This is a Diary of a trip I made in august 1999 with my friend Javier, from Cadiz (Spain). We flew from Madrid to Capetown: from there, we took a bus to Windhoek and joined a guided tour through Namibia in a truck. It ended in Victoria Falls. From there we went by trian to Bulawayo and again to South Africa. There we took a plane back to Spain. It all took us 20 days.
I hope you find it useful, or at least amusing. Thanks for visiting. KINMA
30 - 31 - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 12 - 13 - 15 - 16 - 17 - 18
30.VII.1999. Friday On the road
We leave Madrid (Barajas) at 14,40, with only 20' delay. The flight, with Turkish Airlines (662 US$. i/v with Viajes Zeppelin) lasts more than 4 hours to Istambul. We checked in to Istambul, just in case we lost some luggage, but soon realize our mistake: after arriving in Istambul we have to go out of the transit zone to pick up the luggage and so, we have to get an entry visa (10 USD), only for 2 hours. Tip: always check-in direct and trust your destiny. So, we go out of the transit zone, pick up the luggage and wait till the next flight. It's hot in here and there's lots of people. At 23.45h we take our to Capetown.
31.VII.1999. Saturday Capetown
We land in JBG (Johannesburg) at 9.00 (same than in Espa–a). We stay about one hour in the airport, waiting for new passengers to board. There are some free seats, so we can sleep a bit, till we get to Capetown. The arrival to Capetown is amazing: you can see the Table Mountain, the sea, the beaches... In the customs office, they tell me that my return ticket is not valid, because someone in Istambul kept a part of the ticket that I shoul have with me now. They call an agent of Turkish Airlines in the airport and he tells me not to worry about it. I will be having it solved on my way back. I made copies of all the tickets and important documents in Madrid, so I'm not extremely worried about it. In the airport there's someone waiting for us, the guy of the hostel we made the reservation in for tonight by e-mail (Ambler's Backpackers) Is always pleasant to have someone waiting for you in a foreign country. He takes us in a van to the city center, where the hostel is (by the time I write this, XII-1999, the hostel has moved to the suburbs).
We arrive at the hostel at 13,30. It's saturday, so there's not many people
wandering around here in the center, as it is an offices area. We leave our
luggage in the hostel and take a minibus that takes us to the feet of the Table
Mountain. It's a shared minibus, so it stops in the way up picking and leaving
passengers, so we can take a little tour of the city. It costs 7 rands (Money
Exchange) The city center (Downtown) is small, about 7x7 blocks and it seems
to be very modern, except 2 or 3 houses from last century. People use to live
in the suburbs, around Table Mountain, and it seems the higher you live, the
higher you are in the social scale. We see first Bo-Kaap, an asian-muslim neighborhood
with little houses in pale colours. As we get higher we see cottages with high
walls and a lot of security measures, with a big alarm showing at the entrance.
The minibus breaks down at the middle of the way, so we have to climb all the
rest of the way up. It's a nice walk, the views are superb, and the vegetation
is nice, very mediterranean (pines...)
The cable car takes 5 minutes to get there and it costs 45 R. It is a round
cabin that goes round, so you can see all, the city at your feet and the mountain
approaching. At the top there is a souvenir shop, a bar and it gets real chilly.
Usually there is a lot of fog, you 
are literally surrounded
by clouds, so you can't see much, but we have been lucky today and the 
views are amazing, you can see all the city to the north and the Cape of Good
Hope to the south. At the south terrace you can see the little Rock Dassies,
wandering around and looking for food from the tourists. I seat at the border
looking northward and gaze at ALL AFRICA lying at my feet. I can mentally see
all the trip that we have forward. I put my walkman earphones and forget rush
and time for a while. At about 16.00 we go down again.
We take another shared minibus to the Victoria
& Albert Waterfront, a modern Mall made in an old harbour. In fact,
they still have boats coming in and out of the harbour, so it's quite amusing
sitting there in a terrace having a coffee 
watching the boats and
so. We make a reservation for tomorrow in a boat that goes around the bay.
After a while, we take a shuttle taht leaves from the entrance of the Mall
and leaves you in the center. We go back to the hostel. There they recommend
us a nice place to dinner in Observatory , The
Africa CafŽ. It's a new little restaurant decorated in a very
"ethnic" way. They serve "African buffets", a mix of
severeal dishes from several parts of Africa. You can eat all you want,
and they explain you what the meal is all about and where does it come from.
It costs aprox. 12 US$ and it's a good way to start experiencing Africa.
