Well this is very late but hey better late than never! Limited internet connection throughout Africa meant the blog didn’t get updated and it was back to the old school journal writing!
If I wrote about all my amazing experiences in Africa this blog would be about 100,000 words long, so to sum it up, Africa was AMAZING and hands down my favourite part of the trip. I had so many beautiful experiences while I was there which I got to share with some beautiful people, big shout out to my amazing tour leader Manda, cook Sofia and driver Gylos from Gecko’s tour company. Their local knowledge and great sense of humour made the trip, and by the end of the 3 weeks they felt like family and I didn’t want to say goodbye.
I had prepared myself for the adventures of camping and to be honest I was a little nervous as I had never really camped before, it’s just not something my family did when I was young, we were posh and stayed in caravans! So I packed my large supply of wet wipes imagining no showers for weeks and I got quite the surprise when all the campsites we stayed at had shower and toilet facilities with most of them also having a pool! This was definitely not what I expected but after a long hot day those showers before bed were heaven! And the tents were pretty good too, nice and roomy, I think I’ve passed the test and could definitely camp again.
Our tour started in South Africa, Cape Town and we made our way through Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe and ended in Zambia. I met some wonderful people along the way and as I mentioned had some of the best experiences (crashing my quad bike and smashing my face was not one of them) so I’ll just mention a few.
One of my favourite experiences of the trip was in Botswana on the Okavango Delta River where we were treated to a Mokoro ride along the river, it’s a traditional dugout canoe with boys on the back that use poles to move the Mokoro along. It was so peaceful to be moving through the water, amongst the reads almost at water level to everything. After setting up camp and having lunch the boys took us out on the river again where we spotted some hippos across the channel. We sat there for a while taking photo’s and I said to our Mokoro poler named Manpower ‘is it just me or do they seem to be getting closer’ to which he replied ‘yes they are making their way towards us so we need to leave’. We swiftly started to make our way back and had only just started moving when suddenly a huge downpour started. The cameras quickly went into plastic bags to keep them dry and initially I tried to crouch low and shelter but soon realised my attempts were futile. We were all sitting in these Mokoro’s getting absolutely drenched with fish jumping out of the water and over our heads, one even landed in the boat next to me. It was one of those moments that you had to have been there for but it was really funny, the image of all of us sitting in these Mokoro’s soaked to the skin while the poler boys furiously tried to get back to shore with us laughing our heads of while the fish jumped out of the water all around.
Seeing all the wildlife was of course one of the best parts of the trip and we got to see the elusive big five but the highlight for me was when we saw a male Lion close up, it was truly spectacular. He was a young male sitting by the roadside drinking from a puddle and he just watched us while we watched him and snapped away. It was breathtaking to be that close.
My memories of Africa will be of beautiful sunsets and sunrises, the Christmas day sunrise while we were on the houseboat on the Okavango Delta was by far the best, the wildlife and breathtaking scenery and of course the beautiful people I met along the way.
Africa definitely stole my heart and I will be going back one day, hopefully sooner rather than later, to explore the rest of the fascinating continent!
