Anyway, that was our excitement for the day. Other than that, today we moved from our makeshift campsite right outside the gate of Chobe to the campsite we are staying at tonight in Moremi National Park. The road into Moremi was beautiful, and we saw a lot of wildlife as we followed along the banks of the Khwaii (sp?) river. We spent a while watching some hippo antics by the river and raving over the cute little hippo babies. After we got into Moremi, we headed towards Dead Tree Island, where a pride of lions had recently been seen, and spent quite a while trying to find it. When we finally got there, there was a lion and a lioness lazing around in the shade and generally being boring. It was pretty cool, but we had been hoping for the whole pride. Oh well. Then it was getting late and we rushed towards our campsite, barely making it through several little muddy/marshy/pondy areas and having to turn around where the road went into some larger pools. Tensions ran a little high at the road conditions and at not knowing exactly where we were (we kids and dad were loving it), but we finally pulled into our campground a few minutes before dark. Another good day in the bush.
Travis
RENAE:
And now we have teeth marks in our cooler for a souvenir.
July 6
July 6
ROGER:
As usual the gang got a bit of a late start. I could go into a detailed explanation of how much of one’s life is wasted by lying in bed for sooooo many hours every morning. Missing the sunrise is only a small portion of what is lost, but this gang can sleep for umpteen hours a night, and then have to take a nap after driving a short while. The main reason they have to nap so quickly is because of the fatigue of sleeping so long, but that is another subject.
Anyway I did get the fire ready for them and the tea water hot (my usual morning job), and after a while there was rustling in the tent, which is a always an encouraging sound. We decided to pack up and head toward Savuti (instead of doing a morning game drive) where we planned on staying the next night. We considered Linyanti as well, but decided not to take another day to head into that part of the swamps – we just don’t have enough time to do everything. On the way we saw tons of wildlife, as usual. It is good to see the wildlife is still plentiful in Botswana. We saw hundreds and hundreds of elephants, although we didn’t see as many as we used to in the Chobe area. We also saw lots of giraffes, zebra, hippos, birds of all sorts, and of course many different kinds of antelope. We also saw a herd of about 20 sable amongst a group of elephants. They are one of my favorite antelope, and I’ve never seen a herd like that together before. That was ONE of my highlights. I always love watching the game – a favorite part of Botswana for me. When we got to Savuti we discovered most of the water holes were dried up, and someone told us the wildlife was not as prolific there. We decided to head on down toward Third Bridge in Moremi, where we used to often go when we lived in Maun. I count that as one of my favorite places on earth. On the way we saw a Civet (a large cat, but smaller than a leopard or Cheetah). It was sitting smack in the middle of the road, and I’m sure I could have gotten closer to it by watching it’s reaction and driving closer, but everybody got so excited and yelled loudly for me to stop. Of course as soon as I stopped he got up and ambled away, but we did get a pretty good look at him. A little later we saw a big male lion sitting right along the road. We drove up beside him and admired him for a while. He was only about 8 feet from our vehicle, and just sat and watched us. I did open my door a little to see him get up, and he walked about 20 feet back and sat down again. It must be nice to be King in the jungle, and not have to be afraid of anything.
I knew they used to leave the gate open at the park entrance years ago, but we weren’t sure what they did these days, and we were going to get to the gate after dark. There was a chain there which we could open, and we went outside the park about 500 meters and found a place to set up camp in the bush. In this part of the world there are no cattle posts or people, and the area is as wild as the park. The park is not fenced. We built a fire right away to keep the lions at bay and make supper – much to Jolene’s dismay we didn’t make camp until after dark. The days are so short since it’s the middle of winter here and we don’t have long enough days to get much done.
We had heard something in he suspension that did not sound right the last part of the trip, and after checking underneath I found the one shock mount broken. One advantage to this vehicle was the dual shocks, since I knew we would be way overloaded with 7 people and all our gear. The broken portion would rub the wheel when we went over big bumps – we decided to deal with it the next day. After eating we hit the sack and listened to all the normal bush night sounds - roars, grunts, howls, yelps, shrieks, belches, etc – they are always fun to listen to. Off to a blissful noisy nights sleep.
Roger
ROGER:
As usual the gang got a bit of a late start. I could go into a detailed explanation of how much of one’s life is wasted by lying in bed for sooooo many hours every morning. Missing the sunrise is only a small portion of what is lost, but this gang can sleep for umpteen hours a night, and then have to take a nap after driving a short while. The main reason they have to nap so quickly is because of the fatigue of sleeping so long, but that is another subject.
Anyway I did get the fire ready for them and the tea water hot (my usual morning job), and after a while there was rustling in the tent, which is a always an encouraging sound. We decided to pack up and head toward Savuti (instead of doing a morning game drive) where we planned on staying the next night. We considered Linyanti as well, but decided not to take another day to head into that part of the swamps – we just don’t have enough time to do everything. On the way we saw tons of wildlife, as usual. It is good to see the wildlife is still plentiful in Botswana. We saw hundreds and hundreds of elephants, although we didn’t see as many as we used to in the Chobe area. We also saw lots of giraffes, zebra, hippos, birds of all sorts, and of course many different kinds of antelope. We also saw a herd of about 20 sable amongst a group of elephants. They are one of my favorite antelope, and I’ve never seen a herd like that together before. That was ONE of my highlights. I always love watching the game – a favorite part of Botswana for me. When we got to Savuti we discovered most of the water holes were dried up, and someone told us the wildlife was not as prolific there. We decided to head on down toward Third Bridge in Moremi, where we used to often go when we lived in Maun. I count that as one of my favorite places on earth. On the way we saw a Civet (a large cat, but smaller than a leopard or Cheetah). It was sitting smack in the middle of the road, and I’m sure I could have gotten closer to it by watching it’s reaction and driving closer, but everybody got so excited and yelled loudly for me to stop. Of course as soon as I stopped he got up and ambled away, but we did get a pretty good look at him. A little later we saw a big male lion sitting right along the road. We drove up beside him and admired him for a while. He was only about 8 feet from our vehicle, and just sat and watched us. I did open my door a little to see him get up, and he walked about 20 feet back and sat down again. It must be nice to be King in the jungle, and not have to be afraid of anything.
