Overlanding Southern Africa in a Hilux

[Guzzle H2O]

Blog Post Here

In March 2020, half of Team Guzzle H2O had the opportunity to do some overlanding in Southern Africa. If you've read the About Us page, you may know that Guzzle H2O co-founder, and my husband, Sean "Doogie" Couvreux, races highly competitive sailboats for his day job. For the first time in his career, the racing circuit in which he participates went to Cape Town, South Africa for two events. Since there were two events on the schedule, with three weeks in between, we decided to take our family (us and two kids, 8 & 10 years old) on a grand adventure through up to five Southern African countries. Cape Town had always been on my dream travel list, as had a safari.


Once we knew his schedule was solid, we blew through all of his saved airline miles to buy tickets for the kids and me. A plus of having a career with a lot of travel is that sometimes those miles can be used for an amazing trip. The kids and I were to meet Doogie in Cape Town for the final day of his event, explore Cape Town for the weekend, and then start our big loop. After buying the plane tickets, we had to figure out how to get around. Doogie's South African teammates had highly recommended doing a self-drive safari by renting a 4x4 camper truck. We camp a lot at a home, sometimes in tents, and most often in a lightweight camper trailer, but rooftop tents were going to be a whole new ballgame. After much debate, we settled on a Toyota Hilux Bushcamper from Bushlore Africa. Bushlore was fantastic and answered all of our random questions and even moved our pickup date at the last minute, as we decided to pick up early so we could explore Cape Town by car.


After we had the plane tickets and reserved the truck, we started researching different routes and stops. I wanted to see the amazing red dunes of Namibia and do as many safari drives as possible. Doogie wanted adventurous hiking. I had to explain to him that adventurous hiking opportunities don't often exist due to the possibility of lions and other predators roaming wild. We came to agree on the following loop:

• Cape Town, South Africa
• Augrabies Falls National Park
• Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park
• Sossusvlei, Namibia
• Possibly the Skeleton Coast
• Etosha National Park
• Caprivi Strip, Namibia
• Kasane & Chobe National Park, Botswana
• Victoria Falls - Zimbabwe & Zambia
• Nxai Pan & Baobob Trees of Botswana
• Johannesburg, South Africa

We would do this loop from our rented Toyota Hilux Bushcamper, staying mostly in campgrounds along the way and overlanding whenever we could.


After the research was done, vaccines scheduled, and safari clothes purchased, we got around to packing our gear bags.


Our Bushlore Toyota Hilux Bushcamper claimed to be coming with everything we needed for our trip. As people who like to be prepared, and traveling with kids, we added a whole bag of gear, a lot of it important, some not.

Of course, our number one item was our Guzzle H2O Stream. It was extremely important for us to be able to do this trip without relying on single-use plastic water bottles. We also didn't want to experience the "traveler's diarrhea" that we had been warned about by our travel doctor. We made sure the Stream was empty of any residual water from its last use and padded with clothing in our checked luggage. Doogie travels frequently with a Stream this way and has had no issues.


Other items on our list included:

• Headlamps
• Solar lanterns
• Goal Zero solar panel
• 6 1L reusable water bottles
• Medical kit w/meds & thermometer
• Sh!t Kits
• Knife/multitool
• Car multi-charger
• Scrubba wash bag
• Stasher reusable zip lock style bags
• Binoculars
• Camera gear
• Travel adapters
• Travel/camping towels for each of us
• Clothesline with clips
• Lightweight sleeping bag liners treated for mosquitos

In addition to our gear list, Doogie has an extensive travel mobile phone plan, which allowed us to get driving directions via Google Maps as well as the ability to look up campgrounds via the iOverlander app. Also, we had a GPS and rented a satellite phone from Bushlore in case we got stuck somewhere.


Once we picked up the car and remembered how to drive on the left, we headed out to explore Cape Point and the Cape of Good Hope outside of Cape Town. The kids were looking forward to seeing the African penguin colony at Boulders Beach. After two days of sightseeing and provisioning in Cape Town, we were on our way.