1.VIII.99. Sunday Intercape Mainliner
The day starts cloudy, windy and a bit chilly.Anyway, here is winter. We go walking to the bus station, 5 minutes away. There's nobody at the streets, it's sunday and it is an there are offices buildings all around. At the bus station we take the shuttle to the Warerfront Mall again. We go to the pier in order to catch the boat, but the weather is not OK, so they have cancelled the 11.ooh boat. We should have to wait for the 12.30 one, but it's too late for us. Then we take a walk around the Mall and have a delicious brekfast at one of the cafes. At 11.30 we go back to the hostel; we pay for the beds (130R the double & 40R/each for the airport transfer). We take our rucksacks and go back to the bus stations in order to catch the Intercape Mailiner. This is the only direct way to go to Windhoek by land in public transport, there is no train. It is a rather comfortable double-deck bus, with a crew of 6-7 persons. You check in the lugagge, as in the airports, and they go in tow. The landscape in the outside of CPT is very nice, green fields, farms... After 2 hours you cross some mountains and enter a valley with orane trees and other fruit trees.The bus stops 15 min. in a petrol station. We buy some water, dried fruits and biltong (dried meat, we ate it like peanuts, just for killing time).After the valley and endless plain with little bushes start. We are into the desert. You can't see any vehicle in several kilometers. We stop in another petrol stationb. The sun sets at 18.00 h. A hostess offers tea and coffee. It's good to have something hot, when the sun sets it gets real cold in the desert. As we pass by Springbok the bus breaks down. It's cold and windy out there. As we don't know exactly what happens, we can't risk to go to a restaurant and have some dinner or so. We wait by the bus. It starts raining. We leave again at 22.00h. At 22.40h we cross the border. They don't ask for visa (for spaniards). We sleep for a while. At 7.00 in the morning we arrive in Windhoek. The sun rises.
We were supposed to be picked up from the hostel at the bus station.
Everybody leaves, but we keep waiting for the pick up. 15 minutes later
we make a phone call to the Rivendell
hostel. Nobody answers (it«s 7:15h anyway!) After another 15 minutes
we take a taxi to the hostel. We ring at the door: nobody (too early? closed?)
We can't keep waiting in the middle of nowhere so we walk to the nearest
hostel ( Chameleon).
Yes, they are open. It's a one flat chalet with a rear patio. They are not
supposed to open till 8, but we can wait inside. There is some more people
waiting as well. They came in the Intercape as well, and they picked them
up from this hostel. Lucky them! We make some tea in the kitchen (free tea
and coffee, help yourself, and wash the dishes). There is a refrigerator
too, so you can buy your own food and cook it here. We book two beds in
a dormitory for 30 N$ (1US$= 6,58N$. See Money
Exchange). In the yard there are two weasels that run aroundand a white
dog. It's bloody windy in Windhoek (they pronounce it Vantuk), in fact the
meaning of the word in afrikaans is "windy place". We go walking
to the city center (5 minutes). It's a modern city, with a tiny "downtown"
of high glassbuildings in an only "main" street (Independence
Av.) where you can find everything in town (banks, shops, bars...). You
can have a look around in about 2 hours. It's funny how quick the traffic
lights change for pedestrians. You really have to run to cross, even for
short distances!
After a while you just don't care about traffic
lights, you look both sides and cross.
At noon we go back to the hostel to have a shower and rest for a while. We have lunch at 14:00 at "Joe's Beer House", a cute restaurant in Independence Ave, 700 mts away from the Railway Station, in your right as you go out of the city. It has a little garden in a "jungle" style and they serve there a meat buffet with some salads and dessert. There is some game meat: ostrich, springbok, zebra... You can eat all you want for about 11 US$. After lunch we take a walk by the hills around WHK (Christuskirche, Alte Feste, Tintenpalast...) The sun sets at 17:00, so we go to bed early. After dinner in the hostel a guy tells us that they had some disturbances in Katima Mulilo (in the Caprivi String), so they have temporary closed the border with Zimbabwe and the pass to Victoria Falls. It's very cold at night here.
3.VIII.99. Tuesday Namib Naukluft
We raise us at 6:15 to go to the Safari Hotel to gather us with the group of
the trip of 12 days that we have hired at Karibu
Travell. 
