Livingstone - Namibia all night long (and Eeva goes safari)

I didn't really know what to expect from the Vic falls. I got dropped off at the entrance (free minibus from the hostel) and teamed up with Heather from Canada, paid up the $10 park fee and in we went. You can hear the falls from quite far away, and the air starts getting more and more moist as you approach them. Then all of the sudden you can see them right in front of you: magnificent, thundering, too big to see where they start and where they end. Just lots of water, lots of spray, so high, so close - one slip and you're gone, they don't believe in safety fences around here! You get completely soaked as you cross the footbridge, but luckily I was prepared and had a raincoat with me. We watched people doing bungee jumps from the bridge that separates Zambia from Zimbabwe, I decided not to go for it (note: been there, done that already... not my cup of tea). After a few hours of wandering around we left and did some souvenir shopping in the markets - or trading more like. My made-in-china umbrella bought in Botswana for pennies turned out to be a very desirable item and I swapped it for a lovely ebony hippo carving, my hairband paid for a cool necklace, and they also wanted my flipflops and t-shirt but even though I was tempted, I decided I had to draw the line there.

Last night in Jolly boys, we went out for a great Indian meal and when we got back I spotted a table tennis table in the corner. I'm a closet table tennis fanatic so I spent the rest of the night playing like there was no tomorrow.

I left Livingstone and Zambia behind on Wednesday. On the bus to Namibia I met Kaisa and Minna from Finland and after 13-hours, several border and passport checks, stops and packets of crisps later we got off in Tsumeb, Namibia. We had to double check we hadn't actually arrived in the middle of Germany - it's surprisingly hard to tell! This place is as far from Africa as Finland is from North Korea. After realising that Tsumeb was a place we couldn't get out of fast enough, we decided to organise our own safari to the Etosha national park. It took us pretty much the whole of Thursday to get sorted, but by the end of the day, we had all the gear: sleeping mats, tents, a mountain of tinned food and of course our very own safari vehicle: a silver Hyundai Atos, about the size of a small beetle.

On Friday morning we hit the road. The 100km journey took us about half an hour, thanks to the amazing, empty roads they have here. I don't think we came across any other cars on the way there! The next three days we spent driving around the huge national park and camped on each of the campsites there. Every morning we'd get up, have a cheese and tomato toastie heated on the campfire, moved on to the restaurant to have a cup of coffee (finally, travel companions who understand the importance of a good cup of coffee!) and plan our route for the day.
The rest of the day went smoothly driving around the dusty roads from one waterhole to another, spotting various animals. There are so many zebras in Etosha that it got to the stage where every time we saw some we would cry: Not another zebra!! My biggest wish to start with was to see a rhino, and my wish came true on the first day already. We parked by a waterhole and were just about to leave when there we saw something coming towards us. We stopped the car and saw the rhino, who obviously had taken a liking to our car. To him it must have seemed like a lovely, shiny female. We were told to move by the people in a safari car next to us to avoid any closer encounters with the rhino, which we duly did – we didn't want to risk having to explain the strange damage at the back of our car.

Some of the highlights of our safaris included taking a pee next to a sleeping lion (“But it's obviously sleeping! It's not going to mind if we get out of the car...”), getting excited about spotting birds (even I had an enthusiastic birdspotter inside me waiting to be released) and breaking the national park rules one after the other (such as feeding animals: surely birds and gerbils don't count?).

We got back to Tsumeb on Monday afternoon, ready to leave the “one of the loveliest towns in Namibia” (accoriding to LP). Again we couldn't wait to get out fast enough. Little did we know that destiny had other plans for us: Kaisa caught a stomach bug which meat that we had to spend another day in town. While she stayed in the hostel hugging the toilet for the course of Tuesday, me and Minna took in the sights of Tsumeb. The local museum had a very interesting collection of stamps.

Finally on Wednesday morning Kaisa managed to keep her breakfast in, so we packed our bags and run out. The plan is to jump on a local bus and head to the coast. Let's see where we end up.