The trip from Windhoek to The Victoria Falls took 8 days and I can honestly say that by the end of it I really loved this part of Africa. It was an organised trip and I usually hate those sort of things but I loved this!

We left Windhoek early in the morning, when I say 'we' I mean I was on the trip with a German woman, a couple from London who were Greek and Italian and the guide (from South Africa) and the assistant (from Botswana).

I was so lucky to have a small group of people in the trip and as we set off we all got to know each other and they were a great bunch of people. The first day was mainly just driving but even so we saw Warthogs, a Zazu bird (from the lion king! I think its real name is a yellow tailed horn bill or a yellow billed horn tail or something) and we also saw donkeys and vervet monkeys. Patric the guide told us that a lot of people in Botswana live mostly on donkey meat! The male vervet monkey has EXTREMELY bright blue balls - its so funny as they are such a bright blue ie bubblegum blue!

We crossed the border into Botswana (country 22) with no problems, there are as many people in Botswana as there is in Glasgow - so we saw very few people and little or no civilisation - was lovely! We set up camp in a lovely lodge that had lions and cheetahs there - they had been rescued and were now in captivity and it was nice to see them up close. In the camp we also saw eland and the usual baboons and in the morning we also saw giraffe.

Botswana:
This country is one of the most successful, stable and peaceful of all the African Countries, and one of the most beautiful as far as I am concerned as it is home to the Okavango Delta, and the Chobe National Park.

The second day of our trip we arrived at the Okavango Delta and again put up camp. The really nice thing about this trip was, although we were camping in tents we stayed in the grounds of some fabulous lodges with thatched roofs and could use their pools, lovely showers and bars.
The camp in the Okavango delta was one of my favourite as they actually had open air showers with bamboo plants around to protect your modesty (slightly) and it was one thing i really wanted to do in Africa was have a shower outside (dunno why, just seemed part of the African 'experience')
The next morning the vervet monkeys decided to sit in the tree above the toilet I was in (same place as the showers) and throw things at me! Hardly fair when I was a sitting target!

The Okavango delta is breathtaking - I have already emailed pics of this. It is the largest inland Delta in the world, (another thing to add to the list). The water is crystal clear, and we navigated into the delta by traditional mekoro (dug-out canoes), many of which are now made of fibre glass, to preserve the sausage trees in the Delta, that were traditionally used.

The next day we had Mekoro drivers (kind of like punting on the Thames) and they took us deep into the Ocavango Delta. The Mekoros are very low in the water though and there is only room for 2 people and if you move around you end up in the crocodile infested water (as almost happened to us!)

That day was lovely as we moved through the Okavango Delta through narrow channels of water with grasses all around and water lillys seeing hippos and crocodiles and elephants! We saw the elephants when we went for a walk on one of the islands and it was a VERY different experience seeing them on foot as opposed to being in a truck where I felt safe! Seeing them on foot was a bit nerve wracking!

Hippos are really funny animals. Actually it was hippos that caused me to nearly fall in the water and get eaten by crocodiles............

Yannis (the Greek guy from London) was in the boat in front of me and asked me what I thought the Latin for hippo. He then told me it was 'hippopotamus amphibious' which made both me and the German girl laugh and in doing so nearly upset the boat. Hippos kill more people in Africa than any other animal and when males fight they will fight to the death every time. They are very bad tempered and lone females with calves are dangerous as if males find male calves they will kill them as they will be a threat to the dominant males later so females are very protective of their young. They also make the weirdest noise and Yannis could imitate it perfectly - which unfortunately gave rise to silly games of creeping around each others tents making animal noises at 3am after a few too many drinks at the bar!

In the Okavango Delta we also saw a huge monitor lizard - which Patric tried to pick up - with the result it ran straight towards us and had us running in all directions!

