Day 19. New Years Day and Chobe National Park

Happy New Year everybody. Mine was certainly different from the usual.

First thing this morning we got organized for our New Years Day morning game drive. 6:00 am start. Thirteen of us went on a safari jeep. As we were driving along the road to Chobe National Park we saw several Cape buffalo. That means I've seen all of the big 5, but only have photos of 4 of them, the leopard was on the night game drive.

Ed, John and I sat in the front seat as we drove around parts of the park. The roads were rough and bumpy. We didn't see too much variety but lots of quantity of impala (including fighting), baboons (including babies), hippos (including jousting) and maribou storks. We really enjoyed it, although a few people were very tired (some didn't sleep at all) from the New Years Eve party and slept through parts of it.

Back to camp for breakfast. We found the people that remained behind still asleep, so a group of us went to the camp restaurant for breakfast. We had a continental breakfast and also eggs, bacon and sausage. Great way to spend the last of our Botswana Pula. Happy New Year.

The we packed up and drove to the Zambia border. The crossing is very basic and there is a ferry across the Zambezi River (apparently Botswana and Zambia want to build a bridge but one of the pillars would be in Zimbabwe waters and Mugabe won't let them do it). From the ferry you can see five countries! Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Angola! As soon as we landed in Zambia we could see that things were more primitive and the area much poorer, more like what I expected in Africa.

We drove on and arrived at the Waterfront Lodge and Campground in Livingstone by one. We set up all the tents and had lunch. Then we had an orientation meeting where they told us about all the activities that we can do here. John and I booked five activities to do over the next three days. We also saw the other GAP truck (and the driver, Paul), that we are going to go on to Nairobi.

There are lots of verdent monkeys and baboons in camp, so we have to be careful and watch our stuff.

Then it was time for our evening boat cruise and dinner party on the Zambezi River. This is probably the last time we will all be together as ten people are leaving the group and we get ten new ones for the next leg.

The cruise was really nice and relaxing. Drinks were free and people took advantage of that. We saw several hippos in the river as we floated along. After dinner Ed and Richard got to singing! They did a version of Yesterday and others. Ed is having the time of his life. Our guides posed on the front of the boat in a Titantic pose.

When we got back I investigated the wi-fi situation (50 000 Kwacha per day, about $10, so I'll try that tomorrow). The lodge has a restaurant bar and we hung around there and continued our party. Spent a lot of time talking to Retief and Vernon about their plans for their future. Vernon also told us a lot about the next three weeks. Sounds like lots more fun.

John and I finally headed off to the tent by midnight.