We are 14 persons in total; is an English-speaking group,
although there are 4 spaniards, and an Italian that lives in New Zealand but
speaks spanish, because she has lived in Uruguay (Gabriella). There is a guide,
Jimmy, and a cook, Paulus (Poli). We leave at 8.00 o'clock toward Sossusvlei,
in the Park of the Namib-Naukluft, in the desert of the Namib. On the road we
see a lot of desertic mountains. Aside from a pair of highways, all in Namibia
are trails of sand, although in fairly good state. We do not see almost any
car during the 5 hours that takes the trip. The truck is an old Mercedes, but
very comfortable inside with 4 rows of 4 seats. At 13.30 we arrive at Sesriem,
the nearest camping to Sossusvlei. It's in the middle of nowhere. There are
several enclosures of stone, each one around a tree, where you can camp. We
have lunch, some sandwiches and salad. Each one helps preparing the meal and
washes the dishes afterwards. The guide teaches us how to mount the tents and
then we mount each one ours, by couples. They are large tents for 2 persons
where you can even stand up. They give us 
mattresses to put under our own sleeping bags. At 17.00
we leave in the truck toward the dune of Elm, that is very near the camping.
The truck leaves us at the foot of the dune, and from there we go up walking.
The best way of climbing, at less at that hour of the day (late afternoon),
is barefoot, since the sand does not burn and is very pleasant to feel how your
feet sink in the sand. The climbing takes some 40 minutes. The view from the
top deserves the
suffering, you see all the
immensity of the desert to your feet, and you realize you are in the middle
of nothing. The sand is reddish orange and the warm light of the sunset does
even more reddish. We see the sun set from up there, with silence all around.
It gets dark soon, so we return to the camping and we have dinner, meat BBQ
and sausages. It's cold at night. It's nice to have a camp fire under the stars.
Here you see millions of stars.
4.VIII.99. Wednesday Sossusvlei
We wake up at 4.30 (yes, AT NIGHT). We are gonna see the sunrise from
world famous (so they say) Dune 45. 
As we are arriving we see a lot of vehicles that had the same idea (it seems to be very popular to see the sunrise from up here). I climb barefoot too, but this time is 5.15 in the morning and it's bloody cold. As I get to the top (see photo) I put my feet into the sand to warm them up. Anyway, is worth the effort, sunrise here is marvellous. You can even imagine you are alone in the desert watching the sun rise up for the very first time of Times (but in fact you are surrounded of tourists making photos with flash all around and talking as loud as possible!) I do the way down in "the easy way": YES, I throw myself down the dune as fast as possible; my feet sink in sand as I move down. The bad side of it it's that it only takes 15 seconds to go down, but 20 long hard minutes to climb, and I'm not in the mood to repeat the experience! We go back to the truck and have a nice & warm early morning tea.
Afterwards we go to Sossusvlei, at the end of the valley. We can only reach the 2x4 parking. From there on you can only go thru with a 4x4 vehicle.
It's 5 km. of sand. It takes us 1 hour and a half of hard walking, but it's
a nice landscape of red sands and you can sometimes see some animals (oryx...).
What you find at the end is a huge dune and endless sea of red dunes.
But we already had enough of climbing dunes, and we are short of time, so
we rest for a while and go back. 
On the way back we do hitch-hiking.
Why didn't we have the same idea before? Only 15 minutes. My god! We go
back to the camping site and have lunch at 13:00.
We have some free time after lunch. I take a shower, shave up. go to the swimming-pool and have a cold cold beer. The weather is hot, but the water of the swimming pool is incredibly cold, it must come from a subterranean source or something. At 16:30 we go to see the Sesriem Canyon with the truck. Is very little, you can visit it in half an hour. We go back at 17:30 and have dinner at 19. Today we had a lot of free time between activities so I read, write, draw, drink beer watching the sunset on the dunes.. you know, things you never have time to do in everyday life, but that are important... very important. The sky is even starrier than yesterday. We are tired, we have woken up so early.
5.VIII.99. Thursday Welwitschias
We wake up at 7. After breakfast we unmount the tents (faster everyday,
we're getting used) and go towards the Valley of the Moon. After
one hour on the road we stop at Solitaire. As you may imagine by
its name, this is the most isolated place I have ever seen. Have you seen
the movie Bagdad CafŽ? Well, that was Times Square compared
to this! Though it is indicated in the map as a little town, is only a petrol
station with a house and a store. Anyway is worth the stop here because
they serve a wonderful apple pie. The rest of the day, till 19:00 we keep
on the road through a desertic landscape, where you hardly see and ostrich
and 2 oryx. The distances here are enormous and there is NOTHING in between.
The Valley of the Moon is quite interesting, very similar to the
landscapes you can see in Lanzarote (Canary Islands), seas of lunar stones
and rocks. 
In the evening we stop to camp in the middle of nowhere, in a little oasis, near the Welwitschias plants. This Welwitschia
Mirabillis are a unique kind of plant, one of the oldest in the world ( around 2.000 years some of them). They get the water they need from the mist, through the leaf, as it hardly rains here. They are so sensible that if you step on near them, you may hurt the roots. There are some little stone enclosures around them, but anyway, people step into them to make the photo near the plant (...).
