Friday December 24.
We left early again this morning and did a short hour long game drive to the park exit. We saw a couple of warthogs and then stopped at a waterhole where we saw zebra and giraffe drinking as the sun came up. Got some beautiful photos.
The rest of the morning was spent driving. We stopped at two towns to get supplies of water and what not. The second town was quite big and looked quite prosperous. There seemed to be a mad frenzy of Christmas shopping, especially in the large grocery store.
We continued and arrived at Waterberg Plateau, our new campground, about 1:00. We set up camp and had a good lunch.
In the afternoon a group of us went for a hike up onto the Waterberg Plateau. The plateau is at least twenty kilometres long. The road out of the camp starts off gradually but quickly turns into a long fairly steep hill. Then we branched off onto a foot path that became a rock climbing exercise. John, Stan, Roger and I led the way and we took the steeper more challenging route. When we got to the top (about 45 minutes) we climbed a rock pillar there. That's where we are posing in the photos.
On the way down John and I jumped into the camp pool fully clothed, to cool down and wash the sweat off of us. Then back to the camp for a couple of beers before dinner.
Our Christmas Eve dinner was provided by the guides: steak, chicken kabobs, squash with spinach, potato salad, and a bean salad. For pudding we had jello with caramel string and whipped cream.
We also celebrated John's birthday which is tomorrow.
Then some sitting around talking, drinking and limbo dancing?!?!
T'was the night before Christmas
And all through the camp..... (some random thoughts)
So far the trip has been everything I hoped for and more.
My tent mate John, is an excellent guy and just as immature as I am. We have similar interests and ideas. We are both into exercise and do ½ marathons and triathlons.
John and Ben, are still waiting for their bags to arrive... both got lost in transit on two separate flights. They have been lost and found a couple of times during the trip, but have still not arrived, and there appears to be little hope.
Camping life is good. So far the washrooms and showers in the camps are better than expected and are actually quite clean with normal toilets.
The three guides are great young men. They are friendly, helpful and lots of fun. They obviously love their jobs. They work very hard guiding, cooking, buy groceries, repairing tires, doing anything that's needed. They are on duty 24 hours a day. Because they can't be bothered setting up a tent for themselves, they sleep on the top of the truck. The one night it rained I could hear them scramble into various parts of the trunk. I found Retief sleeping in the luggage area and the two others sleeping in the sitting part of the truck.
The food is great. Breakfasts and lunch are sometimes just cereal or sandwiches with salad, depending on how much of a hurry we are in to getting somewhere else, but dinners are very good, especially considering where we are and how they are doing it.
We all have a work group that we are assigned to and we rotate through the chores daily. There is packing the truck, washing up, keeping the cooler boxes clean and tidy, and cleaning the inside of the truck. Works well.
Sleeping in the tent is good. They are roomy, more so than Machu Picchu, and we sleep on two inch thick foam mattresses. Life on the road is fantastic!
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