With the Land Rover full, we were on our way to Livingstone to see Victoria Falls, known locally as Mosi-O-Tunya or the Smoke that Thunders. With the region having experienced record and in some places devastating rains earlier this year, the falls certainly were thundering with an estimated nine hundred million litres of water falling every minute. The only downside of this was that the spray coming off the falls was so big that it was actually quite difficult to see them as we walked around. We signed up for the 111m bungee jump from Victoria Falls bridge on our first morning and both loved it so much that we followed it with a tandem bridge swing over the Zambezi which was even more exhilarating, gripping on to each other for dear life with the falls right behind us. 
As well as visiting every view point, getting completely soaked crossing knife edge bridge and walking down to the lower Zambezi river beneath the falls, we spent a day kayaking on the upper Zambezi river between the hippos and crocs, visited the falls by full moon to see the lunar rainbow, and took a microlight flight over the falls and above the rising spray which gave us a perspective of their incredible size. We also had the opportunity to meet up with great friends Phil and Clare on their honeymoon for a drink by the river, a real treat having been unable to make it to their wedding.After three days at the falls we made the ferry crossing to Botswana and headed straight for the beautiful Chobe national park, famed for its huge numbers of elephants. Within the first hour alone,
we must have seen over fifty of them. Being without a guide or someone who really knew what they were doing was a completely new safari experience for us, adding a sense of fear that one usually doesn't get. All of our elephant encounters meant that we lost track of time and ended up finishing the drive to the camping area within the park at night. Being such an active time of day for the game and with limited visibility, trying to find our way made for a particularly exciting drive with herds of buffalo, giraffe and elephant all crossing our path. By the end of the drive, we were fairly comfortable that the brakes of our Land Rover were in good shape.Driving from Chobe to Savuti national park was our first off-road experience, a 100km soft sand narrow track going up and downhill. Whilst being a test of Dan's driving skills, it was not so of the Land Rover whose unbelievable off-road ability we were beginning to learn. We only had one night in Savuti, however we managed to randomly bump into Phil and Clare twice more on their honeymoon - sorry guys we weren't following you!
After Savuti, we drove to Moremi national park within the Okavango Delta, the highlight of which was most definitely our leopard sighting with neither of us ever having seen one before. Having just been complaining about the lack of game that day, we were tearing around a sandy corner in a bid to reach a different part of the park, only to be greeted by a female leopard crawling towards us. After slamming on the brakes and the leopard realising that we were just a harmless car, she relaxed on the road in front for our viewing pleasure. With just one river crossing to complete in the flooded park, the Land Rover strolled right through, however we were a bit nervous when we saw the water level creeping up to just below the windows. Camping in the middle of all three parks was truly memorable, barbequing under the stars in the bush and going to sleep to the sounds of hippo and hyena, as well as being woken up in the night by passing elephants who had little respect for the trees.
The rarely visited Makgadikgadi salt pans of Top Gear fame were our next destination. Whilst we had to detour several hundred kilometres to get there, the experience of driving over them was something Dan had always wanted to do. At 16,000 km2, Makgadikgadi is the largest salt flat complex in the world. After a tough and uncomfortable day's driving across rugged scrub land and amidst extreme levels of Kalahari dust, we finally reached a section of the pans that was dry enough for us to drive across without risk of sinking. The sight of the endless and totally flat white pans all around us as we drove across was mesmerising and brought on an indescribable feeling of freedom.
After leaving Botswana, we routed through the Caprivi Strip in Northern Namibia and headed straight for Etosha national park. Our three days in the park 
brought us some great game viewing including a lone lioness strolling slowly under Susie's window and most fortunately several black rhino (the very endangered one) by a waterhole one night alongside several white rhino. Dominating the landscape of the park is an 8,000 km2 salt pan which was covered by a thin layer of water whilst we were there. Having got slightly over confident about the ability of the Land Rover, Dan decided that dropping two wheels into the water wouldn't be a problem whilst turning on the pan's edge, however we very quickly discovered the limits of the car when Susie's side started sinking into the mud beneath and there was no way of driving out of it. Having seen lion close by, we weren't too keen on walking for help, however it wasn't too long before two other 4x4s passed and together worked to pull us out. Entirely Dan's fault.