We go back to the tents at 18:00. Dinner is at 19:00 and after that we make a camp fire. As we are camping wild, there«s no showers nor toilets. If you are in a hurry, you must leave the camp site with a flashlight and pray for wild animals not to wander around there. The guide tells us to go back quickly if we see two tiny little red lights in the dark: that's our lights reflected in some animal's eyes! We'll hold on till tomorrow.
At 8:00 we leave for Swakopmund, about 20 kms away. It's early in the
morning and the fog is thick, you can't see 1 meter away. This is all the
water that life gets around here. SWK is a summer city with nice beaches
and nice cottages along the beaches, a long seaside and nice restaurants
to seat at the terraces and eat seafood... BUT now is winter here and it's
bloody cold and windy. Anyway is a quiet pleasant village, with lots of
german-style houses. It is surrounded by the dessert everywhere, except
the seaside. 
In summer is very popular, a lot of people from all
Namibia and abroad come to swim in their beaches. We leave our luggage in
the Swakopmund Rest Camp (44US$/cottage). It's a quiet place with
blue little 2 store-cottages, but is so entangled in security barbed wire
that it seems more a concentration camp.
We take a walk around the village. The clock tower at the Public Library
is a good place to have a nice view of the town. Everybody here speaks german
(and english as well), it's easy to see german influence here, much more
than in Windhoek. We go for lunch into a german BeerHaus and when you are
inside you might as well be in MŸnchen. We have LeberkŠse and
BratwŸrste with Sauerkraut. At 13:00 we take a little airplane
(CEESNA) for 4 persons to have aride around the Skeleton Coast, Kaokoland
in the north and back thru Damaraland (3 hours and a half). The sky is cloudy,
everythings looks a bit greyish, but we have no choice, and anyway we are
gonna fly low, so we go ahead. Skeleton Coast is the coast of Namib northwards
of SWK. Its name comes from all the shipwrecks you can find along the coast.
The endless beaches are inhospit and the water seems to be bloody cold down
there. You hardly see some fishers along the coast. 
They come in couples
with a 4x4 vehicle thru the dessert to spend the day here fishing and drinking
beer. It doesn't seem to be an amazing plan for the weekend, but if you
think of the alternatives here in winter, you would go fishing too! We fly
over Cape Cross, a huge colony of sea lions that we are gonna visit
tomorrow. As we reach Kaokoland we go inland. We see a lot of lunatic
red landscapes, dry rivers, and we are supposed to see dessert elephants
and oryx, but we don't see any. As we pass Damaraland we fly higher and
pass over Spitzkoppe, a huge rocky mountain (1.829 mts) in the middle of
the dessert, as an iceberg in the middle of the sea. We land at sunset,
go back to the camp and have a shower.
We take another walk around SWK to see if we can have a beer or something.
The streets are empty in the evening, and there are only 3 bars and 4 restaurants
in all the town. Everybody seems to have gone fishing! So we go back to the
camp and pick up the laundry.
At 19:00 we go with the rest of the group to have dinner at a fish restaurant, the "Lighthouse Pub" (of course, it is by the Lighthouse). It is decorated in a sailor style with great windows facing the sea. We have clamps and fish (some kind of haddock). It's good to have "proper" food after so much camping.
The "zipper concert" starts at 7.30 today. We don't need an
alarm clock anymore. We go to bed at 20:30 and wake up at 7:00, so we sleep
a lot, in fact. We gather around the guide's cottage, and have breakfast
at his "dining room". We leave SWK towards north along the coast
heading Cape Cross.
In this point of the coast landed for the first time in this area a european ship (Diego Cao, 1846, from Portugal). There is a stone cross (Padrao) to remember this fact. But what makes most famous this place is the enormous sea-lions colony that lives here. You start realizing that you are approaching the colony as you smell the incredibly strong WC-like smell of the sea lions. And when you get down the vehicle and get closer, the noise is also amazing. From the small stone fences, you can see the thousands of animals jumping in and out of the water, playing, fighting... You can get very close to them, but there is a point where they adopt a defensive attitude, and you better not get any closer, or you will see why are they called "lions".
The road to Damaraland is even more deserted and dry. We stop for lunch at Uis, a mining little village, now semi-abandoned. We eat at a road bar, in which you seem to be in the USA middle west: country-music, men drinking beer with their typical middle-west cups, watching American football on TV... At the streets, little boys try to sell you "precious" stones. They are not a treasure, but is a good souvenir for someone at home, and you make their day, they get so very happy when they get to sell one of their stones...
