After the first night in Kruger National Park we spend another day and a half driving around the park and observing the animals. We're very fortunate to spot a leopard lazing up a tree, but the lions are elusive - looks like we'll have to wait until Tanzania to see them. We take a drive at sunset, and enjoy a magnificent vista as four giraffe lope gracefully through the grass before the setting sun.
Following our time in Kruger we head north-west through Limpopo Province in South Africa in the direction of Botswana. We are now into a more rural area, and small towns of tiny concrete or brick homes are dotted through the landscape. The towns have power to the dust-surrounded homes but there is little other infrastructure. Countless stalls and small shops line the roadside; orange-sellers, hair salons, carwashes and mechanics. Children play in dusty yards with soccer balls, men and women sit by their stalls at the side of the road, and people trudge the dusty roads in every direction.
We stop for a break in the afternoon at a shopping centre in a reasonably large town, where the rickety street stalls are contrasted against the modern shops, including KFC. A large armoured police truck guards the carpark, but the resting policeman doesn't seem too concerned. We decide to ditch the modern stores in favour of the stalls, and head off in search of bananas. We walk through the stalls feeling conspicuous, and pick a stall where a lady sits with her children. Not sure whether to bargain or not, we ask for a price. It's one rand per banana, or six rand for a pack. At that price (six rand is about AU$1) I wouldn't feel right bargaining, so we take a pack and hand over the coins. The lady may well have put the price up for us tourists, but we don't mind. The lady smiles as her children hide behind her. We laugh with her, and Mariska says she has beautiful children. The bananas are great!
The drive ends at Polokwane Game Reserve, near Petersburg, where we chill and play some hacky sack with some others in the group (mostly Aussies, plus some Danes and Canadians).
Later in the afternoon we take a drive through the reserve and come face to face with a huge white rhino, who comes within metres of our truck and looks as if he's thinking of charging! It is an immensely powerful animal.
On Sunday we leave camp at 7:00am for the long drive across the border and into Botswana. We cross the border without difficulty, and exchange some of our South African Rand for the Botswana currency, the Pula. Driving on it is soon apparent that the living arrangements are somewhat different here. In Botswana there seems to be more of the original village arrangements, with small mud huts in compounds with pens of animals. Our guide Khensani tells us later that as there is plenty of land in Botswana, the government gives plots of land to people to encourage agriculture.
We drive on through Francistown, Botswana's second-largest city (in fact Botswana's second of two cities!), and stay at Nata Lodge - an oasis in the desert. The next day we drive on north through Botswana heading for Chobe National Park. The road is still bitumen here, but in parts we slow to a crawl to navigate our way around potholes which are four feet across. The land by the road is unfenced, and goats and donkeys roaming the roadside create further havoc!
That afternoon, after setting up camp at Kasane, Botswana, on the Chobe River, we take a sunset boat cruise in a little dinghy on the Chobe River. It is a beautiful, wide river, and its meeting with the Zambezi not far from here forms the intersection of the borders of Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe. We spot plenty of animals - birds, elephants, baboons, crocodiles, giraffe, and then a whole herd of hippopotami wallowing in the shallows by a grassy island.
The sun sets over the river as an elephant wades home from one of the grassy islands to the river bank, just twenty metres from us.
Friday, September 26, 2008
The journey begins...
After a great couple days catching up with Paul and Colette, on Tuesday 16 September we fly out of Perth for Johannesburg. We arrive slightly ahead of schedule, and on our way through customs and immigration we chat to a girl that Mariska knows from World Vision, who is going with her mum to volunteer for a few weeks at an orphanage in Mozambique.
Our driver meets us at the airport (this is not a place to catch a taxi!) and we head to Amadwala Lodge, an hour's drive through the unending sprawl and development of Johannesburg. We spend the first two nights at Amadwala, meeting the other members of our Intrepid tour group, and we also visit a Johannesburg shopping centre which is an eye-opening experience.
