Worst Experiences

A Merry Christmas Wish 2002

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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Today, Christmas Day, we will take Jana’s Blessing and a van back to Tengchong and catch a bus for Ruili on the China-Burma border.

While we sit here at 7:00am bleary-eyed waiting for the water to get hot so we can take a shower we are wishing each other and you HAPPY CHRISTMAS!!!!

It means good luck, Jana said as we listened to the cricket in our room at the Hot Springs…it was prophetic…we were going to have another adventure!

On the ride into Tengchong I wondered how much the automobile companies saved by not installing shocks on the minivans…another Chinese mystery. Then, eating noodles at a sidewalk stall in front of the bus station, we were delighted when a young girl sat down with her bowl…good morning she said eating quickly…she only had 10 minutes before her bus left for Baoshan…on her way to a rock music concert…oh we wish we could go with you we said…she plays the piano, sings and dances she says…so excited to meet foreigners she laughed…then seriously-English is very important!

Waiting for the bus we saw three of the six people we met at the Myanmar Tea House! Then Li Bing from the T.C.C. Cafe came in to see off a friend…wished us Merry Christmas and we wished him a happy Chinese New Year…

As the bus detoured down a pot-holed dirt road through some vegetable fields and across an old stone bridge to get to the next little town I said to Jana…you know…we piss and moan but I wouldn’t travel any other way. I wouldn’t either she said.

But we no more than smiled at each other over this thought when the guy behind blew cigarette smoke…and when Jana opened her window the guy behind with a mean face closed it again….can see him in the driver’s mirror she said…we could get into a big fight with him if we wanted, I said laughing…that’s all I need Jana groaned. Then we talked about how traveling was a metaphor for life…have to go through a lot of drudgery in order to experience the high points…like marriage or backpacking or running a marathan…but then of course you have a story to tell afterward!

On the way south to Ruili we drove through little Chinese villages…trucks full of firewood, full of sacks with contents of unknown origin, full of rocks…vendors on each side of the road with barely space for one lane of traffic wending it’s way…like through a parking lot…careful not to hit the women in ethnic dress sitting behind their little piles of oranges and spinach. Then through a town full of carved cement slabs for burial markers…ladies with cream-colored towel headdresses…then a pick-up full of ethnic ladies with bright pink dresses & and pink towel headdresses…people barely moving out of the way as the bus honks it’s way through…another whole town making nothing but bricks.

There are so many people in the world I say…everyone thinks they are the center of the universe. The “issues” we thought were so important back home have taken on a distinct perspective. We have it very very good and have no idea how lucky we are to be born in America.

Then ancient terraces full of green vegetables together with modern tomatoes covered with plastic and back up and over the mountain range on a dirt road that threatened to shake the bus into it’s parts. Our laps held a picnic of mandarin oranges, boiled eggs, crackers and water. But when a poor old woman, on her way to visit her grandchildren in Riuli ran out of her tolerance for switchbacks and vomited profusely all over the floor our picnic lay uneaten.

Then the bus stopped behind a long line of vehicles waiting for the construction workers to open up a way for us ahead. Everyone piled out of the cars and buses to sit on a grassy area for an hour and a half…waiting…while we listened to the entire Chinese Men’s Chorus…the chorus of hacking and spitting…incessently…one after the other…like dogs marking their territories we thought! It got to us…now we each have a cold. The women talk loudly…like they are angry…but we don’t think they are. Finally, it is a relief to pile into the bus again and at the summit the road suddenly turned from ancient cobblestone to blacktop again.

Further on it is impossible to discern the names of the towns…we think this must be a little like what the migrant workers from Mexico feel when they are brought to Oregon by the coyotes and sold into bondage to the labor contractors…not knowing where in the world they are.

Domestic Fight in Baoshan

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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The Lonely Planet description for finding Huacheng Binguan was difficult…the hotel name was the same but the street was different…two Dutch travellers sitting in the lobby with their backpacks told us we were in the right hotel…they had spent the day walking in the rain in the town…not much to see they said…and were waiting for the 6pm overnight bus to Jinghong. Our room in the hotel was not good by any standard..grody bathroom, shower pipe dripped on your back when you were on the squat toilet…no towels…no hot water except in a thermos. TV but freezing cold. The thing that saved us was the little kid hot water bottles we bought at a variety store that we filled with hot water and clutched tight to our chests under the covers. Walls thin…don’t know about the clientele…listened to a horrible domestic fight for an hour trying to go to sleep.

