Travelling News - 1st January 2006!!
Hi all,
Happy New Year to you all and hope you all had a great Christmas and New Year. We have finally hit civilisation and are currently at the beach in teh adventure capital of Namibia - Swakopmund! We love it!!
Thanks for all the Christmas greetings. We will try and respond to all your e-mails, as long as this connection stays up and we don't run out of cash!!
We are on the home-straight with only a week left on tour and we have had a great time since leaving Livingstone.
We survived the gorge swing and a helicopter ride over Vic falls..... both were brilliant!
Then picked up a new group and headed out of Zambia (thankfully.... it is vvvv expensive) and into Botswana.... (prob one of our favourite countries so far) We went to Chobe River and the National Park and did more game drives, game cruises and saw the largest group of elephants so far having a bath in the dirt. Was very cool!
Then off to the Okavango Delta for Christmas. This was an experience to remember. The delta is a series of waterways and grassland, much like the Everglades. The delta is formed by the Okavango River ( and another that we can't remember) running inland and dissipating into the grassland.
Christmas Eve - When we got there, we met a poler called Anton (a girl) to take us into the Delta. All the polers own a dugout canoe called a Mokoro (like a humble gondola) and then pole you through the waterways as you lie back 2 per Mokoro and die in the plus 100 deg heat with no shade.
Sounds great, but our Mokoro leaked, so I bailed out on Sandy and left him to join 2 other girls in a fibreglass mokoro (the Rolls Royce). A couple of hours and sunstroke later we arrive at some dry (ish) land and setr up our bush Camp. Then spent the afternoon playing cricket with our polers and laughing at the little Nepalese guy called Badu (we have nickenamed him Budah and we are going to adopt him and bring him to Australia as he is hilarious) diving into the water to catch the ball.
Much later we enjoyed a few glasses of Vino, Secret Santa, a Christmas tree (part of a bush) decorated with tin foil stars, paper baubles and choclate marshmallows, Cottage Pie, Custard and fruit and some African dancing and singing around the campfire. Was very cool and we certanly a Christmas we won't forget.
Since then we have travelledthough Etosha National Park for more game driving (no game at all, so very boring) and finally landed her in Swakop. We are ecstatic as we are at a hostel with clean beds, WASHING MACHINES!!!! and a pool, where we celebrated New Year last night. We didn't make it to the beach party.... peaked too early and had to get put to bed!!! but did see in the New Year.
We are going fishing tomorrow and hope to catch enough to feed the truck, although if our last attempt is anything to go buy, we might have to stop off at the Supermarket on the way home.
All is good and we are looking forward to the last week and getting to Cape Town. The countries we have visited are amazing, but it is nice to get to something more civilised after such a long time on the road. Only 5 more nights in a tent!!!!
We are missing you all loads, especially now over Christmas and New Year.
Hope you all had a great time and we look forward to seeing you later this year!
Will write from Cape Town when we get settled!
Lots of love
Sandy, Yvonne and Monkey
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