The drums of Africa

Goeie dag everyone or good afternoon from Africa! Sorry it’s taken us so long to add a new blog, we had internet for the first time yesterday in Botswana but it went at 2mph and we barely got to check emails!! As you can imagine its Africa, its hot, its crowded and the internet, let alone computers aren’t very well spread as yet. We are currently sat in a camp site, surrounded by the sights and sounds of Africa, birds talking to each other in the nearby trees, the Zambezi River in front of us flowing steadily as the fish below live merrily and the sky filled with thunder clouds and ready to get angry with a storm. It’s pouring with rain and the lightening is beginning, its amazing, keeps making us jump!

The campsite is equipped with its own cabin, where we all eat together and share our travelling stories. The cabin is decorated with laterns and bamboo tables as well as a nice little internet suite, well one computer and a chair to be exact but does the job, however it is as slow as a dead mosquito. The computer is facing out onto the majestic Zambezi River so i am watching the storm as i write to you.

Things are going well for us so far. We met a big yellow truck in Johannesburg that was to be our home for the next month. Johannesburg was a tad intimidating as we arrived to our first city on our travelling tour. Hot, sunny, barbed wired colourful city that has the higest rate of car jacking in the world. Great place to start we thought. Our first night here was spent in a hostel that was full, we had to stay in their overflow room, just 15 minutes walk away from the main hostel. Not far I hear you say, but in a place where you are warned to not leave your houses after 3pm this was a tad daunting for the both of us. We literally ran to the meeting we had that evening in the main hostel as it was dark and there were a lot of gangs hanging around the streets. In the night, we were quite unnerved, hanging our towels above our heads to dry then soon fell on us in the night, making us awake to what we believed to be an intruder!

The next morning after an unusually cold shower, we met a whole truck load of mates, 23 of us all together. All from varying backgrounds and lifestyles, it was great to finally meet who we would be spending the next 30 days with. We began our long journey together, heading out of Johannesburg and into Kruger National Park gaining our first real view of South Africa. It seemed very vast, but with lots of houses crowded together and lots of colour and vibrancy. We drove through the day out of the main cities and into the surrounding areas of Kruger National Park, taking our first glimpse of wildlife as we saw gifarres along the route.

It was amazing to think just a day or two before we were sat in our homes in England watching TV and as we were driving to Kruger, we were hot, sweaty, thirsty and in the South Africa safari bush looking out for the wildlife we had only ever seen on TV.

Our first night of camping approached as we were shown a tent ‘putting up’ construction. Easy enough we thought, as we were trying to work out what went where. The green dome shaped tents sat nicely in a circle as we all strecthced our legs to a game of volleyball whilst the cooks as the campsite were preparing the fire and the food for the evening. Once we had set our tents up we soon started to see why it was named Elephant camp as the footprints that we slightly larger than human prints began to emerge. After a lovely meal and a great camp fire we were treated to a dance by the family that owned the campsite. The family, of around 15 members of all ages, played the drums and danced in the shadows of the fire as we sat on and listened thinking how amazing Africa truly is. The children of the family danced merrily for hours, with their huge smiles and happy faces so I joined in and gave my English hips a chance at dancing African style.

Once the family left, we were on piled onto 4x4 trucks for our first safari in Africa. It was pretty dark by now so we were using head torches to spot wildlife. We were so lucky to see elephants and a hyena. The next day, after a pretty good sleep in the tent we packed up and headed to Kruger for one last safari in the park. We saw so much our camera ran out of its 3 batteries. We were metres away from herds of elephants, giraffes, zebra and even a lion decided to come and take a rest right next to my seat in the 4x4 as it watched the hippo in the river in front of us.

Another few days on the truck, driving, listening to ipod tunes andswapping seats to talk to other members of the truck or playing cards on the table at the front of the truck we were soon heading into Botswana, our first border crossing of the trip. We were warned not tot ake pictures, not to wear hats or sunglasses and not to look the security in the eyes. As we entered the immigration building, which was more like a hut, we were faced with a sign that said no littering, keep Botswana beautiful, which seemed hilarious considering the amount of rubbish surrounding us. The immigration officer stamped us through and into Botswana we drove.

The landscape dramatically changed from green flora to a dry and dusty Botswana. Women walked along the side of the road carrying all sorts of necessities on their heads and children played together in the dusty landscape. We drove steadily towards the Chobe river and the Chobe National Park. After another night of bush camping, with scorpions surrounding our tents, we safaried in the biggest park in Botswana. The heat was intense, our hats were shielding us from the midday sun and they intensity of looking for animals helped us to forget the burning sun on our skin.

After a nights drive to Zambia, we crossed the border and headed to the Zambezi river, our next camp site. This campsite was a lot more commercial then the others and we were surrounded by a lot more people and other trucks doing similar things to us. This is where the fun begins.

The adreline junky side of us comes out to play tomorrow. We are going white water rafting in the morning (not sure why i am as the lady who was talking about it told us someone died last month, don’t tell my mum lol) and then in the afternoon we are doing gauge jumping, swinging on a bungy over the victoria falls. This is a tad too crazy for me but hey you only live once and I have always wanted to white water raft ever since I saw the movie The River Wild with Kevin Bacon! Just before we are about to embark on rafting the great Zambezi, we took a walk around it to check out its roar. Its majestic, huge and powerful. We were hounded by men wanting us to sit down by their market stool so they could make us buy there crafts. We came away with a few wooden crafted elephants.

South Africa, Botswana and Zambia have been incredible so far. Nothing can prepare you for the complete culture shock that you experience. Toilets that are holes in the floor with a family of flies living around them, thats if there is even a toilet, food cooked by the side of the road in the blistering heat, elephants marching with their families to the nearest water, lions taking shade whilst thinking about their next catch, camping down with the threat of large animals trying to get into your tent, the sound of the animals coming alive during the night, playing with their own kind and the water we have to drink being near boiling point. We swap trucks on Thursday and join a different group of people as we are heading back through Botswana and then to Namibia. Our truck is heading North into Zimbabwe.

Everyone, we are having the best time already, there is so much to say but havent got any more time on the net. This has already cost me 400,000 the currency is crazy here in Zambia!! We will attempt to upload the pics but the computers are dead slow!

Love to everyone x x