Our South African Adventure

Well, we've made it to Johannesburg safe and sound, after an amazing trip around Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe. We were on an overland tour with Drifters, a South African adventure travel company. Covered 8,000 km in 24 days - wow! It's like driving across Canada 1.5 times. We had a group of 13 people including our guide - most of the people were from Germany and Switzerland.

I had been really looking forward to seeing Namibia - the pictures I had seen of the dunes were amazing. Much of the country is desert. The Namib desert is the only desert which touches the ocean. So, of course, Brian and I had to go up in a plane 10,000 feet and jump out to get the proper view of this phenomenen. Truly amazing. We dropped 5,000 feet in 30 seconds - and this time I was totally relaxed and enjoyed the whole thing. We also went quad biking on the dunes for a couple of hours, and hiked up a couple of the large dunes - and ran down them (like walking on the moon, you just float down). There's only 1.7 million people in the country, so it's quite empty really. We watched lots of beautiful sunsets atop rocky mountains with vast views of the desert plains (and the rocks you're sitting on are hundreds of millions of years old!).

The wildlife in Namibia was also amazing. We had a truly unusual experience in Palmwag, where a huge male elephant visited our campsite during the evening while we were having dinner (a lovely braii, aka bbq). It was just a few metres away, chomping away on trees and bushes. We walked right up to it when it was hanging out behind our bathroom. A stare down resulted in us carefully walking away backwards. Scary! Our guide said he has never had clients that close to an elephant while on foot before. In Namibia's Etosha Park we saw tons of giraffe, zebras, elephant, birds, all kinds of antelope, jackal, etc.

We unfortunately only had 3 days in Botswana - would definitely like to go back. We took a 40 minute scenic flight over the Okavanga Delta. Out of this world! You could see huge herds of elephants, hippos, giraffe, etc. grazing and browsing in the marshland - plus really see the Delta. We were picked up at a small airstrip, and taken by truck then mekoro (a traditional canoe with a poler pushing it thru the water) to our remote campsite. We had a bush walk and a sunset mekoro ride, and saw a giraffe - but no hippos, thank goodness. A hippos fresh track went past our tent, but we didn't see anything. Ignorance is bliss.

We also had a game drive in Chobe park in Botswana, where we saw tons and tons of Elephants. I've got pictures of elephants doing everything imaginable - having a mud bath, drinking, snorkelling in the water, babies playing, adults fighting... We have actually taken over 1000 pictures since we arrived in Africa. Is that a lot? :) And yes, we'll make you all look at each and every one of them when we get home. Just joking!

Now I get to Zimbabwe. I'm sure you've read the news and heard that there's a lot of stuff going on there right now. Bad situation. We spent 4 days in Zimbabwe and really loved it - the people, the landscape, the wildlife, the lodges/camps, everything. I'd love to go back. Highlights included seeing Victoria Falls - and seeing it from the sky, since we took a helicopter tour above it. Brian also did the bunji jump over the gorge by the falls. Yes, he's crazy, but didn't hurt anything. The market in Victoria Falls was soooo much fun. We had a great time bartering and joking around with the guys. Just bought one small carving. But got offered a job from one guy :)

And in Zimbabwe we stayed at the most beautiful lodge ever. Brian and i had our own tree hut, all open concept with beautiful views of the watering hole where at least 50 elephants visited in the afternoon. You could watch the watering hole even from a luxurious bath tub! We were going to have our bottle of champagne there (since it coincided with our 3 month anniversary and a Friday the 13th), but unfortunately Brian was a bit under the weather with a flu bug. But he's ok now.

In Zimbabwe we also went for a bush walk with a guide and got 20 metres away from 3 white rhino! Very cool. They can only see up to 15 metres, so they couldn't see us, but they knew we were there - their ears were twitching like crazy.

That's just a few of the highlights. WE're now hanging in Joburg for 2 nights. Most likely go to the Apartheid museum tomorrow. Then fly to Nairobi on Wednesday and start Part 2 of our adventure.

Miss you all! Send updates whenever you can - love to hear from you. We just don't get to computers very often, so I apologize if we don't email back very often.

We'll be going thru our pictures soon and posting a few...

Love,
Anne & Brian