We were in front of our hotel the next morning 5 minutes before Frank was scheduled to pick us up. We still felt badly about leaving Frank waiting for us a few days ago, even though it wasn’t our fault, so we made sure to get in front of the hotel a little early. Problem was, there was also a behind the hotel, and that’s where Frank was. So fifteen minutes later, Frank came in and found a hotel worker…
The Zambezi river makes up the border between Zimbabwe and Zambia, and it’s the Zambezi that is pouring over Victoria Falls. The two countries are connected by the beautiful Victoria Falls bridge, which towers over the gorge the Zambezi has carved. You can walk across this bridge between the two countries, and it’s my favorite border crossing ever. As our last post mentioned, you can walk to the Zimbabwe side of the falls from the town of Victoria Falls. The…
Frank was there, at the Victoria Falls Rest Camp, bright and early at 7am to pick us up for our day-trip to Hwange. The only problem with that was we’d been told by the tour company that pick-up was at 7:30, leaving Frank standing around in the cold for half an hour. Not to worry, Frank waved off our apologies, welcomed us warmly, and we were off for the more than an hour drive to Hwange National Park. Frank said…
Like Johannesburg, Zimbabwe was a place we had no intention of visiting before this trip. In Zimbabwe’s case, it was on account of the political unrest there. However, shortly before we left for Phase 2 of the trip, Erika’s sister’s father-in-law (“I am your father’s brother’s nephew’s cousin’s former roommate”) went to Harare for a few months of work, and was going to be there when we’d be in southern Africa. So, suddenly, we had something of a reason to…
We had no intention of going to Johannesburg. On top of being “just another big city,” we both independently felt like it was one of the more dangerous places we considered going. South Africa in general, to put it lightly, has some issues with crime. “Oh, it’d be the greatest country in the world if it weren’t for all the crime,” a South African we met in Istanbul airport, months later, said to us. He may not be a wrong…
Since we started planning this journey, Cape Town was one of the places we very much wanted to go. But by the time the trip started back in January, visiting Cape Town was looking fairly dicey. They were in the middle of an epic two-year-plus drought, water restrictions were in place, and there was talk of the city completely running out of water by April. Fortunately, enough rains had come and pushed that zero-day date out to 2019 at least,…
The morning dawned on the last full day of our Namibia Travels, with Erika bruised from her sand boarding falls, and Brennan bruised from being thrown repeatedly by his horse. Yeah! Seems like his horse was particularly cranky, and actually threw him twice. I know you’re supposed to “get back up on the horse” and all that, but I’m pretty confident I will never be thrown by a horse twice. Day 9 After a wonderful day of barely being in…
Erika and I had had enough of the early waking up, it turned out. So when Brennan and Sarah suggested getting up early the next day to go out to Dune 45, we encouraged them to go without us. We got to sleep in a sweet extra hour! When we woke up, we decided, you know what, we don’t feel like making breakfast this morning, so we went to get breakfast at the cafe at the campsite. Breakfast was… well…
After the stunning experience of the dunes the day before, we were hungry for some more time outdoors. We’d each found a hike in our guidebooks that was “nearby” Sesriem, so that made an easy decision. For day 6, let’s go hiking! Day 6 “Nearby” is something I hadn’t fully calibrated to Namibia yet. Sure, the trail-head was only 90 kilometers away, but it still hadn’t sunk in yet just how long that takes on Namibian dirt roads. Over 2…
Our start came early again, as usual. Fortunately, Erika and I were sleeping well in the tent now. Exhaustion helps with that. We were even better at getting camp packed up this time, and were easily able to hit our planned 8am departure time. We had a date with the dunes, and Erika, especially, was excited. The dunes were all I really knew about Namibia before this trip, and that’s because Erika has long wanted to come see them. It’s…