Lonely Planet description of where to find restaurants led us all over the place in the rain…we sat down in one street stall on tiny chairs at a tiny table and when we finally realized the workers didn’t know what to do with us we got up and left. We finally ate at a stall where plates of food were displayed and we could pick out what we wanted…eating and drinking our Dali beers while watching a table full of Chinese men play a drinking game that resembled Sticks And Stones. On the way back to the hotel we stumbled onto a market area with displays of fish and seafood but we had already eaten. Stayed only one night and left the next foggy day for Tengchong…the bus leaving just minutes after we got to the ticket window with our backpacks.

Pissing Match In China

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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When Bob took a box of purchases to the Old Lijiang post office they asked him to take everything out one by one. This had not happened when we sent boxes from China before. Bob had spent a lot of time carefully packing many fragile items, so, frustrated, he asked them to take the things out since they were the ones that wanted to see the items…a mistake. Then they told him to put them all back in, which he carefully did…but in a huff….another mistake.
Then they told him the box would have to go to the Customs office and they would also take the items out. This concerned Bob because how were we to know some things would not be taken out of the box-and why did the box have to be searched twice? Never question. When Bob told the clerk these things she went to get her supervisor who then told Bob he would have to take the box to the Customs office himself. Bob figured this was a punishment for questioning the clerks. In the meantime I had filled out a form and as we picked up the box to leave, the supervisor wanted 3 yuan for the form. Bob told them that the form was not needed anymore so he gave it back to her and we left. Bob finally walked to the main post office in new town to mail the box home…with no trouble and no more searching. Want power…be a bureaucrat in China!

Yangshuo

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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Friday November 29 2002
The annual Fish Festival began today. The fish festival celebrates the Cormorant fisher birds who dive for fish from fishermen’s boats they perch on but because of their small throats and a metal ring put around the throat by the fishermen they cannot swallow the fish. The fishermen then take the fish out of their mouths; it is amazing that the birds don’t fly off with the fish.

There was a dragon parade through the town; Jana and I watched some Chinese rock singers and a beer drinking contest; guy from Britain entered but didn’t win, he said, because the beer was warm and hard to swallow. We will run across him a couple more times on the tourist trail. We watched great fireworks in the country that invented them late into the evening on the roof of a restaurant.

One of the many signs for English teachers seen in China: Wanted teachers of English, ASAP, for one month to one year, free bed, food, air ticket, free Chinese lessons, 2500 to 4000 Yuan a month payment, work visa, call 1-390-773-7533 Contact Owen at Buckland College.

Saturday Nov 30
Walked to the bus station with our backpacks to catch a bus back to Guilin so we could catch the train to Kunming by 11:30am. The “Hard Sleeper,” which was about half the cost of a “Soft Sleeper” meant six beds in a compartment with no door. There is supposed to be no smoking on the trains in China but the men smoke anyway and the smoke drifts into the compartments. Our compartment contained a Chinese couple (he with cell phone and large voice) and a nice Chinese guy (all with no English) on one side and Bob, Jana and I on other side.

A friendly Swedish couple in a nearby compartment was good for some interesting conversation about their socialist government which they said works very well there. In the compartment next to us was an older mother and a child with it’s grandparents. The child wore knitted garments with a split crotch for potty-going. No diapers are worn by babies in most of Asia. Maybe we should ask Asian mothers about potty training…probably wouldn’t work in the West, however, because Asian mothers keep their babies with them constantly.

That evenng we went to the dining car for dinner. After ordering (and paying before the meal) we waited a good hour for dinner. When the train made a stop and the waiters debarked we became concerned and asked the new staff for our dinner. They were prepared to ignore us until a nice Chinese man eating at the next table spoke rather strongly to the wait staff about our situation. We think the old staff worked a scam…taking off with the money themselves. We ended up with a nice meal but don’t know if the new staff was stuck with the cost of the meal or not…one of the many mysteries we will witness in China.

The next day as I was walking back down the aisle from the filthy and foul smelling squat toilet at the end of the carriage, I heard hacking, caughing and spitting. I looked up to see the old grandfather next to us spitting on the rug in the aisle. Grossed out again!

