Amy: 5 flights, 2 delays, one sprint through the Montreal airport and we arrived home on Christmas Eve around 4pm. It has been great to be home to catch up with family and friends but one of our friends complained that we haven’t updated the site lately and we left her hanging in the Okavango Delta. It feels like such a long time ago that we were in Africa but I will go back and recap our adventures since the Delta.
From the Delta we continued North in Botswana to Chobe National Park. One of the amazing things in Botswana is that elephants roam free and as we drove elephants would wander out of the bush and walk along the road. Thankfully we did not run into any but we did hear a story about a semi and an elephant that did not have a happy ending. We were fortunate to see several elephants as we traveled to our campground just outside of Chobe. Unfortunately the rainy season had arrived and not only was our campground wet and muddy but the rain makes the animals less active and therefore more difficult to see. Our morning game drive through Chobe National Park was not very productive from a big game perspective but we did see a lot of baby impala, a few hippos, some baboons, and a large variety of birds. We did see one elephant up close but it was just wandering along the road before we even entered into the park. In the afternoon we went on a game cruise that allowed us to get closer to the hippos and to see a huge crocodile on the shore.
From Chobe we left Botswana and entered into Zambia. Crossing this border was one of the times we were very glad to be on a tour. To get to the border crossing you had to take a 10 minute ferry across a river and there were semi-trucks lined up for about 2 kilometres waiting to catch the ferry. Apparently some of them had been waiting 8 days to get across (only 1 truck fit on the ferry at a time). Passenger cars and tour trucks get priority so we were able to go to the front of the line. Even still there was lots of jockeying for position and I saw some $ changing hands. Our tour company had also applied for a visa waiver and it was successful so we did not have to purchase visas to enter the country. Once we entered Zambia we had a short drive to Livingstone and we went straight to Victoria Falls. The falls were beautiful, they did not have the volume of water that Niagara Falls has but the water levels were still fairly low so you could see the rocks in behind the water and the mist created a rainbow in the canyon. There were several activities that you could do while in Livingstone and we chose to do the walk to Livingstone Island. This walk took us along the top of the falls (we looked right over them) to the island were David Livingstone first saw the falls. It was a cool and rainy day but the walk was amazing. There were six of us plus our guide and we often had to hold hands to support each other as we waded through the rapids above the falls. It was so good to be outside and active for about 5 hours. The rain continued for 2 of the 3 days we were in Livingstone and the campground was extremely muddy. This made it a little easier to say good-bye to our tour mates and start our journey home. Some of them were continuing on for 5 days to Johannesburg while others had 22 more days to get to Nairobi.
Winnipeg weather has been kind to us as it is unseasonably warm in Winnipeg right now but I am getting anxious to finalize plans for our next trip. We will post details once they are finalized.
