Hang on there, we'll be back soon

Most of you might know it already: We got robbed and that means all stories & pictures between Etosha and Okavango Delta that I had on my laptop and camera are gone. Until we solved our passport and money issues we won't be able to post in this blog. Keep your fingers crossed that it won't take too long.

This is how it happened:
After a long drive from Maun across Botswana to the eastern border we wanted to stay overnight close to the Zimbabwean border to be the first ones to cross the next morning.  Unfortunately campsites were scarce on that side of the country so we tried our luck at a lodge. The manager was a really friendly guy and after a short chat he offered us to stay in one of the cottages on the property for very little money as they had a last minute cancellation. We couldn't believe our luck! After 3 weeks of camping a luxurious cottage overlooking a lake with a huge bed, hot shower and TV was just what we were craving for. We packed all our valuables from the car into the lounge room of that cottage and connected everything (laptop, camera, battery pack, electric razor) to the power station because who knows when is the next opportunity.
We went to bed and slept deeply because the mattress was sooo soft and comfy. ..
The next morning I got up, went through the lounge room into the shower, came out and tried to find my jeans which I just left hanging over a chair the night before. And only after minutes of pondering and searching, I realized the whole disaster: EVERYTHING from the lounge room was gone!!!
Not only the laptop, the camera, the battery pack,  the razor... also all available cables,  my handbag incl. all travel documents, John's backpack with important things in, his harddrive with documents, our clothes,  sunglasses,  watch, binoculars. ..
And the doors were still locked!
What a nightmare!
After the manager and the police came over we realized they must have come through the window, which were open due to the installed mozzie net.
There is no way we could have thought of that. Even the police considered the place safe. The thieves must have known the place.
The  manager immediately sent out his whole staff to screen the huge property for anything the thieves might have chucked on the way. The police came with a bloodhound who followed a trace. But only 4 km from the cottage is the Zimbabwean green border, so the police had no authority to follow the trace any further.  The staff however risked their life and safety for finding our things. Okay, the manager has set a nice incentive of 1000Pula ( almost a month's salary) for the one who brings the passports. 
The whole morning we were busy with the police, answering their questions (how much do you think the jeans was worth...), they even took fingerprints from the window. We could use the manager's office to manage some issues online, they fed us breakfast and offered free accommodation until we have sorted out everything.
In the afternoon we drove to the police station (luckily the car keys were dropped next to the car and they hadn't opened it), picked up our police reports ( a story in itself I can tell you) and went back to learn that the guys found something 20km into Zimbabwe, which was my (already cancelled) credit card and driver's licence. But that's it. We waited for them to come back to the lodge but they hadn't found anything else.

Of course many "if only's" go through our head. We were lucky enough to have had both our phones next to our bed. The thought of having thieves just behind a thin wall next to you while you are peacefully sleeping is horribly creepy. But honestly, who wouldn't have left his things in the lounge room on a guarded private property? Yes, we learned our lesson, however we were always aware of the fact that we are in AFRICA and we always took security seriously. But there is always this one moment when you feel a little safer, that's when it hits you...

As it is not much fun typing stories with one finger on the smartphone you guys have to wait until I get a new laptop which can't happen before my new credit card arrives in Africa...

And no, we will not cancel the rest of our travels! As soon as the embassy lets us we'll continue traveling... a dream is a dream.

Botswana - the good part

We decided to cross over to Botswana on rather short notice. Initially the plan was to go to the Victoria Falls, that's what everybody was doing whom we met up here in the Caprivi strip. But when we camped on the river Chobe only 300m away from the Botswana border called Ngoma Bridge, we changed our plans. And now it was time for me to get nervous again. I always got nervous when we were about to pass a police checkpoint within the country. Our very first check point had hit us by surprise just outside of Windhoek. John passed it at about 60km/h... not a good idea. The policeman waved us back and gave him a lecture about traffic rules. Luckily only that, but it took about 20minutes. After that we were more cautious, we stopped at every official looking person and most of the time they just lifted their hand in a very lazy way, didn't even get up from the chair under the shady tree. Sometimes it was more difficult to interpret their handwaving though. Once we were sure we've been waved through only to find the policeman shouting at us, and hence making us pull over, gave John another lecture on traffic rules and argued we didn't stop, which is a serious violation of the traffic rules. Oh well, he eventually let us go after receiving a "little present", but I was furious at the unfairness!

However, crossing the border with a rental car, not knowing the rules and regulations, made my stomach rebel the whole morning.

Luckily we were prepared and knew that we couldn't bring certain food into Botswana due to their struggle against food-and-mouth-disease. So at the checkpoint we only had to get rid of our apples, which very obviously would be consumed by the checking staff later on.
The border crossing formailites proved to be very easy at the end. A stamp in each passport, some payments for car insurance and carbon emission tax and we were through. Too easy!

