Whirlwind

Dear reader,

My travel companions!

How are you? It's been awhile, huh? Whoops, sorry 'bout that. I fully intended on giving you the blow-by-blow of my month long trek around south western Africa, but it was a long time ago, the details are getting fuzzy, and the thought of sitting down to write six more posts has kept me from doing just that. So instead I'm going write one more highlights-only posts of my trip. I'm sure you'll hear more of the details later. So here goes nothing.

Poling on the Delta

Day 3: Maun- mokoro trip. Peaceful, beautiful, nice to be on water again. Went on a game walk and saw a heard of zebras. After lunch, I tried my hand at poling and actually wasn't terrible (Ben-- I think I could take you on at paddle boarding!). Oh, and we almost hit a hippo on the way back. Note to self: hippos are really big. Like *really* big.

Sunset cruise on the Zambezi River

Day 4: To Livingstone- super lucky travel day. Hardly had to wait for anything, and we also managed to negotiate the exact right price for a taxi, despite not knowing the exchange rate. Score one for the Americans.

Day 5: Vic Falls- Zambian side. Words can't describe how gorgeous it is, you'll just have to wait for pictures (and even those don't do it justice. You should probably just book your trip and see for yourself...) We got drenched, but it was totally worth it.








Day 6: Vic Falls- Zimbabwe side. is it possible for the falls to be even more spectacular? Yes, yes it is. Also, got to handle American money again, it was weird. Got photographed for a Zimbabwe tourism website at lunch, and I ate crocodile skewers (all for you, Sean).





(I now take a break from the highlights-only post to go into detail about the craziest thing I did all trip: jump into the Batoka Gorge.)The restaurant was in a lodge, and the lodge (like most in the area) had a booking center where you can book all sorts of adventures and outings. I had wanted to try a zipline sort of thing, so we went over to check it out. I must have been feeling pretty brave, because I ended up signing up for the gorge swing...hey, once in a lifetime, right? Basically, they drove us out to the gorge right below the falls, strapped me into a harness (actually two), brought me out to the edge of the platform and told me to jump. Ok, it was a little more organized than that, but that was the gist. The guy who was on the platform with me told me that after I jumped, I would free fall 70m in 3 seconds, then drop into a pendulum swing. He had heard me say earlier that I was a math teacher and right before nudging me off, he said "quick, what speed will you fall at?" Uh, what?! Sorry sir, I'm slightly preoccupied by the 200m jump I'm about to take, can you repeat that? He told me to think about on the way down and report back. Yeah, ok. Then he gave me a nudge. I had a split second of "oh shit. what did I just do?" before the rush took over and all I could do was grin the rest of the way down. There I was, swinging in a harness with the roaring waters of the Zambezi river swirling 3 meters below me, and what did I do? Start thinking about that math problem of course! Well it was much easier to think about at the bottom of the gorge than it was at the top, and I quickly calculated an average speed of 23.333... m/s (this, of course, is based off of 70m in 3 seconds, which isn't entirely accurate if you actually calculate the acceleration due to gravity, which I did as I was being pulled up...yes, I'm a nerd, I know). When I was safely back on the ground, I was greeted by the impressed looking faces of Matt and Jenn, who handed me a Hunter's. They know me well.

So this happened. (Major photo props to Matt!)

On the crossing back into Zambia, we encountered the worst negotiator in all of Africa. When hyperinflation had reached it's peak in 2009, you could find Zimbabwean bank notes in hilariously high amounts, such as 500 million dollars. Now, they've scraped the Zimbabwean dollar, and are using American currency, but you people still sell the old (now worthless) bank notes as souvenirs. After I refused to pay $10 for 5 worthless pieces of paper, this man tried to haggle with me, but I kept refusing. Finally he said he would just give me one if I wished him luck. Uh, ok! Then another guy on the bridge offered to trade me a one billion dollar note for my shirt. Um, no thanks.

Breakfast view of "the Smoke that Thunders"
from the deck at the lodge.

Day 7: to Ngepi Camp. Took the Intercape Bus back into Namibia. Lots of religious/super melodramatic, awful acted movies blaring right above my head. Awesome. Got to the camp pretty late, but the staff re-opened the bar for us, then we all sat around a campfire while a hippie in dreads played the guitar. Reminded me of my theatre days...

Day 8: Ngepi- basically we relaxed all day and just hung around the camp. It was exactly what we needed.

Day 9: More travel. We were hoping to make it to Grootfontein, but we got a slow start and had to wait awhile for a hike out of Divundu. We finally found one in the back of an open bakki, and the guy was booking it. My ears hurt a little... When we got to Rundu, we discovered it was too late in the day to get anything out, so we decided to stay the night. Makeshift dinner of cold focaccia bread from Spar and milkshakes from the bar for desert while we finally figured out what we all owed each other for money. Early bed.

