Give Up On Plans - Matt

Our car's waved to a stop by the traffic officer not 10 minutes after entering Botswana.
'You were speeding,' says the officer in a gotcha sort of tone, as if he's just won a game.
'Speeding? No I wasn't,' quips Pete instantly in his most offended tone. As if just the thought of him speeding is insulting.
'You were,' retorts the officer. 'Pull the car over and go talk to that man.' And indicates to a officer sitting at a picknick table near by.
Pete pulls the car off the road and as he gets out mentions in an offhand way, 'I'll just take 100 rand with me and sort this out.' Sam and I debate for all of two seconds whether or not we should film this and then pull the camera out. We watch the exchange between Pete and the officer from the safety of the car and try to conceal the camera recording the action. After a couple of minutes Pete comes back with this shit-eating grin on his face.
'Sharp-sharp?' I asked using the South African slang for 'all-good'.
'Not quite,' he says. 'Guy wanted 520, so it might take a little more than a hundred to get us out of this. Now gimme some small bills.'

Nothing in Africa seems to go to plan

After leaving lesotho four days ago Sam and I booked it up to Kruger national park with the hopes of seeing the big five (an elephant, rhino, lion, giraffe and hippo) and hopefully to camp in the park. We hadn'tconsidered the holidays and that everyone and their mum was trying to stay in the park. But anyway, a day and a half of driving and a night on the side of the highway put us at the sourthern gates of Kruger where Sam decided to withdraw some money to pay for entry. While I was waiting in the car Sam had some trouble at the atm. He was having some trouble with the machineand two men came over to help. With some exceedingly light fingers they walked away with Sams card leaving Sam to think that the machine had eatin it. He immdiately was able to get on the phone to his bank where he found out they'd already withdrawn over 300 dollars and would eventually get 400 more. At this point he'll get the money back and the card is canceled. The trouble is gettin him a new one.

After that dibacle you could say spirits were understandably low, but Sam handeled it well and the only thing left to do was to get into the park. It was around noon by the time we got in and we found out that the gates close to the park at 6:30pm. So we scurried around trying to find some sort of camp site for the night where we were met with defeat at every attempt. With only a few hours left in the park Sam and I are like great, pay a bunch of money and we're not even gonna see any animals. No way we can see anything in a hnadful of hours.

But we turned down some random road and were able to see some elephants off at a watering hole about 100 feet from the road. Pretty cool. Then an exclamation from Sam and I turn to look out the other side of the car and see a herd of 15 some elephants meandering towards the water with us in between. They walk around while the massive matriarch screens her family against us. Powerful behemoths have the ability, apparently, to lift dipressed spirits and to revitalize the energy of a sad man. In all, we saw elephant, rhino, hippo, nearly drove past giraffe only feet from our car as the blended so well with the trees they were hiding behind, hyena, warthog, tons of elans and a lion stretched out next to the carcass of a rhinocerrous the size of a small pickup accompanied by a stench that permiated everything for a radius of some 50 or 60 feet. I can't really explain the impact of the smell but consider this, a slab of raw meat the size of a car sits in the direct African sunlight in about 90 degree weather for two or three days. It definitely leaves an impression.

So Kruger worked out, but we had to get out and move towards Polokwane where we'd catch our bus north into Zimbabwe and hopefully make it to Victoria Falls for New Years. At Polokwane we return our car but not before finding out that the only way to pick up our bus tickets was with the debit card that purchased them, and since Sam was the one who bought them, and since his card is currently financing some South African's bathroom remodel, we were unable to get the tickets. Can't use any sort of ID even though our names are attached to the tickets and since the bus was full (except for the two empties that were meant for us), we had to wait till tomorrow for the next bus, meaning we'll now be spending new years on a train instead of in Vic Falls. Nothing goes to plan in Africa. Another example.

Even though we bought two set of tickets for Polokwane to Bulowayo (Zimbabwe) we didn't end up using either one, because the extra night we were forced to spend in Polokwane allowed us to meet Pete. Let me tell you a little about Pete. Austrailian but born and raised in Papua New Guiena. He's been traveling for the past two years and is constantly dropping these outlandish little snippits of himself, like his family's close ties with Russel Crow or how his great uncle's a Danish duke. He's a charismatic silver tongued devil with an almost pathological propensity to break rules and push limits. Sam thinks he's a little like Han Solo before meeting Obi-wan and Luke and I have to admit Sams not far off.

So Pete's heading north to Victoria Falls by way of Botswana and Zambia and invites us along within a minute or two of meeting. So it was off to Botswana for Sam and I where we ran into the above mentioned problems with authority. But after that it was smooth sailing through Botswana with the occasional stop to watch Pete chase after the elephants that wander the bush on the side of the road. He even convinced us to try and get close for a good photo. Sam and I abandoned Pete as soon as the elephant started it's charge and I didn't stop running till I had the car between me and the elephant. So we drive across the entire country in about 36 hours with an over night in Nata for some local color. In the whole drive the scenery never really alternated from the flat expanse of bush that stand about 12 feet off the ground.

We reach the Zambezi river that separates Botswana from Zambia and acted as David Livingston's highway to the interior on his fateful attempt to find the source of the Nile over a century and a half ago. When drving onto the ferry Pete tells us that the car rental company told him explicitly not to go into Zambia and would only give him a pass for Botswana. So in front of the customs office Pete does a little blunt forgery to the documents pertaining to his car and it's off to the office. We get the visas easy but Pete then spends the next two hours running from line to cash machine to line and so on and so forth, until they finally allow him to take his car through with a significantly thinner wallet.

On to Livingstown and Vic Falls. Arrive with only eight hours remaining in 2015. Scramble to find a room for the night and then it's out on the town to bring in the new year Zambia style, which means exchanging sweat with Africans and a spinkleing of tourists in the packed cement skeleton of a dance club.

Happy new year guys.

PS. While trying to upload photos just now, our tablet's SD card slot seems to have taken a poop. So we may be relagated to uploading photos only at internet cafes. We're working on it but Africa seems to have this magical field all around it inhibiting electronics from working correctly. Demon ex machina.