New Delhi

Posted on by Laughingnomad

July 27-30
The hotel arranged to have us taken to the railway station in their car for the 6am train to Delhi, so at 5am the streets are full already and workers are queued up at the tea stalls for breakfast. In Africa the pace was slow and men sat around doing nothing. Here, sure, some are lying on just a small dirty piece of cloth on the sidewalks asleep but most men are up and about-energetic and eager for the day’s work-meager as it will be. Interestingly you seldom see women on the sidewalks. As the train pulled into the station I looked at it dubiously, but it turned out to be ok. It was not the cleanest train ever but had air conditioning-the most important thing in this heat.

On the outskirts of Delhi I sleepily watch the plastic and cloth shacks and the naked children whiz by but come alert when I catch a glimpse of a young man seemingly out of place in his nice new yellow shirt and new-looking grey slacks sitting on a stool and leaning on his arms high on a bank above the railroad tracks…maybe he is dreaming…maybe he’ll be going to school…or to work in the new hotel in New Delhi this new day…

Four hours later we stumble out of the train station behind the only two other young but tired looking white tourists who keep glancing back at us…I guessed French or Italian…and probably wondering who else from the west besides them is nuts enough to be in India in the summer. It is 106 degrees on this day. We have not seen one American in India.

The taxi ride to the hotel and subsequent auto-rickshaw rides in the insane traffic looking at alternative hotels all afternoon does me in. We finally choose the Ajante Hotel primarily because it has a restaurant and high speed internet downstairs. For two days I refuse to leave my air conditioned room except for brief forays into the internet cafe. Bob braves the heat, noise and traffic to explore the city by himself, getting lost of course and having to take a rickshaw back to the hotel.

Jaipur City Tour

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Jaipur is the capital of Rajasthan and sits on a dry lake bed surrounded by barren hills at the top of which you can see fort-like edifices and the surrounding fort walls. The all day city tour bus with no A/C left from the railroad station and proceeded to take us to what seemed like every historical building possible in Jaipur!

The entry fees and camera fees for foreigners were many times over the fees for the locals and the soft drinks were four times the normal price which needless to say really pissed off Bob (he just wants to pay the fair and going price) which was ok with me because I am more interested in people than old empty buildings. (The two young college students on the tour from Bangladash were cheating by posing as Indians). An expensive elephant ride around a small courtyard was being utilized only by a few Japanese tourists. You had to pay an entrance fee to see the recently built white marble Hindu temple. Then you had to pay an offering inside the temple to see the inner temple. If you entered with a camera there was additional charge–quadruple for a video cam. Then you had to pay 5 rupees to go to the bathroom afterwards. You get nickel and dimed to death. Very frustrating.

For the remainder of the tour we stayed behind the rest when they toured the buildings and lingered in the streets to watch the kalaidoscope of passing shapes and colors…multi colored tribal women on the sidewalk selling soft green grass to passersby so they could gain graces by feeding the many cows that occupied the parking lot…15 little boys laughing and wanting to shake hands…one woman squatting in front of a wall to pee on a sidewalk…have a look in my shop…no charge for looking…barber shaving a patron in his pavement shop…men in white dhobis (like a sari that is pulled up between the legs) pushing handcarts and traditionally dressed Rajput men in bright colored turbans and handlebar moustaches. The newest and nicest building we saw in Jaipur is a three year old government building!

The tour guide makes his presentations in both Hindi and English (all the riders are Indian and Hindi-speaking except us) but only now and then do we catch a word and realize he is now speaking English! The two boys from Bangladash ask why we do not enter some of the palaces/temples. When I explain that we feel like human ATM machines, they sympathetically suggest that maybe the high prices for foreigners can be adjusted. I tell them we are more interested in the people anyway and they smile. The boys have completed two years of university study in Bangladash and have applied to study in the US. Moving to America seems to be every young Asian person’s dream but getting a visa these days, they say, is very difficult.

On the way to another ancient empty building we follow a rocking camel pulling a handcart piled high with 25 foot long metal pipe…the camel has only one speed and one direction…on this street we see many pavement dwellers-babies, naked toddlers, mothers…those not at home have their few belongings covered over with burlap or plastic..the driver lets us off several blocks from our hotel but instead of taking an auto-rickshaw or taxi we walk back to the hotel in the middle of the street along with the rest of the pedestrians thereby avoiding the urine soaked sidewalk…funny how quickly you can get used to this life if instead you are paying attention to the people…women beautiful with long shiny black oiled hair in colorful flowing saris that provide a foil to the grey dirty surroundings looking to see what is in their eyes… Never again, however, will I complain about the transportation taxes or the garbage, sewer and water bills at home unless at some future time I decide I like sewer water and garbage in my streets and a man carrying my new dishwasher up the hill on his back.