Day 10: Back to Windhoek. I awoke early in the morning on our last day to the sound of birds chirping. I realized that I wasn't cold for the first night of the whole trip, and closed my eyes to sleep for another hour before we had to get up. As I started to fall back asleep, I hear a rustling noise in my tent. Uhhhh. I look down, and see a swarm of fire ants right under my sleeping bag. Yup. I had slept on an acacia thorn that had poked holes in the bottom of my tent, which provided the perfect doorway for a couple hundred fire ants to make their way in. Needless to say, I leaped out of my tent, trying (and failing) to make as little noise as possible. Pulled all my belongings out, spent a half hour brushing everything off, threw out the tent, and took a shower.

Combi to Windhoek. Back to Chameleon. Dinner at Joe's Beer Garden (too kitschy for my taste, super unimpressed with the beer selection), then early bed. Up at 4am for my 7am flight to Cape Town.

So that pretty much sums up the first half of my trip. Sorry for the super abridged version, but I promise to share the full version with everyone when I see you again. I'll post again soon about Cape Town and Etosha with mom.

Till then,
Jamie

10 Days, 4 Countries, 3000 Kilometers: Part 1

A little less than a month ago, I left Onamutai for my first long break of the year. My first stop was Windhoek for our Mid-Service training. It was so great to see everyone again and being back at BPU felt oddly like home. At this point, I don't remember anything particular about mid service that you would all be interested in, so I'll just skip to the beginning of my trek around Southern Africa with a fellow volunteer, Jenn, and her boyfriend who was visiting from home, Matt. As this was a long trip, it's going to take several posts, so be patient. And because it was so long ago, this may be a little rough, but if you're still with me, here goes nothing.

Day One: Leaving Namibia
Because we were all on a budget, our goal was to free hike as much as possible to save money (also, it's fun and half the adventure). So on our first day, we got up early and took a taxi to the hike point out of Windhoek heading for Gobabis, a town on the way to the Botswanian border. We tried for a few hours and a few different spots along the road, but all we got were offers to the airport. We ended up calling a driver that our friends had taken to the border the previous day, and we was willing to give us the same discounted price. The ride to the border was fairly uneventful and we arrived with no problems. We grabbed our bags and went into the customs office to fill out the first of many exit/entry forms. Once those were stamped and processed, we headed to the crossing. Having never crossed a border on foot, I was surprised at how long it was. Seriously, the no-man's land between Namibia and Botswana was about one kilometer. I came to find that this was fairly typical...

Anyway on the other side we filled out an identical form for entry and then went to find a ride. However, the border town, Mamuno, is not so much a town as simply the border post, so there really wasn't anywhere to go but the side of the road. Luckily it didn't take too long for us to flag someone down, despite the fact that there was almost no one around. We managed to get a semi-truck to stop for us and after convincing him that the three of us could squeeze in his behind-the-seat sleeping area, we were off! For those of you that haven't ridden in a semi-truck before, those things are MASSIVE. I felt like we were going to crush everything just because we were so high up! The cab itself was pretty big too- our driver even had a minifridge in the center console! Our driver was nice and was playing some sweet jams, so we had a really enjoyable first hike. He was headed to South Africa, so he dropped us off at an intersection where we would be heading opposite directions. It was a busy road though, so we only had to wait about 15 minutes before getting another hike.

We had been hoping to make it all the way to Maun, but it was already close to sun down, we decided not to risk it and just spend the night in Ghanzi, a very small town that reminded me a bit of a Boarder Planet on Firefly. We found a lodge that had camping, pitched our tents, and got a bite to eat at the restaurant (Jenn and I even splurged on chocolate milkshakes with Amarula-- we agree that this was one of the best decisions of the whole trip).


Day 2: Into the Delta
We got up fairly early hoping to catch a bus to Maun, but we had been given misinformation and the bus had already left. We once again headed to the side of the main road out of town to wait for a hike. After about a half hour of waiting, we started getting hungry, so we broke into our food supplies. Here we are, sitting on the side of a dusty road in the middle of nowhere, and Jenn is eating brie and fig jam on wheat crackers. I ate peanut butter with my fingers.

We finally got a hike (along with the other 3 people that had joined us in the 2+ hours we waited) in a covered bakkie. It was a bit long to go in a bakkie, but since it was covered and the road was paved, we decided to just go for it. We arrived in Maun no worse for the wear, but a little sore (Matt was introduced to his first "bakkie bruise") and hungry again. We hunted for a restaurant we had read about in Lonely Planet and found the gem of a cafe tucked away down a side street by the airport. Hilary's was excellent and if anyone is ever in Maun, Botswana, I highly recommend it. It was a cute little cafe with excellent homemade bread, sandwiches, soups, and- the best part- iced coffee! (well it was hot coffee that they put on ice for me...but still, my first one in Africa!)

After our delicious lunch, we stopped by the backpackers to drop off our gear and pitch our tents, then headed back into town to grocery shop for the next few days. We were planning to cook most of our meals while at the backpackers, so we quickly decided on a few easy dishes we could prepare and bought the goods. When we arrived back at the backpackers, we ran into Erika, Rachel, Abby, and Malin who had just gotten back from their overnight mokoro trip! Hearing their stories about it got us really excited for ours the next day.

We ended our first day in Maun lounging on seats next to the river, enjoying a beer from the bar while listing to Old Americana music and marveling at the fact that we had actually made it.

Photo credit: Matt Berg