The Van Plan

After our drive along the western end of the Caprivi strip, so called after Heligoland Zanzibar treaty of 1890 whereby we (theBrits) gave Germany access to the East coast of Africa along a thin strip of land along the Zambezi in exchange for their rights to Zanzibar and Heligoland in the North Sea. We headed south to Windhoek and the Villa Verdi Hotel for a couple of nights to celebrate my birthday stopping off at the Hoba Meteorite the largest on earth.

Lucy on the meteorite

We arrived at the hotel clutching our “voucher” and confirmation…….but no room. Lovely conversation with Cathy in the USA who apologized (unheard of in customer service and admitted the error …again unheard of ) and offered us a room at the Hilton at no extra charge. Result…… and well done Hotels.com we will use you again and certainly recommend you to anyone who asks. Mistakes happen and its lovely when they are sorted efficiently and apologies made.

From Windhoek we took the Trans Kalahari highway to Swakopmund

Long drive through miles of nothing but along wonderful tar roads, we stayed the first night in the concrete jungle of Alte Brucke which was a building site, before moving to the much nicer Desert Sky. We had lunch at the Tug restaurant oysters and wine…. and did some tourist shopping drove down to Walvis Bay and past Dune 7 ( apparently the highest in the world but looked fairly tame compared to some of the ones we saw in the Western Sahara …must be how they measure them)

From there north via two lovely new friends Herman and Elna in Henties Bay who we met in Zambia and who told us to get in touch when we got close. We did and had a lovely Sunday lunch with them. Then on to the seal colony at Cape Cross …apparently one of the largest seal colonies on the planet. Certainly the smelliest!




Amazing to see hear…. and smell… I can see why there is such controversy about culling seals they look gorgeous, Cape seals have lovely little ears but adults consume 250kg of fish per year and there are hundreds of thousands in this one colony and the water for miles around is brown/green with shit. Cant understand why they dont spread out, must be the animal equivalent of Mumbai which is apparently the largest city in the world by population density rather than Tokyo which has the most populous urban area!
We saw the beautiful colours of the lichen fields which are an amazing example of symbiosis between two living things an alga and a fungus.The fungus absorbs moisture from the air and the alga contains the chlorophyll …


How anything can live in this desolate environment is a miracle!
And of course as it was the Skeleton Coast we saw the ship wrecks.

Decided after our flight over the delta to do a boat trip and see everything from another perspective. We saw the most gorgeous bird life but no game

We also followed our noses to find a wonderful ceramic studio in the middle of the bush.
Okavango Ceramics and got ourselves invited to supper by Jan and Virginia when we got lost!
Uneventful drive north along the delta towards Namibia but lots of flooding and apparently the water level is still rising. Our last night at the Maun backpackers saw two houses flood and a 4×4 go into the water on the causeway to the campsite. (suspect the driver was worse for wear!)
We were lucky enough to see the most wonderful herd of elephants stepping over the fence and looking both ways before crossing the road right in front of us just before the border.


We spent a wonderful few days by the river at Mahangu Safari Lodge where we bumped into an English Village in a van. Quite literally 19 friends from a village in Kent had got together, hired a van and driver and come to Africa!
Chillenden Village… in a van!

Spent a wonderful few days at Maun Backpackers and managed to get a group together to share the cost of flying over the delta in a private plane. (Thank you Sara and Laura) Amazing.




We saw masses of game in big numbers moving across the ground and their tracks through the swamps made the most beautiful patterns. It really was one of those experiences we will never forget.

We met up again with the Dutch couple Charis and Jarijn who we had met in Bulawayo and they decided to come with us to Chobe just across the border into Botswana. Did you know that Botswana has only 1.9m people that’s the same as Portsmouth whilst London has nearly 8 million!….and its the same size as Texas which has 24m! We stopped for a couple of nights at Kasane at the Chobe Safari Lodge which was a beautiful campsite with amazing facilities. We did a wonderful fishing trip on the Zambezi where Charis caught a tiger fish…..

but it wasn’t enough for the BBQ that night and we had to resort to the local supermarket! We travelled on together towards Maun and stopped overnight at a quirky campsite at Gweta called Planet Baobab before making our way to Nxai Pan National Park the next day. We saw a lot of ostrich

and some rare hunting dogs as well as the famous group of 7 trees called the Baines Baobabs,

and of course, the Nxai Pans.

In the middle of bloody nowhere the leaf springs at the front of the vehicle went again. So we limped back at about 5km an hour out of the park and on to Maun.

Stopped off in Bulawayo to see the famous colonial club full of mementos from past British royal visits with a huge portrait of Cecil Rhodes in the main sitting room. But at $250 per night for non members we thought we would stay in the van….
Victoria Falls was fantastic, the town a bit of a disappointment with constant tout hassle, but the campsite and the Falls themselves were wonderful. We walked to the Falls for the full ‘in your face’ wet weather experience and were grateful we had our macs.


The Falls are 108m deep and 1.7km wide…dropping one million litres of water a second over the edge so we got very wet from the spray! We went to the truly colonial Victoria Falls Hotel for ‘sundowners’. The following day we spoilt ourselves with a helicopter trip over the falls to get the full perspective. Mind blowing!




We saw some elephants crossing the river just up from the Falls and a host of smaller game in the savannah as we flew over.