We keep moving towards Khorixas. Before reaching the camping site, we gaze some desert elephants near a farm by the road. It's a group of 3, and they seem to be used to men's company, though the farmers tell us not to get to close. They wander around in the desert and go into the farms when they are thirsty. Their skin is brownish grey, it's a nice view to see them go back into the desert.
We camp at "Aba-Huab Camp Park", by the dry river bed of Huab River. It is, in fact, but a drinks kiosk and a basic WC and showers (though not always water) in the middle of nowhere. Is bloody windy when we arrive, so it takes us a while to put up the tents. We have dinner, some beers and go to bed soon.
We wake up at 6. There is no water. We have breakfast and then go on a short trip to see the " Organ Pipes ". These are basalt structures in form of columns, that remind the tubes of an organ (that's where its name comes from). They remind me the "Path of the Giants" of Ireland, but in smaller.
Afterwards we go to Twyfelfontein, where there are paintings and engravings of bushmen. The landscape is amazing, with great reddish rocks. There is a natural water source from where water not always comes (that's the meaning of Twyfelfountein, Fountain of the Doubt). From there we go to the Petrified Forest, a plain where you can see petrified trunks of trees (pines...) and some welwitschias. At 25 km of Outjo we run out of gasoline. The guide must hitch-hike to the next petrol station, in Outjo. He takes half an hour. In the meanwhile we take a photo of the group on top of the van.
At 17.00h we reach Etosha National Park. The park closes at sunset (18.00h), so we stay in the camping of Okaukuejo, the most western one. This is a real camping, with swimming pool, supermarket, bars, laundries... Next to where we camp there is a pool which they illuminate at night and animals go to drink. It's kind of a circus, with seats, lights... but it is interesting to see how they approach to drink there and how they act in a "natural" environment. For dinner we have grilled ribs and sausage. Soon we go for a drink to the bar near the swimming pool and we seat to see the animals. Elephants, oryx and rhinos arrive. Some people stay all the night awake looking at the beasts. I go to sleep at 21,00h. It is no longer cold at night.
After breakfast we leave the Okuakuejo Camp and go out to see animals with the truck. In endless golden plains, you can see springboks, kudus, impalas, zebras, giraffes, wildebeests and even lions!! The Park is very dry and there are not too many tourists (if you've been to Kenya, you'll appreciate not to see 10 other vans around you when you are supposed to be "in the wild"). At 13:00 we have lunch at Halali Camp. This one is in the middle of the Park. Is not as good and big as the first one, but it's got a swimming pool too. I wear "multi-purpose" underwear, so I take off the trousers and have a wonderful swim while the others look at me from the grass. 
In the picnic zone we meet another Spanish group, from Katanga Travels. They go on a "wilder" tour, their average age is lower and their truck is more uncomfortable. And their food is worse too, I would say. Now I appreciate much more our wonderful cooker!! After lunch we keep wandering around looking for beasts. At 14:00 we arrive into Matunomi, the third and more oriental Camp of the Park. A part of the group goes out again with the truck, but I prefer to relax by the swimming pool with a drink in my hands. It is a small pool, but there is a bar, grass and all the quietness of Africa. Who could ask for more?
At 18:00 I go to the "beasts pool" to see the sunset. It is like a TV documental: giraffes, wildebeests and even some rhinosÉFrom behind the trees appear groups of birds that move as a whole against the purple sky. I play some classic music in my Walkman. PEACEÉ
Javier went to see the sunset from a tower located at the entrance of the park, from where you can see a lot moreÉ but you have to climb stairs, and I'm not in the mood today. We go to "bed" early today (20:30)
Today we leave Etosha. We go eastwards to Zimbabwe via Tsintsabis and Rundu. It is not the best way, the roads are not paved, but we have some delay and need to take the short way. We are in a hurry because we heard that there were some violent disturbs in the Caprivi Strip, near the border. That's the best way to reach Vic Falls. If that pass is closed we should have to go via Botswana, and that means another whole day of travel (and one day less in Vic Falls!)
In Rundu, by the border of Angola, we stop to have a drink. It's a little village by the road, but there are shops and supermarkets. I buy a new little rucksack, because mine is already dead (4 years of travel is enough for her), for some 6 US $. We get rid of the Namibian dollars, cos you cannot change them outside Namibia. The only money you can use in all the south of Africa is US dollars and South African rands. We buy some food and stop for lunch by the road under a tree outside Rundu.At 14:45 we reach Popa Falls. Well, "falls" is not the right word to name that pool, but we are happy to see water after our long journey through the desert. We camp by a grass field by the river and take a walk to see the "falls" and take a ride in a "mokoro". These are tiny vessels made out of tree trunks, in which you can take a nice ride around the falls. You can find them in Okavango too.