 

[Guzzle H2O]

Part 2

When I last left you, we were exploring Cape Town. Given the chance, I would have spent about two more days visiting that beautiful city, but our time was limited to exactly what Doogie had between his two events so it was a weekend of sightseeing and then we were on our way. Rooftop tents were new to us, but, after we picked up our truck, we felt pretty good about it. We left the city early on a Monday morning with our sights set on Augrabies Falls National Park in the north. Augrabies was a good jumping-off point to destinations in the Kalahari - a long day's drive from Cape Town, but not too far that we couldn't easily do it.

During our sightseeing in Cape Town, we had tried to find a good reusable water jug which we could use for clean purified drinking water. Without having the time to run around town to seek one out besides the few camping stores we came across, we came up empty-handed. So, at our first gas stop, we purchased three 5L plastic water bottles. One would be our fill-up container. One would be for clean drinking water. And the last would be our reserve. This was the only water we purchased during our two-week trip. And, the third bottle stayed sealed until our last night after we had packed our Stream away in our baggage for the trip home.

On our way to Augrabies Falls, around lunchtime, Google Maps had us exit the paved freeway to head off on a gravel road for 200-300 kilometers. Oh boy, I was thinking this was going to be a long adventure if this was how we were starting. At Bushlore, they had taught us to "air-down" our tires when on gravel or sand, so we paused in the middle of the road to "air-down". I'm not sure we passed any other cars besides some farm equipment on the road. That was the day we learned to also pull up the GPS map to see which way was actually best. Google Maps liked shortcuts. The GPS liked only paved roads. We found a mixture of both to be best over the course of our trip. Tire pressure stops were always a good time to refill each of our drinking water bottles.

Once we arrived at Augrabies, we went on a short game drive and walked to see Augrabies Falls. The kids also stopped for a swim in the campground pool. Something we had read but weren't sure we believed, was that almost all the campgrounds have pools. It was true. I think we only stayed at 1 or 2 campgrounds that didn't have a pool. We got too anxious to see the sights and missed making dinner before it got dark. We soon learned that everyone eats and gets in their tents before dark to avoid the mosquitos. We also had to watch our food closely, otherwise, the campground baboons and monkeys would help themselves to a yummy dinner.

While we were prepping dinner, Doogie did what was to become our nightly ritual with the Guzzle H2O Stream. By then we had been drinking enough water that our first 5L bottle was empty. So he filled that bottle up with campground water and used the Guzzle H2O Stream to pump clean filtered drinking water into our reusable water bottles. Once we were into the second 5L bottle, he would also fill that with clean "guzzled" water so we could refill our individual water bottles during the day.

*Note: this photo was not from Augrabies Falls N.P., but our next stop near the Kgaldari Transfrontier Park.


You're probably wondering if our truck had a tank as well. It had a 60L water tank with a spigot near the back tire. We weren't quite sure how much water we were going to consume each day so we decided to go forward with the two 5L bottle plan - one for filling up from the campground and one for drinking. We left the truck water for emergencies or washing up. The spigot was often muddy since it was down near the tires, which made it slightly undesirable to use frequently.


Throughout our trip, we figured the four of us were consuming approximately 10 to 12 liters of water per day. We had six individual 1L reusable water bottles that got filled as needed, along with at least 5L in reserve every time we left a campground with water.

Our biggest priority was to avoid purchasing water along the way. This not only saved on single-use plastics, but also money, and the number of times we had to stop for provisions. Since our truck had an electric cooler/fridge and a generous storage drawer, we only had to do two major provision shops throughout our trip. We were able to fill in bread and snack needs from a park store or gas station convenience shop. It also saved a lot of room in the back of the truck not having to store 30L of drinking water in bottles.

After Augrabies Falls, we went up the Kalahari Desert and the Kgaldari Transfrontier Park.

 

[Get Out GO]

Awesome trip, you made some great choices there! Lots more to see so do come back though

 

[Guzzle H2O]

@Get Out GO not done yet! Part 3!

After spending a night and doing a morning game drive in Augrabies Falls, we headed toward the Kgaldari Transfrontier Park, which we had heard was a must-see. The park sits on the borders of South Africa, Botswana, and Namibia, and is managed by all three countries. It's also known for being home to many big cats, including black-maned lions. Unfortunately, I had not been able to secure camping reservations online but had heard that sometimes spots open up. We arrived a little too late and didn't get a campsite in the park, but we were told to try a lodge just outside of the park. This was our first introduction to what camping in Africa can be.

