Where 3 Cape Town, South Africa

HI All

At Vic Falls we picked up some more people - and lost some really good ones (I have to say that because they might be home now and reading this)....

We travelled into Botswana (rich country due to all their diamond deposits) to Chobe national park then Maun and then flew by light aircraft into the Okavango delta (one of the few inland deltas in the world - all the water evaporates !) where we camped for a couple of nights in the middle of nowhere. We came out of the delta on Xmas eve by speedboat and spent Xmas day at Sepupa Swamp Stop - Xmas day was blisteringly hot - we all had presents (sweets and a 'secret santa' - it's amazing what you can get for US$5).
Then to Namibia - fantastic country (my favorite in Africa) despite most of it being desert - it really is interesting honest ! Oh and hot - about 40C but very dry so the heat was bearable.
Toured round various parts of the desert and spent NewYears Eve at a massive rave in the dunes......then Etosha national park where it hasn't rained for a year and the animals have to come to the waterholes to drink - so we saw loadsa animals. Then South all the way down to South Africa, Cape of Good Hope, Penguins and Cape Town - a wonderful city.

High Points
- Watching the elephants play in the water at Chobe - they formed a line of 5 just like they were in the circus and waded in...
- Morongo trips in Okavango delta (dug out canoes for 2 people plus a poler) we went for hours through the narrow channels surrounded by water lillies and the occasional hippos and antelope.Idyllic.
- Sitting on an osterich in Namibia - a tad unstable (there is no saddle) and all you can grab onto is it's neck - though not very tightly !!!!
- Windhoek - capital of Namibia - an ultra modern and very pleasant relaxing city in the middle of the desert (like Adelaide apparently) - shoppping heaven for those that way inclined!
- New Years Eve Party in the dunes - about 5,000 people, 2 sound stages (main one rave, the other everything else) - absolutely amazing.........
- Sandboarding down the dunes - if it sounds like you just walk up a dune with a 2m x 1m piece of plywood, lie down and launch yourself down the steep side then your very close - just add a crash helmet and elbow pads and you can get up to 80kmh, then add a jump at the bottom and hold on f***ing tight - pure insanity.
- Quad Biking in the dunes - believe it or not you can go almost vertically up a sandune on a quadbike (160cc) if you get a bit of speed up....but then you have to go almost vertically down again - very similar type of insanity to sandboarding - 35km of great fun - almost continuous adrenalin rush especially as I/we were all just out of control almost all the time!
- Rock painting that are about 6,000 years old - Oh yes ... of COURSE this is a cultural trip ??
- Welwitschia plants - these can be up to 2,000 years old although the ones we saw were only approx. 300 years old. They grow at 1mm p.a. and only have 2 leaves but because of the wind and desert conditions they leaves are very tatty and they look like large lettuces that are passed their sell by date !!!!
- Sitting with 3 semi-tame cheethas at a cheetah reserve. You can stroke them if you are very careful and one of the handlers is keeping it calm - but then they wandered around us and nobody moved an inch in case we scared them(!) - they are beautiful animals but they have very big and sharp teeth (we were so exhilarated/scared stiff by them) - more dangerous than sandboarding but even more memorable!!
- sitting next to the waterholes in Etosha NP. Herds of elephant, giraffe, zebra, springbok(crashes of) black rhino and (prides of) lion all came to drink at the various holes we watched. Saw 15 lions in 1.5 days.
- Sunrise over the dunes (had to get up at 4.15am though and clamber up a large dune - worse than working for a living!!)
- Kolmanskop ghost town - no ghosts but an ex-diamond mining town which was abandoned in the 50's and the wooden houses have filled up with sand - weird.
- Fish River Canyon - 161km long, 27km wide (at widest) and 550m deep - all carved out by water - although for most of the year the river is dry ! Very spectacular.
- Robben Island off Cape Town - where Nelson Mandela (and most of the current SA cabinet) were imprisoned from 1964 until mid 80's (released from another prision in 1990 and became president in 94). The cells were only 2m x 2m and they were kept there 23.5 hours a day (then instead they volunteered to do hard labour just so they could get out a bit). A monument to the struggle against apartheid - very moving. Much respect to them for spending the best years of their life in such conditions and then not seeking reprisals once they got into power.
- Going up Table Mountain for sunset and then watching the lights of Cape Town twinkling goodbye on my last night in Africa beautiful - what a way to finish what was a fantastic trip of 12,000km by road through Africa.


Low Points
- Fishing on Xmas Day which was great except that we saw more hippos than fish and caught the same no of each - i.e. none.
- Getting up at 4-15am to watch sunrise over dunes, walking up a large dune in the dark only to find that my camera was (permanently) buggered! (Sand from NYE party had worked it's way in!). Just bought new camera in HK.
- The sea in Namibia (which is within the tropics) was colder than winter in Brighton !! due to cold currents from the Antarctic).
- drinking the water in Okavango delta - it was chewy, dark brown and YUK! but that was all we had for 3 days.
- Smell of Cape Cross Seal (lion) Colony - can't think of anything to compare it to - it was that bad.
- Meeting some intelligent white (Afrikaans) people in Namibia who were so racist (and claimed to base their beliefs on the bible) - basically white man was made by god whilst black man descended from chimpanzese - incredible that such beliefs persist.


And that was wot I saw in Africa. (if you read it all - well done, if you didn't then I can't blame you!) - let me know if you want to stop receiving these junk emails and I will take you off the list.

What did you get for Xmas (more than me I guess !!!!)

Now I'm heading for Hong Kong...

Luv Pete