Canoeing Adventure on the Nata River!

Follow this link to our other blog, to find my story about our canoeing adventure on the Nata River, just 300km away from home, or just click on the photo below.

 

Summer Memories - late 2021/ 2022

I took a tour through the photo gallery on my phone, which produced some interesting memories of the summer months! We do not really encourage visitors at this time of year, and only the most diehard family members tend to brave the extremes. If Kasane is not serving up humidity and sizzling temperatures, it's offering torrential summer rain and dramatic thunderstorms. Sometimes it sets in and rains for days on end, which is when we tolerate a world of mud and mould, while mushrooms cheerfully sprout inside our indoor/outdoor home! Insects come out in tropical hordes, and town electricity goes on and off randomly with the storms. 

First, however, comes November - the build up to the rainy season and in our opinion the hottest and most uncomfortable month, although many in these parts traditionally select October for that honour! 

Being bikers, we are undaunted by climatic conditions and for a weekend escape we put on our hot, heavy bike gear and headed 300km south to camp at Nata Lodge, one of the important aspects of this trip was to try out our new soft luggage setup for the bike. "Turkana Gear"(if interested, you can read about it here)

The problem with biking in extreme heat is that one feels a drastic need to rip off all boots and jackets at the instant of becoming stationary. Bike boots exchanged for flip flops, our feet burned up in the sand as we set up our camp in the blazing sun just as fast as we could.

Escaping from the direct sun, we headed for the only appropriate options. G & Ts, and desperately needed swimming pool! 

 

39 degrees Celsius (over 102 Fahrenheit) with almost no humidy, is a different type of heat compared to our humid riverine heat back home.

The sunset through the palm trees in our campsite that night made up for it. The horizon was fiery, as the sand cooled down rapidly, in true desert style.

Later in November, during our epic bike retrival mission, (story over here) we enjoyed the backwater fringes of the very wild Lake Liambezi.

Two insignificant humans on the wild floodplain, looking out towards Namibia.

At this time of year, the build up to the rainy season is the topic uppermost in all our minds and we tend to make bets on when the proper rains are going to start.. 

In mid December, another quick bike trip from home to spend birthday time with Anton and cool off in the pool with the best view over the floodplain. For the record, Amelia won our rainy season commencement bet!

Christmas time was the ultimate relaxation. We stocked up with our essentials and bunkered down in our haven - home. I was in the mood for being creative in the kitchen... my planned mince pies failed due to lack of the rather critical Christmas fruit mince anywhere in town, so I enjoyed myself creating some vegetarian dishes for Christmas and Boxing Day with my parents. Strangely I only found photos of ingredients, not the final products?! We also took no photos at all of our Christmas lunch, which I find quite unusual, but I think I sign of really relaxing and not caring about such things!

This is the only festive Christmas photo on my phone. Some ingredients on their way to becoming a Lentil Cider Loaf!

The only Christmas Day photo!

For New Year (also Tiennie's birthday) I had set my heart on making him a Red Velvet Cake. Sadly when I went shopping, there was no red food colouring in town. I had a choice of green, pink or blue food colouring on the one hand, or perhaps painstakingly extracting red pigment from betroots on the other, pioneer style. 

Blue Velvet Cake it clearly had to be! There was also zero icing sugar in town so the easiest topping had to be caramel from a tin. I think there was also something wrong with the buttermilk, so it was an interesting exercise. The cake batter was a rather startling shade of blue, and the whole thing was extremely peculiar and best forgotten! It tasted better than it looked, but the birthday boy politely asked for plain white vanilla sponge cake (his favourite) next year! 

Blue Velvet Cake in progress!

The cake being a flop, and a bit of cabin fever setting in, we went looking for a place to have birthday/New Year lunch, and were pleased to see our first choice was packed out with domestic tourists! Great for the economy but a bit unappealing to us. We found a quieter venue, and did what we do best. Chilling at The Old House, our favourite local pub & restaurant.

Another one of the joys of the season is the emergence of my absolute favourite wild flame lilies, and I wait for them anxiously every year around New Year. Finding these beauties flaming away randomly in the bush just makes me very happy!

We are lucky to live in a beautiful tourist town with access to a great river. With January well underway, and all the festive season trippers gone, we had the deck at Chobe Safari Lodge all to ourselves, with this lovely view.

Before 2020, it was almost totally impossible to nab this prime spot on the sunset deck... nor to sit and observe the view in peace and quiet, but since the pandemic hit, a lot of things have changed. Hoping for better times this year for our tourism companies...

The cocktail menu was leftover from Christmas and New Year, so we indulged in the very interesting blue drink known as a "Mrs Claus Special".

Cheers to 2022!

We stayed till sunset. Of course we never get tired of Chobe sunsets...

Some January skies with amazing cloud formations, and the open road ahead. One of my favourite views, no matter where!

Traffic on the way to work ... I hastily captured this breeding herd stepping assertively onto the road - before we had to move on!

Breeding herds have right of way!

As we move gradually towards the change of season, I am still keeping an open mind regarding 2022, not as stupidly hopeful as I was for 2021... but perhaps just a bit more cautiously so. Time alone will tell.

Wishing all reading this, a peaceful week to come...

Beautiful mini break and mechanical dramas!

I have updated our bike adventure blog with a new post - a small window on our special corner of the world, and one of the typical situations we have to extract ourselves from, when exploring by motorcycle in the middle of nowhere!

Have a look at our Border Town Nomads blog, or click on the linked photo below!

This glorious sunrise was a gift to us during our recovery effort - retrieving the broken down bike from a very remote area on the Namibian border!

 Wishing all reading this, a wonderful week, still filled with the positivity of new beginnings for a great year :)

Happy New Year!!

