The Long Road Home

After the incredible experiences in Zimbabwe, Chobe and the Okavango Delta we had a fair distance to make up to get back to Johannesburg.  The next few days are pretty much exclusively travel days, heading back toward Kruger National Park in South Africa.  Once there we spend two nights then it’s back to Jo’berg and home from this crazy adventure.

Ines and Alyssa on the drive home.

To everyone’s chagrin, the alarms were sounding at 5am so we could hit the road and beat the heat.  It has suddenly got much warmer here and the days heat up pretty quick.  Even the evenings and nights are warmer and I really don’t need much more than my sleep sheet and light overbag to stay comfortable which was sure not the case when we started out on this safari. 

Botswana is definitely more affluent than Zimbabwe and we passed a huge diamond mine as well as a coal mine that was situated right next to a big coal powered power plant.  The people in the cities are often dressed nicely, houses are bigger and nicer (still very small to North American standards) and you can tell there is more wealth here.  The other notable observation here is the amount of garbage along the side of the road is way less.  In Zimbabwe there was garbage everywhere and even South Africa there was way more garbage.

The first night’s stop was Palapye which is 100 km from the border with South Africa.  The next day was the border crossing and a stop at Polokwane where we had a great grassy area to set up our tents.... no dirt for one day!!!  This was the same place we stayed on the way up so we had that campsite pretty dialled.  The third day was similar to the tour up with Blyde River Canyon views, the potholes and the great pancake and biltong places along the way.  We set up the tents for the last time in Kruger National Park for our final two nights of the safari.

Blyde River Canyon.

I think everyone is getting really sick of all the dirt and dust around the campsites, I know I sure am!  Pretty much every campsite we have been to is just dirt so when you walk or a car drives by you get a stream of dust across the camp.  All the houses have dirt around their homes too which is meticulously raked or swept every day.  We were told it is so they can detect if snakes have slid across the area and into their homes.  Makes sense, but it still is really annoying when you’re camping in it every day!  It also supports Shannon’s thought that she really doesn’t want to be here in the summer when all the different snakes are out and about.

Everyone is still holding it together but we can all feel the trip is winding down and there are more thoughts about home as we spend eight hours a day in the truck.  Shannon was bored and can’t read in the truck so she started a “to do list” for when we get home.  I’m still holding out and trying to stay focused on working on the blog, getting my book read so I can give it to Duncan, drinking a few beers, and swapping tales with the crew.  The kids are still entertaining themselves with card games, reading, magic tricks and ipods and Jenna has found the back seat open so has taken up residence there to get a few more hours sleep throughout the day.

Blyde River Canyon

It has been an interesting experiment taking four families from different areas along with a number of couples and single people, throwing them in a bus and asking them to work together to do all the jobs necessary to make the trip work.  It kind of reminds me of the TV show Survivor except no one get voted off the bus at least not on our bus but I have heard that it does happen from time to time!  The dynamics of child discipline and just couple interaction has been great and everyone is still stepping it up to get everything done.  There have been some entertaining dialogues back and forth between Brendan, the tour leader and Flow but so far no-one has killed each other!  The German contingent of Simon, Tauti, Reuben and Alessandra have been awesome with the kids and have been a lot of fun to have on this leg of our journey. 

It’s been pretty crazy observing interaction between black and whites in South Africa.  Some people are very open and often you see younger people mixing but there is still a lot of bigotry out there.  One woman at a grocery store just budged in front of a black man in line without saying a word like it was completely acceptable.  The looks you get from whites when you hold open a door for a black woman is pretty funny too as it is when the black woman finally figures out what you’re trying to do for her.  It’s definitely not the norm. 

Hearing some stories around the fire from Flow of her life with her white partner of 10 years and the family not accepting her after all that time is pretty nuts too.  In her other job where she lived with a family cooking for them where she was expected to put her dishes and cutlery where the pet supplies were and not with the rest of the plates and cutlery.  After hearing the stories and observing the interactions in public you realize how recently Apartheid has ended and how reconciliation and forgiveness is still in its infancy here.  I can’t see it changing for a few more generations but you’ve got to hope things will get better with education, acceptance and time.  It has been a pretty incredible experience to see it first hand and has been the topic of conversation often between Duncan, Michel (aka Papaa) and myself.