At the Zambezi Waterfront in Livingstone we met our tour leaders and the rest of the people on our tour (23 of us total). Most of them were from the UK or Australia, and one couple was from Croatia. Our tour which we booked because it was the only safari we could find in our price range for the days we needed, was an overland, which we soon learned meant A LOT of time on the road in our truck, whose name was Rafunza. A lot of the folks on our tour were coming off other tours in Kenya or Namibia. Some of them had been overlanding for 40 days! Hard to imagine since it means 500km most days or 4-8 hours of driving. One guy on our tour had climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro and seen Gorillas in Uganda before joining our tour. Some of them were on extended holiday and would be heading to NZ and Australia and then Asia before returning to the UK.Our trip seemed short by comparison, but they were impressed by the number of different places we had squeezed in a little over 3 weeks.
Our safari began with a lot of rain, but fortunately there were clear skies ahead. The first day we set up camp in the mud and took a tour on the Chobe river. The rain let up a bit for the tour but was cold and most of the animals were still in hiding. We did see some hippos and crocodiles, and some birds including fish eagles.
Things got sunny after that at Elephant Sands in Botswana. It was wonderfully sandy there, no mud and gorgeous. The Bushmen, or San, who usually lead a wildlife walk had gone home for christmas, so the owner of the place led us on a walk through the brush. It was lovely. We saw giraffe and elephants and kudu.
The following night we camped along the great, green Limpopo river along the border of Botswana and South Africa. The border crossing in the morning took a while, but we saw a sign that we shouldn't worry :).
The last two days of the overland tour were amazing. We stayed at this beautiful camp where we upgraded to a neat little hut. It was nice to have beds. Right after arriving we did a night game drive that was definitely one of the highlights of our whole trip. We headed out in this open air 4wd that felt like Indiana Jones. The ride itself was cool, but then we got to see elephants, including a baby, and lions.... literally a couple feet from the truck!! It was incredible.
Elephant!
Lions!
The last day we did a full day game drive that was also neat, saw our first zebra and rhino and warhog, and more of the now usual impala. You can see lots more animal pictures at
http://picasaweb.google.com/juantravels/SafariThat night was Christmas and the kids at the camp performed a dance and there was a Christmas feast that include warthog ribs (lots of pumba jokes), gnu sausage, and kudu steak, as well as lots of drunken revelry and 'Carol-oke"on the part of our fellow travellers. Then it was goodbye and back to flying as we head off to Cape Town for the next journey.
