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| Finally seeing Table Mountain! |
In South Africa, our main target was the Cape Gannet colony in Lamberts Bay which is easily reachable from the border provided you arrive early. Lamberts Bay is a lazy fishing village but needs to deal with the notorious Western Cape weather and we arrived on a bad day - gloomy and rain!
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| Deadvlei - one of Namibia's top attractions |
While we had the opportunity to check out Namibia during our time in Botswana, we never got down to it and regretted not getting to Etosha at the very least. With cyclone Freddy bearing down on Zambia and Botswana, Namibia remained the only dry option at this point and we finally entered Namibia through the Caprivi.
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| Senyati waterhole in Botswana |
The original plan was to cross to Namibia through Zambia via Katima Malimo but the intel we were picking up was the road on the Zambian side was a disaster. So we only crossed in to Botswana to cross in to Namibia through the Ngoma border which is a well maintained tarmac road.
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| Vic Falls from the air - The Zambia/Zimbabwe border |
Due to the effects of cyclone Freddy which has already dumped rain on Zambia and on its way back after gathering strength off the coast, the Zambian leg saw us bypassing South Luangwa and Lower Zambezi, both of which were flooded, and heading straight to Livingstone to check out Victoria Falls.
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| The official start of our trip - Lake Malawi |
Our final day in Blantyre was here with the cleaners cleaning out the house as we left for Lilongwe to get the car fridge fitted out at Northside Motors. Fridge fitted and we headed off to Salima so our official start point would be at the Lake.
Check out the Polarsteps daily entry for a log of our 'Lake2Cape' trip
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| Overlanding 60 days over five Countries |
This was an adventure of a lifetime that all overlanders dream of, a long trip over a month or more. Not many of us get this opportunity due to work and family commitments or simply don't have the gear to last much more than a long weekend of camping.
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| The Lake of Stars |
Throughout our travels in Southern and East Africa, Malawi had never been on our radar. What little we knew about the country was about it being the home of Lake Malawi (known as the Lake of Stars).
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| Elephant family at the hide |
We didn’t need to get up at 5am to do a game drive, but habits die hard and we were up not long after that to catch the sunrise. Our plan was only to get across the border, not all the way home to Blantyre so were weren’t in a hurry to get going.
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| The magnificent African crowned eagle |
Our last day in South Luangwa and as usual we were up and at the gate just before 6am. Nothing of significance wandered into our path and soon we were headed to the Mfuwe lodge area where surprise, surprise the lions hadn’t moved more than 20 meters from where we’d seen those full lionesses the previous evening. Except that the males and the lionesses that we’d seen the previous day had joined up with the 2 females and now the pride was 8 strong.
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| Male lions watched on by the zebras |
A good day yesterday, so could today live up to it? There was no question about where we were heading to first – Wamilombe! So it was through the gate past the same self-drive car that was shooting the sunrise again and straight to the plain.