I knew they used to leave the gate open at the park entrance years ago, but we weren’t sure what they did these days, and we were going to get to the gate after dark. There was a chain there which we could open, and we went outside the park about 500 meters and found a place to set up camp in the bush. In this part of the world there are no cattle posts or people, and the area is as wild as the park. The park is not fenced. We built a fire right away to keep the lions at bay and make supper – much to Jolene’s dismay we didn’t make camp until after dark. The days are so short since it’s the middle of winter here and we don’t have long enough days to get much done.
We had heard something in he suspension that did not sound right the last part of the trip, and after checking underneath I found the one shock mount broken. One advantage to this vehicle was the dual shocks, since I knew we would be way overloaded with 7 people and all our gear. The broken portion would rub the wheel when we went over big bumps – we decided to deal with it the next day. After eating we hit the sack and listened to all the normal bush night sounds - roars, grunts, howls, yelps, shrieks, belches, etc – they are always fun to listen to. Off to a blissful noisy nights sleep.
Roger
July 5
July 5
JOLENE:
Ok, so it’s not my turn again today, and I’ll let one of the kids write about before today, but I’m sitting at our campsite in Chobe by myself watching this incredible scene in front of me. The sun is setting with lots of beautiful clouds and it’s along the Chobe River, so there are lots of birds and bird noises and it is so peaceful & absolutely gorgeous.
Roger & all the kids are on a game drive, but I decided to take advantage of some time alone and to start supper. Every now & then I look all around me to be sure I’m not going to be surprised by a lion or something. We did hear a lion roar in the distance earlier, and saw one earlier today as we were driving. The kids can write about their first experiences in the African bush. I’ve seen it all & done it before but it is still incredible. One thing I didn’t remember is all the birds, but if you look for them, there are many incredibly beautiful ones. We have a book along & look them up as we go. Right now, as I write this, a lion is roaring and some other animal is squealing – I’m quite sure there is a lion kill not very far away. I moved my chair to in front of the tent in case I need a quick place to go!
Jolene
LISA:
Well, Travis stole my day. As you can probably guess, it is not often that us kids fight over a day to blog. But June 7th was a momentous day in the history of the Weaver (1/7 Gotwals) family. But don’t jump ahead too quick. This wasn’t a dull day either.
We left the campground and headed out towards Chobe. We had to stop for internet (partly to inform all you devoted fans about our happenings) and do the oil. I’m guessing that the oil problem was previously mentioned somewhere up there. The most exciting thing that happened at the internet café was that we saw a gigantic dung beetle outside, although there was no dung around so it couldn’t impress us with its poop maneuvering skills. After spending copious amounts of minutes there, we left and drove to Chobe. Within the first 5 minutes of entering the park, we saw a spectacular assortment of species, including a lioness sleeping under a tree. I know I will never be able to name everything we saw, but some of the many animals we saw while driving through the park were giraffes, elephants, impala and many other kinds of antelope, various types of birds, and I think I’ll stop there because I could probably go on forever, and it’s also blending in with the current animals we’ve seen in the near present. We have a book of animals that we are checking off everything we’ve seen in case you want to see it sometime. It’s really incredible. It’s kind of unreal, seeing all these animals you’ve heard so much about in books and movies and seen in cages right beside you in the wild. It’s hard to believe. Seeing all these huge and strange animals in the wild is so much more impressive than being in a zoo.
We found our campground and set up camp. We kind of explored the place, and we heard a lion roar while it was still light. That was pretty cool. Then Mom stayed back while we all went on a game drive, as Mom said. We didn’t see a whole lot on the game drive, but when we came to the water as the sun was setting, it was totally worth it. This was quite a sight. Now I have seen a lot of beautiful scenery in my life, but this one just about takes the cake. Usually when somebody describes a scene as “breath-taking”, it is a really beautiful sight, but it doesn’t actually take your breath away. I’m pretty sure I actually gasped when I saw this. I don’t even know how to describe it because you basically just had to be there, but there were these scattered clouds everywhere, and the colors of the sunset were shining through them in the most perfect way. The whole thing was reflecting off the water in front of it, and if that wasn’t enough, there must have been over 100 elephants out there. They were sticking together in groups and some were drinking, some were wading, and some were crossing the water. Now let me tell you, baby elephants are just too ridiculously adorable. Everything about that picture was just so perfect.
I’m pretty sure I’ll never forget that image. I don’t know how Africa does it, but every single sunset and sunrise (although I haven’t seen a whole lot of those) is just incredible.
I love this land.
Lisa
JOLENE:
Ok, so it’s not my turn again today, and I’ll let one of the kids write about before today, but I’m sitting at our campsite in Chobe by myself watching this incredible scene in front of me. The sun is setting with lots of beautiful clouds and it’s along the Chobe River, so there are lots of birds and bird noises and it is so peaceful & absolutely gorgeous.