The lodge, just a few kilometers from the South African entrance to the park, had plenty of spots (we were traveling in the off-season, which made things easier). Once we signed in and paid, we were given a key and told to go to campsite number 1. Each campsite had its own ablutions block, meaning its own little house with a full bathroom, hot shower, shaded patio, and kitchen sink. This was all for the price of $20-$40/night. Most of these types of lodges had little cabins or chalets as well as campsites. And of course, there was a pool and restaurant. This was around the time we realized that the campgrounds all have pools because it is incredibly hot in Southern Africa.

We cooked dinner on the braai (BBQ), "guzzled" some more water with our Stream, and hit our tents before dark. I woke up early and took a peek outside our tent and saw a zebra standing right next to our truck. Pretty cool.


Here is a video of Doogie "guzzling" our water at the Kgaldari Lodge.


We were quickly learning that the downside to the rooftop tents and early morning game drives is that you have to pack everything up as soon as you're up. We started making pb&j and/or Nutella sandwiches to eat for breakfast in the car rather than taking time to cook a morning meal. We got pretty good at packing the tents and truck and could do it in about 35 minutes by the time we wrapped up our trip. And that included everyone getting dressed, bathroom stops, teeth brushing, etc.

In the Kgaldari Transfrontier Park, we got our first big game drive experience. It was a lot like when we went to Yellowstone National Park. We saw cars stopped, so we stopped and looked around with our binoculars. It was still sometimes tough to see the animals, but we ended up seeing two leopards, a black-maned lion, lots of wildebeests, springbok, and other "hoofed mammals". Our self-drive safari was on! The other cool thing about this park is that you constantly switch countries. We were driving in and out of South Africa and Botswana, which we could tell from the markers on the road, but never had to pass customs. We originally wanted to exit the park directly into Namibia but learned the only way to cross into one of the neighboring countries was to spend two nights in a park campground. They did this so people wouldn't try to use the park as a thoroughfare between the countries. So, we had to drive back towards the way we came and on to Namibia along another route.

The Namibian border was our first international border crossing of the trip. We crossed at a sleepy border town where we parked right at the official gate, went into the offices to process all of our vehicle's paperwork and passports before driving on our way. It was in the middle of nowhere and we were the only car there. It looked like most of the border and immigration workers lived in housing just beyond the offices. We exited onto a long straight gravel road, something we would see a lot of Namibia.

 

[Guzzle H2O]

Part 4 - Namibia

Namibia is an unbelievable country. It's incredibly expansive and has a population density of about 3 people per square kilometer, making it one of the world's least populated countries. It has straight gravel roads and big skies for miles and miles. We felt like a lot of it reminded us of eastern Utah, but bigger and more expansive.

After an overnight stop at a lodge campground, we made our way to Sossusvlei in the Namib Desert. This was one of the places on my must-see list. Giant red dunes as far as you could see. And, Deadvlei, a white clay pan with dead camel thorn trees, made especially famous by Instagram. Looking past the busloads of tourists (which really wasn't that many, but felt like a lot because you could drive for hours without seeing another car), it was one of our favorites places. We drove ourselves to the end of the road in fairly deep sand, airing down even more from our gravel road settings. Then we climbed the spine of a giant dune named Big Daddy Dune and then sank into the white clay pan of Deadvlei. The contradiction in colors and texture was like nowhere else I've ever seen.




Since this was one of the spots that we got out and did some hiking, we were able to see how prepared, or truly unprepared, people were for this kind of activity. The four of us each had a 1L reusable water bottle filled to the top. Most people we passed had a fraction of that in a single-use plastic bottle. It was disappointing to see. Luckily this is where our Guzzle H2O Stream shined. It was extremely hot that day, so once we got back to our campground, we "guzzled", or ran water through our Guzzle H2O Stream, multiple times while hanging out under the shade of a large tree.

