Under Big African Skies, Volume the Second

Hello again. Sorry to bother you so soon, but we're trying our best to get this whole thing finished out. Those that haven't read Volume 1 of Africa can skip down past this one to start Africa at the beginning. Or you can click this link if you're lazy. Our story now continues...

From Chobe, we all climbed into the truck to cross the Namibian border to spend two nights in the Ngepi camp which got us a little closer to the Okavango Delta region of Botswana. The camp itself was pretty decent aside from the huge spiders trying to get into our tent and creepy hidey spiders hanging out in the bamboo siding of every building and toilet. The coolest part of the camp were the bathrooms, all totally open to the sky and with creative themes, such as the “Toilet of Eden” which was set on a pedestal nestled in a rather large garden with walls and a free standing sink. Laura had her first truly African shower experience at Ngepi as well – half way into her freezing cold shower the camp she managed to exhaust the camp's water supply just after soaping up. So it was about fifteen minutes before I ambled along and heard her pathetic little whimpers and got them to turn on the generators. There was some self-medicating involving whisky and ginger soda that evening to deal with the post traumatic stress.



Ngepi camp was our first chance to really get the “the animals here will kill you” speech. Basically, the rule for getting out of the tent to pee at night is to poke your head out of the tent and shine your light around to see if you can see any eyes shining back at you. Green eyes are herbivores and that means you can probably go pee if you’re careful. Yellow or red eyes mean it eats meat and you’re going to have to hold it for as long as it takes for the red eyes to be replaced by green eyes, which isn’t going to be anytime soon.

Ngepi was fenced in so it wasn’t like lions and hyenas were going to come snuffling at the tent door, but there were plenty of hippos in the area. Those who aren’t familiar (most of you should be because I couldn’t stop talking about it before we left on our trip) should know that hippos kill more people than any other animal in Africa each year. Yes, the friendly fat hippo that looks like it’s too blubbery to be a danger. They’re territorial and aggressively mean. As our guide put it, “if you manage to get yourself between a hippo and the water or a hippo and its baby, you’re dead.” They’ll bite you in half and leave the pieces for the crocs to munch on. Knowing this, it’s a little unnerving to get out of your tent at night when the water is only about 20 feet away, even if the eyes staring back at you are green. Its especially unnerving when you hear the hippos calling to each other in the middle of the night sounding like Jabba the Hut laughing. I may be a weenie but I found them freaking menacing.

After hanging out at Ngepi we pushed back into Botswana and entered the Okavango Delta region. This area is particularly special because its where all of the rain that falls in Angola eventually ends up. Instead of pooling into a permanent lake, the water spills out onto the flatish lands of Botswana every year after the rainy season to create a marshy land teeming with life. The grass grows high and animals flock to the beautifully clear and clean water. When we arrived at the delta (after many Civilization IV pangs from seeing all of the grass huts in Botswana) we jumped into our mokoros (that’s the type of canoe you see in our pictures) and were delivered to our “wild camp” which ended up being more of a “not-quite-wild-luxury-camp” on one of the islands in the delta. Even with the camp basically enclosed by fences (wild camp means there are no fences between you and imminent danger) there were still plenty of animals in the area. A guide took us around the island to see the hippo poo splatters, elephant leavings, porcupine quills, termite mounds, and plenty of edible vegetation (not particularly appetizing with the hippo poo splattered all over it).



The camp itself was nice despite the wasps making their homes in the toilet and shower rooms. We even had tents already up for us that had actual beds and room enough to actually stand up straight. But, just in case I forgot, the hippos were happy to remind me where I was in the middle of the night. Stepping out of the tent to a chorus of about 10 hippos laughing their Jabba laugh from what seemed about 20 feet away basically made me fall right back in the tent on my ass grunting a couple of choice four letter words to make sure Laura’s confidence was in the right place.

The next morning we all climbed into the mokoros at sunrise for another ride. This time we went farther into the delta for a game walk on one of the bigger islands. The mokoro ride was pretty nice if you take away the thousands of spiders falling into the boat and the millions of small insects trying to fly in your mouth, eyes, and nose. Sure, there was the odd tiny frog flopping in the canoe to make you feel better, but all Laura and I could do was be happy we weren’t in the front of the mokoro line breaking the path. Considering every piece of grass had a spider web across it, poor Cinzia and Jacko had more stowaways than anyone else.



Once we got to the island, we had a pretty uneventful game walk, truth be told. We saw a couple of warthogs, a couple of elephants, a family of zebra, and troops of baboons. The strangest bit happened after we ran into another group that had seen lions running around on the island. Our guides decided to “stalk” the lions to get a glimpse. At first, we were all pretty pumped at the prospect of seeing some lions but after we started walking into the area where they were sighted only to find ourselves in the middle of grass taller than us with guides only carrying fruit as a weapon, the idea seemed less than great. Sure, the baboons in the trees weren’t freaking out which meant we probably weren’t anywhere near the lions, but it was still unnerving. Of course, crazy lady once again regaled us with her bountiful knowledge and said, “Don’t be silly! They won’t attack you! Jeez guys… just shoo them away.”