We meet a group of 8 guys from Catalonia, who are doing the same route as we do, but in the other direction. We share tips and memories. They hired 2 4x4 vehicles in Harare, and want to go to Namibia. The car fare was high but they are a big group. They went recently to Chobe National Park and, as they passed through it by car, they've seen a lot of elephants. After dinner, we go for a "Spanish" night, loud voices, some drinks, out lateÉ I missed it
The guide tells us is definitely NOT sure going to Vic Falls via Caprivi, so we'll have to go through Maun and Nata, in Botswana. We leave the camp and in 15 minutes reach the border with Botswana. We change time in our watches (1 hour plus in Botswana). We pass the Namibian border. While we wait outside for the rest of the group, we take photos with a huge elephant skull. We fill the papers for entering Botswana, but it seems not everything is OK. There must be some paper left or something wrong with our permissions. It is not the route we should have taken, so Karibu, the agency, did not plan it. It seems not all the border controls demand you the same papers, so we have to wait till the guide solves up the problem. We wait for 1 hour, another one, another oneÉ We are in the middle of nowhere, a complete nowhere land, no bars, no shops, no TV, nothing but HEAT. And the worse of it is that we don't know exactly what's happening. The guide talks to the agency, the agency talks to the border control, but nobody talks to us clearly. We vote to decide if we wanna take the risk going through Caprivi, but nothing clear comes out of it. Some people seem to have a blind faith in the guideÉ Group travel!!
After 7 HOURS of waiting, we enter Botswana at 16:30 towards Maun. The sun sets down at 18:00. Though the roads are paved, straight and lonely, it's not quite safe to drive by night here (too many animals can cross). At 21:00 we arrive in Maun. We go to a camping, where a manager of Karibu Travels waits for us to apologize about the border affair, though we are not in the mood for apologizes now. We take a quick dinner and go to bed soon. As we are late in our schedule, we'll have to wake up early tomorrow.
We wake up at 4!! In the night and leave as soon as possible towards Kasane via Nata. The road is quite good, paved and straight. All the trees we can see are naked, without leaf. The first impression is that there was a big fire here or something, but we soon realize that here is winter. For us, this are summer holidays, but in this hemisphere august is winter, in spite of the heat.
We reach Kasane at 12:30 (after 7 and a half hours of travel)
We have lunch at 14:00 after entering the Chobe Safari Lodge (in tents, not in bungalows). We are beginning to find here more jungle, great trees, rivers, after so much desert. After lunch we take a boat for a ride in the river Chobe for 3 hours. In this park most of the Wildlife is around the river, all of them come here for water and there is a lot of hippos, crocodiles and elephants. We see buffalos, lots of birds and lots of japaneses too!! Is very plesant to sit on the top deck of one of these two-leveled vessels and see the park from here. The sunset is really amazing, so red and pure, with all this silence around!!
We have dinner at 19:00 and afterwards go to the terrace of the Lodge to have a big cold beer watching the african night.
The birds singing wake us up at 6. We are in the jungle! At 8:10 we pass the Botswana-Zimbabwe border controls (in less than 10 minutes!!! Africa always surprises youÉ). You have to pay 30 US$ to enter Zimbabwe. At 9:30 we arrive at Vic Falls village, where we end our guided trip with Karibu Travel and continue on our own. We head the main street (there are only 6 or 7 streets, so is not easy to get lost here), Parkway, where you can find almost everything (restaurants, banks, adventure agencies, souvenirsÉ). We change some money (1$ Zim = 4 ptas.) and book in a canoe trip by the river Zambezi. This and the horse riding are the most relaxing excursions you can find here. The rest are "adrenaline-burning" experiences, like bungi jumping, white water rafting, parachutingÉ And canoe is also one of the cheapest. We do it with Bundu adventures (70 US$). Most of the sports are about 100 US$.
We go to the camping Inyathi. There are two main campings here. Ours is abit out of town, but is nicer (grass, swimming poolÉ) than the Municipal CampRest, much more close to the center (in Parkway). After setting up the tents we go back to Parkway at 11:30. There a truck picks us up for the canoeing. We cross the border to Zambia (15 minutes away) to a place where they have the canoes and all the staff. Some of the cheapest and newest "adventure agencies" are in Livingstone, in Zambia.
The canoes are not made of wood, but plastic ones, for 2 persons. Javier goes with the Budu guide, I go with another member of the group. The ride will take some 2 and a half hours. Is easy to start rowing, even if is the first time (and IT IS for us). After 1/2 hour we stop at a river island for a cold lunch (included in the price). We wear caps for the sun and a life jacket, but nothing for the crocodiles (no, it was a joke, the guide tells us there is nothing but elephants & hippos hereÉ we hope he is right). After some rapids (little ones, esciting, but not dangerous) we see some giraffes, elephants and hippos. At the end of the route there is a truck waiting for us with cold beers (thanx, Budu Travels!)
