Getting Out of Dodge or Getting There is Not Half the Fun

Getting Out of Dodge

or

Getting There is Not Half the Fun

 

The first thing you notice at a safari camp in the Okavengo Delta of northern Botswana is the silence.  There is not a sound; it’s almost as if you can hear the earth rotate on its access.  The other thing you notice is how flat the savannah is, and how black richness of the night sky.  The Southern Cross was waiting for me.  I’d not seen it since the Atacama in Chile years ago.

 

But getting to Botswana and making this happen was no easy task.  It doesn’t come as a surprise to me why people take tours.  Pack, show up, let them make the decisions

 

This was not the case.

 

Back up.  Early April, Mexico City.  I am sick yet again.  This has been going on since February and I am sick of being sick.  What started as an e coli infection with insufficient meds to treat it, led to a greater stomach infection where the e-coli spread.  Same doc.  Three-day supply.  “You don’t need more,” he said. He was wrong.

 

It fell to me to close up the house.  Steve had gone home a week earlier.  CDMX was brutally hot.  I was eating nothing.  Drinking nothing.  I was sicker than I’d been all winter, sicker than I’d been since 2012 when I ended up in the hospital for three days.  Easter weekend I slogged out to my friends’ home too far from the center.  We shared a pizza.  I was seriously dehydrated.

 

I still did not have my visa to go to Brazil (yes, that comes later).  Monday morning, I go to another doc.  More meds.  Five days.  Visa arrives at last minute.

 

I get into a taxi to go to the airport for an 8 pm flight.  There’s a car accident on the way.  We’re stalled in traffic for 40 minutes which puts me dangerous closely to getting shut out of the flight.  I feel terrible but have to stay in control because it’s just me.

 

I check in.  It’s a 9-hour flight to Sao Paolo and I don’t sleep.  I’m still sick.  I arrive.  I’m so tired I have to rent a hotel room for 6 hours because it’s 5 am and I can’t get into my Airbnb until 4.  This is not starting well.

 

Sao Paolo.  I like Sao Paolo.  I like it a lot.  I chose this route because it’s the easiest way to get to South Africa.  Straight now South America.  Across the Atlantic to Johannesburg.  I stay in SP for a week, connect with “friends” I met in November.  It's hard not to like Brazilians.  The Mexican meds aren’t working and I visit a 4^th doc who finally gives me the meds I need—a ten- day supply of Flagyl as well as some blood work and a poo test.  

 

I hand around the city for a week.  I could live here.  No one talks about Trump.  They only vaguely know what’s going on which is good.  It’s not a topic of conversation.

 

The night I leave I’m still sick.  I fall asleep in the taxi.  I only sleep when I’m sick.

 

The flight gets off on time.  I sleep most of the way and arrive rested.  In Joburgh, I hire a car and driver from the airport for a four-hour tour.  He brings me to Soweto, Nelson Mandela’s home.  It’s early May and leaves are at full peak autumn color.  (I remember once calling my mother from Christchurch, NZ on Mother’s Day and telling her how the entire Botanical Garden I’d visited earlier was October golden.)

 

When we return to the hotel the driver is very clear. “Do not leave the hotel.  It’s too dangerous.”  The hotel reiterates.  It didn’t matter.  I was still sick although I could feel the meds working.  

 

The next day, the same driver picked me up and delivered me to the airport.  It was a two-hour flight to the town of Maun, Botswana—the gateway to many safari destinations.

 

Frankly, it was a series of small miracles that had gotten me this far, but I’m already feeling better and things are looking up.

 

A new experience awaited.