We drive through the famous “Pink City” which is the 250 year old part of the town. Doesn’t look pink to me…looks like a dirty rust color much like the mud huts in Africa or red clay kasbahs in Morocco…and don’t think it was repainted since the first time 250 years ago.

The bus transfers us into four wheel drives and up a winding road we go to the Amber Fort to view yet another palace and have lunch. I sit on a concrete wall alone for a few minutes to write in my journal and wait for the others to gather when I am quickly approached by about six laughing men in their 30’s or 40’s who shake my hand and want to know where I am from…then they traced a swooping convex shape in the air with their hands and arms and asked if I did this…what does that mean, I ask, and they all laugh and move away…not interested anymore. I tell Bob that I think I was just propositioned…

Pushkar India

Posted on by Laughingnomad

The driver has to ask 5 times for directions to Pushkar (no male pride here). Upon entering the village a guy sitting at a table lets down a red and white pole barrier and asks for a 15 rupee village tax. This is only for tourist cars…Bob says disgustedly that Oregon is really dumb.

In high season the ghats (steps or landing to the lake) will be full but this day there is hardly anyone at the ghats to bathe and obtain blessings in the holy water of Pushkar Lake-only a few young backpackers lounging at a refreshment table near the water. On the way back to the car we came upon two young men who were here from Delhi to take their engineer exams so they can qualify for a job on the railroad. Always the first question is “How do you like India”� Always I answer that I like India very much-especially the people. I beat them to the invariable next question: “Do you have children”� It is good in India to have sons.

Back to the road to Jaipur I see a sign advertising the “Pink Floyd Cafe Hotel…Wish You Wear Hear.” On the way out of the village there is a sign: “Thank’s.” We see men and women working on the road excavation in 100 degree heat loading gravel into the back of a truck using shallow pans carried on their heads…a man on a tractor with a hot pink turban…no speed limit and no cops on the road…hundreds of trucks waiting to load acres of marble…trucks all orange and painted with various designs…trucks are king of the road in India too…tribal woman with red over pink and orange over purple and flowered and multicolored and rings and big jewelry in their noses…we see STD everywhere but it stands for the State Telephone Department not Sexually Transmitted Disease.

The two lane Highway is being widened to four lanes with funds borrowed from the World Bank. But not in time for us with cars passing trucks honking that are passing trucks honking with motorcycles here and there honking on each side and in and out…camels pulling carts on the shoulders…at night vehicles use no lights honking…only for signaling an emergency like horns in the US. The last 12 miles are in the dark and by the time we get to Jaipur I am a frazzle…I have a headache from the diesel fumes…my ears hurt…no more road travel for me in the third world! And then I’ll be damned…after passing all those trucks…honking honking…the driver pulls over for tea!

Swakopmund

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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June 6-8, 2002
How are you today mommi? George and James do a pretty good job looking after me-making sure I’m happy so I don’t unglue on this trip and make a problem for everyone-maybe they think we don’t like roughing it even though we have spent 30 years backpacking and trekking. In spite of their best efforts, and in spite of my determination-I unglue anyway as we pull into Swakopmund on the coast…I had gotten little sleep the last three nights in my thin nylon and cotton sleeping bag that we bought in Nairobi because our camping gear had not arrived before the start of the trip. I spent the day in the truck crossing the ice-cold desert in a levi jacket and sleeping bag and I am frozen to the bone. I natter constantly to myself: no one wants to see out-the others were partying late the night before and are all asleep! So why can’t we pull down the clear plastic tarps over the open windows?!!

The bus station is only two blocks away and in a fury I threaten to catch a bus to Cape Town…the only thing that stops me is that the truck has pulled into the locked hotel compound which is such a patchwork of spaces (three other trucks are also inside the compound) and buildings that I can’t find the front door out of the place…I retreat to our assigned room and slam my luggage down on the floor-Bob looking on helplessly! I stood in the hot shower for half an hour in spite of the written warnings on the wall to use the desert water sparingly. I crawled into bed and had been meditating for awhile when I heard Bob ask whether I wanted to join the others to eat in the compound restaurant. By this time I had calmed down enough to grudgingly admit that I had to eat.