Roger & all the kids are on a game drive, but I decided to take advantage of some time alone and to start supper. Every now & then I look all around me to be sure I’m not going to be surprised by a lion or something. We did hear a lion roar in the distance earlier, and saw one earlier today as we were driving. The kids can write about their first experiences in the African bush. I’ve seen it all & done it before but it is still incredible. One thing I didn’t remember is all the birds, but if you look for them, there are many incredibly beautiful ones. We have a book along & look them up as we go. Right now, as I write this, a lion is roaring and some other animal is squealing – I’m quite sure there is a lion kill not very far away. I moved my chair to in front of the tent in case I need a quick place to go!
Jolene
LISA:
Well, Travis stole my day. As you can probably guess, it is not often that us kids fight over a day to blog. But June 7th was a momentous day in the history of the Weaver (1/7 Gotwals) family. But don’t jump ahead too quick. This wasn’t a dull day either.
We left the campground and headed out towards Chobe. We had to stop for internet (partly to inform all you devoted fans about our happenings) and do the oil. I’m guessing that the oil problem was previously mentioned somewhere up there. The most exciting thing that happened at the internet café was that we saw a gigantic dung beetle outside, although there was no dung around so it couldn’t impress us with its poop maneuvering skills. After spending copious amounts of minutes there, we left and drove to Chobe. Within the first 5 minutes of entering the park, we saw a spectacular assortment of species, including a lioness sleeping under a tree. I know I will never be able to name everything we saw, but some of the many animals we saw while driving through the park were giraffes, elephants, impala and many other kinds of antelope, various types of birds, and I think I’ll stop there because I could probably go on forever, and it’s also blending in with the current animals we’ve seen in the near present. We have a book of animals that we are checking off everything we’ve seen in case you want to see it sometime. It’s really incredible. It’s kind of unreal, seeing all these animals you’ve heard so much about in books and movies and seen in cages right beside you in the wild. It’s hard to believe. Seeing all these huge and strange animals in the wild is so much more impressive than being in a zoo.
We found our campground and set up camp. We kind of explored the place, and we heard a lion roar while it was still light. That was pretty cool. Then Mom stayed back while we all went on a game drive, as Mom said. We didn’t see a whole lot on the game drive, but when we came to the water as the sun was setting, it was totally worth it. This was quite a sight. Now I have seen a lot of beautiful scenery in my life, but this one just about takes the cake. Usually when somebody describes a scene as “breath-taking”, it is a really beautiful sight, but it doesn’t actually take your breath away. I’m pretty sure I actually gasped when I saw this. I don’t even know how to describe it because you basically just had to be there, but there were these scattered clouds everywhere, and the colors of the sunset were shining through them in the most perfect way. The whole thing was reflecting off the water in front of it, and if that wasn’t enough, there must have been over 100 elephants out there. They were sticking together in groups and some were drinking, some were wading, and some were crossing the water. Now let me tell you, baby elephants are just too ridiculously adorable. Everything about that picture was just so perfect.
I’m pretty sure I’ll never forget that image. I don’t know how Africa does it, but every single sunset and sunrise (although I haven’t seen a whole lot of those) is just incredible.
I love this land.
Lisa
July 4
July 4
JOLENE:
Yesterday – July 4. Roger & all the kids got up at 5:30 am to view the sunrise over the falls, but I didn’t feel the need to see another sunrise at that point. I had seen two beautiful ones camping in the middle of nowhere that the kids didn’t see, so now it was their turn. Besides I was quite sore from the walk out of the gorge after white water rafting. Yes, I went along, which I was NOT planning to do. And it was great fun except for the Erin scare. My boat didn’t flip – Renae & I had our own personal boat with 3 guides on it until she moved into the other boat with the others when she felt comfortable enough with it. I’m not one for death defying events, so to go on this was a stretch, but I did enjoy it a lot. But we had to walk straight down a gorge and then straight up again at the end – I think it was 750 meters – not sure what that translates to, but it was never ending.
Anyway after they got back, we packed everything up again and had one last time at the curio shops. It’s an amazing place really, and quite out of my comfort zone with all the people selling things & trying to give me a ‘cheap price’. They are so desperate for money it’s really sad. Renae was our best bargainer, at least of the kids. Roger isn’t too bad either, but I’m quite uncomfortable with it. We all got things, and then we had to find a place to lug them around the rest of the trip, which, with all our stuff, was quite a challenge, but everything found a spot. We left there around noon and headed back to Botswana and Kasane right over the border. It took us awhile to find a camping place – it’s full of South Africans whose kids are on school vacation right now. Erin & Travis cooked a supper of rice, lentils and vegetable curry while Roger, Nicole & I went grocery shopping and stocked up for the next 5-6 days since there will be no stores from tomorrow till when we hit Maun about Tuesday of next week. It takes a lot of food & planning for 7 people.
Jolene
LISA
Renae and I were laboriously wrapping the souvenirs in newspaper and taking great pains to properly protect our precious goodies from the harsh conditions awaiting it on the roof of Tau. We were not, as one might assume from the above post, lazily sitting around waiting for people to feed us.
JOLENE:
Yesterday – July 4. Roger & all the kids got up at 5:30 am to view the sunrise over the falls, but I didn’t feel the need to see another sunrise at that point. I had seen two beautiful ones camping in the middle of nowhere that the kids didn’t see, so now it was their turn. Besides I was quite sore from the walk out of the gorge after white water rafting. Yes, I went along, which I was NOT planning to do. And it was great fun except for the Erin scare. My boat didn’t flip – Renae & I had our own personal boat with 3 guides on it until she moved into the other boat with the others when she felt comfortable enough with it. I’m not one for death defying events, so to go on this was a stretch, but I did enjoy it a lot. But we had to walk straight down a gorge and then straight up again at the end – I think it was 750 meters – not sure what that translates to, but it was never ending.