Since starting our camping trip earlier in the week, this was the first day we had enough downtime to find wifi (at the campground's restaurant) to catch up on emails and world news. While we normally try to keep digital use to a minimum while camping, it wasn't the time to do so because the Coronavirus was making more and more headlines and starting to hit Southern Africa.

Still aware, but not panicked, about the Cornovirus, we continued our adventure north. We realized we could pick up a day in Botswana if we left Sossusvlei early the next morning and headed straight to Walvis Bay on the Atlantic Ocean. The Namibian coastline is infamous and is most often known as the Skeleton Coast. We were out to see the flamingos of Walvis Bay and then decide how far up the Skeleton Coast we wanted to journey.



In the end, we decided to only spend a night on the coast, south of the official Skeleton Coast Park. We found an oceanfront campground and settled in for our coolest night of the trip. We actually had to use our sleeping bags! This campsite also had the nicest ablutions block we had during our trip and included an indoor mini kitchen with a fridge, shower, bathroom, and patio. This was the first campground we stayed at that didn't have a pool, but its oceanside location made up for that. It was quite cool and foggy, conditions which plague Namibia's Skeleton Coast much of the time.

We set out in dense fog early the next morning intending to make it to Etosha National Park, which we were anxious to see. The Etosha salt pan is so large it can be seen from space and the area surrounding it is home to many animal species. We had made reservations for two nights at the Okaukuejo Campsite, which is famous for its floodlit water hole. It did not disappoint! Okaukuejo is a rest camp in Etosha National Park that has a range of housing options from "chalets" to campsites along with a set of pools, a restaurant, and a convenience/camp store. The water hole overlook sits right at the edge of camp and has benches and even some bleacher-like seats for people to sit and watch the animals. It is a real-life nature tv channel!

Zebra and springbok were drinking from the water hole when we arrived in the heat of the midday sun. Animals would come and go with different groups. It was amazing. What we were waiting for was nighttime though! I had read that at night, rhinos are the stars. We made our way over to the water hole just after dark, and sure enough, a little after 8 pm as if on cue, the rhinos walked into the light. We spent over an hour watching five rhinos drink water and eat the surrounding plants. It was one of the most amazing sights I've ever seen. In Etosha, they have both black rhinos and white rhinos. Of course, we forgot to look up the difference before we headed over to watch so we aren't sure which we saw. (The names are not based on their color but on the shape of their lips and nose).

We woke up early the next morning and went on a game drive. It's the routine of a self-drive safari trip...wake up early, pack up, and get on your way as soon as the camp gates open. In Namibia, it was at 7:00 am. At Kruger, on the other side of Africa, it was 5:30 or 6:00 am. We had some up-close giraffe and zebra encounters, but could not find any lions or elephants. I think we were all amazed at the number of animals and the landscape but were perhaps a touch disappointed in not seeing any of the "big 5" on our game drives. That is until we were at the water hole again that evening and saw a lone rhino. Then we heard a lion roar. And then, just like the night before, cue the animals! This time it was a lion and lioness. They sauntered over to the water hole, drank for a bit, and then wandered off into the dark. They were amazing! And so much bigger than we thought they would be. It was magical.

We came back to the truck on an animal sighting high, excited for the next day's morning drive through the eastern end of Etosha, towards northern Botswana. Little did we know that our trip was about to take a drastic turn toward the south. Stay tuned for the story of our race to the border!

 

[Guzzle H2O]

A Race for the Border

We last left our story on the high of seeing the lion and lioness saunter into the light of the water hole. It was exactly the kind of animal encounters we envisioned when we planned the trip. Unfortunately, while we were enjoying the animals and landscape of Etosha, the world had still been moving and Coronavirus was quickly becoming a major issue everywhere. Until that point, we had been pretty well connected to the world via our cell phones or park wifi. For some reason, in Etosha, the cell signals made it seem like we should be getting emails and web browsing, but hardly anything would load correctly. The restaurant's paid wifi was also down. That afternoon, we had overheard a few people around the pool talking about what they were going to do, where they were going next, etc, but nothing seemed much worse than it had two days prior when we had last gotten good information.

