Signed, Sealed, Delivered!

In terms of aesthetic beauty Cape Town may very well be the most stunning city I have encountered. It's natural setting in a bowl surrounded by the flat ridge of Table Mountain on one side and the crashing waves of the Atlantic Ocean providing it's frame on the other combined with cultural history, beautiful Victorian parks and buildings fused with more modern architecture means Cape Town has everything one could ask for. I made Blue Mountain Backpackers on Long Street my home for the next two weeks and as soon as the Swedes and I had settled in I bumped into Maayan and Andrea once more, they had been here a while now and were "working" at a local restaurant. I joined the Swedes for one last drive in Radovan which took us down the coast looking at penguins to the Cape of Good Hope and it's harsh but amazing surroundings. We also went up Table Mountain together before the three musketeers left their Land Rover for shipping and caught flights back to Sweden while I stayed on a bit longer as it had come to my attention that Manchester United would be coming to town.
I'm not a great believer in fate but I made it my final mission to see the team and when a group of drummers, who were going to perform at the official launch of the new away-kit, slept at the same hostel I decided it couldn't hurt to attempt to sneak into the closed event now that I knew the venue. So I made my way to the Castle and surprised at the benefits of being white was left alone for the majority of the four hours I spent lurking in the tent waiting for the players to arrive. Finally they did arrive and I mingled with other likeminded football fans by the open-bar before being offered both a ride to the open training session that evening and a ticket to the friendly match the day after. It poured down with rain and the United faithful were completely drenched by the time the practice was over, I followed a group of supporters to the railings where Sir Alex Ferguson was heading, I first offered him the sleeve of my wet jacket to sign but he looked bewildered and instead I managed to stretch my George Best T-shirt far enough for him to reach. It may seem pathetic to most of you, but this could be the absolute highlight of my entire trip, not many can claim to have an autograph from the person or thing they closest consider to be God. The following day's match was an average affair, but I wasn't to bothered and had now made my mind up and purchased my flight home. My shark-dive was cancelled due to rough conditions and instead I said my farewells to Cape Town, the hostel and Andrea, got on the third-class train which I had been warned from taking by so many people and set off for Johannesburg. The dangerous and horrible trainride proved to be a very pleasant 27 hours with lots of space and fantastic views. In Johannesburg Maayan was waiting at the station having made her way there a few days before me. She showed me where to get cheap stuff before we said goodbye for the umpteenth time and she caught a flight to Ethiopia. I spent a couple of days in Jozy visiting the brilliant Apartheid Museum, and exploring the nightscene with help from Simon a South African I met in Istanbul many months ago. After this brief encounter it was time to concede, the trip was over and I got on my homeward bound aeroplane. I could only watch the small dots on the inflight map disappear, as cities I had traveled through over the past 10 months whizzed by beneath me. A quick stop in Qatar before getting on my final flight, and I was back where it all started, Stockholm, Sweden!

The Long Way Dune!

The drive to the Atlantic coast went smooth even if the environment was harsh. The Skeleton Coast or As Areias Do Inferno (The Sands of Hell) as the first Portuguese explorers called it gets it's nicknames from the large number of boats which got shipwrecked in the fog along the rocky shallow coastline and the unfortunate sailors who crawled ashore only to find an unforgiving ocean of sand. Today the only skeletons we saw were those of many seals who had washed ashore, but later at Cape Cross we would find a colony of over 100,000 live seals, allthough the extremly lazy albeit very cute animals could often be mistaken for dead.
After surviving the drive on the beach we got to the small town of Swakopmund, while the others decided to do some sandboarding I opted to stay and see what the town had to offer. Swakopmund is often said to be more German than Germany and I could understand this as the weather was the same miserable, grey and wet weather that I experienced in Berlin at the start of this trip. Weather in general has been getting colder for the past month or so as the days are usually warm but at night temperatures have dropped below freezing. The town itself had some German charm with small churches, cafes and brauhauses but once again I felt it was an artificial place built up to please tourists.
The next day we pushed on south and reached Sessriem which is the base for exploring Sossuvlei and the massive sanddunes in the area. We got up bright and early to witness the famous sunrise over the desert but somehow we managed to choose a day in one of the world's driest ecosystems when it rained so the clouds blocked any amazing phenomenon that may have occured. It cleared up later though and the landscape that unfolded infront of us was incredible, huge mounds of sand as far as the eye could see shifting in different shades of red and gold. We spent the day walking along the giant spines of the dunes and taking in the scorched landscape and then drove on south once more. Our next stop was yet another impressive sight, The Fish River Canyon.
Depending on how you count Fish River Canyon is the second or third largest canyon in the world after The Grand Canyon in the United States (The Blue Nile Gorge in Ethiopia is deeper but not as long or wide.) We drove around the rim of the canyon which if you excuse the pun was gorge-ous, for a while and then headed to the Ai Ais at the southern end of the park. The Ai Ais are natural warm springs but the water is pumped into pools and to be honest it felt very similar to being in a heated kiddie-pool. It was pretty nice to get clean though after some very dusty and sandy activities and it revived us for the long drive which awaited in the morning. As the Land Rover which has served as my mode of transport and accomodation drove me across yet another border into South Africa it was funny to think how I had originally intended to just join the guys for a short lift into Botswana, and had no intentions of really seeing much of these parts as public transport here is pretty much nonexistent. Now almost a month later they still hadn't gotten rid of me and I had seen so many amazing places which would never have been possible without the help of my three fellow Swedes. A symbolic flat tyre on the last day of driving was the the only hiccup on the 15 hour drive which took us to the goal that we had all set up when leaving Sweden... Cape Town!!!

Pretty O.K.avango

After a warm shower and a nights good sleep in Maun the four of us got back in Radovan and headed towards the northern parts of the Okavango Delta. The Delta is a large area of wetlands which marks the end of the Okavango River also known as "The River Which Never Reaches The Sea." We crossed the river on a small ferry and got to the village of Seronga where we could arrange a mokoro trip for the following day. A mokoro is a narrow canoe which is pushed forward through the shallow waters using a long pole rather than paddle and for the next two days it was our mean of transport. Being poled around the swampy nature through hippopotamus-made canals in the reeds was very tranquil and we could just lay back and enjoy the scenery and wildlife surrounding us. At night we camped on a small island and the morning after we went for a hike around it, spotting more animals including the endangered and elusive wild dog. After finishing our trip in the delta we drove out of Botswana and into Namibia where we took a couple of days driving to Etosha National Park. Etosha is probably the best Safari Park I have seen so far and the amount of animals was incredible. No sooner had we entered the park before we were driving behind a pride of lions ten-strong, and the animal viewing just continued allthough the leopard stayed out of sight keeping my Big Five tally down to four. After this we were safari'd out and started our drive towards the coast.