Group photo 1
Group photo 2

Day 6. Joining the truck tour to South Africa

A day of meeting new people. There's 21 of us on the truck. They turn out to be a great bunch of like minded fools. There's lots of banter.

We drove for 100km, over the border to Botswana. It's quite a nice campsite. We put up our tents on the rocky ground and dossed by the pool (filled with revolting water) for a while. Then had a nice dinner cooked on the fire.

It's hot - 30'C at 11pm as I write this. The ground is rock hard, my camp mat is only about 1 inch thick. My pillow is a cushion I stole from the aircraft. We will be getting up at 5:30am to go searching for wild animals in a jeep. The water I swallowed while rafting is now coming out again. Sleep isn't going to be in abundance... Hopefully we'll eventually get used to the lack of matress and pillow.

A wild warthog (see pic) and a million apes live in the campsite. It's quite entertaining seeing the apes raid other people's stuff.

Day 7. Animal spotting in Chobe National Park

We set off at 6am in the back of a pick up truck for a 'game drive'. It was excellent. We added lots of animals to our 'spotted list'. Elephant, hyena, antelope, blue winged birdy thing, crocodile, giraffe, buffalo, mongoose.

Day 8. Relocate to another campsite

It's now getting even warmer. 36'C at 5pm. But we've arrived in a lovely campsite. There's even a swimming pool. Well actually it's a big cage in the river to stop the crocs eating you. However there's nothing to stop them walking round and climing in the way we do! And I'm sure the books mention all sorts of diseases from river water...

It's a fairly desolate place. we're 300km from the nearest hospital and the petrol stations are just like you would imagine in the middle of Africa.

The local children are fascinated by seeing themselves on the screen on the back of the digital camera. They were very grateful for our spare food.

Day 9. The Okovango Delta
A giant (16,000 sq km) wetland that has the Okovango river feeding it, but no rivers draining it. The water just soaks into the sandy ground. We're going to stay at a campsite on the edge and then go into the swamp and 'bush camp' on a tiny island for one night. We can only take take minimal stuff as we're leaving the truck behind and travelling by pick-up truck, then speedboat, then mokoro - a boat made out of a hollowed out tree trunk. (Well they're made of fibreglass now actually!)

Day 10. Bush camping.
No facilities except a fire for cooking, a swamp for washing in, and a hole in the ground for a toilet. Hippos, elephants, warthogs, crocodiles etc live here, but we only ever saw them at a distance or heard them. I made a spear to defend us in case any wildlife tried to stampede the camp. Unfortunately

Day 11. Back to civilisation.
...well, a campsite with running water. And scorpions in the toilet. A lazy day chilling out and playing chess. The evening got a bit wild as they had a Hooch promotion on at the bar.

There were lots of T shirts to be won in competitions. I was disappointed not to win the male stripper one, despite getting out the cooking oil. I was beaten by a professional, but those pictures have been banned for legal reasons.

No diseases for us yet. Just a cut finger and some bruises from the partying.

Next country - Namibia