Our plan now was to drive to Maun, the gateway to the Okavango delta, via a 4x4-only road which was about 250km long, instead of driving 700km around it. Unfortunately our tank wouldn't reach more than 300km. Enough on a tarred road, but not on soft sand. So we had to drive back to Kasane where the next petrol station was, which was a 100km detour.
The next morning, fresh and with a full car reaching another 1400km without being refilled we made our way through Chobe Nationalpark to Maun. The sandy road forced us to release tyre pressure enormously and most of the time we couldn't go faster than 20-30km/h. The 250km proved to be unmanageable within one day! At the end it took us more than 8 hours until we decided not to push it any further and stayed at a campsite about 80km before Maun. The whole day was very exhausting even though we've only been sitting in the car. The enormous concentration while driving (John) and the constant fear of being stuck (me) wore us both out. And even though we crossed the Chobe Forest Reserve we saw not more than 1 elephant, 2 giraffes and 1 impala... and of course lots of birds, but we didn't really enjoy the landscape and its fauna anyway.

Luckily the next days didn't require us to do a lot of driving. We went on another Mokoro Trip through the Okavango Delta. And here we could actually enjoy sitting in this wabbly canoe and being pushed through the maze of shallow water which forms the delta. We were a group of 3 Mokoros and quietly our little group slid through the water following a -to us- invisible route. All we could hear was the gentle splashing of the long stick that the guide used to push the boat forward. We stopped to watch elephants in the distance and after about an hour we reached Chief's Island. Here we went for a walk which turned out to be 4 hours long. The beginning was quite inexciting. We seemed to walk aimlessly around the island (afterwards I knew the guides were looking for animals all the time; the one in the front in order to show them to us, the one in the back to prevent any attacks) when we only saw one giraffe in the distance. We sneaked up to the young bull who stood still for a long while watching us approaching and when we were about 60m close he decided to turn and galopp away. Now, having seen more giraffes before in Etosha and elsewhere, we knew that a galopping giraffe is rather panicked even though it doesn't seem like it. Their movements are soooo slow, because it takes so much effort to move 4 2meters-legs, that's why they normally don't do it. It is almost like watching slowmotion when you see a giraffe galopping.
After that we walked for ages and learned so much more about white-browed sparrowweaver, yellow-billed stork and I-don't-know-what... it seems to be a great sport for others to watch birds in Africa, but for us they were just too unspectacular and then they are constantly flying away...

But we should have more luck watching a herd of zebras grazing, impalas, which were more nervous and took off, ostriches which didn't seem to like our company and then suddenly we were surrounded by about 15 giraffes. Not close of course, we only spotted them one by one and only realized at the end how many it were. They seemeed to be curious and cautious at the same time. We decided to have our lunch break in their middle. This confused them a little so they better disappeared slowly, one by one...
After the lunch break we came across an almost dried out waterhole in which 2 giant catfish struggled to survive. We couldn't see them as the water was almost black with mud and of creamy consistence already, but it seemed to be only 20cm deep and the big fish were constantly splashing trying to escape into deeper water. Quite dramatic but also exciting... the way of life, here it would end for 2 fish who were at the wrong time at the wrong spot... but at least they would end up as fish eagle dinner, because many of them hung around the island...
Now we were at peace with our game-spotting intention and went back to our mokoros. It was me who spotted the hippo grazing in the reed, which was unusual as they normally stay in the water during the day. But we were far enough away and hippo didn't mind. All in all, even from today's point of view that was my best Africa wildlife experience!

Last days in Namibia

After Etosha National Park we wanted to hit the Caprivi, a small strip of Namibia in between Angola and Botswana leading almost all the way to the Victoria Falls. Other than the dry and desert-like climate in the rest of the country up here the landscape is green and lush. And with rich vegetation population increases, so we passed many villages along the long drive. For the first time we got a little bit of an idea how people live in Namibia. Before the landscape we drove through was mostly deserted, settlements were rare because there is just not enough ressources for people to live of. But in the north east corner that changes. We saw kids waving at the cars, goats and cattle along the road and the typical mud houses with grass roof. Sometimes there were stone houses in between but mostly they looked empty, or maybe it was just the impression that glassless and curtainless windows leave. Schools and shops (with basic stuff like rice, drinks and chips) seem to exist in every village, but later we learned that not all families can afford to send their kids to school.

