Southern Africa 2025. Part Six: Cape Town

 

1^st November 2025 (Day 21)

The Fellowship is at an end, but not in a bad way, more like the bit where Aragorn tells the hobbits that they should not bow to anybody. We lose Alan, Jinni and Sybille to an airport transfer to Victoria Falls Airport, Zimbabwe. The rest of us persevere to the border where kilometres of trucks queue in the baking sun. We skip the line.

At the health check a guy hands us a small piece of paper that he’s previously date stamped. “What’s that about?” I ask Tawanda. He shrugs. The piece of paper goes into box, a raffle maybe, on the Zambian side of the border building. The smiling lady official asks me where I’m going, when I’m leaving and why I’m not spending three months in Zambia as I’m allowed to. “I have a wedding to go to on Wednesday,” I reply. “That I only found out about yesterday.”

Then we transfer to a shuttle because this is where we leave Towanda and Jonas for some reason. It’s an emotional farewell. I will miss them.

In Ghanzi Jonas cooked an amazing meal of spatchcock chicken on the braai. There was a mystery item roasting in tin foil. We asked what it was and we’re told squirrel. He went on to explain, straight-faced, how he caught one while he was waiting for us to complete the desert walk. Two squirrels were fighting and the defeated one ran almost directly into Jonas’ arms. He strangled it, gutted it, stripped off the fur and tail, put it into a bag and into the Tank’s fridge.

It was butternut squash. We all believed him.

Susie and Jenny are dropped off at Fawlty Towers in Livingstone, Warwick and Maree at the airport. Only the four hobbits make it back to Victoria Falls Waterfront - me, Claire, Vlatka and Zivana. Flight tomorrow, time to kill, don’t particularly want to do anything. Taxi is ten minutes late to Livingstone, arrange for him to pick us up at nine from the restaurant where we’re meeting Susie and Jenny.

There are about fifty curio stalls in a row and we’ve US dollars and rand to use up. Most of what they’re selling looks locally made and decent. We go to the furthest stall and Claire buys some salad servers. In the next one she buys fabric. In the next she tells me I have to buy something and I look at a mask I only have a vague interest in owning. “Sixty dollars.” I walk away. “Make me an offer.” I offer 20. “Okay.” It’s not that I want to deprive them of income but it was only worth 20, if that. We buy from seven stalls in a row. We’re not being hassled, they’re all waiting patiently for their turn, but we’re the only tourists there. After the seventh Claire decides she can take any more. It’s too hot.

So, there’s a slow walk of 2km down the dusty, noisy main road, big trucks grumbling. It’s busy, hot, smelly and unattractive. The Spar is nowhere near as good as the ones in Namibia and Botswana. I try to buy cigarettes at the Shoprite kiosk, as I’m not expecting much from Livingstone duty free, and a security guard has to butt in an aisle till for me to pay. We’re the only white people outside of the hostels. This is the real Africa.

I’ve been trying to avoid eating anything that purports to be fresh and so far it’s worked, so the frozen fish sushi at Sea Spice is perfect. Taxi guy turns up at 19:10. No, nine o’clock, we say. He goes away and comes back at 21:10. Watch is slow perchance?

Lovely evening finished off by a few G&Ts by the Zambezi and the soft crunch of mosquitoes on ankles.

 2^nd to 3^rd November 2025 (Day 21 + 1-2)

I was unable to post this yesterday due to being properly knackered, not helped by the Uber driver’s out-of-date satnav and his never having been to South London before.

Wake up at 7am because my phone pings. It’s a text. ‘Kenya Airways would like to inform you that one or more of your flights has been affected by a schedule change. New itinerary: Livingstone to Nairobi 18:00 4th November. Nairobi to London Gatwick 23:59 2nd November.’

Now, I’m not sure that’s going to work without time travel but, even with my first genuine hangover of the holiday, I remain calm. I tap on ‘view alternative flight options.’ They can offer us a flight at 19:15 today from Livingstone to Cape Town, then Cape Town to Nairobi at 23:25, one hour after we’ve landed, then Nairobi to London Heathrow at 09:10 tomorrow.

If you look at a map you will see that flying to Cape Town is completely in the wrong direction. In fact, if you draw a straight line from Nairobi to Cape Town then half way along you reach a place called Livingstone. It’s six more hours flight time. But there’s no choice.

