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Windhoek: Tower of giraffes
Posted by Squiffy on September 10th, 2008
You may recall that in Zambia I spent a long time scouring local markets to purchase a wooden giraffe – a replacement for my original giraffe, bought in 2000 and subsequently broken by my clumsy dad (I know, I know the earthquakes were really to blame dad!). Dave and I spent an even larger part of our day sourcing packaging materials and making a cardboard box to protect Twiga on his way home to the UK. As I posted the parcel I begged the universe to let it arrive safely. Last time customs decided to cut open the package AND the giraffe to check for illegal wares.
The Zambian post office worker promised me that the parcel would arrive at my parents house in one piece, and within 14 days. I knew I’d have to wait longer than this for confirmation of its delivery, as mum and dad were swanning around France in their new motorhome (good on you for doing it in style!). The night they arrived back in Burbage, I hounded them with a phone call: “Any sign of the giraffe parcel, or a note to say it’s waiting at the post office for collection?”. Sadly, no. Maybe it was still on its way, but it had been nearly 3 weeks now. I promptly insisted that Dave call his mum to see if the parcel he’d sent on the same day had arrived. It had. Uh-oh. The giraffe was lost I concluded.
Slightly sad, I remained optimistic. I would just have to buy another one whilst I still had the opportunity and send it home with my sister when she comes out to Cape Town. Fortunately, on the way back from the game reserve to Windhoek we passed a large carving market. We had to endure the hassle of bartering once again, but when rumour got round about exactly what I was looking for, giraffes appeared left, right and centre, and I didn’t have to do too much searching. “Too big, too small, wrong colour”, I announced until I found one I liked. Technically, it’s proportions aren’t accurate but it had a fat neck and legs which should be dad/earthquake-proof. As an insight into the bartering process here, the guy intially wanted N$750 (over £50) and I eventually paid N$100 (£7), still more than I should have really.
Pleased with my purchase, I texted my sister to see if it was ok for her to carry it home. She replied, “Fine, but are you sure your last one didn’t get home? Jane (our neighbour) said something about a parcel being left with her whilst mum and dad were away?”. Whoops.
It seems I now have a collection, officially known as a tower of giraffes. Dad has quite successfully repaired the first one, Twiga made it home from Zambia, and Sylvia is now bubble-wrapped and ready to take a plane from Cape Town. Giraffe anyone?
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Daan Viljoen Game Reserve: Self-drive safari
Posted by daveb on September 9th, 2008
Whilst we still had the services of our Mercedes hire car which we used to travel from Maun, Botswana to Windhoek, Namibia, we took our first self-drive safari in the Daan Viljoen Game Reserve near Windhoek. Humans notwithstanding, there are no predators in the reserve and so we were able to walk around quite freely without worrying about becoming lunch.
We saw a handful of wildebeest, oryx, gemsbok, and a few birds. Chris and Jasmin ate crocodile in the on-site restaurant and I had a taste. Something between fish and chicken, I’d say. I was rather happy with my chicken goujons, thank you very much.
Filed under Namibia • 4 comments »
Maun to Windhoek: Crossing into Namibia in style. In a way.
Posted by daveb on September 8th, 2008
We took advice from a number of overland truck drivers and tour leaders, locals and fellow travellers about our options for getting from Maun, Botswana, to Windhoek, Namibia. Flying is the most popular way, but the tickets are about US$300 each. With four of us, chartering our own aeroplane with pilot wouldn’t be that much more expensive — actually about US$1500 (yes, we genuinely researched this option too!). There was no public bus. Hitchhiking as a group of four for nearly a thousand kilometres across a desert is a three-day endeavour for death-wishing nutters only. And then there’s the one-way hire-car option, with a one-way fee costing more, much more, that the car itself ($400).