Luckily, Doogie speaks fluent french and overheard some men talking in the bathroom about how they were getting recalled to France the next morning. They had come from Victoria Falls (where we were planning on heading next) and told him the situation there was not stable as far as the border crossings were concerned. They explained that their guide had told them they had to get on a plane home the next day.

Everyone we spoke to had a lot of intense emotions around this issue, as there were hardly any cases in Southern Africa and everyone's home countries were starting to get overwhelmed. I know that we felt much safer from the virus in Namibia than we did in Washington state.

After a brief talk about it, Doogie and I said we would reevaluate in the morning and retired into our separate rooftop tents. There had been some hyenas roaming through camp in the evenings, so we each bunked in with one of the kids just in case they needed something during the night. I think both of us were lying there repeatedly hitting refresh on our phones, trying to squeak a little bit of info through. After a restless night, we woke up early and both agreed that maybe we should not continue east, but perhaps head south to the nearest town to see if we could get wifi and cell service so we could reevaluate our situation. We debated about still doing a game drive and then going south from the other entrance of the park, but luckily decided to head straight south and make up the game sightings later in the trip...perhaps in the Okavango Delta area of Botswana.

We got to the nearest town around 8 am and stopped for gas. Our gas fill-ups were painfully slow due to the extra gas tank. The way the tanks filled required the gas attendant to slowly fill it by hand so that the gas could drain from one tank into the other. But that was ok, it left us plenty of time to start browsing our phones to read the latest news. That's when we realized how serious our situation had become. Sailing friends who were also staying on in Africa to do a safari, but staying in South Africa, text us and said that the borders were going to close to Americans that night. We were going to be locked out! Doogie and I both got on our cell phones and found out that South Africa had already closed 75% of its land borders and was not allowing any citizens from high-risk countries in starting the next day (which we assumed meant midnight that night). Now, if you read my other posts, you've already read how vast Namibia is as a country. It's huge and nearly 1000 miles long at the coastline. We were very far north and very far away from South Africa. Start the panic!

Just about everything was running through our minds. What if we were stranded in Namibia. Could we fly out of Windhoek? Where we would be able to go? What about Botswana? Doogie still had bags in Cape Town for his next event (and plane tickets out of Cape Town), but that event had also just been canceled. The kids and I had tickets out of Johannesburg. Cue ALL.THE.EMOTIONS. Doogie called his mom and got her out of bed in the middle of the night in California so she could research for us and follow up with consulates, US government recommendations, etc. We looked into everything and contacted anyone we could think of. I was on my phone's internet looking for the closest land borders. We were especially concerned about the borders closing before we could get there, as many typically had limited hours and closed in the early evening. Finally, we concluded that no matter what, we had to start heading south.

As we drove south, we figured the closest way to Johannesburg was actually to cross into Botswana and then into South Africa, but that meant two border crossings and importing the car into Botswana just to drive through. We quickly decided that was too risky and the border crossings themselves might take too much time, so driving straight south to the South Africa/Namibia border was the best route...13ish hours away. It was around 8 am at this point. I drove (on the left!) while Doogie continued to call consulates, travel agents, and more for advice and information. A lot had happened in those two days without wifi or cell phone reception. South Africa had already closed several smaller land borders. Luckily we found two 24-hour borders still open on the main highway, due south of where we were. Now we just couldn't stop for more than gas because who knows how busy the borders would be when we got there.

Also adding to the panic was the fact that we had driven on gravel roads for a lot of our time in Namibia. The distance was doable on paved roads, but we were worried about ending up on gravel roads again. It turns out the road we were on was paved the entire way because it is the major road that runs the length of the country. I won't call it a freeway since most of it was one lane in each direction, but that's what it was by Namibian standards.