Anyway after they got back, we packed everything up again and had one last time at the curio shops. It’s an amazing place really, and quite out of my comfort zone with all the people selling things & trying to give me a ‘cheap price’. They are so desperate for money it’s really sad. Renae was our best bargainer, at least of the kids. Roger isn’t too bad either, but I’m quite uncomfortable with it. We all got things, and then we had to find a place to lug them around the rest of the trip, which, with all our stuff, was quite a challenge, but everything found a spot. We left there around noon and headed back to Botswana and Kasane right over the border. It took us awhile to find a camping place – it’s full of South Africans whose kids are on school vacation right now. Erin & Travis cooked a supper of rice, lentils and vegetable curry while Roger, Nicole & I went grocery shopping and stocked up for the next 5-6 days since there will be no stores from tomorrow till when we hit Maun about Tuesday of next week. It takes a lot of food & planning for 7 people.
Jolene
LISA
Renae and I were laboriously wrapping the souvenirs in newspaper and taking great pains to properly protect our precious goodies from the harsh conditions awaiting it on the roof of Tau. We were not, as one might assume from the above post, lazily sitting around waiting for people to feed us.
July 3
July 3
RENAE:
I love White Water Rafting!!! Ok, I’ll admit that I was freakishly nervous and scared the few days before we left, mainly of the raft flipping and me getting trapped, or getting thrown off and hitting a rock or something. Somehow I heard a rumor that 3 out of 4 boats flip, but honestly I have no idea from where because that is not true. When we talked to the first company and asked how many boats flip, their response was “Since it is highwater season, the rapids aren’t as wild, so your boat will probably only flip once.” However, after talking to the guides from the company and learning that the boat I was in would not in any way flip, and looking at pictures of other groups, I became excited and not nervous anymore. We started halfway through, because the portage route of the 9th rapid they usually portage in low-water season (it’s a level 6, and called ‘commercial suicide’) is flooded, so we had to start after that. Keep in mind that these are the worst rapids in the world that commercial companies use, and is on the Zambezi River, the river that feeds Victoria Falls. We went through some level five rapids, but if we went in low-water season there would be even more. Well the trip was AMAZING! I went through 6 or 7 rapids in the non-flip boat, then moved to the flippy boat for the rest. The rapid after I moved I fell out. This particular rapid, ‘the oblivion’, has flipped more boats than any other in the world. We didn’t flip, but MAN we were close! We were literally vertical, and I was certain we were going to flip and my worst fear would happen, since it was going to flip over me, soI half bailed out, half tried to hang on. I learned later that soon after I fell, so did Travis, and my dad threw his whole weight onto the other side. Without him doing that, we would have definitely flipped, no doubt about it! When I went in I tried to grab onto the rope so as not to lose the raft, but couldn’t find it. I went under the raft and came up on the other side. The guide pulled me in quickly, and Trav too. Before that Roger also went in, but I didn’t see it. I heard it was pretty funny; he was flailing around on the bottom of the boat. Then the very next rapid Erin also fell out. It was pretty scary, because we went through the whole rapid and couldn’t see her head bobbing like everyone had been. I actually didn’t realize she was gone until I heard Travis’ scared, hoarse “Where is she?!”, and then I knew something was wrong. I’ll let her tell you about that though. In the end, everyone in that boat fell out except Lisa and Nicole, and everyone is fine. Then we hiked up the gorge and ate lunch there. Afterwards we got our certificates and went to Vic Falls. It was really misty, and half of the waterfall was clouded out by it, but it was still amazingly beautiful.
I love Africa!!!
Renae
ERIN
Renae asked me to give my own account of my rafting adventure, so here you have it. I think the river god must have been angry that I didn’t buy any of his charms that the locals were trying to sell us on the hike down into the gorge. Anyway, like Renae said, I had a little more excitement than I bargained for on one of the last rapids. Maybe I could’ve hung on when we hit the wave, but hey, what’s a rafting trip on one of the most exciting rivers in the world without one good flip? So I fell in and came up for a mouthful of air, but before I could even look for the raft, another wave of water caught me mid-breath and sent me swirling underwater. I remembered what to do, held onto my paddle, didn’t panic, and waited for my life jacket to pop me up again. It didn’t. I kept being thrown around, spinning or flipping, I couldn’t tell which, only sensing the water around me getting darker and darker through my eyelids. You expect to hear pounding water, or some ominous music in a movie soundtrack, but the whole thing was strangely silent. It felt like I was there forever. It all seemed absolutely surreal, until I came to the realization that I was going to have to take a breath soon, and it wasn’t going to be of air. I gave up on the being-patient-and-not-panicking tactic right about then and decided I better start swimming, even though I wasn’t quite sure which way was up. One of my biggest fears has always been getting trapped underneath something underwater, and I never thought I’d be so incredibly relieved to find my head hitting the underside of the raft. I pulled my way out from under the raft then, to sunlight and air and everybody yelling and Roger pulling me into the boat, and the guide telling us that it was a whirlpool that sucked me down and dragged me all the way through the rapids and spit me out at the bottom. He said it was normal, nothing to be too worried about. I sure wouldn’t have guessed it. It didn’t hit me until quite a while later how scared I actually was. It was just a minute’s breather, then paddling straight into the next rapids, none the worse for the day’s events than a head full of water, a good story, and a great deal of respect for the mighty Zambezi. River god, next time I know to buy your charm.