Luckily, we discovered that a Namibian hire-car was already in the country and needed to be taken back across the border. We offered to take it back to its original depot for free, but of course the car-hire company was having none of it. Eventually we agreed a price which would work out about US$100-150 each, including fuel. And one other thing, the car was a Mercedes.
A Mercedes! Picture that. One flight aside, we’ve travelled exclusively by public bus and shabby taxi. For the next three days, driver notwithstanding, we’d be more-or-less horizontal in our own private first-class cabin. The girls picked-up the car, whilst the boys packed away the tents and the piled-up the bags ready for loading into the ample boot. Imagine our faces as the girls rolled-up in an Mercedes A-Class, roughly the same size as a shoebox. I’m sure that our mountain of baggage was taller than the car!
Anyhow, using Chris’ time-space-volume abilities, we managed to get the luggage into the rollerskate and headed off towards the next country in only slightly less comfort than we had hoped for. We had originally thought that we would make it all the way to Windhoek in one day, but as the car contract was for a minimum of three days, we took our time. Good job too, as there’s no way that we would have made the whole journey in a single day; for one, it was the first time any of us had driven in Africa (it’s different, believe me) and driving after dark is only for the experienced or foolish. (Seriously, wild animals pose a life-threatening risk on the roads and you’d be unlikely to see it at night until it’s way too late. Hit an elephant on the road and you’ll feel it much more than he will.)
The first night, we stayed at Zelda’s campsite, lodge and private game reserve, which is just 10km into Namibia from the border. It was a great choice and easily the best campsite that we’ve stayed at so far. At our individual pitch, we had running water, fire, electricity and lights! In fact, we even had a Cheetah come and pay us a visit — luckily, there was a chicken-wire fence in between our tent and the Big Cat. We took pity on the caged Porcupine who waited until twilight to further his escape back to the wild — good luck mate. Claire and I celebrated crossing the border of our fifth African country on this leg of our world trip by eating in Zelda’s restaurant. I had my first ever game steak — an Oryx (photo attached — Naomi & Ben [vegans], please forgive me!).
The second day, we stopped-off at the thermal springs at Gross Barmen. The naturally-heated indoor pool was thirty-eight degrees Celsius and it felt like stepping into a hot bath! Unfortunately the attached campsite wasn’t a patch on last night’s, although, in fairness the toilets were really clean and there was even a communal kitchen with conventional cookers with hobs!. The wind was blowing a gale, so we hid our tent under the washing-line. It was to be a poor night’s sleep — grunting and screaming animals came into the site and Claire and I pulled-up our sleeping bags to stay out of harm’s way… nothing gets the pulse racing like a wild animal six feet from your nose, separated only by a bit of thin canvas…
Before returning the car in Windhoek, we undertook our first driving safari at the Daan Viljoen Game Reserve (write-up and photos tomorrow as this post is too long already!).
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Africa Insight: How long does it take to…?
Posted by daveb on September 5th, 2008
Everything takes much longer than one would imagine over here. As an example, let me share with you today’s task, which was to organise a 4×4 camping-car for an imminent tour of Namibia. We are currently in Botswana, the car-hire firm is based in Namibia, next door.
Our mobile phone does not work in Botswana and we’re only here for a couple more days, so we decided not to buy a Botswana SIM card. We’ve been told that the reception in this town is patchy anyway. Instead, we’ll be using our Skype Internet phone from what is definitely the fastest Internet cafe that we’ve had the good fortune of finding right here in Maun.
It’s already taken three hours of poor-quality, often dropped, Internet calls to get from having the phone number of the car-hire company to receiving a quote for the hire. Unfortunately, the received quote had a number of critical errors. Like the number of people, the vehicle, the start date, end date and price. It took a further two hours to get the quote completely corrected. All I needed to do now was print-out and complete the attached credit-card deposit form and fax it back to confirm the reservation. Except the form wasn’t attached.
After more tooing-and-frowing, the form arrived in my inbox and we hit the print button. Except the printer was was out of ink. The other one was broken too. I infiltrated the office upstairs with a USB key to use their ink. No paper. Got some paper. Bingo! We printed; only a single-page fax stood in between me and the car.