The day ended with another ‘sundowner’ watching the game gathering at the waterhole below Victoria Falls Lodge. A tough life!

Waterhole at Victoria Falls Lodge

The word Zimbabwe is derived from the Shona words dzimba dza mabwe meaning house of stone…..named of course after Great Zimbabwe! It was originally thought to be a Phoenician city or maybe part of the empire of Sheba or King Solomon…..the basis for this was no more scientific than a belief that Africans couldn’t possibly have built anything so sophisticated.



Well they could and they did, and at its height in the 15th century it housed over 25,000 people. The great enclosure alone has over one million stone bricks and the walls are over 6m thick at the base and 4m thick at the top the whole site is split into 3 parts but defenses to all are a series of concentric paths and narrow passages.


Amazing to think there are hundreds of sites like this in southern Africa.

Beautiful drive south from Kariba to Harare to stay with James and Wendy. When we arrived in Harare the rain started (unknown at this time of year) and we even had a hailstorm, which confused us all. We went to Doon Estate to see some of the best art and artefacts we have seen on the entire trip …with predictable results… We now have two sculptures in the loo and more carvings in our roof box as well as a collection of spears taped to the back door! We went to the central post office to buy stamps and came away with a wedge of inflation era notes.
We then went to Ruwa to see April and Ian who live in the most beautiful house with a “pet” Zebra instead of a lawn mower


and a Jack Russell. James and Wendy then took us north again to stay on their fantastic tobacco farm in Centenary



tobacco seed beds

where we had the most beautiful couple of days exploring the farm on foot and on motorbikes.


They gave us a fascinating insight into farming in Zimbabwe over the last few years and a spectacular evening eating fillet under a full moon. We then spent a wonderful weekend with April and Ian enjoying roaring log fires a hot bath a long walk and a delicious Sunday lunch.
* two of the farm workers names!

We spent a few days at Bridge camp on the Luangwa river where we had a fabulous trip down the river on a canoe looking at crocodiles and hippos and of course wonderful bird life


then on to Lusaka where we had the van serviced ( thank you Mercedes Lusaka who didn’t attach the fuel filter properly …..AWA ) not a lot of tourist stuff to do but we went to Kilimanjaro a restaurant selling interesting local curios and a wonderful batik and pottery workshop before heading south to Kariba. Just outside Lusaka we picked up a white Zimbabwean hitchhiker who had come to Lusaka for a job interview and was heading back to Harare sign of the times……We spent a couple of days at Eagles Rest Camp before crossing into Zimbabwe. Despite our GB plates and obvious “Englishness” we couldn’t have had an easier crossing. How nice and what a surprise!
We went to Warthogs Bush Camp again right on the lake shore, whilst we were relaxing a group of 8 elephant decided to walk through the camp and say hello.

They sampled the rubbish in the bins,

tested out the kitchens

and then had a drink from the swimming pool.

“Hey, this is Africa” as the man in the bar said!

We spent a wonderful 5 days in South Luangwa at Flatdogscamp The camp is on the banks of the Luangwa river and you can watch hippos and crocodiles in the water from the riverside tents. Elephants, and hippo wander through the camp night and day so campers, not in the purpose built and protected tents are advised to use the tree top platforms to camp….

We were very pleased to be in our van where we slept soundly but Lewis in his eyrie hearing elephants in the night looked out to see an elephant trunk pulling leaves off the tree at eye level….he had tied his guy ropes on to some branches so spent the rest of the night worrying what would happen if an elephant pulled the branch off… would the guy rope snap or would the tent come off…..
We did a night drive with Edward and then using the rest of our 24hr entrance pass drove around in the van we saw one other vehicle in the entire day, not helpful when we had our first puncture in the whole trip and had to change the wheel with Lucy on lion watch. Thank you Lewis!
We saw the most wonderful variety of wildlife, fish eagles, Pels fish owl (huge) leopard up a tree with a kill

and on the riverbank as well as elephant,zebra, giraffe countless deer, wharthog, crocs (flatdogs in local parlance) and of course the hippo and thousands of monkeys and baboons. Brilliant.


A bloat of hippos (yes thats the collective noun for the next pub quiz!)

After a lovely few days at Chitimba we decided to press on south keeping to the lake shore, but the first leg was up into the hills reaching Mzuzu before heading back to the coast. No sign of diesel ( which had been in short supply for several weeks) so we turned back to the coast passing through miles of rubber plantations.

The drive was spectacular but long…..and no fuel, so we were pleased to have 50 litres spare on the roof.
We spent the night in Senga bay and then headed for Lilongwe the capital… made the decision as there was still no fuel to go for the border after a couple of days at Mabuya camp with intermittent power caused by the fuel shortage. Tom and Jane who run the camp were wonderful as was the campsite.
The poverty statistics are quite simply horrific even by african measures 40% of the population live on less than US$1 a day and nearly 50% of the population are under 15. Life expectancy is 43.

I am told that cane mice(?) are delicious…
We met Lewis at the bar who was looking for a lift to South Luangwa National Park in Zambia, our next stop, so we gave him a ride to Flatdogs where Edward who had been to school with our sons was based. Bit of a drama just outside Chipata when the gear stick came off in me ‘and……