The road to Mongu!!

It is february 12th today and Leah, Kelsey, Shannon and I are sitting in an internet cafe in Mongu scrambling to get in touch with family and freinds before out taxi driver picks us up ( at a different internet cafe) in thirty minutes! This post might be kinda short as a result...

We arrived in Mongu (Western Province) on the eveing of February 10th... so that was... Thursday! We all pilled our luggage into the bus at chesshire home in kubalangua (through the back window since the back of the bus didn't open). Once the two back rows of seats were piled to the ceiling with bags, all 17 women, 1 driver, and 1 co- pilot were crammed into our bus we began our journey to Mongu! The girls were crammed in there, 5 people to a row of seats. In the very back where I was sitting, some of us perched on the back rest and the bags behind us. The windows were wide open, traffic pollution streaming into the cabin along with the "fresh air", however teh temperature was ok and we were all in high spirits.

A few hours later we had left the city behind us and entered kofu national park!! The entire area is a wild life reserve and I for one was determined to see a lion or an elephant... or a bird maybe? I stared out the window intently for 2 hours. Wind blowing in my hair, sun burning my face slightly and the heat radiating from the pavement. One of the girls announced she saw a deer, but I still hadn't seen anything :( well, excep for a volture!

Then suddenly spring bock or heart beasts or antelope ( I think they were one of those) began popping up all over the place! I was pretty excited and peered into the underbrush more intensly... and occassionally looking up into the trees... perhaps we would see a leopard?

Soon after we stopped for lunch so Shannon, Hannah, and I went to explore. Jess Barker warned us all to be careful, the last time they had stopped at this particular spot, there had been a pride of lions lying in the grass. Soon the girls and I spotted a baboon ni the tall grass!!! I actually managed to take a very grainy picture of it! :)

We finished all of our snacks and climbed back on the bus. On the road again, for who knows how many hours! Then suddenly the drivers said something at the front of the bus and everyone was scrambling to look ahead of the bus, then it was announced that there was an elephant on the road!!!

I stared straight ahead and could make out a dark shadow on the road ahead of us. \but it was huge! Shurely that was a truck and the drivers were confused? My mind raced to make sense of the scene in front of me, as we got closer my eyes adjusted and I made out the shape of two large elephants crossing the road!!! the bus slowed and we watched for a moment as these massive creatures wandered into the brush. Then suddenly another huge buck began crossing the road behind us, seperated from it's heard. It flapped it's ears slightly, in a sign of agitation and a few moments later our buss pulled away.

I was flabbergasted! Minutes later I had to check my camera again to see if it was true. had three elephants really just walked across the road in front of us!? The whole experience was kinda surreal and I am so excited to go on safari now!!
Anyways after an 11 hour bus ride we finally pulled into Mongu in the dark!
Runnning out of time, so I will leave it upto another one of the girls to continue the story from there. Needless to say it includes, frogs, cockroaches, and snake gaurds!

We are off to the wedding tonight. Hope you enjoyed the blog!! Thanks for reading
~ Jess (L)