ROGER:
I also have a greater respect for the Zambezi than I had. I won’t speculate how long we waited to see the red helmet pop up (we already did that), but I know if felt much longer than it was. Travis and I were standing up looking everywhere for the bobbing helmet, and although we didn’t hear him the others said the guide was telling us to calm down, as there was nothing we could do. I’m sure I couldn’t have done it if I tried, but we rode the rest of the rapids standing up in the raft searching the water. Of course we were looking at the place she got sucked into the whirlpool, so it was quite surprising when her paddle and head popped up right beside the boat – which was way down river by them. It was very quiet the rest of the way down the river, but it was right near the end.
Roger
RENAE:
I love White Water Rafting!!! Ok, I’ll admit that I was freakishly nervous and scared the few days before we left, mainly of the raft flipping and me getting trapped, or getting thrown off and hitting a rock or something. Somehow I heard a rumor that 3 out of 4 boats flip, but honestly I have no idea from where because that is not true. When we talked to the first company and asked how many boats flip, their response was “Since it is highwater season, the rapids aren’t as wild, so your boat will probably only flip once.” However, after talking to the guides from the company and learning that the boat I was in would not in any way flip, and looking at pictures of other groups, I became excited and not nervous anymore. We started halfway through, because the portage route of the 9th rapid they usually portage in low-water season (it’s a level 6, and called ‘commercial suicide’) is flooded, so we had to start after that. Keep in mind that these are the worst rapids in the world that commercial companies use, and is on the Zambezi River, the river that feeds Victoria Falls. We went through some level five rapids, but if we went in low-water season there would be even more. Well the trip was AMAZING! I went through 6 or 7 rapids in the non-flip boat, then moved to the flippy boat for the rest. The rapid after I moved I fell out. This particular rapid, ‘the oblivion’, has flipped more boats than any other in the world. We didn’t flip, but MAN we were close! We were literally vertical, and I was certain we were going to flip and my worst fear would happen, since it was going to flip over me, soI half bailed out, half tried to hang on. I learned later that soon after I fell, so did Travis, and my dad threw his whole weight onto the other side. Without him doing that, we would have definitely flipped, no doubt about it! When I went in I tried to grab onto the rope so as not to lose the raft, but couldn’t find it. I went under the raft and came up on the other side. The guide pulled me in quickly, and Trav too. Before that Roger also went in, but I didn’t see it. I heard it was pretty funny; he was flailing around on the bottom of the boat. Then the very next rapid Erin also fell out. It was pretty scary, because we went through the whole rapid and couldn’t see her head bobbing like everyone had been. I actually didn’t realize she was gone until I heard Travis’ scared, hoarse “Where is she?!”, and then I knew something was wrong. I’ll let her tell you about that though. In the end, everyone in that boat fell out except Lisa and Nicole, and everyone is fine. Then we hiked up the gorge and ate lunch there. Afterwards we got our certificates and went to Vic Falls. It was really misty, and half of the waterfall was clouded out by it, but it was still amazingly beautiful.
I love Africa!!!
Renae
ERIN
Renae asked me to give my own account of my rafting adventure, so here you have it. I think the river god must have been angry that I didn’t buy any of his charms that the locals were trying to sell us on the hike down into the gorge. Anyway, like Renae said, I had a little more excitement than I bargained for on one of the last rapids. Maybe I could’ve hung on when we hit the wave, but hey, what’s a rafting trip on one of the most exciting rivers in the world without one good flip? So I fell in and came up for a mouthful of air, but before I could even look for the raft, another wave of water caught me mid-breath and sent me swirling underwater. I remembered what to do, held onto my paddle, didn’t panic, and waited for my life jacket to pop me up again. It didn’t. I kept being thrown around, spinning or flipping, I couldn’t tell which, only sensing the water around me getting darker and darker through my eyelids. You expect to hear pounding water, or some ominous music in a movie soundtrack, but the whole thing was strangely silent. It felt like I was there forever. It all seemed absolutely surreal, until I came to the realization that I was going to have to take a breath soon, and it wasn’t going to be of air. I gave up on the being-patient-and-not-panicking tactic right about then and decided I better start swimming, even though I wasn’t quite sure which way was up. One of my biggest fears has always been getting trapped underneath something underwater, and I never thought I’d be so incredibly relieved to find my head hitting the underside of the raft. I pulled my way out from under the raft then, to sunlight and air and everybody yelling and Roger pulling me into the boat, and the guide telling us that it was a whirlpool that sucked me down and dragged me all the way through the rapids and spit me out at the bottom. He said it was normal, nothing to be too worried about. I sure wouldn’t have guessed it. It didn’t hit me until quite a while later how scared I actually was. It was just a minute’s breather, then paddling straight into the next rapids, none the worse for the day’s events than a head full of water, a good story, and a great deal of respect for the mighty Zambezi. River god, next time I know to buy your charm.
ROGER:
I also have a greater respect for the Zambezi than I had. I won’t speculate how long we waited to see the red helmet pop up (we already did that), but I know if felt much longer than it was. Travis and I were standing up looking everywhere for the bobbing helmet, and although we didn’t hear him the others said the guide was telling us to calm down, as there was nothing we could do. I’m sure I couldn’t have done it if I tried, but we rode the rest of the rapids standing up in the raft searching the water. Of course we were looking at the place she got sucked into the whirlpool, so it was quite surprising when her paddle and head popped up right beside the boat – which was way down river by them. It was very quiet the rest of the way down the river, but it was right near the end.
