Hi guys, currently struggling with jetlag in Bangkok so taking advantage of the free wifi in the hostel to update you all on the 2nd half of the african trip; here goes...

Tuesday 19th July, day 6:

We got to sleep in today, getting up at quarter to 7 but to be honest i'd have rather had an early start so that we could have been out of the cold. Took down the tent in record time, quick coffee and back on the truck. Took about an hour for me to thaw out, and now the sun is roasting - so crazy. Crossing the border into Botswana today on our way to the salt pans - can't wait to see them as it's supposed to be an amazing sight... The border crossing went pretty quickly abd without incident - pleasant surprise considering most people have to pay the officials some sort of money as it's quite corrupt there. In Botswana they have an issue with foot and mouth so a few times we've had to stop and walk through disinfectant stuff, which is a bit of a b***** as it holds us up when we're on the road trying to get places. The weather in Botswana is a lot better, you can tell we're moving closer to the equator....that night we stayed in at a campsite in Palapye, where we experienced more open air toilets and showers, the novelty will never wear off of showering underneath the stars in a cubicle where they haven't felt the need to put a roof or door on, but have went to the bother of putting fairy lights above the tree you're showering under!! Alot of people were really tired from the bad sleep we all had the night before with the cold so went to bed pretty early. Refused to do this so we went to the bar with Lacey, Michael and Liz where we played pool with the locals. Liz was on fire! We swatched the hot barman, but he was Botswanan so we thought having a flirt might be a bit risky, for obvious reasons hahah.

Wednesday 20th July, day 7:

We took an open land rover truck into the salt pans which was pretty cool - the salt pans are situated outside of Nata in Botswana and used to be ocean like a million trillion years ago but have long dried out and is now just a big desert type space of salt, nothing can really grow or live there but you can see the odd elephant, springbok or ostrich pass through. To be honest there isn't much to do there once you've seen the landscape but it was still a highlight of the trip for me. The guides let us drive the land rovers which was pretty cool - although Liz got it stuck at one point, this was absolutely hilarious! The sunset was absolutely gorgeous and at night you could see every star in the sky - it was amazing to be able to make out the milky way so clearly and we were able to see dozens of shooting stars. Would highly recommend it to anyone going to Botswana to take time to visit it, just make sure you take good company and a few beers!!

Thursday 21st July, day 8:

We left the salt pans early and headed to elephant sands campsite, where elephants apparently come and drink out of the pool, although we didn't see any. We all got showered and had a cooked breakfast which everyone was pretty stoked about. after that we got on to the truck and headed to Kasane, set up the tent at the campsite and bought some booze to take along on our boat safari of the chobe river. This was a very cool experience, to start our driver was called Rambo, and secondly the weather was absolutely gorgeous, we managed to see loads of elephants, hippos and crocs up pretty close and had quite a lot of beer. Beer seemed like a good choice at the time but after a few on a boat with no toilet we ran into a few problems...this resulted in Rambo getting another boat to stop beside us in the middle of the river so that we could climg up on to that one to use their toilet. Spoke to a couple of guys on that boat one Irish and one English, the english guy was an absolute k*** (shock!) so we were happy to say goodbye and jump back onto our own wee boat! Later that night back at the campsite we ended up having a pretty heavy one, getting though a bottle of cane in less than an hour. We all went and sat at the bar and drank some more savannah and random concoctions - Jamie had a bit of a spewy incident after 'taking a man pill' and drinking some black s*** we'd stolen from Jeff. I ended up making friends with two of the night guards, although try as i might they wouldn't let me get a shot or even take a picture of their rifles. Spoil sports. There was some number swapping and random quotes from the night, 'properly steamin'', 'f*** the red cross!' and many more that don't really make sense in retrospect! Tried our best to creep quietly back to camp and kind of succeeded until Victoria panicked when she couldnt open our tent - she thought she was trying to get into someone else's when really she was just trying to open the window. Michael and I couldn't stop laughing and pretty much woke up everyone on the campsite!

