I apologize for the lapse in posting. Work craziness, which is another story for another time. But I wanted to wrap up my thoughts on our big adventure of three weeks ago.
As I think I mentioned, we went about three hours drive south to a very nice little lodge. The drive itself was interesting. We were on what is ostensibly one of the biggest "highways" in the country, and while it was an ok road by Africa standards, there were still occasional spots with giant sinkholes, a couple hundred yards of random gravel thrown in for good measure and other fun, and often unexpected obstacles. We were going through some mountains as well, and there were a few more guardrails missing than I would have liked. And by "missing" I mean that someone had obviously plowed into them and gone over the side.
We were headed in the direction of the border with a neighboring country so there was a lot of truck traffic coming in. We kept joking that we should be on the lookout for our second car which was supposed to be making its way up to us along that route (it has since arrived, also another story for another day). We spent part of the drive behind two petro trucks, which was, quite frankly terrifying. Let's combine a bad road, sharp mountain switchbacks, evidence of occasional rock slides with... two trucks filled with highly flammable material. Wheeeeeee!!! I again emphasize that this was a major road, which makes it all the more odd that two trucks we saw on the drive down that were half pulled over, half still in the road, suffering from what appeared to be damage from a rockslide were still there two nights later upon our return.
The other fun challenge of the drive was the goats. Herd after herd after herd of goats. Very few with any obvious person minding them. They were just wandering in and out of the road to their little hearts' content. The baby ones were really cute, and I kinda wanted one or two. So I started wondering aloud just how much cash it would take to get a goat if we just pulled over and pointed at one (not much, I suspect). Then I started wondering just how fast a whole bunch of little village kids would appear from the bushes if we stopped and tried to just grab a goat and go (no doubt before we could even pull away, I suspect, not that we would really steal a goat, of course.)
Anyway, this was how we amused ourselves for most of the trip and everyone was getting a little tired of traveling, especially after twenty minutes on a much less major, all dirt road and we kept repeating to ourselves that we just had to catch the ferry, then 10 more minutes and we would be there. Instead, to our dismay, we encountered the scene depicted below.
So this is where we were supposed to cross the river. Looks safe, huh! The marvel of engineering at the opposite side is the pontoon boat that is intended to ferry cars across. As you can see from the backhoe, and the line of cars parked on the other side, it was out of commission. I am not sure whether I was happy or sad that it was out of commission, as it didn't really look like it would work particularly well even when it was working.
Instead of crossing with our trusty truck and driving all the way to the lodge, we instead backtracked a few kilometers and went to a different lodge where we left the truck and waited for our lodge's boat to come and pick us up. I was terribly embarrassed by the amount of stuff we had packed for a two night stay. It didn't seem so silly when it was all packed up in the truck and we were going to drive it in, but when it was unloaded and then had to be transfered to a boat then it seemed a bit more foolish. But we really did use almost all of it, with very few exceptions!! And the boat ride was really fun and we saw our very first elephant on that ride.
On vacation, with amazing views of nature everywhere, including frequent appearances by elephants right across the river, and of course C and K are distracted by electronics. Nonetheless, this was the deck of our little hut. Possibly the best thing about the deck was that in the morning coffee magically appeared on a lovely little tray at a predetermined time. Ahhh!
C and K on the boat. They look like they just might be related, huh? She wore an expression similar to that for most of the weekend, and we were worried that she had a really awful time, but she has been talking about the elephants and hippos she saw ever since so I guess it made a good impression.
Me and T on the boat. This was pretty much the full extent of her participation. I would uncover her head every now and again to get a quick photo, but mostly she was hanging out and sleeping in the carrier.
This was the bar and lounge and covered dining area of the lodge. You can see C and T at the very end of the table. It was really lovely, and a lot of fun to get to interact with the other guests at breakfast and lunch. We had great weather, so dinner both nights was down on a lower, open patio. A dinner that I got to enjoy participating in because the lodge was happy to supply a "watcher," one of their night guards to sit outside the room and run and get us if the kids made a peep. A very handy perk indeed!
Here we all are at the end of the trip, about to get back on the boat. C and I are both happy. The girls both look skeptical. But I think, overall, it was a good trip.
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