Roger
Thursday, July 05, 2007
July 2
ROGER:
It is early morning on the 3rd, and since we do not have enough wood to get a fire going and hot water for tea, I guess I should update this while the others are getting their beauty rest. They will just have to suffer this morning when their tea is not ready! I was thinking about going to the Vic Falls Hotel veranda and watching the sunrise over the mist of the falls, but it doesn’t seem as safe to be walking alone in the dark, like it used to be – especially not here with all this country’s problems. It is sad to see this country in the condition it is. We could not find bread yesterday, there is no fuel in the entire town, and people are destitute for money that is worth something. With the world’s highest inflation rate (1700% was the last figure I heard), the money becomes worthless rather quickly. The 100,000 bills I have from here show an issue date of August, 2006, and an expiration date of July 31, 2007. I never saw money printed like that before, and don’t know what it means, but it is printed right on the currency. The black market rate here is many times more than the official bank rate. The shops have clothing and the store had canned goods, but it is priced way beyond the means of the people living here. This used to be a very reasonable place to come for vacation, but now the government is charging for everything, and it must be paid in US Dollars. Visas, vehicle carbon tax, Vic falls entry fees, tax on white water rafting etc. It gets expensive very quickly. Zambia also charges entry fees now, and vehicle taxes, but they are not quite as high as Zimbabwe.
Anyway I guess I digress. I was supposed to write about yesterday. As usual yesterday we got up and after getting everybody awakened fully enough to function in a somewhat normal capacity, we headed out walking. We are in the middle of town, and the town is very small, so we can get everywhere we need to by walking. We did our research and found the entry fee now to see the falls is USD20.00 per person, and that is only for a single entry. It is full moon tonight and the falls are lovely to view at full moon with the rainbows etc, so we thought we would wait until later in the afternoon and go in, have a picnic there, and then stay until the moon was up and view the falls in the moonlight. We went to the white water raft companies, and after some research and discussion with three different ones, signed up with one. They seemed to be a bit more "local" and in the end gave us the best deal. They made me a "guide" so I could go free – whatever works. Renae was a bit worried and most of them have age limits (which would have left Lisa nd Renae behind), but they said we could all go. We even got Jolene persuaded to go in a separate boat that they promised would not capsize. She was planning on staying back – not really interested in experiencing the great Zambezi River in such an intimate way – it is considered the best commercial white water rafting in the world. Renae is going to start in that boat also to see how it goes at the beginning, and then can come over for the wild ride later if she wants. I did ask when the last time somebody died rafting was, but I won’t bore you with those details. We didn’t have to sign our lives away like I had to last time I did this, but that will probably happen in the morning before we leave – or else the "local" outfit just isn’t worried about liability – which is more likely.
We then walked across the bridge to the Zambia side, but since it was a holiday we did not see the zip lines, bridge swinging and bungee jumping – it was closed. Some wanted to go into Zambia, and some didn’t think we should spend the money for visas, so we split up and Travis, Erin, and Nicole decided they would like to hike to the bottom of the gorge, which can be done from "no mans land" before clearing into Zambia. One of them can write about that, but they had a great time. Jolene, Lisa, Renae, and I went into Zambia and had lunch at the hotel close to the falls. It was all changed, and we could not eat along the river like we used to years ago, which was disappointing. We decided we didn’t have enough time to view the falls from the Zambian side, hit the curio shops that Renae loves and still be back to meet the others at the agreed 1600 meeting time at the Zimbabwean falls entry gate. On the way back I got into a very interesting discussion with a Zimbabwean about the current woes of Zimbabwe. He used to be a tour guide, but now walked across to Zambia everyday with his allotment of beer (about $2.50 USD) to sell on the Zambian side. He goes over every morning and gets back about 1400, walking the entire time. He said many Zimbabweans do that, and most of the people we see with bags are doing that every day. Beer is cheaper and better in Zimbabwe, than in Zambia, and that is how he currently supports himself and his family. Talking about Mugabe and the current situation was interesting. When I asked how he could feel comfortable saying the things he was on the street, he said he knew all the CID’s and secret police around Vic Falls, and could talk to me as long as he saw none were overhearing him.
We did go to the local curio market, which is a very interesting place and then returned to the entrance to meet the others, only to discover we did not do enough research. We had to be back out at 1800, and then could go in to view the falls by moonlight later (from 1930 to 2030), but it would cost us an dditional $30.00 per person. That was more than we thought it was worth, and since the 3 hikers went to the camp for a bite to eat and forgot about the time (so they said), they didn’t get there until 1615 and that would only have given us one hour and forty-five minutes to spend at the falls. We were planning on getting back to Botswana the next day, after the rafting trip, but since we didn’t even get the falls viewing done, we decided we better spend another day here. It’s good we don’t have a set plan – hey it’s Africa – it’s best if one just goes with the flow here anyway.
We did go to the Vic Falls Hotel and viewed the falls and the bridge from their grounds, hit the curio shop for those who did not see it before, and then went back to camp and made our meal. There are four VERY serous "journalers" here (sometimes it seems that is all they do), so they spent the evening getting their journals up and we all went to bed early to get ready for our big white water raft trip tomorrow.
