Adventurous Kate contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase through these links, I will earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Thanks!
Are you ready for a BIG monthly recap? Because it doesn’t get any bigger than this.
My dear readers, I visited my 100th country. Botswana. I’ve been working toward this travel goal for many years, and I’m so thrilled to have finally made it happen.
I spent 34 days in Africa — my longest trip to the continent yet. And with such a busy tour planned for September, I knew I’d have no time to get my August recap up, so now I’m pairing the two months together.
From an Italian island to the Czech countryside, from the Okavango Delta to Africa’s most fearsome waterfall, here’s what I got up to in August and September!
Let’s take a look!
The month began in the middle of my birthday trip to Ischia, and I turned 42! Charlie and I spent the day sailing around the island with Vito from West Coast Ischia, who was our skipper on our mini-moon three years ago!
It was so nice to re-connect with Vito and tell him we went to Ventotene because of him and IT WAS KIND OF WEIRD. And as a birthday treat, he dove for sea urchins which we ate fresh out of the shell on the boat.
Ischia is forever one of my favorite places in Italy, and it was so nice to celebrate there. I got to swim in the sea and eat pizza and tiramisu on my birthday. What could be better?
After Ischia, we stopped in Naples long enough to get pizza at Di Matteo (a new pizzeria for me, and it was excellent!), before heading home.
And then began our Africa trip! We started with a full week in Cape Town — and no, a week is not excessive in Cape Town. There are so many cool things to do there.
This was my fourth visit to Cape Town and Charlie’s first, so I was determined to show him the best of the city and also see some new places.
I FINALLY made it to Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned, for the first time. It was an incredibly moving place to visit and I can’t recommend it highly enough.
We also spent a day on the wine tram in Franschhoek, we had the meal of a lifetime at La Colombe, we took the hop-on hop-off bus to Table Mountain and around the beachy neighborhoods, I visited the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary African Art, we ate such good food at Oranjezicht Farmers Market, we saw the penguins at Boulders Beach, we spent the night in an Airstream trailer on top of the Grand Daddy Hotel, and I got an amazing African outfit made for me.
And Charlie? He LOVES Cape Town now, and keeps talking about when we can go back.
Next began our tour through Botswana, Zambia, and Zimbabwe with Rock My Adventure. This was my second Rock My Adventure tour and I knew it would be a fabulous time. And we started in Botswana, my 100th country!
(FYI: You can get £100 off any Rock My Adventure tour with the code KATE100.)
We started in Botswana with a safari in the Okavango Delta. Now, the Okavango Delta is far more remote than the busier Chobe National Park. There are fewer people here, and it has an interesting, watery atmosphere that is great for photos.
We camped in upscale tents with ensuite bathrooms (it sounds fancy until you consider that’s how you pee safely after dark!!), and our guide Master grew up in Okavango and knew it like the back of his hand. We saw lions (adult males, adult female, and the cutest little group of five cubs), a cheetah, and even an aardwolf!
Next up, we headed to the Makgadikgadi Pan to camp overnight under more stars than I’ve ever seen in my life. We rode quad bikes, we woke up to a bright pink sunrise, we met some San Bushmen, I held a scorpion, and then we got to meet a bunch of Kalahari meerkats!
We finished with a few game drives in Chobe National Park, home to more elephants than I’ve ever seen in my life. Taking a boat cruise and seeing a leopard (!) were the biggest highlights!
Next up was Victoria Falls. We started in Livingstone on the Zambia side (Zambia was country number 101 for me), and jumped right into the Devil’s Pool, dangling ourselves over the edge! (The Devil’s Pool is run like a military operation and nobody has ever gone over the falls or died.)
We also walked with rhinos at Mosi-oa-Tunya National Park (while it’s often wise not to identify rhino locations in Africa, the presence of rhinos is well-publicized here), and we had afternoon tea at the luxurious Royal Livingstone Hotel. I even played the piano in the lounge afterward and my friends and I had a singalong!
Next, we crossed to the Zimbabwe side of Victoria Falls (Zimbabwe: country 102!), where we viewed the falls from the viewing platforms (and dodged baboons), took a sunset cruise on the Zambezi, we cheered our friend Emily on as she bungee-jumped, and we spent an evening at a wonderful township restaurant called Dusty Road.
Charlie and I did a jetboat trip on the Zambezi, which seemed a little less violent than whitewater rafting, and it was so cool to see the waterfalls from the bottom of the gorge. Getting drenched on a hot day was a bonus!
Then the tour ended — and a new phase of the trip began. My mom flew in to travel around Africa with me for the final 12 days, and Charlie stayed with us for the first four.
We stayed four nights at the wonderful Waterfalls Lodge, which was such a nice place to catch our breath. The food was great, and you could get an hourlong massage AND a 45-minute facial for just $95 USD!
We got breakfast at the Lookout Cafe, overlooking the gorge; we took a fancier sunset cruise; and we went to the Boma dinner, where we ate local food, played drums, and danced.
Next, Mom and I headed to Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe. Hwange was a very different experience from Botswana — the wildlife was much more sparse. But when we had sightings, they were EXCEPTIONAL.