In any case, we didn’t get eaten by lions and on the return trip our poler took us into a hippo pool on purpose which made us really sweaty and uncomfortable, but eventually we made it back to camp where we had the chance to learn to drive the mokoros. I didn’t manage to fall in, but my foul mouthed curses let everyone back at camp know that I wasn’t exactly an expert. In my defense, I wasn’t wearing my glasses for fear of losing them so I was flying blind. That night we were treated to a local singing and dancing group. They were… interesting even though the drummers had no rhythm that we could see and one of the dancers was perhaps the smelliest person that I’ve ever come in contact with (and I’ve gone to GenCon). Holy schnikies! There had to be something wrong chemically with that guy. Several people almost threw up. You think we are being mean, but you weren’t there.

The next day we took off towards the Makgadikgadi Pans, which are basically huge salt flats, to Planet Baobob Camp which as you might have guessed, has some beautiful baobob trees. Unfortunately Laura took ill along the way having eaten or drank something that turned out to be bad bad bad. So we upgraded from our tent to one of the ensuite huts and skipped activities so that she could feel better. Let’s just say that after two days together in a hut with no dividing walls there are no secrets left between us. After we finally started her on antibiotics things cleared up pretty quick so that she was ready for action as we headed to South Africa’s Kruger National Park on our detour around Zimbabwe.



South Africa is an interesting place. On one hand, you see the immediate step up in civilization in terms of things like grocery stores, agriculture and populated towns once you cross the border from the surrounding countries. But then you stop in a campsite near the border and witness a drunken knife fight break out outside the local bar (which also happened to be in the campsite). Sure, no one actually got stabbed, but it escalated to the point where several people had to step in and remove the long metal wire that had also been broght into the fight for a reach advantage. Then, the next day you roll into a town to go food shopping only to have your truck broken into in full daylight right in front of a row of witnesses who “didn’t see anything.” Thankfully only a couple of bags were taken along with a bundle of Zim money worth less than a penny. Welcome to South Africa!

In any case, once we got to Kruger, things looked up. The park was very nice and we saw all kinds of beautiful animals including two different sightings of wild dogs, which are pretty rare. We were also treated to the usual suspects along with our first sighting of rhinos, but who cares about any of those things when you have the chance to see the most beautiful color aqua blue that exists in nature. The fact that it happens to be attached to a monkey’s scrotum just makes it so much more…. magically ridiculous. None of us really knew what we were in for as we frantically shouted “show us your nuts!” at the large male vervet monkey sitting on the side of the road. Knowing full well the magificence of his genitals, the monkey displayed them proudly to a chorus of giddy laughter, shocked exclaimations, and no small bit of wonder. I mean, just LOOK AT THEM! The pictures don’t even do the color justice.



After that, nothing was special anymore, so we left the park with the plan to head to Swaziland the next day. The drive to Swazi was a little dreary and grey though through lovely, dramatic hillscapes. We were all a bit down knowing that we might never see such beautiful blue balls again and at the prospect of camping in the rain. Thankfully we were able to stay in dorms rather than tents and the next morning we were presented with a gorgeous day. We were staying at Mliliwane NP, which is one of the only game parks in Africa that allows unguided game walks. What’s particularly charming about the place is that warthogs and several species of antelope wander around in the premises. I was about two feet from a warthog that looked like it wanted to go rooting through our luggage and was plenty close to another impressive antelope who we discovered licking the grill of the barbeque from the night before…sausage, can you blame it?



In any case, we took a nice hike up to a great viewpoint with a bunch of our new truck buddies. The walk back down was considerably more interesting. Unbeknownst to us, the campground we were staying in decided to let toddlers draw their trail maps. They turned out to be rather inacurate, to say the least. Thankfully, we had GI James, soldier extraordinaire from ye olde merry England to break many a path, become a human bridge for the ladies (not even a joke, he actually stood in a ravine and the ladies walk across his outstretched hands), and find us a way home. All of this after pulling a Buffalo Bill at the top of the mountain much to our dismayed hilarity. If you don’t know what that is, chances are you don’t want to know.



Swaziland turned out to be a terrific stop before we finally moved on into Mozambique for some beach time fun. But we’ll get to that in the next volume to come sometime in the next couple of weeks though it may not happen until we get back into SF. We'll be heading up into Maine tomorrow and basically be on the move for the next couple of weeks. We'll also have the trip awards and our video extravaganza along with our last comments from the US travels and final deep thoughts (deeper and deeper, way down) to wow you with. Aren't you lucky!

Much love to all,
Dan & Laura

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