I’ve hijacked #tbt and turned it into #ttbt so I can tell stories about old photos of my past adventures. This time: I can’t believe it’s been a whoooooole year since I went to Africa.
This is the best picture I took in Africa. But let me tell you what was going on here, because I was immensely overheated, exhausted, and uncomfortable. The most ideal looking thing is often very different in reality.
We were spending the day in the Okavango Delta in Botswana and had set up camp in a lovely spot on a wee island. We’d been poled out in these mokoros in the morning along with all our stuff. But on that trip, we had our camp mattress pad things crammed up into seats in the boats, so despite being crazy hot, it was super comfortable and relaxing gliding through the water reclining on our piles of backpacks and hiding from the sun under to cheap plastic umbrellas we’d bought in Maun.
After swimming and listening to each others’ music all day in camp, we piled back into the mokoros to be taken to another island for a game walk. This time there was nothing to sit on, so it was slightly more rough and ready. And the guy poling the boat I took in the evening was a fan of plowing through the reeds, which really hurt. It was also SO. SO. SO. HOT. We went for the hottest walk I think I’ve ever been on. We saw very few animals because animals are smart and they weren’t hanging around where there was no cover from the sun like us silly humans were.
Of all the things we did on this trip, I’d have to say this walk was the furthest from a highlight. However, I don’t regret it. Because: Africa.
Plus, on the way back we got this perfectly timed, amazing view of the sunset over the Delta. And it just so happened that the boat I was in was behind Ben and Gary’s boat, which was lucky because the shot would pretty dull and forgettable if it was just the sunset on its own.
When we got back to camp, there was dinner and singing and dancing and drunken stargazing at the most stunning night sky with zero light pollution to a soundtrack of the most bizarre and wonderful clinky-sounding frogs. Completely un-capturable on camera as the best experiences often are. It was great.
