BIG FAT UPDATE

Address: #1 ENRIQUE, PIECE OF GRASS, SOMWHERE IN AFRICA

So, here we are again…I have a few minutes and a loaner computer so thought I would jot down a little note. I realize I have said very little to nothing at all about my day to day life here but have loaded up with all the fun stuff I am doing. Guess that is because most of what is going on is quite fun and exciting and even the little day to day stuff that goes on can be amusing. We have had a load of really early starts and by early morning, I mean 5:00am or 5:30am breakfast and 6:00am departures. Often it is for fun stuff like safaris balloon rides or early ferries to places like Zanzibar but that is not to say that we have not had our share of getting up early for long drive days that involve boarders that may or may not be difficult. In these cases, we are in the truck for around 14 hours and eat lunch while driving. Boarders thus far have been a breeze and no one has been arrested or thrown out (yet) – just the usual waiting in line, passing a few pleasantries with the attendant and then getting a stamp, often on page 36 when there is plenty of open space on several pages well before page 36.

Home is a little green military looking tent (Enrique) and Claudia (truck) and whatever flat spot we can find at our camp site to pitch the tent. My roommate, Susanna (Sus), and I share the tent and have plenty of space to spread out and poke each other in the middle of the night should either of us require a bathroom break when bush camping with the lions, leopards and hyena. The one time I did have to wake her up, we scoped out the area, scanned the tall grass behind the tent with the flashlight and well, shortly after returning to the tent, a hyena came and marked his territory right where I did. Chook and Colleen, our tent neighbors that night figured that it has started raining until they herd the sniffing around of the hyena. Last night we had an elephant stroll through the camp. Never managed to see him but certainly herd his footsteps, sniffing and munching on the trees. Sus swears she saw little beady eyes in the dark.

We have divided the 19 people on the truck into cook groups and we rotate through the groups so that each group has a day cooking. This basically means we help our cook with the cutting up of fruits and veggies and whatever other prep work he needs done and then that we help with all the pots and pans and putting away of condiments at the end of the evening. We are pretty particular about getting everything put away at night so that baboons, monkeys, hyenas, elephants etc. etc. don’t come and raid the food and garbage, although this has happened one or twice. Each person does his/her own dish and then after, we all do what is calling ‘flapping’ where we wave our plates, bowls, knives, forks and spoons wildly in the air to help them dry faster. I am sure some of us have lifted off a bit during one of the flapping frenzies. As we have come south, the time required to dry the plate has shortened considerably. We do get quite a few stares though as 19 of us stand there waving blue, orange, and white plates about in the sun and occasionally throw in a few lunges or bird type flaps instead of waving back and forth.

On the road, toilets are al fresco and often on the side of the road. I am surprised no one has taken a picture of us girls lined up behind the truck when we have to stop in areas with no bushes. It is probably a good thing that the locals don’t own cameras cause they are certainly interested in what us crazy mzungu are doing and tend to appear out of nowhere. We can literally stop in the middle of nowhere for lunch or a break – no homes, no people, long stretch of road ahead and behind and within two minutes of us getting off the truck we have an audience. They just seem to ooze out of the shrubs and trees wherever we stop. The most unnerving part about it all is that they just seem to sit there are stare at us and not say anything or ask for anything or want to interact in any way. Guess that is how the animals in the parks feel as we all come barrelling down on them in our safari trucks.

Evenings are often spent having beers, tea and whatever else is around in the camp site if we are in the bush (under the stars of course) or in the local camp bars, which thus far have been quite fun as we get a chance to talk to other overland groups that pass through. Meals have been quite good and tasty, although not good for the waist line as I am doing very little exercise. Breakfasts consist of bacon, eggs, toast, cereal, fruit and yogurt (obviously you don’t have to eat it all). Lunch is often sandwiches, which means it will be a VERY long time before I will want to have another sandwich. The meat product is often quite suspect but hell, it tastes OK and hasn’t gotten anyone sick yet so I’ll continue to eat it. Recently we have had a lot of leftovers for lunch, which means we make up pasta salads with the dressing and spaghetti Bolognese sandwiches. Dinner is often soup, followed by chicken or beef and loads of veggies, which we all love. Our chef, Charles, is quite capable and does wonders with the veggies on our little two burner propane stove.

So, there is the mundane piece of my life, now on to something a little more exciting for next time.


MAS ANIMALES – SOUTH LUANGWA NATINOAL PARK

When I last left you I believe I was in Malawi at the lake and desperately avoiding the bilharzia. From there, we moved into Zambia and went on the South Luangwa National Park to stay at a wilderness camp on one of the oxbows of the currently very dry river. It was fantastic! The camp site was wonderful, the pool, while small, quite refreshing and with a view out over the river and the bar facing out toward the river for some excellent wildlife viewings. We did a couple of game drives there, one in the morning and one in the evening. The morning drive was quite good as we saw a couple of lions having their breakfast on the beach by the river – buffalo this time – again, lovely crunching and cracking sounds as he attempted to dislocate and gnaw off the from leg of the beat. Of course we had to watch for a bit. At one point someone banged something and the lion looked up at us, face all red, just like he had done a poor job of applying lipstick that morning before heading out for the day. Not sure why we have not seen many lionesses with the kills. The night drive was focused a bit on finding a leopard as they are more nocturnal. A tour of the park brought us to about 100 elephants milling about in the open grassland and blocking our path up the road. Two little babies were having a go at attacking each other, head-butting at full charge to see who could knock who off their feet. It was gorgeous to just watch them wandering about and putting at the trees. We had a lovely sundowner on a bank above an open area and watched more elephants, giraffe and zebra while we drank ice cold beers and sodas and then started off into the night to find out leopard. Very strange feeling to be driving around in the dark, the spotlight the only thing shining ahead and dust swirling about the open top truck. We did find two leopards but to me, it was quite a sad and shocking experience. At one point we had one of them completely surrounded by trucks and lights and he couldn’t quite figure out which way to go. Many of the drivers were speeding around to get their clients a better look and in doing so scaring the leopards and also probably their prey. I wish we could have just sat and watched which really is what we were supposed to do. Our driver said that he was going to report a couple of the other drivers as they are told not to do that and all have guiding licences that can be revoked for poor behaviour. On the way out of the park we came across a sick lioness sitting in the middle of the road. She didn’t even move when the truck came up and we parked right along side of her. I could have reached down (it was quite an open truck) and patted her on the head, which I would have quite liked to do but would most likely have lost a hand in doing. When she looked up, my soul just ached. Her eyes had such sorrow and intelligence in them. I will never forget her face looking up and also the fear that at any moment she could decide to move and go for one of us.

