Hello again. We are currently in Botswana about to leave after having to wait for one of our number to recover from Malaria in hospital for a week. For those who have remained healthy it has been a jam packed few weeks. We have waled - literally- with lions, that was a truly amazing experience. It was at Antelope Park in Zimbabwe, where they are breeding lions to reintroduce into the wild as feline AIDS is destroying th ewild population. We also swam on a n elephant and went for a game drive on elephant back!! Seriously cool stuff. In addition to which the campsite had amazingly lovely hot showers so we were happy as Larry! Truck life is as lively as ever, we had a huge argument amongst all 24 of us whilst on a houseboat in Lake Kariba and amazingly are all still talking to each other. Occasionally it gets a bit teenage stroppy as people throw their dummies out of the pram but all is copable with (especially as there are now only 2 1/2 weeks left to go!!) We took the sleeper train from Bulawayo to Victoria Falls - an event in itself as there were not enough beds to go around and many Zimbabweans had decided to upgrade themselves without paying to do so! 11 hours and 300 kms later (!) we arrived in Vic Falls and spent the next 4 days enjoying the atmosphere. This involved Pete and I moving immediately out of the campsite where the rest of our group was staying and finding our own littel bit of peaceful serenity. We did a fantastic canoe trip down the Zambezi river dodging hippos and elephants tha tcame literally charging down at us to warn us away from thier babies. It worked, we paddled off as fast as our littel boats could carry us! Amaziungly we also saw African wild dogs which are incredibly rare. Even our guide was over excited. Lotsof thunderand lightening and torrential rains whilst on the canoes. Fun, fun, fun!!! Next stop was Botswana and Chobe river. I have never seen so many elephants in all my life. We probably saw 200 in a copuple of hours. I was in seventh heaven! Then we took a Makoro (wooden canoe) and were 'poled' out into the Okovango delta for a relaxing couple of days. And here we are now. I konw I've left lots out, like our evening eating a la carte over looking a floodlit water hole (well you've got to hav ea bit of luxury every now and then) and the fantastic game walk where we walked within a few metres of rhino, but the truck goes soon and I am typing at top speed. Thank you to everyone who has sent emails and texts. We love getting them all even though we don't have the time in internet cafes to reply individually. I wil try to catch up with personal correspondance when we get to Oz. Off to the deserts of Namibia now, and we thought it was unbaearably hot already. I quote the lonely planet "only anybody who is truly stupid would choose to travel through Namibia in Niovember". Well, tell me something I didn't already know!!