Unfortunately, the fax machine hadn’t worked since it was struck by lightening so I took to the streets, paper in hand, to seek-out a person with a facsimile machine. Anika Rice would have been proud of me as I burst through the door of the nearby business centre, nearly accidentally knocking the manager on the floor. I pleaded with him to send our fax and stressed that the hire-car office closed in five minutes. I handed him the sheet and pointed-out the fax number. Instead of springing into action, he gazed down at the paper and began to slowly familiarise himself with the finer details of my car-hire agreement. Like a crazed time-challenge gameshow contestant I retook the paper and started to punch the numbers into his machine myself.
It’s taken almost a complete working day to organise a hire-car, but at least we’ve got one now. I think…
Filed under Botswana • 1 comment »
Okavango Delta: It should have been a wonderful experience
Posted by Squiffy on September 4th, 2008
I’ve already been to Botswana once before and not visited the Okavango Delta, so this time I didn’t want to miss out on this highly regarded natural site. Whilst some tourists take a scenic flight over the delta to comprehend is sheer size, I prefered to get a little closer to the waterways and take a mokoro trip, that is, be poled along in a traditional dugout canoe.
I’m told that a two or three day trip is best to give you a real sense of wilderness, however, as with all activities in Africa, at around $100 a day this type of trip wasn’t really within our budget. So we talked amongst ourselves and agreed that a full day excursion would at least give us an idea of the delta and a pleasant day on the water.
That was in theory. What we actually experienced was some of Africa’s worst organisation yet and only one hour in a canoe, thanks to the budget tour company we booked through (Note: for fellow travellers, we really DO NOT recommend Audi Camp). The one and a half hour transfer from Maun to the delta turned out to be three hours in a windy and dusty open sided vehicle on a very cold African morning. It wasn’t made any more bearable by the gaggle of American teenagers, harping on about how everything was ‘soooo awesome man’, ‘yeah, like really cool’.
When we arrived at the mokoro station, the polers were nowhere to be seen. Forty-five minutes later, after their arrival, we cautiously edged into our canoes, many of which appeared to be sinking. Ours certainly leaked and gave us wet bums, however, Jasmin and Chris’ needed constant bailing and they eventually had to get out and walk. The time that we had on the canoe was enjoyable, I found it very peaceful gliding along the delta waterways between the tall grasses, and the water-lilies were especially pretty. Unfortunately our experience only lasted for half an hour before we moored up in the bush. ‘This is where we go for a walk’, our guide announced. We looked at each other in surprise, we hadn’t known that part of the trip involved a bush walk in the intense heat of the now midday sun.
‘How long is this walk?’, I enquired, knowing that I’m not too good in the heat. ‘Two and a half hours’, the guide replied, at which many people gasped and whispered amongst themselves about what a crazy idea this was. After a quick briefing on what to do if we encountered dangerous animals (did we run up a tree from the elephant or buffalo, I can’t remember now?) we set out, following the guide in single file. After 20 minutes bush walking and having drunk most of my water, I declared it was time for me to go back. Obligingly, one of the guides led me back to the picnic site whilst the others continued on to the hippo pool. I was fortunate to see an elephant on my return walk, whilst the others saw only one giraffe and a few hippos from a great distance on the rest of their walk. It was pure craziness. In fact, Chris is now suffering with heat stroke.
After a very uninspiring packed lunch we clambered back into the canoes and returned along the route we had come. Again it was pleasant but there was no sense of wilderness because of the number of people in our group (remember those Americans from the truck?). Dave’s favourite moment of the day was when I came back from having a wee in the bush and he asked me teasingly if there was a gents next to the ladies. One whiney girl piped up ‘ooh, are there bathrooms here?’. We groaned.