Roger
It is early morning on the 3rd, and since we do not have enough wood to get a fire going and hot water for tea, I guess I should update this while the others are getting their beauty rest. They will just have to suffer this morning when their tea is not ready! I was thinking about going to the Vic Falls Hotel veranda and watching the sunrise over the mist of the falls, but it doesn’t seem as safe to be walking alone in the dark, like it used to be – especially not here with all this country’s problems. It is sad to see this country in the condition it is. We could not find bread yesterday, there is no fuel in the entire town, and people are destitute for money that is worth something. With the world’s highest inflation rate (1700% was the last figure I heard), the money becomes worthless rather quickly. The 100,000 bills I have from here show an issue date of August, 2006, and an expiration date of July 31, 2007. I never saw money printed like that before, and don’t know what it means, but it is printed right on the currency. The black market rate here is many times more than the official bank rate. The shops have clothing and the store had canned goods, but it is priced way beyond the means of the people living here. This used to be a very reasonable place to come for vacation, but now the government is charging for everything, and it must be paid in US Dollars. Visas, vehicle carbon tax, Vic falls entry fees, tax on white water rafting etc. It gets expensive very quickly. Zambia also charges entry fees now, and vehicle taxes, but they are not quite as high as Zimbabwe.
Anyway I guess I digress. I was supposed to write about yesterday. As usual yesterday we got up and after getting everybody awakened fully enough to function in a somewhat normal capacity, we headed out walking. We are in the middle of town, and the town is very small, so we can get everywhere we need to by walking. We did our research and found the entry fee now to see the falls is USD20.00 per person, and that is only for a single entry. It is full moon tonight and the falls are lovely to view at full moon with the rainbows etc, so we thought we would wait until later in the afternoon and go in, have a picnic there, and then stay until the moon was up and view the falls in the moonlight. We went to the white water raft companies, and after some research and discussion with three different ones, signed up with one. They seemed to be a bit more "local" and in the end gave us the best deal. They made me a "guide" so I could go free – whatever works. Renae was a bit worried and most of them have age limits (which would have left Lisa nd Renae behind), but they said we could all go. We even got Jolene persuaded to go in a separate boat that they promised would not capsize. She was planning on staying back – not really interested in experiencing the great Zambezi River in such an intimate way – it is considered the best commercial white water rafting in the world. Renae is going to start in that boat also to see how it goes at the beginning, and then can come over for the wild ride later if she wants. I did ask when the last time somebody died rafting was, but I won’t bore you with those details. We didn’t have to sign our lives away like I had to last time I did this, but that will probably happen in the morning before we leave – or else the "local" outfit just isn’t worried about liability – which is more likely.
We then walked across the bridge to the Zambia side, but since it was a holiday we did not see the zip lines, bridge swinging and bungee jumping – it was closed. Some wanted to go into Zambia, and some didn’t think we should spend the money for visas, so we split up and Travis, Erin, and Nicole decided they would like to hike to the bottom of the gorge, which can be done from "no mans land" before clearing into Zambia. One of them can write about that, but they had a great time. Jolene, Lisa, Renae, and I went into Zambia and had lunch at the hotel close to the falls. It was all changed, and we could not eat along the river like we used to years ago, which was disappointing. We decided we didn’t have enough time to view the falls from the Zambian side, hit the curio shops that Renae loves and still be back to meet the others at the agreed 1600 meeting time at the Zimbabwean falls entry gate. On the way back I got into a very interesting discussion with a Zimbabwean about the current woes of Zimbabwe. He used to be a tour guide, but now walked across to Zambia everyday with his allotment of beer (about $2.50 USD) to sell on the Zambian side. He goes over every morning and gets back about 1400, walking the entire time. He said many Zimbabweans do that, and most of the people we see with bags are doing that every day. Beer is cheaper and better in Zimbabwe, than in Zambia, and that is how he currently supports himself and his family. Talking about Mugabe and the current situation was interesting. When I asked how he could feel comfortable saying the things he was on the street, he said he knew all the CID’s and secret police around Vic Falls, and could talk to me as long as he saw none were overhearing him.
We did go to the local curio market, which is a very interesting place and then returned to the entrance to meet the others, only to discover we did not do enough research. We had to be back out at 1800, and then could go in to view the falls by moonlight later (from 1930 to 2030), but it would cost us an dditional $30.00 per person. That was more than we thought it was worth, and since the 3 hikers went to the camp for a bite to eat and forgot about the time (so they said), they didn’t get there until 1615 and that would only have given us one hour and forty-five minutes to spend at the falls. We were planning on getting back to Botswana the next day, after the rafting trip, but since we didn’t even get the falls viewing done, we decided we better spend another day here. It’s good we don’t have a set plan – hey it’s Africa – it’s best if one just goes with the flow here anyway.
We did go to the Vic Falls Hotel and viewed the falls and the bridge from their grounds, hit the curio shop for those who did not see it before, and then went back to camp and made our meal. There are four VERY serous "journalers" here (sometimes it seems that is all they do), so they spent the evening getting their journals up and we all went to bed early to get ready for our big white water raft trip tomorrow.