The highlight was seeing four cheetahs, a mother and her three cubs, three game drives in a row! We even saw the mother teach her cubs how to hunt an injured young Cape buffalo, but the other buffalo reared up and charged them!
We also spent time in the local community, visiting a school, a women’s health clinic, and the local anti-poaching task force.
We returned to Livingstone in Zambia for two brief nights, and in between, went to the Elephant Cafe — a place on the river where you can feed rescue elephants before having an outstanding meal. It was the best meal I ate on the Botswana/Zambia/Zimbabwe portion of the trip.
Finally, we crossed into Botswana and finished with two nights in Chobe. By then, I think we were both pretty tired, but we got some more wildlife sightings in, including some lions that had killed a zebra and dragged it beneath a tree.
We had an extra night in Johannesburg, so we stayed at a hotel I love, 54 on Bath (and Mom REALLY loved it, too!), and did a private walking tour with Lufuno of WithLocals, who is an awesome lady, and we left feeling like friends.
Good times in Prague. Good food, good friends, good times. We headed out to Srbsko and Řevnice in the countryside to enjoy the beautiful weather and some local beers.
My Czech American friend Esther from Boston visited Prague for a week, and we watched the eclipse, did a day trip to Kutná Hora (my pick for one of the best day trips from Prague), and went to a tufting class! Tufting is when you create a little rug out of fabric. It was easy and so fun.
And I FINALLY got to see The Odyssey after it was out for two months. (Prague is home to one of only six 70mm IMAX cinemas in Europe, so people have been traveling from all over and it’s been entirely sold out most weeks.)
Burnout. I knew I’d be dealing with travel burnout when my summer schedule materialized. Between the beginning of June and the end of September, I had five trips scheduled and was away for more than 50% of the time overall.
Ordinarily, I wouldn’t let my schedule get that bad — but these trips were built around weddings, birthdays, and family trips. And they were all AMAZING TRIPS and I am so glad I went on all of them!! I would do all of them again! But my mental health did pay for it.
So yes. I spent much of August feeling adrift, angsty, and disorganized. I felt like I couldn’t get any reasonable work done.
If a schedule like this happens again, I will sacrifice my birthday trip, perhaps postponing it until a time when things are less crazy.
The camping pee situation. We camped three times in Botswana on our tour — the first had ensuite tents, the second was on a salt pan free of animals, but the third time was camping in simple tents in the national park, extremely close to where we had seen a hyena.
In short: we were told it was not safe to use the toilets at night. They suggested we hold it, or jump outside the tent for a second, pee right there, and jump back in.
Well, there was no way I was peeing after hearing that!! Basically, Charlie fell asleep immediately but I was up for hours worrying that I would have to pee in the middle of the night. Then I fell asleep and Charlie woke up actually having to pee in the middle of the night!
We both woke up early and held it until the sun rose and we were cleared to use the toilet again. Knowing what I know now, I would have brought some kind of women’s portable urinal just to remove the anxiety.
A scary boat experience. The speedboat ride to the Elephant Cafe was surprisingly thrilling — you go over lots of rapids and get close to crocodiles! And it was a blast on the way there.
But on the way back, the boat suddenly conked out and at first our driver wouldn’t say what was wrong. Then he assured us not to worry, because he contacted his boss and they would send another boat to get us if we needed one. WHAT?!
I should add that after my shipwreck in Indonesia in 2011, I had severe anxiety on boats for several years. Even on something as small as a rowboat. (While I was never diagnosed, a friend who is a military spouse told me my symptoms were consistent with PTSD.)
Today I’m mostly fine on boats, but that anxiety flares up when something goes wrong — and it did this day. You DO NOT want to be on a broken boat on the Upper Zambezi. If no one rescues you, YOU GO OVER THE FALLS. If a hippo doesn’t eat you first.
Anyway — the engine was slow, but we made it back in one piece. It was not fun for me.
Flight drama. My mom and I nearly missed not just one but three flights home from Africa!
I’ll be brief: our driver in Johannesburg did not follow Uber directions or Google Maps directions, probably taking his “special secret airport route,” and our 35-minute journey to the airport turned into an hour. Oh, and our check-in was in one terminal and our flight left from another terminal. We made it JUST in time.
(Lesson for you: plan to arrive at OR Tambo Airport much earlier than you think you need to. I would aim to get there three hours before your flight.)
Then on the flight from Johannesburg to Dubai, the flight attendant hit my mom’s knee hard with the beverage cart, her knee swelled up pretty badly, and the crew urged us to go to the Dubai Airport Medical Center during our layover.
The medical staff were great and she was cleared to fly quickly — BUT they could not find anyone to transfer her back in a wheelchair. So we basically had to wait, continuously hound the staff to CALL AGAIN, and long story short, we came within minutes of missing our next flights (hers to Boston and mine to Prague), arriving just in time for final boarding. Sheesh.
My mom is feeling much better now, and I’m thankful that Charlie and I had the foresight to upgrade her to business class on her 14-hour flight to Boston. 14 hours in economy with a knee injury would NOT have been fun.
Best eSIM for Italy — You know I’m an Italy expert, and this has plenty of information not only on different kinds of eSIMs, but things you need to know when staying connected in Italy!
PHPTRAVELS v8