Friday 22nd July, day 9:

A word of warning: border crossing into Zambia by boat whilst still drunk is not advisable!!
Once we got across the border we were instantly met by a load of looky looky men. I only had 10 pula on me (about 1p) so couldn't buy anything - one guy wasn't giving up without a fight:

looky looky - i take rand
Me - i only have 10 pula
looky looky - i take dollar!
Me - i know but i only have 10 pula
looky looky - i take euro?!
Me - that's great, but i still only have 10 pula

In the end we agreed to do a trade, my water bottle for a handmade ebony hippo (callum's getting it as a present haha). We all had a lot of fun trading random crap for stuff, they take anything but really love it when they get shoes - michael traded a pair that had cost him 3 euro for a load of stuff. After the border we made our way to livingstone - still hanging pretty bad we went for a bit of lunch - i ordered a burger which came out with blue s*** all over it - needless to say I gave it a miss and just had a chip or two.Once we got to camp the sun was shining so we chilled out for a bit at the bar then went on a booze cruise of the Zambezi river. We were introduced to a banging cocktail 'zambezi sunset special', drinks were all inclusive so we came off pretty pissed and headed straight to the campsite bar, firing back too many J Bombs and some wierd blue cocktail. Michael and I also braved a couple of 'handgrenades', basically a jager bomb with a shot of tequila in as well as the jager - probably a bad choice looking back! Because it was our last night in the tents we decided to have a team sleepover, with me, V, Lacey, Jamie and Michael all squeezing into the two man tent for a team spoon. We all wished we'd thought of this sooner as it was the cosiest we'd all been for the entire trip!

Saturday 23rd July, day 10:

We got up early again to go to the Victoria Falls which were abolutely gorgeous - we saw the double rainbow and got drenched; the perfect hangover cure!! It was so cool!!
At the market I met a local called Mike who gave me a Nyami Nyami necklace as a gift because I was Scottish 'like David Livingstone' the missionary who named the falls. The nyami nyami is a symbol made of stone which represents the different aspects of the falls and is suposed to be a good luck charm for anyone doing the bungy or rafting at the falls. It was very touching to speak to him and be given it as a gift. I went back to the truck quickly before we left and got my blanket to give to him as a gift back, I wasn't needing it anymore and would have rather he had it than throw it away. Later we went back to the campsite and chilled by the pool - we met a guy and girl from London so sat and chatted to them for a bit. We decided to have dinner at the campsite before trying to find our next hostel. Ordered a fillet steak but I'm pretty sure it wasn't a beef steak - I have a sneaky suspicion it was Kudu but was way too hungry to care, besides it went down just the same.

Sunday 24th July, day 11:

Our last day in Africa :( got to lie in a little before checking out of the hostel then headed to zimbabwe border to go watch Jamie and Michael bungy - crossed the border and met up with them all. We were planning on doing a tandum on the swing across the gorge but shat ourselves after seeing Michael do it. Absolute wimps!! We said our goodbye to David, Liz, Lacey and Michael which was pretty sad although we are hoping to meet up with Lacey and Michael in Thailand for a bit. Jamie was stuck with us for a bit longer as she had just as long a stopover as us at J'burg! The 3 of us passed the time looking at our photos and sipping on mojitos! Then it was time for the J'burg - dubai flight!

Monday 25th July, day 12:

The first day I'm actually blogging freestyle and not from my wee gay journal haha!
Dubai flight was fine as i slept through most of it, we had a quick stopover in Dubai so had to rush toward our next gate for the dubai-bangkok flight. Slept for a lot of that too; this has most definately been the worst two days travelling-wise, as our flight left Livingstone at half 1 yesterday and we only arrived in Bangkok at 7 tonight so there's been a lot of waiting about and boredom. we've both hardly spoken a word to each other, very sociable haha but it's cool, we're both just shattered. It's nice when you can feel that you don't need to make an effort with someone because they know you so well. Tomorrows plan is to do some laundry, get a nice thai massage (happy ending NOT included before the jokes start!) and get our bearings. Looking forward to meeting new people on our next tour although it has to be said they do have a lot to live up to!!

Hope everyone's well at home, thinking of you guys

Jillian xxxx