Day 22 Botswana , Namibia & Zambia

Today was my last early morning wake up, other than the plane home, that is. We were on the road by 7 AM and headed north. It was a combination of paved as well as gravel.

By 8 AM we were at the Namibian border crossing. Each time you come to a border between countries, you must get your passport stamped at the office of the country you are leaving. Then you get back in the vehicle, drive a few hundred yards, get out again and visit the immigration office of the country you are arriving at. We did this 6 times today!

Namibia has a long narrow section extending into the north end of Botswana and this is where we drove for much of the day. The countryside seemed similar to Botswana, but we noticed that the huts were built in a square style rather than Botswana’s round shape.

I read and slept and read and slept. Perhaps I missed villages and towns, but Namibia seemed to be more sparsely populated. We stopped at service stations a couple of times to use the toilets and buy some snacks, but we didn’t feel like our business was wanted. For lunch we had sandwiches which had been prepared for us on the houseboat, and we ate in transit.

We went through a few national parks, stopped to wet our feet at hoof and mouth disease control centers, and drove and drove. The day was a long, tedious one.

We got to the boat crossing into Zambia in good time but were delayed there a bit while we changed vehicles.

By the time we got to our hotel in Livingstone it was 5 PM – a 10 hour day. The whole group met for supper one last time and we shared our favorite experience for each of the days.

We ended the evening with a shot of amarula, a traditional drink made in South Africa from the fruit of the marula tree.

It’s been an amazing three weeks!