What a difference a day makes

First a note from our sponsors. Don't forget that we have a facebook page that is being kept up to date far more quickly than I can write these things. It is called Mudzimi we moto and there are pictures and comments that go up there directly from that mother of all inventions, the iPhone. I have also heard the clamour for more pictures but unfortunately the speed of uploading here is a snail's pace and so I can only do so many. As soon as I get back to high speed land I will post many more

It is so good to wake up and know that you don’t have to climb back up into the cab of the truck for eight hours.  Even if it’s the stupid franklins ( a type of pheasant) squawking at the top of their voices at 5:30 am.  It was a relaxing stroll through the trees to the lodge for an excellent breakfast. Cereal, yogurt, bacon and eggs, toast and something I haven’t had since I left South Africa in 1978, vetkoek. For the uninitiated these are fried dough balls that you can then fill with anything. They are similar to jelly donuts except the dough is sweeter and denser and you know you have eaten something when its freefall ends at the bottom of your stomach.



The people who run Planet Baobab are terrific. Helpful, accommodating and friendly. The good news that greeted us today is that there is in fact a wireless internet connection in the lodge. There was an immediate scramble for computers, iPhones and other things normally reserved for the western world.  It was a little expensive, about $5 for thirty or sixty minutes, a time frame never really well defined. I wanted to upload a lot of the pictures that we had shared the previous evening and do a little blogging. As we started to do what we had been waiting for, it became apparent that while the system may be wireless it was far from highspeed. The data speed was something close to that old molasses in winter, and each picture was going to take somewhere close to ten minutes to transmit. Clearly nothing happens quickly in the bush.  

Looking down the path from the huts to the lodge

No problem, the sun was shining and the beer was cold. We had nowhere to go but the pool. We were told very proudly that the pool is the biggest in the Kalahari, so eat your hearts out, those who have not partaken of this unique experience. There was also a collection of blue and white overstuffed sofas that looked very comfortable, so off I went to relax in the sun and read. Interestingly they are mad of concrete with nary a soft spot to be found. Not only that, but they are scorchingly hot, so the idea was abandoned.

The girls came back from their game drive at about 3 and Johnnie had offered to take them for a ride in the firetrucks.  So a short while later, just now in South African parlance, we loaded ten of them plus their driver and a teacher into the cabs and went for a spin down the road.  My copilot was the girls’ driver, Papa, who had taken on the role of father superior for the trip. He is a 50 something Zimbabwean man who spends about six months of the year on the road driving the girls from the Traveling School, a Bozeman Montana based organization that coordinates these trips. More later on that.  Papa explained the reason that the animals graze so close to the side of the road. When it rains, the rain runs off the road, and because the ground is so dry and thirsty, the water doesn’t run far from the edge of the paving.  That is why the most succulent grass and plants grow there, and why the animals look like they all have a suicide wish, sticking their noses right next to the pavement. 

The program that girls were on was very impressive, not in small part because both the girls and their teachers were impressive. The kids were friendly, outspoken and responsible. They seemed pretty self sufficient within the context of American kids traveling in the bush. ( There was one Norwegian with them). The Traveling School packages about 16 girls with four teachers who have a range of outdoor, leadership and teaching skills and experience. They travel together in a big blue truck, the Blue Bird, ( it was definitely Blue something, not sure if the Bird is right)that has been converted into a bus/traveling classroom for fifteen weeks. They cover South Africa and two other countries, in this case Namibia and Botswana, and are not allowed to take any electronics with them besides an Ipod nano. They have to write their papers by hand and do some PE regularly. By the ed of the trip the girls have come into themselves, learned a lot of lifeskills and by all accounts have gone through  some significant character development. 

The rest of the day and well into the night we relaxed, ate and drank well and prepared for the second half of the trip. We actually killed a couple more bottles of wine sitting under a totally cloudless  sky  looking at more stars than I ever knew existed,  Two  the teachers joined us for our midnight Bacchanal - they are really interesting ladies, but eventually we all faded and turned in