We go back through the zambian Park Mosi-Oa-Tunya (Smoke that thunders. Tha park takes its name from the original name of the Cataracts, before Livingstone decided to honour queen Victoria. In the park we see a lot of rhinos. Inside the parks is forbiddenº to stay outside the vehicles, but this park is so wild that there not many guards, so we climb to the roof of the truck and have a wonderful wild view of the rhinos, impalas and giraffes.
Before going back to Zimbabwe we stop in the zambian side of the Cataracts, to see it from the zambian side. As the Cataracts are just in the border, there are 2 parks from where you can see them, and each one offers a different view of the Waterfalls. The sunset from this size is wonderful. The waters make and astonishing noise when they fall, and it seems you are walking in a cloud, everything is misty and wet. From this side you can see the Falls closer, but you can't have a complete view of them (you have to go to the other side to have that view). The park closes at 18:00, so we have to hurry up. From there we walk to the border, that closes at 20:00
After crossing the border (we had a 1 day visa, you don't have to pay for that) we go to see the recently built "The Kingdom" Hotel. It's a mix La sVegas and a set of Hollywood for "The mines of King Solomon". Inside you can find a Mall and a Casino. After that we go to the Railway Station to buy a 1st Class ticket for the night train to Bulawayo tomorrow night (9 US$). We have dinner at the Sprayview Hotel: Crocodile tail (looks like hake, but tastes like chicken).
We wake up at 7:00, have breakfast, say good-bye to the group and hitchike to the center to have a walk around (we have all the day left till we take the train).
We leave the rucksacks at the railway cloak-room (15 Z$). The station is cute, wooden and quite colonial. Is side by side with the classical Victoria Falls Hotel. There is even a doo to access the station from the Hotel. We go back to Parkway, and have breakfast at the Pink Baobab (capuccino & muffin). Shopping is one of the main things to do in Parkway. I find a collar made out of ostrich bones, for Paloma. We go then to the new shopping mall "Elephant Walk", close to Livingstone Way, at the back of the Ilala Lodge. Is a tiny mall with a central courtyard, where you can have a coffee or an ice-cream sitting in a nice terrace and do some shopping in a wide range of "ethnic" modern stores. We have lunch at "Croc & Paddle", a restaurant with e-mail and internet, where we have "crocodile cocktail", "kudu steak" and "impala brochette".
In the afternoon we go to see the Falls from the Zimbabwean side. The entrance is 20 US$, expensive but worth the effort, is an unforgettable experience. You can see all the Cataracts, an interesting little jungle, the statue of Livingstone and the Bungi Jumping from the Zambezi Bridge. At 
16:30 I go to have "5 o'clock tea" at the Victoria Falls Hotel. Is like going back in time to the XIX century, the British Empire, the Colonial ages. The hotel is a two-story wooden building, all painted in white, with immaculate grass fields all around. The views are magnificient (the cataracts at the end, you can even see the Zambezi Bridge). You can have tea at the garden. The service is quite complete: tea, hot water, milk, cream, sugar, sandwichs, pastries, butter, jam, honey, muffinsÉ all for 160 Z$ (about 3 bucks). I didn't have dinner after all that!!
I go then straight to the Railway Station, where Javier waits for me. We buy some water, bread and boiled eggs at the platforms, just in case. The "First Class" compartment is not what you can call "luxury" but there are only 4 beds and everything looks clean, with white sheets, pillows, blankets. We share compartment with a 76 years old canadian. He is married with a spaniard, so he talks perfect spanish. He is retired and every year spends 4 or 5 months travelling around on his own, alone with his Lonely Planet guide. This time he's doing Nairobi-Cape Town.
We have dinner at the reataurant wagon at 21:40. For about 6 US$ you get 2 dishes, dessert and coffee. Is not haute-cuisine but the waiter is nice and we spend quite a while there (a lot waiting for the dinner and the rest chating after it). Is a quite nice train, but it hasn't got the "colonial charm" of the "Moon Train" from Mombassa to Nairobi.
The train has 3 hours delay, so we arrive at 10:00 to Bulawayo. Of course, we get no explanation about it. We planned to take an early morning excursion to Matopos Park, but we are too late and ALL the groups have already left. We find a van from Africa Sun Lodge, the hostel where we will sleep tonight right at the door of the Station. We book a double room for today, we are really tired and don't want a noisy dorm. We have breakfast and find out about a way to visit Matopos Park today. . 
