The morning was a boat trip along the river between Namibia and Botswana.
We saw so many animals - elephants thundering down the hill toward us and splashing around in the water, hippos yawning, Cape buffalo by the billions, crocodiles pretending to be logs, logs pretending to be crocodiles...
The afternoon was a driving safari. With our guide Innocent driving, we saw more elephants, including a rather close encounter with a single elephant. He came VERY close to us - no one was even breathing! No cats, unfortunately. Still, amazing and FUN!
Driving from Zambia to Botswana was interesting in itself. We were thankful for our guide who helped us do customs. We passed maybe 60 transport trucks waiting to take a ferry over to Botswana - it can only take one at a time, so drivers wait sometimes for 2 weeks. It's unreal. Lots of prostitution and trouble with all those bored drivers sitting around for weeks at a time. Anybody want to build a bridge?
That evening we tried a traditional African restaurant where the waitresses wore traditional clothing and we heard an awesome band. We were given a welcome drink made with corn which is an odd taste and texture for a drink, we found. Luckily, the actual meal was much more to our liking - chicken with peanut sauce, with wild eggplant and sweet potato leaves for vegetables. Dinner was accompanied at first by some drumming which was cool at first, but I had had enough after about 30 minutes. African rhythms are way too complicated for me, so it seemed kind of random and noisy, and it was a wee bit tricky to talk over the ruckus. We tried though, and Daryl and Sabrina told us of their experiences at the hospital. (Heart-breaking and frustrating most of the time, it seems -- power outages causing deaths, lack of training and compassion on the part of most medical professionals, wards based on gender only, putting TB patients, burn victims, psych patients etc all together....A surprising thing is that the pharmacy is well stocked. There is enough stuff, there isn't enough staff. Daryl and Sabrina are trying to influence change, but it's a slow process.) So after a lot of drumming, other musicians joined the lonely drummers, and the ensemble was fantastic. We had a great time talking and enjoying our banana splits.
Next day was the afore blogged gorge activities and Livingston Island - here's a double rainbow at the very edge of the falls.
The following day, we made the long drive back to Rundu (about 8 hours), stopping in Katima to shop for baskets and wraps. We saw many fires along the way and miles and miles of trenches dug for internet cable. Also frequently visible were cows and goats which were actually quite dangerous since they run onto the road without warning. Even elephants do, especially at dusk when the tarmac remains warm as the air cools. Unfortunately, early on in the road trip, we hit a baby goat. He didn't suffer. Despite the casualty, we had a lot of fun talking and listening to music. I took a million blurry pictures through the window of gigantic termite hills and tiny roadside villages.
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