From the Okavango Delta we headed into the Caprivi strip (the little strip of Namibia that runs between Botswana and Angola) and we stopped at a huge group of elephants and climbed on the roof of the minibus to take pictures. Our guide Patric was a lot of fun and it was mainly him that instigated a lot of the 'fun but not really part of the itinerary and don't tell the boss'!!

From the Caprivi Strip we went back into Botswana and spent some time in the Chobe National Park, which was amazing again. We saw loads and loads of wildlife and Patric took us to see a dead elephant that had been killed by 2 rangers as it had attacked them. One of the tusks had been stolen by poachers and you could see the wire they used to pull it out with a truck as the spin marks were in the ground. Anti poaching squads are fearsome things in Africa, they are nearly always black guys and they drive around the parks with 5+ men in the back with capes and guns and balaclavas - they look pretty menacing!

The dead elephant was so big you could actually stand inside the ribcage of it. Patric told us that every time elephants pass here they will stop and cry over the elephant and that's why when they cull elephants (as there are too many) they have to cull the whole heard or the rest of them will be upset and angry and destroy villages and attack people.

This brings me to the ivory trade in Africa, there are a lot of articles in the newspapers about the ivory trade as it is forbidden to trade in it yet people still do it through poaching (as we saw in Chobe). However due to elephant culling there is a lot of stockpile of ivory and some people argue that it should be sold/floated on the stock markets as there is so much of it that the world price of ivory would then drop and it would stop people poaching as they wouldn't get any money for the ivory. However other people argue that this is only short term solution and it would not eradicate poaching and there would be no way to tell which ivory was poached and which wasn't.

The other great thing we did in Chobe was go on a river cruise (not to be confused with the booze cruise we did in Zambia)

It was stunning, simply that, I kind of ran out of words to describe it! We floated down the Chobe river?? and saw wildebeest and giraffes and crocodiles and elephants SWIMMING!!! that bit was amazing. The animals in Chobe simply behaved as if we weren't there which in some ways is good as you can get close to them and you know that these animals have never feared humans but on the other hand i question the extent to which humans have taken over Africa and animals are pocketed into these reserves or parks where they are fenced in.

The next morning we headed across the Zambezi river to Zambia! It took a long time at the border but we were allowed to go after several bribes. Patric explained to us that it was getting near to the end of the month so the police and customs officials collect lots of bribes so that they can pay their staff wages at the end of the month. Welcome to Zambia!

We set up camp for the last time in Livingstone after going to see the Victoria Falls or Mosi-oa-Tunya that means 'the smoke that thunders' and it really does thunder! We could see the 'smoke' rising from the falls when we were still 10k away! The walk around it on the Zambian side was amazing - the falls are at their highest right now and it was so hard to take pictures because of all the spray and the fact that I was drenched through immediately i got there.

The fact that the falls were so high though was lovely as there was rainbows everywhere!

When we arrived in Zambia that was the end of the trip so we all went on the infamous 'booze cruise' that was an all you can eat and drink cruise down the Zambezi and we saw crocodiles and hippos and the inside of lots of beer glasses.

After that we were so drunk that Patric did his party piece and made a noise like a lion grunting using the camping kettle - pictures to follow!! That was a bit of a crazy night with lots of Amarula!

On Sunday we all did our own thing and then went out for a 'last supper' in the town. The next day I was dropped at the hostel and I made plans for my next stop off! We all had t-shirts made showing the route that we took across southern Africa and it also has our names on it, the border stamps and the flags!

I went to Zimbabwe for the day before I left here so that I could see the falls from that side and I would very much recommend it. You are not as close to the falls so you can take some good pictures and its fun. Its also perfectly safe to go into Zimbabwe to do this as it is an established part of the Victoria Falls experience.

From here I will go to Malawi and then up to Tanzania and Kenya! I am running out of time and money and I am actually looking forward to some home comforts! I can safely say that I have no idea what my 'favourite' continent or country or even part of this trip has been but this last 8 days from Namibia to Zambia is definitely up there somewhere among the best!