Bomani Tented Camp, Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe

Bomani Tented Camp is in the south of Hwange National Park, and it is remote. To get there, we had to take a their tram, which they run on the colonial-era rail tracks built by some bloke with a great vision of trains running from South Africa to Egypt but who didn't count on the post-colonial administration taking the particular turn that it has done so the tracks are not in great shape now. Useful for us though!

More early mornings, more safari drives, more lists with lots of commas or again I could just tell a couple of stories.

The Hide, Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe

Elephant: "Hello!"

Okay, so this is where the blog posts have the potential to get really boring. You see, I could tell you about how we got up really early and went for a drive, had a siesta, then went for another drive. I could write a really long list with lots and lots of commas (and I do like commas) with all the animals that we saw. But really, you just want to scroll down and see the photos (in fact you might already have done that).

Before you do though, let me tell you just a couple of stories from our stay at The Hide in Hwange National Park.

Chundu Island, Zimbabwe

Chundu Island is a little (very little) island in the Zambezi River between Zambia and Zimbabwe. They run on solar power and tank water. They have no internet. There is apparently one spot where you can sometimes get phone reception if you hold your phone up in the air. And somehow, from this island, a lovely couple, one Zimbabwean, one originally British, run a lovely safari camp.

Victoria Falls the First

If you ever find yourself at Victoria Falls in Zambia in late February on a beautiful sunny day, and you see the men renting out raincoats and you think, 'That's silly, why would I need a raincoat? It's so sunny!' then you are a fool who deserves everything that you get. I rented a raincoat from them - I did pack a raincoat but then my bag didn't make it to Zambia so that was totally worthwhile - and it's a massive, made-of-some-kind-of-reinforced-canvas monstrosity poncho of a thing. Plus, you wear a plastic bag raincoat underneath. And you still get soaking, hair dripping down your back kind of wet, should have worn a shower cap and swimsuit kind of wet, glad I'm wearing Will's thongs (flip flops for the Australian-challenged) kind of wet (which meant Will didn't have thongs, which meant that he wore his hiking shoes which he tells me 'filled up with water'). There's a lot of water going over them there falls!

New York

If you're reading this, then you have almost made it to the end of the North American portion of our travels, as New York was our last stop before Africa. We had two days in the city and spent one of them sightseeing, then spent the other running general errands like posting home extra winter gear, getting haircuts and repacking for flying (had to find all those pesky gels and liquids that make their way into your handbag). I don't think you particularly need to hear about the errands day, but here's what we did with our sightseeing day (and the night before).

Boston

Boston is very proud of its history, particularly its history as regards the American Revolution, so not surprisingly most of what we did while we were there related to that. The rest of what we did involved snowbanks taller than me, but that was the less fun part of the visit so we won't talk about that (just a lot of frustration involving traffic, no carparks and general difficulty getting around). Here's the highlights of what we did in Boston.

Where in the world: Blog Map!

Ok, so we are actually in Trondheim in Norway staying with friends when we started trying to figure out just how far we had driven in North America which is apparently pretty close to the distance from Melbourne to Trondheim!  That's a long way.

Nova Scotia - Halifax, Peggy's Cove and Lunenburg

If you read the last post, you know that we had to skedaddle from Prince Edward Island because there was a storm coming in. This meant that we spent a day in hibernation in Halifax, Nova Scotia while some kind of horrible rain/snow hybrid fell. However, we did have to eat, so we ordered Chinese food from a local takeaway and then went walking to collect it (they normally deliver but couldn't because their driver hadn't made it back from one of his deliveries...). It's only a couple of blocks away, we thought, how bad can it be (and what choice do we have)? Turns out, not so easy. Let me tell you about what happens when it rains on snowbanks (Canadians and other people used to snowy winters, you can probably skip to the next paragraph). So it snows. Unless the weather clears enough for someone to come out and clean it up, you now have a layer of snow on the roads and the pavements - plus gargantuan snow banks everywhere they don't need to clear. Then it warms up enough for it to rain. The rain and the melty snow make puddles in the still frozen snow. The snow gets churned up all day by people walking by and the rain falling on it, so when night comes and it is cold enough to freeze again, it tends to freeze in horrible tyre-rut type formations, rather than a smooth walking surface. Put enough pressure on the surface (say, a human being walking on it) and the surface breaks and you find your feet in freezing cold puddles of water. So we ever so gingerly made our way (uphill of course, in the dark and walking in the middle of the road because it was the clearest) to get our Chinese. Bit of an adventure to say the least!