We have pretty much all rated this camp as our best camp since we had elephants come for a visit two of the three nights – and by visit, I mean walking right outside and sniffing at our tents – a couple of great safaris, fantastic viewing bar and a last night when an assortment of animals decided to come of a visit at the watering holes – hippos, elephants, impala and giraffes.


TEA WITH ELEPHANTS

After S.Luangwa we headed on our way to the Kafue River where we would stop for a canoe trip down the Lower Zambezi River. On the way, however, Claudia decided to throw a few fits and this time, quite a large one. After two leaky tires in the morning we finally got on the road and were well on our way when BANG, hmmm, that didn’t sound good, lets pull over…ugh…broken axel….everybody off, lunch here! We spent about four hours on the side of a very inhospitable road, cowering in whatever shade we could while Jase and Lucy worked out what our next steps should be. Turns out we were basically sitting in a graveyard of overturned truck and on a runaway ditch so not only were we in bad shape with the truck, we were in bad shape for our safety. Jase went off to arrange transport and by 5:00 in the evening we were loaded into a flat bed lorry and taken the remaining two hours on to our camp for the canoe trip. We were up early the next morning and got ready to braver the croc and hippo infested waters. As it was two night and three days of camping we were all quite loaded down and low to the water, which is a bit discomforting considering the stories we had heard about people being pulled out of their canoes by a croc because they had an elbow hanging out. It was a beautiful three days and the big bonus was that no one was eaten by a croc or tipped by a hippo! We even got in a bit of swimming. In one place we had just passed a croc an then the guide said, OK, we stop here for a little splash. We all thought he was crazy but jumped in anyway and had a lovely time playing in the water and cooling down. There were tons of hippos about (which in my book is better than a croc) and you could look down the river and see elephants drinking and splashing about. In fact, we had lunch with about 40 elephants. Here we were happily preparing lunch and napping on the river bank when a row of elephants wandered through. We got a thorough checking out and then on they went. About two seconds later, another group came wandering through, checked us out and kept going. This went on for about 30 minutes and we all just stood there thinking, aren’t these guys a little too close? It was especially freaky when a couple big guys (or gals) stopped, looked, flapped their ears forward and took a step in our direction. Hmmmm, run into the water and brave the crocs and hippos or brave the elephant? Not sure which is the better choice…however, they kept going and all splashed off into the water and across the channel to the other side. It was quite a site watching 40 elephants climb down the banks and then wade across, their bodies gleaming.

At night we camped on the islands in the center of the river and listened to the hippos call back and forth to each other. They sound like they are right on top of you even though they are way down river. They grunted at us during the day as well, especially if we got a little too close. Maybe they are just laughing at us for being silly and canoeing down the river when it is so much nicer just to laze about in the river.


FREE FALL DOWN A GORGE 70 METERS? ARE YOU CRAZY?

In Vic Falls now after having a successful canoe trip with all limbs intact and Claudie fixed and ready to go again. We are here for a few days and a bit of adrenaline as they offer all sorts of crazy blood pumping activities. I am opting to do the rafting (have to see which one is better – the Nile or the Zambezi) and just did the Gorge Swing. I still can’t believe that just this morning I was jumping off of a 120 meter cliff down a gorge just below Victoria Falls with nothing but a couple of climbing harnesses on and two climbing ropes attached to me (70 meters is free fall). In fact, I did it three times and every time I screamed like you would not believe. On the first one I did a hand stand off, the second one I just jumped (called a pin drop) and the third one I decided to go off backwards. Falling off backwards was definitely the hardest one to start off with as you don’t trust just falling back off a ledge but the front forward really got me to let out a blood curdling scream. About ¾ of the way down you start to think (OK well you aren’t really thinking but your body sure as hell reacts) that the rope hasn’t caught yet and you are falling straight down into some nice big black rocks with no hope of even trying to hit the water (not that that would be much better if you did hit the water). I started off with a nice yell and as I kept falling and falling and falling my scream got more and more panicked, then the rope caught and I swung out over the water laughing and screaming “that was amazing!” And, it truly was. I think now I am ok with the sensation and won’t need to add a bungy jump or any other nutty fall to my list of activities, although some of my group swears they are going to get me sky diving in Namibia over the desert. It was fun watching the people jump as well, especially their facial expressions. They would start off with a look of absolute horror and within a couple of seconds (it was on 4 seconds to the bottom) be laughing and smiling and screaming with joy. There was lots of whooping and quite a few “Oh Shits” as people went crashing down.

The backward one was definitely my favourite as you get a better swing out of it at the end. All in all a fantastic morning and I am ready for a nap – too much excitement for my poor little body!

Tomorrow I am off for the rafting – something like 23 rapids of class 4 & 5. Should be a good day!