We drove like the wind. We were happy to have a double gas tank and diesel fuel. We only had to stop for gas once after that initial morning fillup. Both Namibia and South Africa have rest areas every few kilometers along the road. These are not like the rest areas you see in the US and usually only have a picnic table and perhaps a tree for shade. (If you have bathroom needs, you have to make do with the bushes!) For lunch, we stopped at a picnic table, threw together some sandwiches from our cooler, and kept driving. In the late afternoon, we stopped for gas, bought road snacks, and kept going. Google said we were going to make it with time to spare, but there was a nervous energy in the car. We finally made the South African border around 8:30 pm. The border was not busy, but they already had official notes that said not to let in any citizens of the US, China, Italy, and a few others. Talk about being nervous. If they didn't let us through, we had a few backup plans, but none were as ideal as catching our original flights home. The border agents ended up taking pity on us since we were a family with two kids and it was late. We had also come from South Africa earlier in the week and explained that our flights were out of Johannesburg we were headed back there to arrange new flights home to the US. Doogie had actually been in Africa long enough that he was past the two-week quarantine period and would have probably been let in no matter what, but the kids and I hadn't been there quite as long. Luckily there was still a health worker on duty, so they took our temperatures, as they had done when we flew in, stamped our passports and let us in. What a relief!

Last sunset in Namibia as we get closer to the South African border.

A fuzzy selfie that Doogie took at the border to remember our story.


Our race for the border was intense. If we hadn't made it, we probably would have had to buy new plane tickets home out of Windhoek, Namibia's capital city, and fly through busy European airports that were already starting to shut down. It was so late by the time we got to a town that night that all the campgrounds were locked up for the night, but we passed a hotel and decided it was time for real beds and wifi. We settled in around 10 pm, eating a package of freeze-dried spaghetti that we had brought from home for emergencies or late night dinners.


Of all the things we thought we would encounter on our grand adventure, a race for the border was not among them. Little did we know that our adventure to get home was just beginning.

 

[Guzzle H2O]

Final Episode!

The story about how we got home was equally nerve-wracking to us, but probably not as dramatic of a story to tell you. Our last post found us making a mad dash for South Africa as borders were closing to international citizens to cut down the spread of Coronavirus. It's not as if we had been traveling completely oblivious to the situation, but cases in southern Africa had been quite low and we honestly felt safer camping in desolate Namibia than we did back home, in Washington State, a Coronavirus hot spot. Once they decided to start closing borders, we knew we had to head back towards Johannesburg, and the region's largest international airport.

After waking up in our hotel after the long day's race through Namibia, we decided to cautiously continue to Kruger National Park. Our flights, which were scheduled for about a week later, still looked good and we would be only a couple of hours from the airport if things changed. Plus, the airlines' websites all said to only contact them if your flight was less than 72 hours out. So we got on the road again and started the next leg of our journey.

Since we had decided not to cut the corner through Botswana, we still had more than a day's drive to Kruger. We figured we would just aim for the other side of Johannesburg and arrive at the park early the following day. Even though we were making forward plans for the rest of our stay in South Africa, we were still attempting to change Doogie's flight so he could go home with us on the 26th. We were also trying to sort out a plan for retrieving his luggage and laptop from where it was being stored in Cape Town until his next event (which by then had been canceled).

Sometime mid-morning, we received a text from Doogie's travel agent that said she was unable to rebook him on our flight because it was canceled. Cue the next round of panic! The Delta app still indicated our flight would fly as scheduled. We quickly pulled over at a picnic table rest area and called the travel agent to confirm. She was not able to do much other than keeping him on his original ticket, which at that point, we knew would never fly as scheduled. Being a frequent flier does sometimes have its perks, as Doogie was able to use his medallion customer service number to call Delta directly. We had complicated tickets and our phone agent worked with us for almost two hours before we were disconnected. We couldn't believe we got disconnected after sitting on and off hold for that long on the side of the road in the hot sun. Luckily the agent had finished what he was doing after we got disconnected so when we called back, the next person was able to tell us that it looked like we were all set. We had seats on the Johannesburg to Atlanta nonstop flight in five days, the soonest flight they could get all four of us on, and the second to last flight before Delta discontinued the route due to the pandemic.

Whew! What a crazy 24ish hours. We ended up stopping for the day well short of our goal but at a great little lakeside campground. The campground had a pool and trampoline and the owner was nice enough to give us the prime campsite for both. It was just what the kids needed after two long days in the car. We pulled our Guzzle Stream back out, replenished our clean water supply, had a peaceful pasta dinner and crawled into our tents, looking forward to Kruger.