The dinner was wonderful. I had fried Atlantic fish with a lemon sauce and Bob had Leopard’s Belly-a stew of Warthog, mushrooms and vegetables wrapped up in a pastry like an Italian Calzone and by the end of dinner I was smiling and laughing again. Nikki had half a dozen fresh oysters and game liver and onions. Sarah and Heather had Ostrich kebabs.

James and George had beef steak. Rod came over and encouraged me to stay…”you are part of the group” he says…which just made me want to leave all the more…but he promised that I could sit up in the front half of the truck where there was no wind. This definitely was the low point of the trip for me-cold and no sleep was not a good mix! And no it didn’t help to think of all of poor Africa where a lot of people are not only cold but do not have enough food this winter because of the latest drought…

Swakopmund was like a time/place warp; the small resort town by the sea reminded me of San Diego-nice wide streets with palm trees up and down the medians except you saw “Right of Admission Reserved” signs above the doors of all the businesses. Retail shops have iron gates that are locked and when the retailer sees you standing at the gate he or she pushes a button that releases a lock so you can enter. Big time security…

Everything is immaculate and run efficiently-by the white Afrikaner owners…the Blacks are the waiters, sweepers, garbage collectors and car watchers…my first experience in an openly apartheid society feels very weird. One evening coming back from the latest Woody Allen movie (only six people in the theater and half of those left early). I scared the pee water out of one of the car watchers when I went up to him and ask if his job ever got boring. Apparently not used to being approached or acknowledged on the street by Whites, he gave me a terrified look that said “hey what’s coming down here,” while one of his buddies comes dashing over to help out his friend. Embarrassed to have put him in that position, I just laughed and slowly moved away as he, realizing I wasn’t setting him up for any bad thing, finally smiled.

We ate twice at a pub that served incredible German food with an Afrikaner bent. Rod had recommended the pig’s knuckle-huge-on a bed of sauerkraut. I delightedly peeled off the delicious crackling.

My hair was in desperate need of conditioning and I needed some pampering so I had my hair washed and colored while Bob bought an interesting African mask and a $40 Ostrich belt that he thought he was paying $4 for…that old decimal problem again!

The owner of the beauty shop was Afrikaner and my hairdresser was black. Afterward, when I walked to the back to tip the hairdresser the white women looked striken. Later in Cape Town Heather had her hair done and while the Black beautician was working on her she leaned down and asked if Heather could keep a secret. Then she requested that if Heather were going to leave a tip could she give it to her personally as the tips were never passed back to the Black beauticians. So now apartheid is just going to go underground like in the rest of the world.

While we are doing this, the other riders participated in some of the activities offered in the area-Nikki, Michelle, Adrian, Sarah, Heather and Fi went sky diving and Jimmie, George, Nikki, Michelle, Adrian, Michael and Sarah, Heather and Fi went riding quad bikes in the huge sand dunes; George took a tumble in his bike. Fi, Heather and Sarah and Adrian went both lay-down sand boarding and stand-up boarding on the dunes-they screamed down a sand dune, they said, on a board at 80mph! They spent the evening and early morning singing kareoke in the bar with no dinner.

Bob and I of course dropped into bed and the bar is far far away…

In the morning, George has coffee and cereal set up for us and we share the outdoor “kitchen” in the compound with the other truck riders. One of the other trucks has a couple in their 70’s on it-they looked like they were having the time of their lives. I wondered if their truck had a stereo.

Yainguaz Camp Near Gobabis

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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June 1, 2002 Yainguaz Camp near Gobabis, Namibia
The countries of Botswana and Namibia are very different geographically from Kenya, Tanzania and Zambia. The topography is flatter even than Botswana and much of Namibia is desert except for Brandburg Mountain, a huge marble massif rising out of the desert-also called Fire Mountain because of the way it appears at sunrise and sunset.

We still have to cross the Ondundozonananan (not a typo) Mountain Range in the south of the country before crossing into South Africa. Probably for this reason there are no villages or even huts along the road; the nomads in the area are few and we see only a few people in the small towns.

Crowded House, a New Zealand group is singing the chorus to “The Weather With You” which is “Everywhere you go you always take the weather with you”…and then “If you can’t change the world change yourself…” This music has played so much it has become the truck’s theme song.

