An Update from Lori ("Three doctors in Livingstone, I presume"*)

Traveling at a pretty good clip and trying to make up the five days we got behind in South Africa as we tried to get LandRover repairs and paperwork done made it hard to keep our blog updated properly, so we apologize for our deficiency. Blogging properly takes time, but we do hope you have found it interesting as we have found the land and people to be quite intriguing.

Changing money from one currency to another did cause us a little bit of struggle. After traveling thru Namibia and preparing to enter Botswana, we spent our Namibian money, and we had cleaned out our South African Rand. We arrived at the Botswana border with American dollars which couldn't get us thru customs, they required Botswana Pula. It was late Friday night, no banks open, not a pula to our name, stuck at the border, took some money trading, but got enough pula to cross into Botswana. It was late, dark and the roads were not safe to drive at night, mostly due to the large numbers of donkeys on the roads. We stopped at a gas station, explained our situation and they allowed us to camp out back, nice place except for the 24 hour music that played. At least we were safe for another night, thanks for your prayers.

Early morning headed into Ghanzi, which happened to having their yearly fair. We attended the "Ghanzi show", Herero district fair. The Herero women dress beautifully and are adorned with ornate head dressings. We saw the championship goats, sheep and cattle and of course had to try some of their fair foods. We had shredded donkey. Good thing it was shredded because it was a bit tough.

Headed towards Maun a town at the end of the Okavango Delta. The delta is a unique and dynamic network of waterways, crystal clear channels, palm tree-covered islands and full of birds, fish, hippos, crocs, and elephants. The head waters for the delta start in Angola as the Cubango River, go into Namibia as the Kavango River and end in Botswana as the Okavango and because of the flat nature of the land it forms the delta which eventually flows into the Kalahari desert. This area is home to five separate ethnic groups.

We took a short ride into the delta on a mokoro/dug out canoe and learned a little bit about the people, fishing and living on the delta. The people that run the mokoros are called polers, because the channels are shallow and poles are used to move the mokoros. Learned of the healthy respect for the hippos that these people have.

We drove to our next camp site. One site left, thanks for praying, but the lady said it is a bit remote and the road is deep sand. We had driven thru Mozambique, so knew the road would be no problem for Landy. Remote it was, but much quieter than the gas station stay. Set up the tent, started a fire, preparing for dinner, and it was a fight for the dinner. The rats came out of no where and were aggressive towards our dinner. It was us with firewood in hand going after the rats, the word got out we would defend our dinner, we won and the rats retreated.

Early morning rise again, driving thru the sand toward the road, big cat foot prints in the sand, just glad it was only the rats and not the lion that wanted our food. Quick drive thru Chobe and arrive at border to Zambia in the afternoon. Who knew the border crossing was going to require a ferry ride across the Chobe river? We loaded up the Landy onto the ferry and across we went. It was a small ferry, it could carry one big truck and a couple small ones. Excitement on ferry was the big snake that tried to cross, but I think it didn't end up making it across.

Posted from Livingstone, Zambia

* Note: In 1871, Henry Morton Stanley was sent to East Africa to find the Scottish missionary and explorer, Dr. David Livingstone. After an 8 month search, upon finding him, he famously greeted him with, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume."

(Click on this map to enlarge it.)