Not a safari at the Okavango Delta

Place: Maun

Tunes: The Cult, Velcra, Birthday Massacre

We (me and Ari) did not go to the Okavango safari as we have been on two safari's already for reasons explained before and had an easy morning instead. 

To clarify, we could not get to the right place at the right time in the morning as we could not get there on the previous evening. As we had zero chance of getting there early enough, it made no sense to try and we could take it easy.

In Maun it took a while to find a new tyre for Ari and the hotel, but we managed to do both. Locals have no sense of direction or distance and asking for directions or distances does not always (or ever) work in Africa.

Apparently my camera has also stopped working. It has served me very well so far but I think there's just too much sand and crap inside it. I have the big Canon that works but it is such a pain to unpack that it's not really for the occasional snapshot.

The Okavango safari apparently was ok with all the oohs and aahs you can expect, but based on what we were told, it was not as impressive as the crater was. So, we won the safari game with our lions.

At the hotel Ari changed his front tire and I repacked the panniers again. I also managed to fix the helmet finally to some degree. It has to last only another week and I think it will.

I should have changed my rear knobbly tire as it is showing some severe signs of wear, but the mid-day sunshine looked pretty inhospitable to be honest, so I skipped it. 

So was the food at the hotel restaurant. Rubber chicken again and I was not amused. Apparently the ones we got were the only birds that were delivered to the restaurant today, so they had no choice but to prepare them for us. I think they still had the choice of serving this shit or saying that they have no good chicken. Greedy bastards. The fish we got after sending eight portions of chicken back to the kitchen was better. Pekka went out to find another restaurant.

In the meanwhile, Barry White had arrived to play an eight hour set. Reggae seemed to be his favourite, but cheesy pop and African tunes, such as George Michael's ”Careless Whisper” were on the menu. He was auditioning for the first time to become a resident of some sort, but still he could not once remember the name of the place he was in. What a pro. To give him credit where it was due, he must have played everything he knew non-stop several times over, every time giving it his everything. How he did not collapse from exhaustion is a mystery. And everybody had a good time, apart from some motorbicyclists.

After dinner the place filled up with party people and prostitutes who came to listen to Barry. We retired with earplugs on. It will be a long day tomorrow.