We’re now in Sri Lanka and I have to tell you, Africa feels both worlds and lifetimes away already. I’m trying hard to catch up on these posts (already 3 countries behind), but I’ve been lulled into the lethargy of the crashing waves, the smiling people and the swaying palm trees of this beautiful country, a stone’s throw from India’s tip. We might be here awhile…lookin’ for that lost shaker of salt.
The kids have wandered back down the beach to our not-entirely-dodgy guesthouse after a day in the surf, leaving Mike and me behind. Ahhh…quiet. And while this trip’s been a great adventure in many ways, it hasn’t been paradise and perfection at every turn. There’ve been days (plural) when I’ve been ready to throw in the towel on this cockamamie walkabout. It feels wrong to complain given our great good fortune to be able to undertake such a trip, but hey…there it is. There are days when I can’t take the griping, the constant moving from A to B, the 24/7 togetherness. Days of dirty, smelly clothes and tired children and mixed-up flights and frustrated homeschooling. But today isn’t one of those days. In fact, today has been one of those ‘how-will-we-ever-go-back-to-normal-life?” days. I want to hold on to the feeling – that all the waffling, packing, moving, planning, saving, renting, lost-income-ing, notarizing, nail-biting, and worrying was worth it. Staring at the shimmering Bay of Bengal in this crazily beautiful spot in this crazily beautiful world has made feel like, hell yeah…WORTH IT.
But back to Namibia….
We left Etosha and the Onguma Bush Lodge behind. Five healthy Newlands, four tires with nary a puncture and a long drive towards Zimbabwe’s Victoria Falls. Our route took us via the Caprivi Strip, the long, thin handle of northern Namibia wedged between Angola to the north, Botswana to the south and Zimbabwe to the east.
We knew it would be a long haul to our first night’s destination – Poppa Falls at the westernmost edge of the Caprivi. After a few hours of driving, we made a nerdy detour near Grootfontein to see the Hoba Meteorite – the world’s largest. To this day, I’m not entirely sure what possessed us to go 2 hours out of our way to see a big chunk of rock. It’s apparently about 80,000 years old and was discovered by a farmer not too long ago. It was baking hot and we speed-dated that meteorite like nobody’s business. We paid our (equivalent) $10, ran in, touched this big ole meteor, grabbed a cold drink and ran out again. The highlight might actually have been the enormous hissing beetle spotted near the bathroom. Done and dusted.
Back into Greg and headed north… This was the first time, in Namibia, where we witnessed the intense poverty of the rural villages. On the long drive, the kids watched movies on the laptop or various iPads, while children were hauling water jugs along the side of the road in dirty, torn rags. It was difficult reconcile the two worlds and, at one point, I ordered them to put the screens down and LOOK. Look how lucky you are! Look at how hard these kids have to work for the bare necessities. Look at the smiles on their faces and the huts in which in they live. LOOK. LOOK. LOOK. It made me angry and sad and resolute and deeply upset at the sight of little children with so very little. And our children with so much. It felt obscene. It still does.
We stopped to refuel and grab some grub in the very hardscrabble town of Rundu. The ‘big’ grocery store in town was stripped nearly bare and the only produce to be found was all mouldy and rotting. We bought some yogurt drinks, a hunk of cheese, some white bread, chocolate bars. The kids didn’t like the drinks (“these don’t taste like Yops…you said they’d taste like Yops“), so we pulled over and handed them to a group of beautiful little children on the roadside. They pounced on them like it was Christmas morning. I almost wept. I can only hope that our kids are gaining some level of awareness – that the great cosmic architect deals life’s cards willy-nilly, fairness out the window.
After weeks of heat and dust and sand, we travelled through the Caprivi and marvelled at the change in scenery. It was lush, rainy and green. Wipers on full speed, we arrived at our stop for the night – Nunda River Lodge. Set alongside the Kavango River (which eventually feeds into Botswana’s Okavango Delta), it was in sharp contrast to our previous dry, dusty Namibian accommodations. We did some schoolwork beside the river and watched the hippos snort and grunt as they floated around. We booked a morning boat tour and got some up close and personal shots of the hippos, crocs, Poppa Falls and the amazing bird life. After that, it was back into Greg-the-Toyota and further along the Caprivi.
Our second stop along the Caprivi was Camp Kwando, where we stayed two nights. Totally remote and lush, we watched the hippos, read books, did homework, ate lots of good food and played endless games of 99. It’s a beautiful lodge, with fire pits, river verandas and lots of resident bats hanging from the rafters. Our chalets came with many a chongololo to keep us on our toes. Manly Mike had to do a nightly round-up. Ugh…And if you don’t know what a chongololo is, google it (hint: think millipede on steroids. Whoa, Nellie….those dudes are huge).
