Fancy seeing you here! small world huh...

Sooooo, fairly long time no see, thats because I, the great and wonderful explorer that I am, have been busy surviving the horrors of ...the Okavango Delta...Duh Duh Duuuuuhhhh

But before we get to that, it is now day 30 of my trip, yes i have been away from home for a whole month now - do any of you miss me yet?? Since we last spoke (i use the term figurativly of course) I have crossed the border into Botswana and discovered a lovely thing known only as AHF - African Heat fever. Basically its really hot here. And as a result, we have done / are doing some pretty stupid s***, and talking about pretty stupid s***, and thinking about pretty stupid s*** and basically just being stupid s***s most of the time. Its quite funny actually! Apparently this is the main side effect of AHF - so thats our excuse! So, my first day in Botswana was basically made up of a fairly long drive to camp and then a funny blurry few hours involving cider, kav throwing a bottle of water over my head at my own request, coversations about the same dogs being in different disney movies and how thats even possible, bugs named Bobogeffrey which escaped certain death and of course there was some lively debate about the fact that Tanya touched a mouse...and she liked it. That might not make sense to a lot of you but any of the Gap group who may be reading this are no doubts pissing themselves laughing right now - i actually have a massive smile on my face just thinking about it! But yes, for the rest of you, that blurry time was the result of AHF...honest...

Later that day we went on a bushman walk, which involved the bushmen (a family of people who actually live in the bush and survive there using roots and plants etc for medicine and stuff) taking us through the grassy knoll and explaining to us how they use different plants and what does what to you if you eat it and stuff. it was actually brilliant, and for all the guys reading this - major side boob action from the women's clothes! think i may even have a picture of that...The best part of the walk was at the end when they managed to make fire from just rubbing wood (no puns please) and then sat down next to it and pulled out a pack of cigerettes! even Tanya and our tour guy Wimpy joined them for a quick fag - was very surreal and entertaining to see these people who survive on grass and roots pull our a pack of embassy blue and light up! This was also the night I managed to part ways with my horrible sleeping bag - its actually quite hard to ditch a sleeping bag in africa, you wouldnt think it but it is! So basically i met this guy who was also travelling and staying at the camp but seperatly to us, and he needed a sleeping bag so well that was about it, a sleeping bag in return for a drink at the bar. And before you start, i did warn him that i had a bit of a reaction to it and that he should throw it away if he gets one too, but i might have said it quite quietly when he wasnt looking....

The next day was doomsday for most of us, it was the day before we left the truck and conrad and lindie and our stuff behind for 2 days whilst we bush camped in the Okavango Delta. A harsh place that keeps it's enemies close and its friends in the four star hotel 10km down the road! We arrived at the base camp after visiting Maun (a town) and very quickly made the most of the georgous pool and bar for the rest of the afternoon and evening...it had to be done, we were bush camping for the next 2 days for gods sake! And, i might add, i stayed up a bit later with Kav and Alex and saw my first ever shooting star! Was well cool if i do say so myself (in perfect english too)!

Right, February 14th, Valentines day no less, packed with what little supplies we needed, we headed to the river to meet our doom....

did i say doom? I meant really cool macorros (little canoe things) which, via the poler's who control them, took us to the actual delta in pure luxury i might add! Oh, and we had pancakes for breakfast too! so really not much to complain about..yet! right, so the trip to the delta on these boat thigns was quite long, and it was crazy hot, like 38 degrees i think someone said, so understandably i got my little wooden fan out which used to belong to my nan - this then led to a barrage of comments and jokes about me being the lady of the lake, fanning myself and lazing in my personal boat as i was steered to the campsite - personally i thought it was great but apparently everyone else was gunning for my fan and thus my blood... it probably didnt help that mine and alex's poler (we shared a boat) stopped half way to make us necklaces out of the beautiful water lillies so that when we arrived not only were we cool, we also had jewellry!

After setting up camp (which basically means pitching our tent incase you were wondering) we went for a walk and found the official swimming spot. The water in the delta you see is not safe to drink, nor swim in, nor touch in any way - which is obviously why we used it for cooking and to boil for our tea! The swimming spot was basically a clear spot of water which was safe to swim in, and boy was i happy about that! quite a few people actually passed on a swim because they were scared of the water (cough cough) but there was about 10 of us i think that just decided not even to go back to camp for our swim stuff and just jump in in our underwear! it was THAT hot! Obviously walking back presented some issues since we had to walk back in our underwear, whhich usually would be fine except that the way back was more like a thick bush of reeds and grass that we had to wade through...not so fun! The rest of the day for me, was pretty much spent hitting kav and being hit in return over the head with empty water bottles. and laughing about it..Can anyone say AHF?! But as valentines days' go, this was a nice one :)

That night was awful. I mean awful. It rained. There is no other esriptive term, it just rained. And thundered, and lighteninged, and rained more, and flooded ALL the tents, and rained more, and ruined everything, oh and it rained a little too.

Having survived THAT which i will not name again, we spent the day walking through the delta looking for animals...i say looking because apart from an elephant that was so far away it could have actually been Tony Blair's ears we were looking at, we didnt see anyhting. Oh, a spider, there was a spider, a pretty cool looking yellow and red spider, but still, JUST a spider. Those who shall not be named who took ten minutes to take a picture of the spider, yes i WILL continue to get in your shot and damn you. Just damn you. That evening was our last in the delta so we (i say we, i actually mean wimpy) made homemade garlic bread on the fire and enjoyed a performance from our polers of local songs and dances...yes ladies and gentlemen its that time again - we were asked to perfom, wimpy even passed round whiskey to encourage us! so after a few renditions of barbie girl, in the jungle and wonderwall, oh and row row row your boat (which caused great confusion when we tried to do the whole chorus groups thing) we resorted to challenging them to limbo. They won.

Left the Delta the next day again in the macorro's and went back to the main camp, where we proceeded to change, repack our crap and get back on the truck to move to our next campsite - Planet Baobab. Apparently this was named after a type of tree that is found everywhere there but none of us could spot one or even remember the name until Wimpy pointed out that it was the tree Rafeeki was in in the Lion King - after which we all saw them EVERYWHERE. See, all you ever need is a good solid cultural disney reference! Pretty chilled evening, spent it in this really cool bar which had cow skin on all the seats! There was a big dive competition between the boys aas well in the pool, which basically led to Kav doing some pretty impressive belly flops, following by Steve doing the running man into the water and Andrew then doing some...well...for lack of a better term some very painful looking Ball flops! The winner was clearly Ray, who was just hilarious with his constant need to make the biggest splash in whatever way possible! Way to go Ray!

And so that leads me to today. We are camping right on the border for our last night in Botswana, and yes it is pissing it down. A lot. We went on a nice sunset cruise earlier, but it rained so we couldnt see the sunset. And we got very wet getting back to the truck. Then we made a lovely dinner, and had to huddle together under the only shelter because it was still raining. And although the constant source of hot chocolate provided sweetly by Kav helped a bit, IT WAS STILL RAINING! infact, its raining right now! But the bar has BBC news on, so that softens the blow further, oh and cider helps too...

p.s. there is a really cool jack russell dog here called russell! wimpy sees him everytime he camps her!

xx