We stopped at the famous Ngepi Camp, a camp with very specially arranged tree houses, toilets with only one wall around (so you're facing the forest while sitting on the loo) and all directly set along the Okavango River, which is full of hippos and crocs.
We learned here that hippos are not only the most dangerous creatures in the water, but also that they are the noisiest neighbors you can imagine. All night we had to listen to them splashing the water, grunting or roaring in order to mark their ground. They are highly aggressive to each other and of course towards every intruder, even if it's a big boat. On our sunset cruise with a boat resembling a terrace with an engine, we saw close up how hippos rip open their big mouth and jump towards us in order to chase us away from their territory. We were impressed and happy to be safe on the boat.

That changed the next day when we did a "Mokoro Trip". A Mokoro is a canoe which is steered by a guide and as it is so wabbly and unstable we tourists (max 2 per boat) are only allowed to sit quietly and do nothing. So, in this canoe we hit the river again, the guide explained us a lot about rare birds and we were lucky enough so spot a few of the Top10-rare-bird list. Our guide got quite excited about Purple Herron, African Skimmer and several Kingfishers, whereas we only shrugged at the sight of birds we didn't even know they existed. With the canoe of course we didn't want to intrude hippo's private space but sometimes it wasn't possible to keep the distance and then the bloody things are diving so you never know where they will pop out next. Being still very impressed from the previous' day hippo experience I was very nervous and when a hippo-mama threatened us by jumping towards us, my adrenaline got pumped big time. The guide just laughed and said, she would never come over to us in the shallow water. Around the next corner it was deeper and another hippo found us too close to his private space. This time the guide didn't say a word just suddenly paddled with the max speed... I was so glad when that tour was over, I can tell you!
By now I'm not afraid of crocs anymore, they are small-brained, instinct-driven reptiles. But hippos are dangerous as hell!

We would see more of the Okavango on the other side at its delta in Botswana, but for now we stayed in Namibia, drove up to the Caprivi's capital Katima Mulilo to stock up with supplies and finally spend our last night in Namibia at the banks of Chobe River at a very calm camp where we were the only guests, just how we liked it. The rooftop tent on our car had become our favourite sleeping place, where we felt safe and at home, high above all possible dangers and annoyances.

thoughts about Etosha

And now it was time to enter Namibia’s number one tourist highlight: the Etosha Nationalpark. As usual in Africa these nationalparks cover a huge area but what we didn’t know is that more than half of the national park is a white pan, a dried out lake in which nothing grows or lives. The rest is either bushland or steppe. The campsites and roads are around this pan. We decided to make the most of this and wanted to stay at each of the 3 campsites, giving us 3 days in the nationalpark. And it didn’t take long to spot the “usual suspects” like springboks and oryx but we also didn’t have any problems to see zebras, kudus and giraffes. And pretty quickly we figured out that kudus and impalas are more likely to be met in the bush where they were hiding, also red hartebeests (a little more shy than the others) and elephants, but elephants had problems with hiding anyway. On the other hand springboks, zebras, wildebeests were more comfortable in the wide open of the steppes. Also lions we saw more often in the open plains and giraffes… yeah, giraffes were easily visible everywhere. Jackals liked every place where there was food around, be it the campsite or a half-eaten wildebeest. We were lucky enough to watch hyenas trying to defend their feed from the jackals which they had just stolen the lions. Rhinos liked the bushes and the waterholes and honey badgers and little steenboks (look it up, it’s cute!) crossed our way on escape.

Speaking of waterholes… I was quite disappointed to learn that each campsite (which is in fact a resort to which also chalets, shops and restaurants belong) had its own floodlit waterhole which was easily accessible to everybody and I even heard that some guests just hang out at the waterhole the whole day and still could brag about having seen all major animals of the park! What difference to the zoo is that?

The most common species to be found at the waterholes is the Canon Eos, mostly connected to Germans. It’s amazing how much equipment some people bring keeping them busy the whole time finding the right focus, right settings, right light, right shutter speed… and in fact they miss out on the real experience. Nobody is looking at the scene, everybody is busy with the cameras. And I guess only at home they will realize what they have recorded. I must admit that I do realize the limitations of my Canon Ixus. It has always served me well but it’s definitely not made for crystal clear pictures of animals from the distance. So I personally concentrate on the scene itself, soak up the atmosphere, get caught in the moment and not worry too much about having any evidence about the just experienced. I just hope that the pictures of munching hyenas, roughhousing zebras, roaring lion and running giraffes stay in my head anyway. And by the way, none of these scenes happened at the floodlit waterholes. Getting up early and leaving the campsite at sunrise is a guarantee for more unique pictures than just documenting what passed by the waterhole.

After 3 days in the national park we kind of had enough. Problem is, with all the lions and dangerous animals around you cannot do anything else but driving around. No hiking, no activities whatsoever. So we did around 3hours drive in the morning, relaxed on the poolside during the day and took off for another 1-2hours drive before sunset. But at the 3^rd day we didn’t find anything what we haven’t seen before, so it was about time to move on.