Last Post til Kilimanjaro

After a relaxing and wonderful couple of days on Zanzibar, which included haggling over everything including the price of a grilled banana and a horrible bout of seasickness on the ferry back, it is time to head north and towards Kilimanjaro. Keep your thoughts with us as we battle cold, altitude, and who knows what else to reach 5896 meters! We will try to check back in a week, assuming there is some internet at our hotel...

Please Support Soft Power Education

Friends,

I have decided that I am going to spend my last few weeks in Africa volunteering in Uganda for an organization called Soft Power Education. This organization helps build and refurbish schools and educational materials in Uganda. I learned of this organization from one of my Dragoman overland tour guides, as they sometimes bring groups there to volunteer. Thus, I'm highly confident that this will be a really worthwhile use of my time, and a great experience.

Soft Power does ask that volunteers pay for their own food and accommodation (no worries), and try to do a small amount of fundraising to help cover overhead and materials. If you can spare a few dollars to help this organization, I would really appreciate it! You can visit my fundraising page at http://www.justgiving.com/michellew54. (The organization is UK based, so the page is set up to receive pounds, but fyi, 2 US dollars equals approx. 1 pound.)

Thank you!

By the way, Nick and Lindsay have arrived and we had a lovely day out on and in the sea yesterday, snorkling near Mnemba Island nature reserve here in Zanzibar.

Jambo!

A quick post to let you all know I'm alive and well, and to make you all envious of the fact that I am sitting on a BEAUTIFUL Zanzibar beach, along the warm and lovely Indian Ocean, counting down the hours until Nick and Lindsay arrive! I'm extremely excited, and will try to post some good stories and photos after we conquer Kilimanjaro next week!!!

Close Encounters

We just arrived in Malawi after a great time in Zambia. The last few days were spent camping right outside South Luangwa National Park. When I say "right outside", it really doesn't mean much, as the park has no fences and animals are free to wander through the campsite. Our outdoor dinner was moved inside due to a crazy elephant one night (who also destroyed some random tent), a hippo decided to practically rub its fat ass up against our truck another night, last night there was allegedly a leopard roaming around my tent about an hour after I stepped outside to relieve myself, and this morning a monkey's poo almost fell directly into my cereal bowl from the tree above. The monkeys are cute but also a nuisance, and, upon close inspection, have very sharp teeth. We also went on a couple game drives in the park, and on our night drive were meters away from a pride of lions, including three cubs. One of the lionesses was roaming quite closely around our vehicle at one point, and although I knew we probably looked like one solid object instead of individual potential snacks, it was still a bit daunting!

The next week will be more about the people and the lake here in Malawi, and I'm looking forward to a possible beach soccer match with local children!

Truck Life

Since I'm sometimes easily irritated, there are many times when sharing a small truck with 19 people really gets on my nerves, but for the most part I have managed not to tear anyone's head off. I find myself using all sorts of British English - loo, reckon, torch, palava... (Damn colonialists!) Generally the group is quite fun, but I know some of you want some nasty dirt so here it is. There is one woman I like to refer to as "The Nemesis" because there is no one on the truck who really likes her, apart from her bf, though half the time they fight anyway. Mostly because she is a bossy lunatic who takes herself far too seriously and has zero sense of humor, or humour. Humility still escaped her when, on our recent two day canoe safari, Nemesis and Co. couldn't figure out how to operate a canoe and had the biggest canoe zig-zag I have ever seen. They kept crashing into EVERYONE else and then pushing our canoes out of their way! Being in hippo territory on a sometimes fast moving river, well, this was not a popular move. But this is mild compared to other nonsense. The worst bit for me was witnessing Nemesis ripping a customer service rep a new one for no reason other than she was stressed and then (poorly) justifying it the next day when I tried to call her out on it. Eff off I say!

I get to see a lot of different things while traveling by truck, including my favorite - lots and lots of friendly people who like to wave at us. Especially little children. Except for one knee-high lass who threw a stick at us and pointed accusingly. I have a lot of thoughts on the different villages and poverty and various other things we see, but I will save those things for when I have more time, and haven't just ranted about evil people.

I am currently in Zambia, have survived the canoe safari on the Lower Zambezi without any terrifying hippo encounters (because seeing them 50 meters away while in a canoe was terrifying enough), and will get to do some game drives in the next few days in South Luanga. Oh, and I found it a bit worrying that I could never spot the crocs on the shoreline. But since I didn't see them, they couldn't terrify me. ;)

By Any Means Possible, Including Elephant

The past week and a half has definitely lived up to African adventure! Oscar, our truck, had some troubles, and in order to keep on schedule we used some random forms of transport to try to stay on schedule. As well as adjusting the schedule a bit to accommodate Oscar. :( The first time it happened we were stuck at the Cheetah Park in northern Namibia - not my idea of a great time, surrounded by wild cats (mostly behind fences). We rode through the reserve on the back of a pickup truck and our guides threw fresh pieces of donkey, as the cheetahs stalked our truck. I swear I had a cat nightmare like that once, only no one had any donkey parts to fend them off.

Because the truck was broke down, we also got the chance to visit a local Hemba village and learn about tribal culture. The children were SO excited to play with us. The villagers were all very welcoming and excited to share their culture with us. Interestingly, the women cover themselves with mud to cool and clean themselves, because the area is so dry. The men, however, bathe when they are out hunting.

Next we headed to Etosha NP for some game drives, riding in the roof seats for a nice view, along with some sun and wind in the face. Because of a heavy year of rains, animals seemed to be few and far between, but we did manage to see some lions chilling in the grass as we were almost about to leave.


Unfortunately, here is where the kerfuffle really began, because Oscar's engine seized and we were stuck. We stayed at a random park/campsite and had a chance to play a little pick up soccer (yay!), but ended up a full day behind schedule and transferring our packs and food about fifty billion times between vans and open-sided safari trucks and campsites and back on the open-sided vehicles to traditional Botswanan mokoros (canoes) to head off into the bush of the Okavango Delta. Through it all we were led by our legendary chef, Denford, who generally kept us in good spirits despite being basically without a home (Oscar). The mokoro puts you eye level with hippos, which are crazy crazy huge up close! Here's a pic of my mokoro guide:


Our time in Botswana was short but sweet - spending time in the bush camp with our mokoro guides and singing and dancing by the fire was definitely one of the trip highlights so far. The sunset mokoro trip, however, was a bit disappointing, as traveling through the reeds at that time of day leaves one covered in tiny bugs and other nastiness. I even got a spiderweb in the face at one point. Ew.



We also visited Chobe NP in Botswana and took a sunset boat cruise, and had a blast watching elephants and hippos play in the water. The hippos are disgusting, really. Noisy burping sounds, pooing all over each other, munching noisily, etc. Being in a large boat allowed us to get quite close to the animals and made the safari cruise incredible. Below are a few of my favorite photos from that trip!





Now, we have made it to Livingstone, Zambia, where we will spend a couple days relaxing. Yesterday we got drenched at Victoria Falls - it was like walking through a rain storm at some parts and very fun after being cooped up in a truck all morning. This morning I went on a elephant ride, which was SO much fun on Madinda the dancing elephant, who felt the need to lift his feet and rock us around a bit. Elephants can have such personality.
Apparently Madinda faked an injury once to try and get extra treats after seeing another injured elephant receive special treatment! I also got to feed him treats afterwards and have confirmed the fact that the ellies are my favorite African animal!