A Trip to Durban on the Intercape

After saying goodbye to literally everyone I know in South Africa (bar maybe two people?), it was too depressing to stay at uni any longer when my housemate (hey Rin) was planning on going off to travel herself for mid sem break. With a week to go before I fly off back to Melbourne, it was time to make use of my last remaining days in South Africa (and the last remaining dollars in my bank account...). So I decided to go to the last few places that I've wanted to see but haven't quite had the chance to see yet, first stop: Durban.

Zimbabwe to Nata to Maun & Trying to Get My Dad Back to Australia

There were two routes we could have taken to get to Nata. The first one involved retracing our steps and going back to Kasane. The second was to drive further south through Zimbabwe and to go through a national park. Keen to see more of the country we chose the latter, which involved long gravel roads.

The drive was decent, and we only stopped once on the Zimbabwe side because two cars full of tourists had come to a halt in the middle of the road and gotten out of their car to see and hold a chameleon. We had no idea how they had managed to see the small creature from the car, but I felt quite bad for it as it got passed around from person to person. We later realised that it was not quite that difficult to spot, as we later  drove past a small turtle.

Chobe National Park & Bungee Jumping and Helicopter Rides at Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe

We woke up early Wednesday morning to get to Chobe and begin looking for animals. There was no queue at the park gate, and soon enough we were in (with no map). Our early wake up was wasted however, and it soon became obvious we would not be seeing all that much. With trying to spot animals its all about luck and about being in the right place at the right time. We had no such thing.

For the rest of the morning we spotted a few giraffe, some monkeys, kudu, lots of impala and lots of safari vehicles filled with tourists. It was a bit disappointing, especially as I had been building Chobe up and expecting it to be as good as Kruger. I guess it just wasn’t our day.

In the afternoon we headed back to our accommodation in Kasane to meet a man who was going to help us get through to Zimbabwe the following day. For Zim we would both need to buy visas for $30usd each, and pay $105usd to bring the car in – third party insurance, a car fee and, wait for it, a carbon tax. I couldn’t help but laugh at the last one, a $15usd carbon tax for all foreign vehicles entering Zimbabwe??

The man never showed up however and we waited around 1.5 hours before deciding that we would just attempt to get through by ourselves the following day. How difficult could it be?