Roger
July 1
July 1 Rrin: Well, here we are, in the car once again. Sometimes I wonder if we drive so much every day just to create convenient opportunities for us to blog. We are a captive labor force. Actually, it’s not such a bad thing. Like Nicole said yesterday, sometimes we all need an excuse for a break from interacting with everyone else for just a few minutes. Right now we are on our way to Victoria Falls (Vic Falls, to the locals, or those who pretend to be…I’m learning the lingo, slowly but surely.) This morning we woke up to another impressive sunrise—our motivation to get up in the freezing cold desert mornings—and tried to warm up our numb fingers on mugs of tea from the campfire. Once we got on the road, though, and the sun was blazing down on us, we were closing all the windows to keep out the omnipresent dust, stripping off layers of clothing, and wishing the air conditioning hadn’t decided to quit on us yesterday. Our route of choice took us through the famous Makgadikgadi Pans, these big old salt pans left over from former lakes. With the help of several maps, two guidebooks, and our trusty GPS gadget, we made it through the pans without ever having to use the book’s detailed instructions for salvaging your vehicle after it sinks chassis-deep in the mud. Lonely Planet’s guide to Botswana also warns drivers not to succumb to the temptation to take off with reckless abandon toward the open horizons of the pans. Fortunately, Travis was able to resist those primal urges to drive as fast as he could into the great unknown, so we arrived safely at the other side. Getting stuck in the middle of nowhere would’ve made quite a story, but we’ll settle for convenience this time. Since then, we’ve checked out a few impressive baobab trees (which, according to Tswana lore, were uprooted by the gods and stuck back in the ground upside down), sighted a steinbok, several giraffes, and a zebra carcass, and had a picnic of tuna sandwiches while sitting on a baobab root. And drove. In fact, we just crossed the Botswana-Zimbabwe border on our way to our next campsite by Vic Falls. This immigration experience was decidedly less exciting than the one at the South Africa-Botswana border. No sprinting to closing windows this time. You could tell the people here were more efficient because the immigration employees were playing Free Cell on their computers as they worked instead of Solitaire. Seriously. So now we all have shiny new Zimbabwe visas on our passports, and, if all goes well, we may even head out to the falls to see the full moon make a moonbow in the mist tonight. But we’re not getting our hopes up. You never know what kind of unexpected adventures might arise in the next five kilometers. Erin
June 30
NICOLE: Today was another day of driving, sleeping, & reading. I probably shouldn’t be the one reporting on today actually, because I was in the back seat all day and way too into my book to really be participating. I did manage to hear tidbits of discussion about what routes to take. Dad would love to take a certain road but there are just areas of Botswana that is strongly recommended you don’t travel unless you have two vehicles. Guess we should have brought another Land Rover. We have decided on a slightly less exciting but smarter way of getting to where we want to be. After packing up camp in a relatively timely fashion, we were on our way towards Serowe. Serowe is pretty famous for being the home village of Seretse Khama, the first president of Botswana. I had read up a little bit on Khama, and the story of him marrying a white English girl, which was entirely unheard of, so it was kind of fun to see his home town, although it was really just another village. We stopped at a little hardware store there to get some oil before we headed out into the middle of nowhere, and boy did we draw the crowds. It’s quite an experience being so aware of your skin color at all times, and having everyone else be so blatantly aware also. Surprisingly enough, Serowe turned out to be out only major stop that day. Right out of Serowe is a rhino sanctuary. I guess rhinos are becoming less and less prominent throughout Africa, so it’s just a safe, fenced in area for them to be. We checked into prices to drive through, but decided we’d rather spend our precious time doing other things when we can really go to a zoo to see rhinos any time. So we drove some more and ended up spending the night somewhere between too little towns called Oropa and Gweta, right before we hit the Ntwetwe Pans. This part of Africa has the most amazing sunrises and sunsets. It’s dry scrublands for as far as you can see, and just as the sun is going down on one side of the horizon, setting the whole horizon aglow with pinks and oranges, this huge, glowing, full moon is coming up on the other side. We’ll bring back some pictures, but they just don’t even come close to doing it justice. We are getting more proficient at setting up camp every day, with everyone having their own little jobs to do. Mine is collecting firewood as soon as we get there, which suits me just fine because I get to walk around all over the place, exploring our new surroundings and getting away from everyone after being with them for a full day in the car, and nobody asks questions.
Nicole
Nicole
June 29
June 29, 2007 LISA: As predicted, we did not get off quite as early as we’d hoped. It’s actually quite remarkable that we did get off at all. In the morning, Mom went to the mall to pick up Dad’s shoes (we finally figured out that the lady on the phone was talking about shoes, not cheese), Erin, Nicole, Renae, and I got dropped off at this Craft Show Renae would probably die if she didn’t see, and Dad and Travis went to the hangar to drop off suitcases and take care of other such important tasks. The Craft Show was really neat and we ended up buying quite a bit more than expected. Renae also made some friends that plan on flying to America with us. I don’t know why somebody doesn’t just add Renae’s name to the dictionary, because it keeps getting underlined in red on spell check. Anyway, it turns out that it takes several hours longer than anticipated to drop off some suitcases, but that is just how Africa works. I can see where Dad gets it from. It was after 1:00 when they came to get us. By the time we finished packing everything and headed out, it was after 4. We had to stop at a butchery, and of course figure out where we were going. We headed toward Lebenche or something (and that is most definitely not even close to what the town is actually called) and WOW there are a lot of cattle crossing the road now. Anyway, it was getting dark and mom was getting anxious, so we found a non-fenced in area of the bush near a cattle post we hoped was not occupied to set up camp. We made carrots and potatoes and onions and sausages in the black pot by a thorny fire. It was spectacular. There were cattle and donkeys everywhere, and at one point they all decided at once to come check us out. Moral support, I suppose. The big lead cow with the loud bell sniffed Tau, and I guess she lost interest when she realized it was a lion, not a cow. At first we were a little wary about all these cows surrounding us in the dark and contemplated charging them, but we realized we were very outnumbered and outsized and just got used to it eventually. Never thought that the first animals that would make us nervous while camping in the bush would be cows!!! We fell asleep to the melodious sound of the occasional moo and the far-off jingle of cow bells in the distance.
Lisa
Lisa
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