ZAMBIA 2001
It's a long flight from Sydney to Johannesburg non-stop, leaving in the morning Sydney time and arriving late afternoon South Africa time (about midnight Sydney time). By the time we sit down to a dinner of roast kudu in a flash restaurant, our bodies are telling us it's 3.30 in the morning.
I've seen these eclipse freaks before.
TOTALITY! They all just want MORE!
They'll even sit tight
For a 14-hour flight
And dinner at quarter to four.
We manage to wake for breakfast at quarter to eight, and spend most of the day in our bus. It's the dry season, so we can ford the Limpopo into Botswana instead of using the cable car. We make it to Tumelo Lodge early evening, set up in luxurious cabins and enjoy a princely spread for dinner.
I thought Africa was going to be tough
And some roads are, indeed, a bit rough
But this lodge life is easy
The Limpopo's not greasy
And the couscous! I can't get enough.
Leave early morning. We drive all of a long, long day. Africa is worried about foot and mouth disease. At border crossings and at occasional checkpoints, we must get out of the bus and walk through the sheep-dip.
| Straight from breakfast to bus we all strode And we're wrecked from all day on the road With our feet disinfected And our khybers compacted And our brains a brick shy of a load. |
We get to a lodge where the main attraction is sunrise over the salt pan. We watch the sunset, looking for that elusive green flash.
Our first couple of days in Africa, if we see some elephant dung, we take a photo of it. By the end of the tour, if an elephant walks past we don't look round. At Chombe
("200 beds, 140,000 elephants") we see plenty of elephants. But our driver sees traces of buffalo, and we waste an hour looking for them. So we leave late, so we wait five hours in a queue for
a ferry.
|
We'll dream of what we saw and we heard We'll dream elephants, not just their turds We'll dream of ferry-boat queues And the thundering hooves Of the phantom buffalo herd |
Another day on our Gecko Tours bus. Our preconceived views of Africa included
thundering herds of elephants, but not thundering herds of semi-trailers.
What did we see today, on the bush track?
We saw eight Kenworths, six Whites and a Mack
Four Volvos, a Scania,
A Merc B-double trailer,
And Gecko in the dust at the back
We obey Rule One. We get to Mvuu Lodge in south-east Zambia the day before the eclipse. Next day, cloudless and hot, pack the beer and champagne, find a nice clearing with a view to
the north.
At totality our breaths we were bating.
We said This is for what we were waiting.
A party resulted.
We all got occulted.
Tomorrow we'll need collimating.
You might think any sights we see after the eclipse would be a letdown. However, we are Very Impressed with Victoria Falls. We see the falls both from Zambia and from Zimbabwe, or as they say there,
Zam-side and Zim-side.
I've been on many fine journeys and tripses
By car bike train bus plane and shipses
But Victoria Falls
Has outdone them all
Forget them total eclipses.
We are much taken with the warthogburgers we have for lunch in Victoria Falls town. We
admire the lawn-mowing arrangements at the hotel on our last night in Africa. A young but not small hippo, Sebastian, munches on the grass as the other guests lurch back to their rooms after munching on the traditional lavish dinner.
|
The eclipse and Vic Falls were the best But we must not forget all the rest The post-eclipse bash The elusive green flash And the hotel lawns, mowed by a guest. |
A long trip back to Sydney. No jet fuel at Johannesburg because of a fire at the refinery, so we go via Durban. The runway at Durban is too short to take off with a full load of fuel, so we go via Perth. But
who's complaining?
We'd like these eclipses coming sooner
Especially if they're solar, not lunar
The Zambia expedition
Was a successful mission
See you next year in Ceduna.
Go to next eclipse--Ceduna 2002
Back to previous eclipse--Turkey 1999
