I took a tour through the photo gallery on my phone, which produced some interesting memories of the summer months! We do not really encourage visitors at this time of year, and only the most diehard family members tend to brave the extremes. If Kasane is not serving up humidity and sizzling temperatures, it's offering torrential summer rain and dramatic thunderstorms. Sometimes it sets in and rains for days on end, which is when we tolerate a world of mud and mould, while mushrooms cheerfully sprout inside our indoor/outdoor home! Insects come out in tropical hordes, and town electricity goes on and off randomly with the storms.
First, however, comes November - the build up to the rainy season and in our opinion the hottest and most uncomfortable month, although many in these parts traditionally select October for that honour!
Being bikers, we are undaunted by climatic conditions and for a weekend escape we put on our hot, heavy bike gear and headed 300km south to camp at Nata Lodge, one of the important aspects of this trip was to try out our new soft luggage setup for the bike. "Turkana Gear"(if interested, you can read about it here)
The problem with biking in extreme heat is that one feels a drastic need to rip off all boots and jackets at the instant of becoming stationary. Bike boots exchanged for flip flops, our feet burned up in the sand as we set up our camp in the blazing sun just as fast as we could.
Escaping from the direct sun, we headed for the only appropriate options. G & Ts, and desperately needed swimming pool!
39 degrees Celsius (over 102 Fahrenheit) with almost no humidy, is a different type of heat compared to our humid riverine heat back home.
The sunset through the palm trees in our campsite that night made up for it. The horizon was fiery, as the sand cooled down rapidly, in true desert style.
Later in November, during our epic bike retrival mission, (story over here) we enjoyed the backwater fringes of the very wild Lake Liambezi.
Two insignificant humans on the wild floodplain, looking out towards Namibia.
At this time of year, the build up to the rainy season is the topic uppermost in all our minds and we tend to make bets on when the proper rains are going to start..
In mid December, another quick bike trip from home to spend birthday time with Anton and cool off in the pool with the best view over the floodplain. For the record, Amelia won our rainy season commencement bet!
Christmas time was the ultimate relaxation. We stocked up with our essentials and bunkered down in our haven - home. I was in the mood for being creative in the kitchen... my planned mince pies failed due to lack of the rather critical Christmas fruit mince anywhere in town, so I enjoyed myself creating some vegetarian dishes for Christmas and Boxing Day with my parents. Strangely I only found photos of ingredients, not the final products?! We also took no photos at all of our Christmas lunch, which I find quite unusual, but I think I sign of really relaxing and not caring about such things!
This is the only festive Christmas photo on my phone. Some ingredients on their way to becoming a Lentil Cider Loaf!
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| The only Christmas Day photo! |
For New Year (also Tiennie's birthday) I had set my heart on making him a Red Velvet Cake. Sadly when I went shopping, there was no red food colouring in town. I had a choice of green, pink or blue food colouring on the one hand, or perhaps painstakingly extracting red pigment from betroots on the other, pioneer style.
Blue Velvet Cake it clearly had to be! There was also zero icing sugar in town so the easiest topping had to be caramel from a tin. I think there was also something wrong with the buttermilk, so it was an interesting exercise. The cake batter was a rather startling shade of blue, and the whole thing was extremely peculiar and best forgotten! It tasted better than it looked, but the birthday boy politely asked for plain white vanilla sponge cake (his favourite) next year!
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| Blue Velvet Cake in progress! |
The cake being a flop, and a bit of cabin fever setting in, we went looking for a place to have birthday/New Year lunch, and were pleased to see our first choice was packed out with domestic tourists! Great for the economy but a bit unappealing to us. We found a quieter venue, and did what we do best. Chilling at The Old House, our favourite local pub & restaurant.
Another one of the joys of the season is the emergence of my absolute favourite wild flame lilies, and I wait for them anxiously every year around New Year. Finding these beauties flaming away randomly in the bush just makes me very happy!
We are lucky to live in a beautiful tourist town with access to a great river. With January well underway, and all the festive season trippers gone, we had the deck at Chobe Safari Lodge all to ourselves, with this lovely view.
Before 2020, it was almost totally impossible to nab this prime spot on the sunset deck... nor to sit and observe the view in peace and quiet, but since the pandemic hit, a lot of things have changed. Hoping for better times this year for our tourism companies...
The cocktail menu was leftover from Christmas and New Year, so we indulged in the very interesting blue drink known as a "Mrs Claus Special".
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| Cheers to 2022! |
We stayed till sunset. Of course we never get tired of Chobe sunsets...
Some January skies with amazing cloud formations, and the open road ahead. One of my favourite views, no matter where!
Traffic on the way to work ... I hastily captured this breeding herd stepping assertively onto the road - before we had to move on!
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| Breeding herds have right of way! |
As we move gradually towards the change of season, I am still keeping an open mind regarding 2022, not as stupidly hopeful as I was for 2021... but perhaps just a bit more cautiously so. Time alone will tell.
Wishing all reading this, a peaceful week to come...