Since we were planning on the fly, we decided to head to the Crocodile Bridge Rest Camp, at the southern end of Kruger and just miles from the border with Mozambique. Not known to be one of the bigger campgrounds, I hoped we might get a camping spot without a reservation. We were in luck and got a shady spot amongst the neighborhood warthogs. From what we could tell during our few national park campground experiences in South Africa, campsites are never assigned by the reception desk but are creatively picked by just driving around and parking close to a braai (bbq).

We "reserved" our spot by throwing our table and chairs next to a braai and then headed out for an afternoon game drive. It had been an emotional two days, so when we saw an elephant almost right outside the rest camp gates, we were all very excited. On our drive, we continued to see a whole herd of elephants, kudu, more elephants, and eventually a pod of hippos.

Over the next day and a half, we did three more game drives around Kruger and saw so many animals. The experience was amazing. We saw a cheetah and leopard, monkeys and baboons, giraffes and zebras, elephants and more elephants, hippos, and, on the last morning, a large lion pride. Luckily no snakes, but between you and me, we were not on the lookout for any! And, just as we were wrapping up our last drive, we came to a screeching halt at a water hole when we saw a herd of Cape buffalo, which rounded out our "Big 5" sightings. The "Big 5" includes elephants, rhinos, lions, leopards, and Cape buffalo (and surprisingly not hippos).

Kruger National Park was amazing and we all enjoyed it immensely. It was the perfect way to distract ourselves from the events going on in the world. While we were at Kruger, South Africa had started tightening down, which we noticed in the park shops. They stationed workers with hand sanitizer at the entrance of each shop and many workers were wearing masks. We had also been keeping a very close eye on our flights, worried that they would be canceled again before we could even make it home.

After two nights and four game drives in Kruger National Park, we headed towards the Blyde River Canyon. We had our eye on a hike and a camping spot in that area before heading towards Johannesburg the next day. We found a hike using the same AllTrails app we frequently use at home. The hike turned out to be on the grounds of a mountain resort that also had camping so we decided to spend the night there. We couldn't believe it after spending so much time in the desert, but the hike was in the rain forest and reminded us of hiking in Kauai. It was nice to get one last outing in before tackling the travel day(s) we had left to make it all the way home.

We woke up and had a leisurely camping breakfast before heading back towards Johannesburg. We weren't due to drop the truck off until 2 or 3 pm but didn't want to chance any accidents or construction along the way. It was with heavy hearts that we returned the rental truck sometime after lunch. The parking lot at Bushlore was a clear example of the world we were heading back to, as the trucks were lined up outside their gates. The man who dropped us off at the airport said every rental vehicle was coming in and every upcoming trip had been canceled. And, that was before South Africa had imposed any kind of lockdown.

We got to the airport six hours before our flight. Partly because our drive had been quicker than we anticipated and partly because we were anxious to get back to the US. There was a big sigh of relief when we boarded our 17-hour nonstop flight to Atlanta. Yes, we flew Delta's longest nonstop flight, almost completely full, during a world pandemic. The flight passed relatively quickly, but it was a culture shock when we landed in Atlanta. We had gone from a country that had people stationed with hand sanitizer at gas stations and park shops and restaurants to nothing. No masks, no hand sanitizer besides the small amount we still had with us. Not even a question about our health or temperatures at customs. I guess at that point, the supplies had run out and they were just trying to get American citizens home. Our next flight to Portland was canceled along with 75% of the day's flights, but we managed to get rerouted through Seattle and landed only an hour or two after our originally scheduled time...some 40 hours after we had left our camping spot on the mountain top in South Africa.

Now that we're back at home in the Columbia River Gorge, I can reflect on what a grand adventure it was, and, not in the way I was expecting. We drove 7253 km or around 4500 miles. We didn't get to finish our loop, see Victoria Falls, or do the guided safari we had planned in Botswana. Nor did we "overland" as much as we thought we would. But, we experienced fantastic and inexpensive campgrounds. The people in both countries were always friendly, and especially kind to us traveling with kids. The scenery was varied and beautiful. The animals were incredibly amazing and fascinating. Given the chance, we would all go back. Africa is a pretty special place.