Under Big African Skies, Volume 1

Africa is really big. You might know this. You may have even looked at a map lately wondering where we've been (we're assuming by now that you spend most of your waking hours wistfully imagining our mystical adventures) and thought to yourself "Hey, that Africa... it's pretty big." But until you've driven across such a small portion of it for such a long time, it’s probably hard to have perspective about its gigantism. It took us five weeks of fast travel to see about 1/4 of the continent and really only saw about 1/8 of that 1/4. The experience was one that we won't forget for many reasons. It's just... different there in a way that's hard to explain. That and the monkeys have bright blue balls.

As always, for all the pictures and bigger versions of the ones you see in the blog, visit our Flickr page

[Also, before I forget, since there's been so much disturbing interest in our disturbances, we've got another Apoocalypse Now update for you. Find the new entries (several of which are brought to you by our Africa friends) marked with NEW!]

As you may or may not remember, we began our African trip in Johannesburg, South Africa (pronounced Sewth Efdreeka). This is a city with some heavy baggage. It boasts one of the highest crime rates in the world, an influx of refugees from other brutalized nations in Africa (you may have seen report of some of the xenophobic violence going on in South Africa at the moment), and of course the disgusting history of Apartheid that did a lasting damage that's going to take some real forgiveness and probably some serious forgetfulness to push past.

We didn't completely know what to expect, but the beginning of our stay went something like this: land at Joberg airport to find it looking a bit like the processing center for the foreign refugee camp in Children of Men; drive towards the city only for me to get a sudden and, so far, unshakable desire to play Civilization IV (only to be encouraged later by so many grass huts); finally arrive at hostel which rests cozily in a nest of razor wire, security cameras, and armed response signage; and to be told immediately by the owner that we shouldn't wander the neighborhood at night and not to ever go past the market at the end of the street.

With these encouraging words of the city’s magnificence to bolster our confidence, we struck out to get our shopping done for the upcoming overland truck/camping trip. We had originally planned on sending our camping gear to South Africa to grab before the truck trip, but then found out that our plan was a bit cost prohibitive. Thankfully, there was a nice REI-like store in a mall not far from the hostel that had everything we needed. Geared up, we decided to get a tour of the city and the township of Soweto on our last day in Joberg. This turned out to be an eye opening experience (only one of many). We were first taken to the Top of Africa (the tallest building in Africa which has an amazing view of the surrounding area) where our guide pointed out the areas that we “must never go”. Apparently some ungodly number of dead bodies are discovered in a certain area of the city every morning. The staggering number of refugees from other African nations supposedly provide plenty of replacements.



Our tour of Soweto Township was depressing. Going through the history of South African Apartheid would take a while (700 pages or so according to Mandela's A Long Walk to Freedom, which we'd recommend if you want to know more), so we’ll just say that Soweto was often at the center of it. Inside of Soweto, we got the tour of an incredibly poor section, called Kliptown, which was also very important to the era and where the Freedom Charter was signed in the 1950s. At this point, it’s basically turned into a refugee camp where kids play in sewage and even the basest human needs are struggling to be met. In South Africa's defense, they've been trying to move the people living in these appalling conditions into nicer homes, but any of the shacks vacated are immediately filled with new refugees from other countries before they can be demolished. It's a big problem and it's hard to see any real solution.



The following day, our schedule took us into Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe where we were to meet our tour group. We were informed by the owner of our hostel in Joberg (who had previously warned us of the malicious shadows hiding in every corner of her city) that she thought, in no uncertain terms, that we were insane for going into the war zone of Zimbabwe. By her descriptions, we believed we’d land under machinegun fire and need to run zig-zag routes between foxholes and hope we weren’t unlucky enough to become intimately familiar with a mortar round. At this point, we had gotten a fairly good idea that this woman was at least a little unbalanced and decided to risk the trip considering there were no travel warnings from the US or UK.