Very unhappy with the overall experience which should have cost $90, we complained to the manager and told him we were only happy to pay half. We were expecting five hours in a canoe and only had one, the rest of the day was spent waiting around for polers, vehicles and walking through the bush. It was not what we had agreed to. A typical African illogical argument ensued in which he talked loudly over me and kept repeating that ‘you should have been briefed about the day’. ‘Yes, I agree we should have been told what the day really entailed, but that’s your staff’s fault not ours!’ When we refused to pay his meagrely discounted price he threatened to call the cops. ‘Please, go ahead!’, Dave chimed in, but eventually we settled on a price of $50, still too much for an experience that should have been so much more enjoyable.
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Kasane to Maun: Early morning, dead legs, hard travel
Posted by daveb on September 3rd, 2008
We needed to get from Kasane, the gateway town to Chobe National Park, to Maun and the Okavango Delta. We were told that it could be done on public transport, although any further details were sketchy at best. The early bird catches the worm and we packed-away our tent in darkness at 04:20 to get in the line for the first bus which was rumoured to depart at 06:00. To our surprise, there was an orderly queue of both luggage and people — normally in Africa there’s just a huddle of people and it’s a free-for-all. How civilised, we thought. We added our mountain of bags to the end of the queue.
After half-an-hour of kicking our heels, a bus pulled into sight. Oh dear. We had expected a 52-seat coach. We got a 14 seat long wheelbase Transit van. Worse still, the orderly luggage queue was just a ruse and had already descended into a position-scuffle not dissimilar to that of the grand opening day at a new Ikea store and we had been left behind. Luckily, the Squifter was on top form and used her diminuitive size to squeeze under the flailing Africans and tag four seats for us.
There wasn’t a luggage compartment on the bus and so we had to sit with our backpacks, tents and food on our laps… for over four hours. The locals were not happy about our oversized presence. Poor Squifter probably had about the worst of it. In addition to having nearly fifteen kilograms of baggage on her lap, she also had the displeasure of sharing half of her individual seat with the left bottom cheek of the ‘Big Mama’ sat adjacent to her…
After four long hours with dead legs, we grabbed the opportunity to continue our journey on a bigger, safer coach to take us to Maun. We eventually arrived at the Sedia Hotel, a recommendation from a friendly overland truck tour leader, pitched our tents and flopped onto our new foam roll-mats (which cost us only a beer at the last campsite).
Probably our toughest day of travel yet; glad it’s over but pleased with our achievement as many people said that Botswana couldn’t be done by bus!
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Chobe NP: One-way day-trip to Botswana
Posted by daveb on September 2nd, 2008
Next stop, Chobe National Park in Bostwana — our fourth African country. (I don’t count Morocco as being in Africa; it’s just a weird island all by itself.)
We knew that getting around Botswana without our own transport was going to be difficult. In fact, getting to Chobe NP from Livingstone, Zambia, would involve five or so transport changes. Happily, before we set off alone, we had the good fortune of meeting Chris and Jasmin, a good-looking German couple who were planning a route that matched our own towards Namibia (again, a difficult country to travel without wheels or a Private Pilot’s License). They had come up with a novel solution: Join a one-day organised Chobe safari visit from Livingstone and stay-put in Botswana at the end of the day, waving-off the other tourists as they returned to Zambia. And then find a place to stay. Genius! We decided to copy their plan and boarded the bus.
Once inside Chobe, and thus Botswana, we were taken on a whirlwind driving safari around part of the national park. Chobe is most famous for its density of elephants — eighty thousand of them, to be precise. Crocodiles are also a major feature feature and I was really looking forward to meeting some close-up as I had only previously photographed them from a distance. Unfortunately, our safari driver-guide was more concerned with getting from A-to-B as quickly as he could and rushed us through what could have been a far more pleasurable experience. Don’t misunderstand me: The drive was indeed enjoyable, but it paled compared to our experience in Lake Manyara, the Serengeti and the Ngorongoro Crater under the professional and enthusiastic leadership of Rama, our Tanzania Journeys safari guide. We were particularly amused by the baboon searching through elephant poo for easy, tasty, undigested morsels. We were less impressed when our driver refused to stop to let us photograph six giraffes having brunch at the side of the road, citing time as being against us.
