bots and zam and craziness

Every time I sit down to recount our trip to Botswana and Zambia, I quickly feel so overwhelmed that I give up and delay until another time. Nine days that started off so relatively "normal" somehow turned into experiences that sound unreal every time I say them out loud. How does one convey that?

Botswana was yet another new perspective on Africa. I'm beginning to realize how much, despite my concerted efforts to avoid this, I still compare everything I see back to Senegal. Dakar was chaos, loud, dirty, vibrant, in your face. Somehow I thought I would see more of that on this trip, but Botswana, from what we saw, seemed in many ways quiet and reserved. The makeup of the people changed once we crossed the border, but it was less than 20 km before we saw yet another of our favorite institutions: the Mall, containing the same shops one would find in South Africa. For the rest of our 1000+ km drive through the country, one could tell how sparsely populated Botswana is. Hundreds of kilometers would pass before seeing another village, which always presented an interesting juxtaposition of thatch roofed huts but with diverse and unexpected amenities.

Obtaining stamps one and two of the trip (South Africa exit and Botswana entry) was not so much a problem. We got our car, a far too nice Nissan Tiida (think Altima) through, too. After a lovely evening in "Gabs" with Graham, sharing really great conversations on just about everything with him and his roommates over a braai, we left early the next day to Maun. Notable events of this 1000 km drive: seeing the Tropic of Capricorn, crossing the tip of a salt pan, and going through at least two or three "Veterinary" checkpoints. More on those later.

Twelve hours drive with countless donkeys and cattle on the road later, we arrived at our backpackers, the "Old Bridge." The place was lovely, with a relaxing great outdoor bar/restaurant by a river coming out of the Okavango Delta. We each had small rooms with the open-air bathrooms/showers nearby, and stars surrounded us. Around 8 am the next we were sped by motorboat to the protected area of the delta, from where we took Mekoro--small, dug out canoes that seat two people and are maneuvered by a guide with a pole--through a tiny part of the vast Delta. Mostly this was swampy water, with beautiful lilies and reeds and vegetation around us. We stopped for lunch on land and were guided on a long, hot walk to spot giraffes and elephants. On our way back, as we stopped in an area with more open water, we spotted hippos in the distance. (We'd spotted them on the way there, too. This time they were slightly closer.) We paused, enjoying the water, watching the hippos, until one of them decided he'd had quite enough of us watching him and started charging towards us. Loudly. Huffing. Quickly. Our guides tried to speed us away into the reeds as fast as can be done when using a pole, and we swiftly escaped (though a short while later we still heard the huffing near us). Kind of amazing.

So one Mokoro tour and twelve applications of sunscreen later (no, really), we returned to our backpackers. The next day was spent blissfully relaxing, as well as mentally preparing for the drive to Zambia the following day. Rumors saying the ferry crossing at the Kazangula border was closed due to flooding turned out unfounded, while a man named Rex gave me all sorts of advice of what to expect on the road there. The trip should take you seven hours, but there's a stretch of really disastrous potholes. Watch out for those. What kind of car are you driving? A sedan. Hm. I mean, you should be ok. Just...you'll know when you hit that part. Take it slow. Let the lorries pass you. Drive on whatever shoulder you can. Oh, and be prepared for a lot of chaotic bureacracy in Zambia.

At 5 am Wednesday, along with a lovely Israeli woman who was also traveling to Victoria Falls, we began Adventure #2. A sunrise drive, with giraffes in the road at one point, greeted us, and we sped along. Somewhere we hit another checkpoint, which are geared toward preventing foot-and-mouth disease and require all shoes and car to be dipped in a soda-ash solution. In Nata I took over driving. 285 km to Kazangula to go. I drove about 25 km before potholes appeared. A lot. Well, Sarah said, I guess we found it. I proceeded to navigate for four hours through roads that were, indeed, disastrous. The worst of it, the 20 km stretch at the beginning, felt at times impassable. No road, or gravel, would have been preferable to the spiderweb of concrete and 8-12 inch giant potholes. The "shoulder" was no better. As giant trucks veered and swerved passed us, as well as pitying SUVs, we pressed on at 0.5 km per hour.

It did get better after those 20 km, though it was bad for at least another 100 km. Not long into the slightly better stretch, we passed elephants on the side of the road at a watering hole. Occupied elephants are supposed to be no problem, so that was exciting. I continued driving, listening to celebratory music for having survived potholes. We approach an SUV stopped in front of us, and see elephants hanging out at the side of the road in the distance. Great. Unoccupied elephants, especially if there is a baby, require extreme caution. There's a long stretch of potholes just before them. We wait by the side of the road, not sure what to do. I realize that I am sitting in the driver's seat at the side of a road trying to determine how to speed by elephants through potholes, and I break out in quiet laughter (lest the elephants be provoked by my laughter in a car several meters away).

Needless to say, a giant safari truck passed us and as its passengers happily distracted the elephants with picture taking, I take our poor Nissan at full strength through potholes past this. We make it to the border. Stamp #3. We get onto a ferry that uses a small wooden board to separate me from the Zambezi as I drive our car onto it. A lovely river-ride. And then Zambia.

Stamp #4 comes only in the midst of completing a ridiculous number of steps required for entry, transactions we completed using four different currencies. Two hours, one Pontoon Fee, Road Toll Fee, Council Levy, single-entry visa purchase, Customs Import Tax, Carbon Tax, and Third Party Vehicle insurance later, we officially enter Zambia. The 70 km of road to Livingstone is well sealed, thank God. We're stopped three times, each time a request one of the different documents we obtained. I find myself officially in complete disbelief that we made it through this day.

Our last sight of the trip was, of course, the indescribable Victoria Falls. We spent a day hiking through the Zambian side of the falls and seeing them from every angle, including an amazing walk over a tiny bridge so close to the falls that all one feels and sees is pouring water from every side. The falls are at their fullest not only during this time of year, just after the wet season, but apparently moreso this year than in the past fifty years. As a result, we saw far more mist (which doesn't feel very "misty" when you're in it) than falls, but it was breathtaking. As was walking on the bridge to Zimbabwe, which we didn't enter, and hiking down through a rainforest-like area to the base of the falls, where the vortexes forming give an idea of what white-water rafting through the area might feel like.

That night we took a relaxing cruise on the Zambezi. We left to Botswana the next day, earlier than we'd planned, but knowing what we did about the road conditions we knew we couldn't make it back to Gabarone in one day. For all of its border-bureacracy, Zambia and Livingstone were culturally the most interesting part of the trip. Everyone we spoke to and dealt with, from border officials to taxi drivers to the police who stopped us at checkpoints and ultimately to the ferry operator with whom I had a 45 minute conversation waiting for our ferry, were wonderfully friendly. Though traveling is supposed to be logistically difficult, I'd love to return there one day.

This time the border was a breeze. Backing off of a ferry on the Botswana side was not. On our approach to the pothole area, we had two more elephant sightings. Once when we were accidentally parked on the side of the road next to one that was hiding by a tree, and another when, in the distance, a full elephant train of parents and children crossed the road.

And so, via a night in Francistown, we made it back to Gabs, spent another lovely evening with both Graham and Rafa, and were back in Johannesburg by Sunday afternoon.

Pictures are posted, by the way, though my internet connection makes posting them on Picasa time-consuming. If you have access, the album on Facebook actually has captions and a few more photos. I'll try to keep adding to both.