So we flew into Zimbabwe and were greeted by song rather than gunfire. That’s not to say the situation wasn’t a little startling. After seeing an elephant crossing sign and having the sudden jolt of “holy crap, we’re in Africa,” we were stopped on the road on the way into town at a police checkpoint and had a sudden jolt of “holy crap, we’re in Africa.” After our driver was harassed by the police and we were eyed suspiciously for several minutes as cars continuously flowed past us and the checkpoint, we were finally sent on our way and found the town itself fairly peaceful, though very poor. Most of the people we met were desperate to trade anything they had for US dollars or bits of clothing. Our shoes were of particular interest, though after three months of travel we wouldn’t have imposed them on anyone.

It doesn’t help that the currency is a joke. In just one lunch, Laura and I managed to spend 700,000,000 Zim Dollars on sandwiches and drinks. Oddly enough, these businesses were charging more in USD than ZD, which was encouraging tourists to spend the wrong kind of cash. I seems that they should want USD and lower their prices to get encourage tourists to use it. I mean, the government already knocked three zeroes off the currency last year for crying out loud and the dollars actually have printed expiration dates. Whaaa?



When we weren’t being followed by insistent street merchants, or searching for restaurants that actually had food to sell, the town was pleasant enough despite its desperate way. I mean, when you can wander into a town and see a huge troop of baboons wander around alongside the people, its hard not to have some fun.

The morning after we arrived, we finally met up with our group leaders and found them to be immediately likeable. We also learned that we’d be heading out that evening for the co-driver’s birthday party on a sunset cruise (booze cruise) on the Zambezi river. After spending the day organizing the following day’s activities, we met up with the group and proceeded to get roaring drunk. The group, including our two leaders and cook, was made up of 7 Canadians, 4 Aussies, 3 Americans (including us), 2 Brits, 1 Italian, and 1 Zimbabwean.



The cruise itself was brilliant, including our first sightings of wild elephants and hippos, and ended with a nice sunset. The party then moved to another bar as the merrymaking hit its full stride. Considering the amount of social lubricant everyone poured down their throats, the evening was a successful ice-breaker. Dancing was followed by a night swim in the disgusting pool at the bar and a birthday broken toe for our co-driver. Several people lost their possessions along with small slices of their dignity, but it was all in the name of fun! It was also clear that we definitely fell into the right group.



While we would have loved to help raise the party to new heights of idiocy, all of the people that joined the trip in Victoria Falls (many came all the way from England, Egypt, or Nairobi) had made an appointment to walk with lions the next morning at dumb o’clock in the morning. None of us particularly felt like still being drunk while walking with the cute and cuddly killing machines so we bailed on the party a bit earlier than the rest of them. Thankfully, as it turns out, there were plenty more opportunities to make fools of ourselves along the way.

The next morning greeted us way to eagerly and early as we awoke to put our lives (or at least our limbs) in mortal danger by walking with lions. Turns out the little buggers are quite cute, especially when they’re only a few months old and slightly less aggressive and dangerous than the full grown versions. Yeah, the lions were all cubs, thankfully, because they were still unnerving to be around. They’re certainly beautiful animals, however, and having the opportunity to be so close to them was definitely special. This adventure also gave us our first glimpse into the insane mind of one of our fellow tourists. This woman was appalled to find that any of us were in any way scared of the lions. Her favorite sayings that day were “oh come on, lions aren’t going to attack you” and “there’s no reason you should be scared” and “here kitty, kitty! Aren’t you precious!” This turned out to be just the tip of a very bizarre egomaniacal iceberg of lunacy. For example, later in the trip in Swaziland she went chasing after a black mamba forcing her husband to step in to stop her. Who chases after a black mamba? Crazy people, that’s who.



After the lions, Laura and I moved on with our new friend Christine (she’s one of them Canadians) to watch her fling herself off of the Vic Falls bridge that spans the divide over the lower Zambezi and between Zimbabwe and Zambia. Sure, the operators basically had to throw her off the bridge, but she did do it. What I did was throw up a little in my mouth while watching.