In the afternoon we took to the water on a very civilised dining boat safari, on which we and a bunch of American tourists were stuffed full of buffet food and unlimited (UNLIMITED!) beer and wine. This was a really enjoyable experience and the perfect opportunity to get to know our new German travel buddies a little better. The waterside animals performed their almost pre-rehearsed acts flawlessly: Elephants washing, playing and crossing the river. Crocodiles laying-in wait along the river banks, occasionally smiling (to cool down) and slipping into the murky waters to disappear from sight.
We spent the evening at the campsite making fire and playing with our cameras to create ‘light graffiti’ art with a slow shutter and a torch — have a look at the photos to see my crocodile and Claire’s ‘Botswana’ word.
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Africa Insight: Multipurpose soap
Posted by daveb on September 1st, 2008
Refreshingly, Africa has the antidote to our consumeristic faux-necessities:
Meet Sunlight SoapTM — for Laundry, Kitchen and Personal.
Filed under Zambia • 2 comments »
Africa Insight: Communications suck
Posted by daveb on September 1st, 2008
Of late, we’ve discovered the joys of using our laptop as a SkypeOut Internet Phone. Unfortunately, the microphone is at the top of the lid of the laptop and the speakers are underneath — until I get a headset, one has to accept looking like a twit whilst on the ‘phone.
It works great right up until the power fails and the hostel’s wireless router drops the connection…
To all Western readers: Do not take your infrastructure for granted, you lucky buggers! (Never again, will I.)
Filed under Zambia • Click here to comment, it makes us happy!
You can’t handle the cheese
Posted by daveb on August 29th, 2008
Following our previous culinary incident in which I was made to feel guilty for a cock-up in the restaurant kitchen, we thought that we would get our next meal from Livingstone’s Shoprite supermarket. I needed a break from the drunk, near-violent Angolan gemstone-smuggler who caught me off-guard as I was trying to buy underwear in a clothes store. (He was thrown out of the shop by security, promising to wait for me outside, and we were escorted to the supermarket by a fellow clothes-shopper.)
Our perennial favourite travel-cheese, Laughing Cow, was approaching it’s use-by date in-store and so had been discounted.* After all our other items had been beeped through at the checkout, our assistant looked up:
“I’m sorry for you”, she offered.
“Umm. Ok. Thanks. Sorry, why are you sorry?”, I quizzed.
“I’m sorry about the cheese.”
“It’s OK, we know it’s near its use-by date. That’s why it’s discounted.”
“No, I mean I’m sorry, you can’t buy it.”
“Umm. Really? Why not?”, I was confused.
“The manager is on lunch.”
“O…k… but what does [i]that[i] matter?”
“He is on lunch so you can’t buy the cheese.”
It turns out that if a product is discounted, the manager must authorise the discount at the checkout. Presumably to avoid ne’er-do-wells from moving discount stickers to other [non-discounted] foodstuffs. Makes sense. What does not make sense, however, is the fact that there is no deputy manager or anyone else in the building with the ability authorise the sale of the discounted cheese.
Squiffy put the cat amongst the pigeons:
“That’s ok. We’ll just wait here [at the checkout, holding-up the queue] for the manager to finish his lunch.”
We got our cheese and, boy, did it taste of small victory.
* Why is Laughing Cow our favourite travel-cheese? It’s because it doesn’t need to be refrigerated. Spanish supermarkets don’t bother putting it in the fridge. Morocco doesn’t even have fridges, or supermarkets for that matter. Makes you wonder just how much [perishable] cheese is actually inside a Laughing Cow triangle, doesn’t it?
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