We talk to the boss here, Mr. Kruger, and he offers us a private tour of half day to Matopos for 40 US$ (lunch included). At noon we dapart with a Land Rover and buy some lunch on the way (Sandwiches and fruit juice). The Park is great, with an incredible landscape of huge round rocks, bushmen paintings and the buril site of Sir Cecil Rhodes. This monument is at the top of a hill, in a place that Sir Cecil liked a lot and thet he called "World's View". The view is in fact wonderful, but the history of this grave isn't: Rhodes chose this place for himself knowing this hill was a sacred place for the natives. They used to come here to pray, but now they can't do it anymore. There are some other graves there (his friend/lover Dr. Leander Starr Jameson, and Rodhesia's Prime Minister Charles Patrick J. Coghlen) and a monument to 34 soldiers fallen with Allan Wilson and the "Shangani River Patrol".
Back to the Hostel, we have some rest and try to go to the restaurant "Cape to Cairo", but we find it closed on sundays, so we go back to the hostel and order a pizza. Is cold at night here.
I wake up at 6:30, have a cup of tea and leave the hostel towards Masvingo at 7:45, to see the ruins of "Great Zimbabwe". Javier stays at Bulawayo in order to make the reservations for tonight's bus to Jo'burg and see the Museum. I take a "chicken bus" (a local bus) that takes 3 hours and a half to Masvingo. (2 US$)
Masvingo's bus station is very "african", full of people, old buses with the lugagge (and chickens) on the roof, children selling oranges, bananas, eggs, cornI take there another bus to the ruins. It doesn't go specifically to the ruins, is a local bus that stops near the ruins (that's what the driver says). It's absolutely crowded, so I have to do all the route (45 minutes, 30¢) standing. It stops 2 kms away from the ruins, so I have to go walking under the sun till I get there by a road that also leads to the "Great Zimbabwe Lodge" (in fact, it goes THROUGH it). The entrance fee is 5 US$.
The ruins are quite impressive, with huge stone walls of about 1 and a half metres thick and 5 or 6 metres high. It reminds me somehow to Mycenae, in Greece, with its "cyclopean walls". There are doors, aisles, houses, acropoli, templesÉ The landscape is nice too, with a lot of aloe plants all around. There is a little Museum with stone birds (statues 1 metre high) which are now the symbol of Zimbabwe (you can see them in the flag). There is also a "typical village" where they play folkloric dances for tourists. I prefer to sit on some ruined walls in the silence and imagine how this site was not so long ago. This are the only stone ruins you can find in all sub-Saharian Africa.
In my way back I do Hitch-hiking, and a car leaves me at the bus stop. I arrive in Masvingo at 14:00 and find a bus to go back to Bulawayo. I step in, but is almost empty, so we wait till 16:00 (2 hours) till the bus gets literally FULL (the african way). In the meanwhile, a drunk man offers me drug and wants to introduce me his "sister" . I finally can avoid him and buy some bananas and oranges for the trip. It takes 4 hours to get to Bulawayo. I'm exhausted, take a taxi and go back to the Hostel.
We have some dinner at the hostel and at 23:40 Mr. Kruger takes us to the bus (Translux, 25 US$), in the center of Bulawayo. Mr. Kruger treats all his guests as if they wear their own sons and daughter (and I'm talking literally). He says he treats us the same way he'd like to be treated if he travels to our country. That's a nice way of thinking!! The bus is big, but not as comfortable as the "Intercape Mainliner". It's cold at night.
We wake up at 6:00 at Beitsbridge, in the border of South Africa. It takes us 1 hour to pass controls. The lanscape here is green, with lots of farms, crops, fieldsÉ At 9:30 we stop for breakfast at Pietersburg. This town looks a lot more "european" then the rest of the trip. At 12:35 we arrive in Pretoria. We take a bus here to the airport, 52 km. Away.
Johannesburg's airport is quite small, and there are not many waiting areas. We change money, leave the rucksacks at the cloak-room and wait till 18:20, when we check-in the lugagge to Madrid. Once you pass the passports controls there a whole world of shops and Duty-Free. We do "last-minute shopping". There's a lot of nice items from South Africa, Safari shopsÉ We take a "real" coffee in an italian cafeteria and board at 19:40.
At 6:00 (7:00 local time in Turkey) we arrive in Istambul. We go to the transit desk, get our boarding cards and wait till 10:20. We read in the newspapers taht yeaterday they suffered a big earthquake here in Istambul, but the airport seems to be OK. After more than four hours we arrive at Madrid, home at last!!
TEXTO EN ESPAÑOL