After that, Laura and I headed to check out the falls themselves, which are every bit as impressive as you hear. Basically, it ruined every waterfall that I’ve seen or will see (except for maybe Iguazu if we mange to get there). The park itself was pretty nice and offered plenty of terrific view points. We were lucky enough not to get completely drenched by the spray (which you can see from over one mile away) and even get some decent pictures. We also saw some more baboons with their disgusting buttocks and some smaller vervet monkeys. One with the crazy eyes up and attacked Laura from behind. I had to step up and save her life. That’s right, I’ll fight a monkey for my woman.

Later that day we headed to the helicopter pad for our sky ride around Victoria Falls. This gave us a whole new appreciation for the size of the thing. You can see it in the pictures below for yourself, but it’s pretty freaking spectacular. We’ll have a movie or two of the falls in our video spectacoolAAr at the end of the trip.



That night, the hits just kept on coming as we went out for the official “welcome to the trip” dinner at a game restaurant called Boma. Not only did they have tribal dancing, a traditional fortune teller (who told me that I will have 9 children and Laura that she will have six…the math did not please her, but then again he told her she drinks too much wine to be strong enough to have children), singing, and drumming, but they also had a ridiculous buffet that included such tasty morsels as kudu, impala, ostrich, crocodile, and our very bestest new friend, the warthog. YUM is probably the correct word to describe the ugly buggers. Every warthog we saw after this dinner might as well have been a porkchop with legs as far as we were concerned.

We were also told at dinner that we had to flee Zimbabwe. It was becoming quite clear that Uncle Bob (Robert Mugabe) decided to steal the election that he most obviously lost a few weeks before (having not even allowed the release of the election results this entire time). So the UK issued a travel warning which meant that the insurance on our UK tour company’s truck, employees, and passengers would be null and void while in the country. Unfortunately, it meant we would have to miss Hwange NP, Antelope NP, and the Great Zimbabwe Ruins, which was really a shame. We were redirected to the awesome Kruger NP in South Africa, but it also meant that we had to add a significant amount of driving to the trip. The truck (named Helena by the way) was comfortable enough, but we definitely didn’t anticipate being in it so much.

In any case, the next day saw us fleeing towards Botswana’s Chobe NP with our tails between our legs. The difference from Zimbabwe was apparent almost immediately as we saw a) food available for purchase in a supermarket, b) Internet available, c) people spending money, and d) people working. The camp ground we stayed in wasn’t particularly nice but it served the purpose. We also found out at this point that our poor cook Dave had three different strains of Malaria attacking his system. Needless to say, he was out of commission for a few days even with the drugs.

Our time in Chobe was spent on a river cruise and a safari truck in the park. These were our first tastes of game drives and we liked them very much. We got some amazing views of a lot of different animals. Warthogs, giraffe, crocodiles, hippos, impala, kudu, monitor lizards, and all kinds of birds were about, but the best views we had were definitely of several families of elephants. Seeing an elephant in the wild (or any of these critters for that matter) is such a happier experience than seeing them in a zoo. Even when they’re only about 10 feet away from your truck fanning their ears like they want to fight you. They obviously have a pretty complex social structure, care very much for their young, and love to play in the water. They’re awesome animals and it’ll probably be kind of crappy to see them cooped up in a zoo enclosure after this. The prize of our game drive in the park was undoubtedly the leopard sighting though. Very rare and reclusive. It wasn’t a fully grown adult, but it was beautiful. Unfortunately it was also nearly night time as we were leaving so our pictures of it aren’t exactly brilliant.



So, as I mentioned in the last blog, we’re going to be splitting Africa up into pieces. Probably three pieces. It should be easier now that we’re sitting in Boston at our friends’ house. The next chunk will get into Namibia (laughing Jabba), Botswana (there's spiders in my mokoro!), South Africa again (ringside for the knife fight), and Swaziland (Buffalo Bill) with the last bit about Mozambique (my very own beach), Lesotho (truck parties and barfing dogs), and the last stretch of South Africa (the closest relative of the elephant is a fat rat) leading into Cape Town (lizards do push-ups here). We are back in the US now and find it strange that we’ll be heading home in a little more than two weeks. In any case, look for more installments to come in the next week or two.

Much love to all,
Dan & Laura