We woke up absolutely frozen after camping at the rest camp on the border (Martin’s Drift) beside the Limpopo River.
The No Phones decision is already a complete epiphany. The girls have embraced it from the start as a kind of game, one of their imagined worlds with its own set of rules, to adhere to with complete dedication.
Great things happen when you’re not on your phone (and on top of a rooftent on top of a Landcruiser on top of Africa).
After getting lost in Pretoria yesterday, “Today’s goal is not to get lost at all” (Bea.) Still, we did get lost in Francistown due to roadworks and the car GPS not worrying about taking us into rough-looking areas, so us manually overriding it. We’re a bit nervous in towns and are trying to avoid them as much as possible. At Cape Union Mart we paid a trillion pula for warm gloves, socks, and thermal pants.
My goal was to have mint chocolate for breakfast. Done!
This part of the trip is a strange combination of these kind of very low-key expectations and small comforts, combined with a lot of driving through very poor, dry, uncharted (by us mom!) parts of Zimbabwe.
As ever, we’re intent on avoiding humans, finding birds and animals.
We saw some elephants and beautiful teeny steenbok by the side of the highway. They’re so shy – steenbok avoid predators by lying low in thick cover. They have glands between their hooves which leave a scent trail to mark their ranges. Will try not draw too much of an analogy there!
The promise of lions and a Mila-steenbok
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