It’s a breeze crossing the border into Namibia-and no charge for our visa. We are south of the equator now…it is winter and it is freezing cold but Rod doesn’t put the flaps down on the long-haul drive….and I suspect Bob has asked to have them rolled up so he can see out. I am fuming at what I consider his selfishness. We are all in our sleeping bags. We need the girls from Britain here to mutiny…You Bastard! Lorelle would have yelled!

Half frozen, we get to the camp after dark and put up the tents. James inspects a broken spring on the truck as we eat our dinner in the dark. We can’t use the multi-use hall of the camp to put our tents in as we had hoped because the Afrikaner farmers are having a joint birthday/wedding celebration and all the space is being used.

Bob has put the tent on a hump so I am cold and miserable all night as I scrunch down in the corner.

Maun & Sitatunga Camp

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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Tues May 28,2002 To Sitatunga Camp near Maun Botswana
Up at 5:30 again. Had wieners, eggy bread (French Bread) with honey and canned spaghetti for breakfast. James is doing his usual antic-body stuff while eating his eggy bread-“fucking sweet honey!” he says out of the blue and everybody laughs-suddenly awake. James is usually very animated and pretty funny.

It’s 200 km to Maun (rhymes with down) where we will wonder around the town for a couple hours before we continue on to our camp for the night. On the way we see two Oryx and Rod explains how their unique breathing aparatus works although I can’t remember any of it. Later we saw Ostriches again. Rod says they are the largest birds in the world and they can kill a human by stamping them with their feet. When they run it looks as if they are running on a water bed.

We stop for toilet and suddenly a big army truck filled with army guys pulls in after us….oh, no we all yell…but they were just checking to see if we were alright and pulled back out on the road again. George hides the meat from the veterinary road checks that are looking for meat with lung disease before we take off again.

The truck slows down again and we look to see a dead cow by the side of the road with about a dozen or so vultures hovering around it. The truck stops so we view the whole grizzly process: One vulture gets on top of the cow and punctures a hole near the rear of the stomach. The entire head of the vulture disappears into the hole and then others take their turn. As the truck starts to pull out again everyone lets out a YUKKK…as one of the birds sticks his head up the bum! Rod says we should be grateful to the vulture and the hyena…keeps disease from spreading…The birds are even built for good hygiene, he says, hardly any feathers on the head and neck for smooth entering of the hole…so what’s so sick we remind ourselves…we eat dead meat too!

Many of the younger women walking along side the road are wearing their hair in plaits and the young guys have those tiny dreads with heads shaved around the sides. I was told later in Swakopmund Namibia by a young guy with the same hairstyle that they got it (hair shaved nearly to the top of the head) from an early American black rap star! When I teased him about naughty rap lyrics he just laughed but a couple older black Africans who overheard me nodded their heads up and down in assent-all the while making faces. Don’t think the older ones approve of the young black male African penchant for black American rap!

Some of the older women from the Herero tribe are wearing long Victorian-style dresses that flare way out at the bottom. The unusual dress, which is now a tribal trademark, was forced upon them by prudish German missionaries in the late 19th century. On their heads the women wear a huge “hat” that looks much like a very wide bow. What is very distinctive about these women, however, is the regal and proud way they carry themselves when dressed this way.

We will see some of these women later in Namibia. Actually, the whole outfit reminded me of the red and white dress and headbow that the stereotypical “mammy” wore in early American movies. Apparently when in traditional dress the men wore a variation of the Scottish tartan kilt but we don’t see any of those.

We stop for internet but the computers are down.

May 28 Sitatunga Camp
The WildLife Adventure.com truck is at the camp…Kumuka truck comes in and we look for Damian and Melissa who transfered to the Kumuka in Vic Falls so they could get down to Johannesberg…you’d think we were all long lost friends as our riders let out a squeal and run to hug them.

Rod has contracted with a Safari Tour company to take us into the Delta on Mekoros so Gary from the company stops by to give us details. Gary, originally from New Zealand, lives in Maun and the locals call him: “Geeza.” Mekoros are an ancient way of plying the delta; canoes carved out of tree trunks with a poler that stands in back pulling the canoe forward.

The other riders party in the bar which didn’t close until 2am and the music was so loud you couldn’t sleep…even with ear plugs…I stayed surly for two days. The Delta will offer respite…