When we bid adieu to Camp Kwando, we had only 2 nights remaining on our Namibian adventure. We reached the end of the Caprivi and dipped briefly into Botswana’s Chobe National Park. The border is a funny one, ringed with baobab trees and a few smiling border guards who seemed to traipse back and forth between Bots and Namibia with ease. They took an instant shine to Lucy and kept trying to convince us to leave her behind with them. She was not impressed.
We weren’t in Botswana for more than a few hours, but in that time, we spotted giraffe galore and more elephant than we’d seen during our entire time in Etosha. Botswana is a particularly special place to me and as soon as we entered Chobe, I felt an immediate need to ditch plans and stay. Sadly, it wasn’t in the cards. But we’ll be back and Bots will always have a piece of me.
With great affection, we left our trusty steed Greg behind in Botswana and caught a transfer to Victoria Falls. The Botswana-Zimbabwe border was mayhem and madness all wrapped up in a tangle of chaos. Warthogs and long-haul truckers and mud puddles and masses of humanity. But we made it through, 1980s-era portraits of Robert Mugabe staring down at me as I filled out visa forms. Our tourist visas were suddenly twice as expensive as we’d been previously told. And, of course, the credit card machines weren’t working (“Only American cash dollars, please”). When we were literally unable to ante up the American cash dollars required to enter Zim, the machines very conveniently resumed operating. A Christmas miracle, no doubt.
We arrived in Victoria Falls in late afternoon and it was exactly as I’d left it 20 years ago. A bustling frontier town of hawkers and touts, loud and dusty and vibrating with human enterprise of every sort. We had dinner at the kitschy-but-fun Boma Restaurant that night and, I’m proud to report, we all drummed our hearts out and ate the requisite mopane worms. Tom, in fact, found them quite tasty and returned for seconds.
Our ‘chalet’ in Vic Falls was probably my biggest accommodation fail of the trip so far. I’m pretty sure our bunkers at the Victoria Falls Rest Camp must have been prison cells at some point. We had two nights in these little cinderblock beauties complete with 4 single camp beds and enough mosquitoes to send pharmaceutical companies into overdrive. Also included: broken fans, a filthy bathroom and a colony of other bugs (note: rhymes with smock broach). And an oddly adorable Formica table. Ugh. Grim city. Apparently, I’m still a broke 23 year old backpacker. Who knew?
Our second day at Vic Falls was spent at….you guessed it…Victoria Falls, aka Mosi-ao-Tunya (the Smoke that Thunders). Despite the dodgy border town and the smock broach issue, Vic Falls are deservedly one of the seven natural wonders of the world. Neither the highest nor the tallest, they are still the world’s largest falls based on volume of water displaced. Twice the height of Niagara Falls, to give you an idea. They weren’t running high in December, but they’re staggering nonetheless. We were soaked from the mist and swept up imagining ourselves as David Livingstone in 1855 when he first stumbled upon them. Amazing. And I was strangely perturbed this time around by the lack of railings, guardrails, safety precautions, etc. Mike and kids loved it, but I was slipping and sliding and imagining certain death at every turn (this is a normal Jean-like thing, but still…).
Excited Mike
We spent all morning at the Falls and then hitched a ride with some friendly locals to the venerable old Victoria Falls Hotel for a long, leisurely lunch. This old lady is a bastion of colonial Rhodesia (as Zimbabwe then was). Still elegant and commanding a fantastic view over the Zambezi River and bridge, she’s a grand dame of the world’s hotels. Monkeys chucking mangoes at us, we walked through the immaculately kept grounds and settled on the veranda for a long lunch.
And then it was over. Just like that. Before we knew it, we were being whisked to the lovely, modern Vic Falls airport to catch our flight back to Johannesburg. The kids were exhausted and so excited to return to Rose, Conrad, the dogs, the pool and the peaceful tranquility of Blair Atholl. Not to mention the fact that Santa was a mere 4 days away from a big deliverable…
I think it’s fair to say that Mike and I were both a little sad to say goodbye to this leg of our adventure. Namibia to Victoria Falls was challenging, beautiful, difficult, rewarding and all our own. I’m so glad we did it, despite the fevers, worry, heart-stopping poverty, flat tires, long drives, dodgy food, smock broaches and infernal heat. More than any other travelling we’ve done, it felt like an accomplishment. And it was over.