Eating My Words, All The Way To Zambia

A few weeks ago a younger, more brazen, and more ignorant version of me promised that I would never go on an Overland Tour. The thought of getting on a bus and driving from sight to sight with 20 other randomly selected white people for 25 days did not appeal to me. I kind of regard the Overland "trucks" as one of the sights of Southern Africa, viewing them with as much interest and study as I would any other. Alongside the giraffe and rhino you’ve got giant white boxes full of white people listening to their Ipods as they roll from site to site in Africa. “Self, not for me,” I said to myself.

Well, I regret to inform you, dear reader, that while I may not have broken that promise in letter, I have done so in spirit. I’ve just arrived in Livingstone, Zambia (where Victoria Falls is located) after eight days on an organized tour. I know, I know—you must be thinking “hypocrite!”or “liar!”or even possibly, “fat pompous bastard!” So let me take a moment to explain myself, and hopefully along the way I can relay what it’s like to be on one of these organized tours in Africa.

After a week in Swakopmund, I realized that it was probably time to move on. I did some research on traveling to Botswana and learned that there are really only four ways to get there from Namibia: 1) fly (too expensive, and otherwise not available until mid-July); 2) rent a car (too expensive to do alone, and I had yet to meet anyone going that way); 3) catch a ride with this dude named "Tarrence" who for the princely sum of $750 would drive me into Botswana (Tarrence seemed sketchy, and $750 is about what I paid for this entire tour anyway); or, 4) go with an organized tour that can arrange the transport/border/accommodation issues for you and provides food. I chose the latter.

The tour operator was called Wild Dog and Crazy Kudu Safaris, and I took a bet (incorrectly) that they were better at touring than naming. They cater to a more “mature” traveler and are much smaller than the big overland trucks. Seeing as how I had no other way to Botswana, this would have to do. I booked it, and set off for Namibia’s capital from Swakopmund by local transport, called a Combi.

A combi is basically a van-taxi, often a VW bus, operated privately but licensed by the government. You go to a prearranged spot to meet the Combi, pay your money ($10 for about 200 miles), and then wait in the bus for the seats to fill—as long as it takes. Now you might be thinking that you could probably fit about 7-8 people in a VW bus, but with some ingenuity in the arrangement of humans, utter disregard for passenger comfort, and a trailer to tow the luggage, you can actually fit 15 people into the bus. 15. In a VW bus. For nine hours.

This Combi ride started out ordinarily enough. The bus filled quickly--one hour vs. up to three at times. I had a window seat, and there were only three of us in the farthest back seat instead of the normal 4-5. We lit off right away, and I was feeling pretty smug about the whole thing. I brought out my water bottle, my book, and I settled in for a comfortable journey to Windhoek. Our first stop was 3 minutes later at a gas station, where we put air in the tires and fueled up. Before we would actually depart for Windhoek, we would visit that gas station three more times. It turns out that one of the tires had a leak in it, and the driver was testing how quickly it was leaking before setting off on a 200-mile journey through deserted roads.

Now the way that they fuel cars in Namibia is quite interesting. It's full service, similar to how our Oregonian friends do it down south. But the fuel attendants can't actually ring you up. They take your money then go inside the gas station, and wait in line with all of the other customers to effect the transaction. It creates a total bottleneck at the cash register, and you end up waiting in your car for quite some time. This isn't all bad though, as when they say full service here they really mean it. Other attendants wash your windows, clean your locks of dust (the gravel roads are killer), and are otherwise just generally helpful while the one pays your money for you.

There's one modification to this procedure for the Combis though. The Combi drivers and gas station attendants have got it in their mind that by rocking the van back and forth you can actually get more fuel into the vehicle. Since driving in Namibia is a bit of an adventure, it's a good idea to completely fill the car before you go out. So one attendant tops it off, and then the driver and the other gas station attendants push back and forth on the bus while the guy fueling slowly adds additional droplets of gasoline. Meanwhile, 15 of us are in the overloaded bus, bobbing back and forth, banging heads together. It's really quite a comedic sight.

Finally we set off, and immediately I was treated to the sweet sound of Damara music played at full volume. For those not familiar with Damara music, I'll tell you how to recreate it: form groups of two; one person gets a Casio electric keyboard--the fewer keys the better--and plays A-A-C-D-G over and over again in single notes; the other person sings whatever words enter their mind over this cacophony of synthesized sound, and there you've got it. Ten stops, two pounds of meat snacks, and seven diet cokes later, I arrived in Windhoek, approximately nine hours after I left Windhoek.

