Etosha Pan. 1st and 2nd June.

Writing as we drive from Halali camp to Namutoni camp at the eastern gate for our second nights camping in the Etosha National park.
It has been and is amazing. Chilled, enjoyable, accessible and a super high animal spotting success rate. It is a strange mixture of incredible landscapes, thousands of animals (reckon we've seen most of the 18,000 Zebra) and South African family camping holidays.

Our campsite last night was a bit random. 30 odd sites for camping all full with 4*4's and trailers that turn into small houses.

The safari's have been proper cool. The herds are huge and it is a really easy place to get around. I guess some purists might be put off by that but we've found it brilliant.
The park is enormous and is based on waterholes connected by a network of gravel roads.
The openness and scrub landscape make it feel quite barren, but bathed in sunlight it was beautiful. The pan itself is like a brown and green sea from a distance. It drew us back plenty to just look at it.

As we knew our readers would want it confirmed, Cross and Bray took one for the team and tested the pan. We also dont just believe what we read and wanted to know whether it really was salty.
There were very different styles. Bray went for selecting a rock and tasting. Cross a full press up position licking arrangment.
Same outcome. Salty.
The pan also gave us some photo opportunities we felt we couldn't miss. Animals wise we will let the photo's tell that story. pretty successful though.

Fitness regime. German Style. 30th June.

The CMJJJ attempts to stop our muscles from atrophying are aided by the presence of uber jock James Cross. In the oddest and most german campsite yet, we even went for a 'jog'. Notable for the sunset and a cracking chicken madras. Camp food smashed again.

Botswana to Northern Namibia. 30th June I think.

we were nailing it down gravel roads to get moving. Every now and again stuff just appeared.

 We are getting good at lunches.

it may be bigger and have a tent on the roof, but Ravlon is still the top  car in Africa.

Meat Smuggling. 30th June.

So you are heading off into a new country. Namibia. You have ahead 4 nights of cooking for yourself on open fires and exploring national parks and the least populated parts of Africa we will encounter.

Of course you do your shopping carefully. You make sure that you buy plenty of energy food such as beef and chicken to keep you going. Meat = Food, and Cross and Bray refuse to eat without its presence in dinner.

Turns out Namibia has a region (the north, of which its border is where we were travelling from) which isnt allowed to export its meat products raw. We of course had no clue. It isnt in the bradt guide anyway.
Having crossed the border the day before we did our shopping in Rundu and drove on again, aiming at Etosha pan.
We quickly arrived at the vet control checkpoint.

The vet control guy and his police side kick started by asking to share John's chocolate (crunchy no less) which is never gonna happen and just annoyed Bray. Crossy was more polite/soft and caved in to sharing his chocs with the dude who then cheerfully conned us into telling him we were travelling with contraband.

Basically we could either cook it there and then or they would take it away and destroy it. Now as we had no previous knowledge of this perfectly applicable law and Bray was still off on one about his chocolate, we debated the point somewhat.
Just to clarify we were hardly driving around with half a cow bleeding away in the boot. We are talking about  packaged / shrinkwrapped meat products from a supermarket in plastic and everything.
To be fair their official response was consistent. Simply pointing to the HUGE sign on the huge and rather official looking checkpoint. So crossy whipped out the old stove and we had 9:30 am pepper steak and sausages.
Why smuggling we hear you ask? Aside from it being a potentially pun tastic title, if we told you, we would be breaking the oldest rule going. What goes on tour, stays on tour. CMJJJ 1- 0 Bureaucracy.

Okavango Delta. Planes, Makoro's and Automobiles. 27th - 29th June.

We're obviously travelling in the coolest car in Africa but away from the road, travelling by plane was pretty damn good.
500 feet above the ground, flying over the delta was pretty amazing. we were all buzzing (johns fuzzy head aside).
Saw big herds of Buffalo and elephant and plenty else. It was cool just to see the scale of the delta. We hardly scratched its surface. Would love to go back.
We got to watch the sun setting over Botswana on the return journey and the colours were amazing. The changes as the sun is going down and the long shadows are immense and so different to the day.  I have big memories of sunsets in Africa. The delta looked amazing.

If plane travel was cool, Makoro travel was chilled. We spent a night out in the bush and travelled by speed boat and makoro. It included long walks among Zebra, Elephant and Wildebeest. Good fun and seriously relaxing.  As you can see from the photo's, Monkey was well involved and Ciara had started playing with different camera functions.

Old Bridge Backpackers and Maun.

This was one of our big ones. A place we all wanted to see and that we were really looking forward to. Nik and Suz gave us a great heads up on a backpackers joint the Old Bridge Backpackers. The place was class, a quality bar, great advice and help organising things and AMAZING showers. After days of sand on the road a hot shower in the open air was really good.  It is a backpackers so it had its moments but it just had a feeling straight away of having a positive atmosphere and being fun.  To be fair we also realised that the slow bar service was as much to do with Julia's extra polite waiting technique as the staff's ability to do two things at once.  It was on the river too, really cool.
On arrival we were pretty done in and also had some kit holes to fill. A day of not moving much was decided on so got drunk playing ring of fire (mum note: this is a drinking game). slept late but well that night.

Bray's hangover was by far the worst (a bottle of makers mark saw to that) but the blowout was grand. Despite feeling a bit iffy we smashed a day of productivity. Cross and Bray were heroic. Not only did we succeed in purchasing Botswana football shirts (highly important) and the tools we needed. We also discovered electricity in the Rav again with the help of Toyota Maun. Was a random afternoon but fun times.