The Big Huge Update

First of all, apologies for the long bloggish silence. We were supposed to have internet service in Okaukuejo, but as the sign said on the door of the café: “Internet Closed Due to Technical Difficulties.” The good news is that I’ve stored up a backlog of entries, mostly from other people on the tour, and if you scroll down you’ll be able to enjoy some of the stories of other Kokos in Africa. I’ve also got quite a nice storehouse of pictures built up and I’ll try to sprinkle them throughout the entries. I’m not keeping careful track of everyone in the pictures, but I’m trying for a variety of faces. If there’s a face in particular that you’re missing, comment and I’ll do my best to find a picture of your chorister for next time!

We’re now striking out into unknown territory, beyond the route we took on our first tour. Today we’re driving through the Caprivi panhandle of Namibia and crossing the border into Zambia to spend two nights at Victoria Falls. Last night we were scattered throughout the Popa Falls region. I can only speak for my group (20 of us) but our accommodations were quite nice -- considerably more rustic than some of the newly-renovated luxury suites we’ve been occupying in the Etosha Game Reserve, but clean and homey and in a beautiful setting. Our dinner (which took two hours for our single server and cook to prepare) was a great time, waiting aside -- chatting and telling stories and enjoying the power outages in the dining room whenever our cook used all the kitchen appliances at once! We slept in four-bed cabins with mosquito nets. No heat but plenty of lights and electrical outlets. There was a shared bathroom for each gender and we all enjoyed our Girl Guide Camp flashbacks as we brushed our teeth together last night and this morning. (My parents will be proud to know that I did not, in fact, get monstrously homesick at two in the morning and make the counselor stay up with me all night while I cried! Go me!)

The Rainbow Lodge group arrived this morning with tales of an encounter between an attractive young Dutch tourist named Bart and a certain member of our artistic staff whose name rhymes with ‘Jimberley’. Alas, no e-mail addresses were exchanged, but there is talk of making a new Facebook group dedicated to reuniting the pair.

Crossing the border means that we need to have our passports close at hand, and in order to help our bus remember this, Jenica composed a song:

Passports, passports, prove who you are --
That you’re not a terrorist with a bomb in your car!

This is accompanied by holding your passport aloft so that I can see it, waving it back and forth as we sing along. We’ve learned a lot from observing the grade one class back at Hanganeni Primary!

Since we left Swakopmund, there’s been a lot more travelling and a lot more wildlife viewing! We started off the week with an overnight stay at the stunningly beautiful Waterberg Plateau National Park. The red rock faces of the tall plateau dominate this gorgeous area, which is smaller than Etosha. Many of us climbed up the plateau -- a steep and very rocky trail -- the evening we arrived, while others got up at six in the morning and caught the sunset from the top. The park was full of Damara dik-diks, a very tiny deer-like creature with big eyes and ears. The highlight of the stay was our delicious and beautiful group dinner, during which we had our second engagement announcement! Congrats to Erin and Kier, who, as Erin put it, “felt the African magic”
during our dinner in the dunes back in Swakop. That makes two happy couples, one per week. We can’t wait to see who will be next… likely front runners:

- Bruce and Kim
- Adam and Gibb
- Kim and Bart (Bruce is heartbroken -- leave her alone for one night and see what she does!)
- Carlos (the bus driver known as “the Chuck Norris of Namibia”) and Amanda Coulter (who calls him Chuck)

Next, we spent two nights at the first rest camp inside Etosha, called Okaukuejo. All three rest camps in the park are undergoing renovation in celebration of the park’s one hundredth anniversary, which means that the accommodations we experienced varied a lot -- even for the same roomies! Jen and John spent the first night in an unrenovated chalet with holes in the wall, lion-shredded towels, and a sink hanging on by a thread, bravely suffering through the inconvenience while some of us luxuriated in our slate-floored, track-light-illuminated double rooms. The next day, when they lost power, water, and watched the bungalow next door being demolished, John decided to mention their situation to the front desk, who upgraded them -- to the two-story luxury cabin with a view of the watering hole from their bedroom upstairs! Needless to say, they’d barely gotten through the front door before Jen’s mom Elaine and her roomie Susan Chan showed up with suitcases in hand, claiming the double bedroom downstairs. Ostensibly they were there to chaperone, but we all knew that they wanted to enjoy the sweet life too!

The first night in Okaukuejo, we were pleasantly surprised to be entertained at dinner by a group from the Okaukuejo Primary School. This happened to be the primary school we visited on our way through Etosha in 2004, and we sang for them again the next morning! They have a fantastic music program, dancing and singing alike. We discovered that we knew a few of the same pieces and sang Avulengila and Singaba Yo Singaba together. They loved Afro Shine’s piece Ti Mama. They came and sang at the rest camp again on our last night there. They are a great group of kids and we were so excited to meet them and sing with them. We were able to leave them with a few small tokens as well -- Canadian souvenirs, some school supplies, and a half dozen soccer balls.

We’ve been very lucky with wildlife viewing this time -- tons of zebra, wildebeest, springbok, oryx, kudu, giraffes! We’ve even had great viewings of elephants, who mostly eluded us last time. On our second afternoon at Okaukuejo, we were visited by 45 or more elephants at the watering hole! We have all also had a chance to see wild lions, which we didn’t see at all last time. We even saw (but didn’t pet) wild cheetahs at the Cheetah Conservation Fund sanctuary enroute to Etosha on Thursday.

After Okaukuejo, we headed west and stopped to drop off 18 choristers at the Halali rest camp. Because of all the renovations, we couldn’t all be accommodated at one camp, so we split up for a night. Team Halali also encountered problems with the suites they were given -- no toilets or sinks! -- but the staff at the rest camp were amazing and upgraded them all to honeymoon suites. The Namutoni rest camp was equally great. Though half of us wound up staying in shishilala new suites and the other half in older bungalows, the Namutoni staff were great. Apparently the staff from Okaukuejo called Namutoni and told them that a great Canadian choir was coming to stay and we had to sing for them. Namutoni bribed us with an amazing outdoor braai for dinner, complete with crocodile, eland, and other exotic meats! We sang, of course -- what a fantastic staff!

And that brings us up to date! Sorry again for the long hiatus. I expect that my internet access will be a bit more regular from Thursday onwards as we travel back to Windhoek and then to Cape Town.

Here are the pictures:


The breathtaking Waterberg Plateau


Singers from Koko and Okaukuejo Primary join together to sing Avulengila (this is the song where Dolfie sang the solo, in case you're wondering!)


Our Albertan cowboys ham it up for the kids at Okaukuejo Primary


An elephant taking a dustbath


Elephant and baby! Cute!


A singing giraffe! Amazing!


The second happy couple. Awwwww...