At the Victoria Falls Waterfront Activity Centre I ask the guy if there’s anything we can do to waste five hours. Now, African people can be very slow, it’s the heat, but this guy must be a Professor of Slowness at Livingstone University. After a minute he says: “Have you booked your airport transfer?” So, I do that. Another five minutes without looking at me. “Do you want to go on a game drive at 11:30?” It’s 70 USD each, but right now I’d happily pay that to avoid staring at the Zambezi and dreaming of food that isn’t steak, burgers, ribs, bream or bad pizza.

Our guide is Vincent, the same guy who drove us from the Botswanan border. He’s a lovely man with a cropped shiny beard and no moustache. We’re the only ones in his 4WD so the price seems worth it and he drives us a few km or so to Mosi-oa-Tunya National Park, which is proud to call itself the second smallest of Zambia’s game reserves.

You may rightly think that we’d be bored of game parks at this point, but Mosi-oa-Tunya is special in that all predators have been removed. Therefore, all the animals seem very tame and unbothered. We’ve seen so many zebras and impalas, but the ones here walk straight up to the jeep.

There are committees (real word when stationery) and kettles (real word when flying) of vultures and towers and journeys of giraffes – more than we’ve seen before, just by the road. And, sorry Tawanda and Jonas, but Vincent is the most brilliant guide ever – he knows these collective nouns, he doesn’t just make them up, and he’s well-informed about botany and history. There are herds of buffalo-shmuffalo and a new small type of antelope whose name I’ve already forgotten.

But the main reason to come to Mosi-oa-Tunya, which is also the local name for Victoria Falls (‘the smoke that thunders’ for those who’ve forgotten) are the white rhinos. There are only 10 in the park, but that’s out of 12 in the whole of Zambia. And the reason they’ve survived the poachers who sell their horns to stupid, evil Chinese people, is because they’re protected by armed guards 24/7. The guards seem like nice chaps. We leave the 4WD and walk single file to where six of the rhino are lying under a tree sheltering from the hot sun – 50% of the white rhinos in Zambia. They’re beautiful creatures, cuddling up with each other. Why some people want to make them extinct for the sake of a bag of keratin is beyond me.

We’re the only tourists in the park. Mad dogs and Englishmen and all that.

I had expected nothing from Livingstone Airport other than a guy selling a couple of sandwiches and some warm coke. It’s very clean and empty. There are two check-in counters and it seems implausible that our luggage will ever make it back to London, but they do print out all our boarding passes which is a relief for our ailing phones. Claire surpasses even her own standards of failing airport security by forgetting she has scissors and a knife in her hand baggage. There’s a duty free of sorts, a café and smoking room with two armchairs, one of which has shat itself. It’s hard to get lost.

Three hours to Cape Town. In most airports the transit passengers go down a separate channel back into the departure area, sometimes through security. However, nobody transfers in Cape Town because it’s on the bottom tip of Africa and there’s nowhere to transit to. Luckily, I spot our names on a piece of paper and a woman marches us to the front of the passport queue, then through customs and arrivals, back into departures, through security and another passport check. We have our passports stamped twice in less than twenty minutes. Wouldn’t have made it otherwise.

The noticeboard says the plane goes to Livingstone and Nairobi. If it stops in Livingstone I’m going to lose it, I think. But there’s an old Aussie guy in a cap who’s having to do the same as us and I reason that if things kick off, he’ll be in there first, so I stop worrying. I ask the woman checking the boarding pass whether we’re stopping at Livingstone, and she mumbles something under her breath which could have been either ‘yes’ or ‘no.’

We don’t stop at Livingstone. Six more hours on the plane, a three hour lay-over in Nairobi, which is one of the worst airports I can remember being in, then 9.5 hours to Heathrow. The uncomfortable plane on which of course I can’t sleep flies over the South Sudan, Chad, Niger and Algeria this time. Because I’ve booked us Hindu vegetarian meals, we are given exactly the same food four times in a row. Apparently, Hindus like dhal, spinach and rice for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Is Southern Africa worth it? Oh, most definitely. The Zambezi and Okavango rivers are hot, jungly and teaming with wildlife. Etosha and the Kalahari are barren wildernesses where plants, birds and animals fight for survival. The Skeleton Coast is a cold paradise of sand and waves, and the Namib has the landscape of a far-away planet. Even though I knew what was coming, I didn’t know it would be like it was, everyday had many surprises. It was impossible to predict which animal would be pooping outside your permanent tent next.

The people are, for the most part, friendly and glad that you’re here - so many tribes, completely different from one another. And we had a great group in the Fellowship and its guides. We made friends. This has been one of the greatest trips of my life.