Sadly, at the bar that evening in the hostel I met not one but two groups of people with their own cars heading north to Nairobi. One was a group of three Swedish guys driving a Land Rover Defender (I love those cars) that was completely kitted out with 4x4 gear, and the other was an Englishman and his Australian girlfriend who drove this 1970s VW bus that had been converted into a camper. It was the most hideous car I had ever seen, but my god did it have style. Three weeks in Africa and I hadn’t met anyone like this, then one night in Windhoek and I get two invitations to join. Argh. Since I’d already paid for the organized tour, I opted for that and hoped that I might see them again here in Vic Falls.

The following morning I was picked up at the hostel and introduced to my fellow travelers, with whom I would spend every hour of every day for the next eight days. Immediately I realized that my definition of “mature”and that of Wild Dog’s differed in age by about 50 years. In our group of nine we had two German women in their 30s, one Englishwoman in her 30s, one Australian women in her early 70s, and four retired Americans, one of whom was in his 80s. Our average age was most definitely over 60. Now, lest you be thinking that I am about to discriminate on age, I would like to state for the record that I love old people. I think old people are great. My grandparents are some of the coolest people I know.

But old people and young people don’t quite have the same approach to traveling, as I would come to learn. For example, unlike the oldest American, Winston (names have been changed to protect the innocent), I don’t think it’s interesting to call out the temperature every 10 minutes. “10.2 degrees!” Winston would call out from the back of the bus, following that rousing data-point up with, “that’s 50 degrees Fahrenheit!” Every morning I was greeted with a discussion of the various temperature points throughout the night, and the always-appreciated game of “guess the temperature right now”.

Winston also was apparently on leave from the Discovery Channel and shooting a documentary of organized travel in Southern Africa. He literally recorded nearly every waking moment of our trip on his camcorder. Example pieces of footage include coffee beans that he picked up in his hand to film, 75,000 different impala, and just generally shooting video of local people outside of our bus as we would drive by. And people say that Americans have bad reputations as travelers. Not so! Of course you wouldn’t mind somebody driving through your neighborhood, filming you as you’re working in your yard, right? This experience was made all the more hilarious by the commands barked by Winston in English at the locals as he was filming them. “Smile,” he would tell one group, or “Pick up your brother and hold that basket on your head,” he would say to another. They would look back at him with blank stares, surely thinking, “White people smell funny.”

I could go on and on for hours on what this travel experience was like, but suffice it to say it probably won’t go down as a highlight. On our last night, just yesterday, we were treated to our guide getting absolutely smashed and passing out in the dirt of the campsite. He woke up later on, and decided in a drunken stupor that it would be a good idea to take the truck, packed with all of our valuables, into town for a joyride. Needless to say, someone’s tip was trimmed back a bit at the end of the journey.

I’m going to sign off now, as I’m going to meet some friends at the Royal Livingstone Hotel (a really nice one, apparently) for English High Tea (please say that in your very best British elocution). More to come soon, as I’m finally in a town with internet access. Tomorrow we’re off to river raft on the Zambezi, which is supposedly one of the better rivers out there. Hope you all are well.

P.S., For those with a map and the interest, from Windhoek headed east to Ghanzi, then 2-3 days in the Okavango Delta, then a day in Chobe National Park, and a day in the Moremi Game Reserve before finally arriving here in Livingstone, Zambia.

Some pics:

(Monkey eating our yogurt in camp, Zambia)

(The mighty Victoria Falls)

(My new friend Zoe, with the bridge connecting Zambia and Zimbabwe in background)

(Members of the tour group)

(Yours truly at Vic Falls)

(Elephant crossing, Botswana)

(On a game cruise in Botswana, elephants in background)

(same game cruise, family of elephants in distance)

(14th sunset in a row, Botswana)

(truck with an ábnormal' load, Botswana/Namibia border)

(Mokoro trip, Okavango Delta, Botswana)

(Mokoro guide, "Rambo", and me, Okavango, Botswana)

(Really cool Baobab tree in background, Caprivi Strip, Namibia)

(Sunset-in-a-row #15, Caprivi Strip, Namibia)