The rapid modern development in much of Johannesburg is contrasted with a couple of shanty towns we drive past, where thousands of people live in a mess of corrugated iron, dust and garbage. Many of the inhabitants are Zimbabweans and Malawians who have come in search of a better life, but unemployment is high and so living conditions are terrible. The class divide between blacks and whites is wide - black workmen walk hours to work whilst newer cars are invariably driven by whites. But this is not so shocking as the attitudes still held by some (I stress some) of the whites towards their black brothers. We see some black employees treated terribly by their white employers, and one employer has the gall to refer to the black population as 'monkeys' in our presence. The apartheid regime is gone on paper, but it will clearly take longer for the attitudes of many to change.
Thursday morning and we're up at 5:15am, and the tour truck is packed and we're on our way just after 6. We battle our way through the Jo'burg traffic, heading for Kruger National Park about 9 hours drive away. On the way we visit Blyde River Canyon, the third largest canyon in the world. It is spectacular, with sheer rock faces rising from the river into mound-like mountains shaped like village huts.
Finally arriving at Kruger in the late afternoon, we take a quick drive around before setting up camp. The park is huge - some 19,000 square kilometres and 350km from north to south - and is home to literally thousands of elephants, lions, zebras, giraffes, buffalo and other wildlife. There is no shortage of animals to be seen here, and in an hour we spot giraffes, elephants, zebras and many others. Whilst the park is fenced, this is as close as one can now get to seeing them in their natural environment. It is a spectacular sight to see an old bull elephant feeding just 10 metres from our truck!
Back at camp (a fenced area separate from the animals!) we set up the tents and cook dinner - pork chops and warthog sausages with potatoes cooked in the coals. The group gels and we settle in for our first night of the tour.
Our driver meets us at the airport (this is not a place to catch a taxi!) and we head to Amadwala Lodge, an hour's drive through the unending sprawl and development of Johannesburg. We spend the first two nights at Amadwala, meeting the other members of our Intrepid tour group, and we also visit a Johannesburg shopping centre which is an eye-opening experience.
The rapid modern development in much of Johannesburg is contrasted with a couple of shanty towns we drive past, where thousands of people live in a mess of corrugated iron, dust and garbage. Many of the inhabitants are Zimbabweans and Malawians who have come in search of a better life, but unemployment is high and so living conditions are terrible. The class divide between blacks and whites is wide - black workmen walk hours to work whilst newer cars are invariably driven by whites. But this is not so shocking as the attitudes still held by some (I stress some) of the whites towards their black brothers. We see some black employees treated terribly by their white employers, and one employer has the gall to refer to the black population as 'monkeys' in our presence. The apartheid regime is gone on paper, but it will clearly take longer for the attitudes of many to change.
Thursday morning and we're up at 5:15am, and the tour truck is packed and we're on our way just after 6. We battle our way through the Jo'burg traffic, heading for Kruger National Park about 9 hours drive away. On the way we visit Blyde River Canyon, the third largest canyon in the world. It is spectacular, with sheer rock faces rising from the river into mound-like mountains shaped like village huts.
Finally arriving at Kruger in the late afternoon, we take a quick drive around before setting up camp. The park is huge - some 19,000 square kilometres and 350km from north to south - and is home to literally thousands of elephants, lions, zebras, giraffes, buffalo and other wildlife. There is no shortage of animals to be seen here, and in an hour we spot giraffes, elephants, zebras and many others. Whilst the park is fenced, this is as close as one can now get to seeing them in their natural environment. It is a spectacular sight to see an old bull elephant feeding just 10 metres from our truck!
Back at camp (a fenced area separate from the animals!) we set up the tents and cook dinner - pork chops and warthog sausages with potatoes cooked in the coals. The group gels and we settle in for our first night of the tour.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Farewell Australia
The moment has arrived for us to leave the shores of Australia. Our
bags sit on the conveyer, wrapped in plastic (a must for Jo'burg), and
well underweight. The check-in girl asks how long we've been planning
this trip. "Eight months", we say, a look of excitement, relief and
trepidation on our faces.
Now, the South African Airways plane sits ready and waiting for her
precious cargo. God-speed to Africa!
bags sit on the conveyer, wrapped in plastic (a must for Jo'burg), and
well underweight. The check-in girl asks how long we've been planning
this trip. "Eight months", we say, a look of excitement, relief and
trepidation on our faces.
Now, the South African Airways plane sits ready and waiting for her
precious cargo. God-speed to Africa!
Sent from my iPod
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