 Wishing all who read this, a very Happy New Year!

SA Bike Trip - Part 3

Belated Christmas greetings to all reading this post!

I have managed at long last to upload the final 3rd part of our August trip to South Africa, which is findable on our travel blog Border Town Nomads, or just click on the link below :)

 

Border Town Nomads - new bike travel blog!

Hi all!  I have started a brand new blog dedicated to our bike trips and travels!

Please come over and find us on our new website: Border Town Nomads
Our new blog has pictures and words in abundance, in my usual style :)  I shall still be keeping this blog going as well, it's just the bike travel and trips

I have posted Part 1 and Part 2 of our recent bike trip to South Africa in August.
Follow the links below, to catch up:

Thanks to all for following our adventures, and I hope to see you over there!

 

Winter Holidays - Collected Memories!

Winter is receding rapidly into the past, but when I found this unfinished photo album type post in drafts. I enjoyed taking a look back at my favourite time of year in Kasane. Better late than never to post these memories:)

I really love our winters, and I especially love it when visitors choose May or June, being one of the most comfortable climatic moments in our tropical world. Apart from cool weather, there is also a very pleasant absence of the insect hordes that flourish in the rainy season! From a scenic point of view, winter also catches the Chobe River in one of its loveliest moods, thanks to our seasonal floods and the high water. In a good season the Chobe and Zambezi rivers merge, to create an impressive mass of water, visible in this sundowner photo.

The fast flowing river creates rather fascinating patterns in the water. I never get tired of these river foam designs, sketched onto the surface by the current.

 

Visit from biker buddies!

Our early June highlight: an impromptu visit from Dejon and Kelley - an adventurous biker couple from Cape Town. We became friends via social media (as one sometimes does) as we followed their adventures all the way up to Tanazania.

As we chatted more and more frequently during their travels south towards us, we exchanged ideas and experiences and found we had a huge amount in common. Eventually we helped arrange logistics for shipping their much needed replacement bike tyres from Durban to Kasane, and ultimately it just seemed obvious that our new friends, and Bumblebee (their fabulous Yamaha xt1200 Super Tenere bike) should all come and stay with us, as we know well how welcome a biker haven can be after those long days on the road. Looking back it was perhaps a leap of faith on both sides, but I never questioned opening our home to these two special people. I believe that sometimes you just know!

Chobe boat cruise, June 2021

Biker chick pals

 

 

 

 

 

 

Apart from taking lots of time off work to explore our area like tourists with them, we took our own boat out on the river, complete with a couple of adventurous 4 x 4 boat launching dramas, and enjoyed the high water below the rapids, very close to home.

Just visible here under the clear fast flowing water, is the white sand of our "private "squeaky beach. Something to look forward to every year, when the water drops! For now, just floating above it..

Cruising around below the rapids

D's biker GoPro adapts to water!

Famous Chobe sunsets on the river bank, just a few minutes away from home. After the boat is safely out of the water, many a sundowner is enjoyed here. Kel and I had to pile on the winter gear, but came prepared. I enjoyed this silhouette! There is actually a crescent moon in there, too.

What's the point of having biker friends in town if you don't go on a bike camping trip together! We camped at Muchenje Campsite and Cottages, enjoying the high water here on the floodplain. At this time of year this campsite is a beautiful waterside experience.

Our blue tent in the very same spot occupied by the red tent during the rainy season! Blogpost about the red tent over here

Campfire by the river, with great company!

We would have happily had Dejon and Kel staying with us for an unlmited time, but they did feel the need to proceed south, and also we had two very important young visitors booked in next: our twin nephews, Matthew and Ronan. After a couple of days of covidly complicated travels for them via Johannesburg, we headed for lunch at Chobe Safari Lodge by the river, straight off the flight from wintry Johannesburg to glorious Kasane!

Back home, some quality time walking on the farm..

Being high river season, we could make it all the way downstream to the new Kazungula bridge. Blogpost about the new bridge over here

Being a few weeks on from the earlier floating photo, squeaky white sand now exposed, due to the drop in water level!

The boys enjoying the golden sunset time on the river. I just love this light.

Chobe National park, more of nature's beauty, and a special lioness sighting...

Yes again. I can't get enough of our sunset silhouettes and make everybody pose!

Nata Camping trip

We headed off with the boys 300km south, to Nata Lodge, and arranged to meet up again with Dejon and Kel, who had been cruising around other parts of Botswana! Armed with a lot of critical supplies since we were travelling by car (yes, Botswana was in a wine and beer lockdown once again!) we had a great reunion with the two bikers. By my standards it was freezing cold at night, but nothing a campfire can't fix!

Typical Nata Palms

Bumblebee, at Nata Lodge

 

 

Sundowners on the edge of the Makgadikgadi Pans here still very much flooded and full of water. Just outside the boundary fence of the Nata Bird Sanctuary, seen disappearing into the water!

Cruising on top of the vehicle, just like our own boys - about 20 years ago, in the same place!

Swimming in the amazing salt pans!

On our way home, we stopped over at Eselbe Camp, on the Nata River, a favourite place of ours, but we could not stay over due to time constraints this time... we said goodbye to the bikers, who were staying over, then heading further south.

Obviously "H" the dog is the star of the show, here!

Kel and H

Back in Kasane, a traditional Chobe boat cruise with the boys, before saying goodbye to them and sending them back home, all of us a bit sad but already excited for the next visit in 2022!

Happy Aunt with the boys!

Feeling very blessed and fortunate to live in such a special place, and despite all the disasters heaped on by the pandemic, we are still here and still surviving one way or another. Lucky to have created these irreplaceable memories this year!