Next destination was the remote Kaokoveld area in the northwest corner of Namibia, often referred to as the last untouched wilderness in Southern Africa. We'd heard that the journey to and through the area was very tough and slow going with only badly corrugated sandy tracks at the best of times and boulder stricken steep mountain passes at the worst. In the one thousand kilometres that we covered, there was nothing that even closely resembled a road, the only directional aids being three differently coloured oil drums at strategic points along the way. The mountain and desert scenery was breathtaking and the feeling of remoteness was moving. 
In the five days we were in the area, the only people we saw were the nomadic Himba people whose existence in one of the driest deserts on the planet and seclusion from outside influences were astonishing. The women cover their skins and braid their hair in ochre and butter oil to protect them from the sun, giving them a striking red colour. In one village we visited bringing bags of food as a gift, we learnt through a local interpreter that only once had they ever been visited by white people before whilst some of the children never, making them incredibly shy. Three times we drove up to the Kunene river which moonlights as the border with Angola, each time offering the most jaw-dropping landscape. The first was the Epupa Falls which whilst not as large as Victoria were even more beautiful through the sheer number of them tumbling down the multiple rock faces from Angola in all different directions and the beautiful setting they are in. The second was the wide open valley of the Marienfluss with silvery green fields of grass swaying between the mountains. The third and most memorable was the end of 
Hartman's Valley, a mountainous area covered in deep red sand blown in from the Skeleton Coast and interspersed with sand dunes. The detachment from the outside world in this furthest away corner was at its greatest. It was at this time as we started to head south that Susie decided we could take a short cut across some dunes rather than follow our previous tracks. The thick sand was becoming softer and softer making us have to drive faster and faster just to keep on moving, culminating in us getting stuck on the crest of a dune. The chassis of the car was entirely beached in the sand and we had to dig for about an hour in the blistering heat before being able to drive back along our newly laid tracks to where we started. Entirely Susie's fault.
As we approached the Skeleton Coast via the rock paintings of Twyfelfontein and the two hundred and fifty million year old petrified forest, the temperature dropped dramatically with fierce winds coming off the southern Atlantic Ocean. As one of the most treachorous and barren shorelines in the world, scattered with old ship wrecks, it was a real joy to drive down. After a quick stop at the one hundred th
ousand strong and rather smelly cape cross seal colony, we reached Swakopmund, a town that looked and felt like it had been lifted straight from the German coast. With the spectacular backdrop of the sand dune desert behind Swakopmund and the Atlantic coastline, Susie had her first taste of jumping out of an aeroplane from 12,000 feet strapped to the front of an instructor. We followed it straight up with quadbiking up, down and around the desert sand dunes at sunset which we agreed was one of the best activities we had ever done.
After Swakopmund came the enormous and dramatically shaped red sand dunes of Sossusvlei reaching up to 300m and the dried out clay pan of Dead vlei with its striking white colour against the rich redness of the sand and the deep blue of the sky. Summiting the 200m high and S-shaped Dune 45 for sunrise was a struggle but well worth the effort. After visiting the beautiful Quiver tree forest and nearby cheetah orphanage, our final stop in Namibia was the impressive Fish River Canyon, the second largest on earth.
Crossing into South Africa marked our last country in Africa and so was tinged with an air of sadness however we had the joys of the Cape winelands and Cape Town itself ahead of us. The setting for the vineyards of Stellenbosch is beautiful and so it is not surprising that the grapes taste as good as they do. After visiting several of the great wine producers on our first day and sampling their finest, we retired to our campsite with several bottles in tow which were enjoyed with some fresh springbok fillets we'd picked up from a farm along the way. With the first sore head of the trip the next morning, it was straight back to the vineyards to sample some more.
With just over 8,000km on the clock, we reached Cape Town, the mother city of South Africa. Whilst it was a sad farewell with the Land Rover after the incredible journey we'd just completed, it wasn't long before we checked ourselves into a beautiful guesthouse in Bantry Bay. 
As well as the sights of Cape Point, the penguins of Boulders Bay, Table Mountain and Robben Island, we spent several lazy days in Cape Town soaking up the atmosphere, visiting friends, enjoying the seafood and just chilling out after three months on the move. The only exception to this was our last day when we went cage diving with the great white sharks that live in the waters of False Bay. Seeing these amazing predators breach the water as they attack the unsuspecting seals above was incredible and to see them just a few feet away underwater adrelinine-inducing.
We've now arrived in Vietnam for the start of an eight week journey through South East Asia which will no doubt bring with it some very different experiences to Africa. The food so far, amazing.
Click on the album cover below to see some more of our pictures.
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| Southern Africa |
Love to you all.
Susie and Dan xx
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