Drowned by elephant

African elephants are GInormous but extremely gentle. It's fun to ride on their backs, feel their massive boneless feet, rub their tusks, give them a hug while patting their soft underside, and use their knees as chairs. They even have surprisingly good aim when kicking balls with their feet and throwing with their trunks. It's the weirdest thing to see them swing their trunks in circles and to feel the suction of their trunks as they suck food from your hands. It feels and sounds exactly like a vacuum cleaner, but slimy. Their mouths are the slimiest though, and smelly. Just steer clear of the backside when nature calls because they will make rivers and mine fields proportional to their size. The most fun we had with them was during the high heat of a sunny day when we went into the river on their backs. Elephants love to play in the water to cool off so while our 4 ton 20 year old was sloshing around we were getting continually dunked in the water. She would roll to the side leaving only the tip of her trunk above surface and we held on to her for dear life waiting for her to stand again so we could catch our breath. And she did this constantly, rolling us with her. I think she thought she was fish. It was great fun, until the floaters showed up. Luckily we were walking out of the river as they appeared behind us. One of the other girls on the truck wasn't so lucky and she got thrown off the elephant amongst the floaters and headbutted one while everyone groaned on the shore, happy it wasn't us.

When walking with lions carry a big stick

We spent a few days at a park in Zimbabwe that is breeding lions for release into the wild. We got to spend quite a bit of time with a group of 5 month old cubs as well as a pair of 10 month old males that are being slated for the first release into the wild. Apparently, there has never been a successful release of lions into the wild. The lion rehab folks at African Impact have been working on this for something like 20 years.


Mary's fun:
I only had to point the stick at them a few times to stop them from charging me. The 5 month old lion cubs were the most playful and rambunctious. They tackled each other at every opportunity and would give us the "naughty" look as if we were injured gazelles. But you rub them on their bellies and they'd calmed down enough so we could open their jaws to check out their teeth and retract the paws to reveal their claws. Of course we didn't do any of that when they were eating and had a chunk of cow in front of them. Something about instinct overriding discipline. The 10 month adolescent lions were our favorite. They were so big you could stroke their backs while they walked and letting them use your hand as a chew toy was no longer suggested. But they were much calmer so you could sit with them for a long time rubbing their fur and playing with their tail. Their expressions were majestic and their eyes had a keen focus. Just watching them walk was mesmerizing. They still climb trees with comical awkwardness though. One fell out of the tree and leapt right at me, luckily I stepped back fast enough to have him fall at my feet instead of my head. Although the split second curiosity of experiencing a lion pounce on me was tempting. The lion walks were easily one of the highlights of our trip, if only we could've taken one home.


Usually, the lions are fed in their cages. But every couple weeks, the cats intended for release into parks are allowed out at night to practice hunting. We got to go along! Under a near full moon, we loaded into the back of an open jeep and followed 4 anxious lions as they were released from their pens into their 3000 acre buffet stocked with wildebeast, various antelope, giraffe, zebra and elephant. Sometimes the lions were ahead, leading us through the brush. Sometimes they slowed and walked surrounding us. After a while wandering in the dark, we saw the reflections of wildebeast and impala eyes ahead. The lions didn't take long to decide what to do and suddenly we're moving 60km/hr through brush and trees. Yes, trees. The lions went under them and we drove through them to keep up.
Within seconds of the attack, the dominant lion had snared an infant gazelle and was discussing dining rights with the other three. We spent the next hour and a half watching the ritual feeding as the big cat slowly ground through flesh and bone of her prey - sharing not one bit with the others. Sad and gruesome, yet simply amazing.

Not worth the paper its printed on

Zimbabwe is so messed up. They have a crazed ruler that has scorched the farmland to pave the way for foreign tourists leaving the residents homeless and the country lacking in vegetables and fruit. He has reinvented the currency multiple times, revaluing it on a daily basis. The official rate was 250 Zim dollar to 1 USD. A banana is 700 Zim dollars, a bottle of soda 3000. The black market when we showed up was 6,500:1. Ten days later we got 10,000:1. A restaurant owner exasperated that prices had gone up 168% in the last two months. By June the rate was expected to change by the hour at which point he'd pack up and go fishing. The notes themselves are a joke. The largest bill is 10,000 the smallest I saw was 2 so people carry plastic bags of money around to buy a loaf of bread. Of course, once you exchange to Zim dollars you cannot change it back. The paper currency look like monopoly money I used to play with twenty years ago. On every bill it has the validity date of August 2006 and expiration of July 2007 right above the words 'Bearer's Cheque'. Given these conditions it is mind boggling how the residents are able to cope and yet they seem to. Most people try to get hard currency like USD or Euros, or they don't save at all but rather spend money as soon as they get it for items they can sell later. Zimbabwe ended up being a very cheap country for us to travel though but there was so little available to buy. Getting eggs meant hiking all over town going from one empty shelf to another. There was no bread for a while because that week the mills in the country were making wheat meal. And yet between Antelope Park and Victoria Falls it was one of our favorite countries.

Mary laundering our money after we had a bit of a run in with a roudy group of drunks and a swimming pool

Chunky water

On board the truck we carry about a dozen jerry cans of water that we fill at whatever campsite has it available. Some times it comes out of a hose and when we're lucky there's a tap. Having a tap doesn't mean it's fit for consumption though, even after the chlorine tablets. But that's what we use to cook and wash with. Some people (us excluded) are brave, or pinching pennies, enough to drink it. Even if you can get over the often yellow-brownish color of the water, there is nothing quite so unappetizing as floatie pieces in water. Even watching a line of ants march in and out of the cans won't deter me as much as unidentifed chunks. But then we have learned that it's often best not to look too close at things. Ignorance is best.

A bugged life

I remember the days at home when I would run out a room if I saw anything crawling that didn't have a social security number. But living and traveling in Africa for six months has changed that a bit. Now a shower is acceptable if there aren't a couple of 5" slugs, spiders are okay as long as the cobwebs aren't in the stream of the water, giant moths are tolerable if they stay on the wall, beetles are left alone as long as i can see them, and I just glaze over the mildew, dirt and rust. Every few minutes I take inventory to make sure they're all still on the walls, ceiling and fixtures and not sneaking around. The sinks are a whole other issue. I've shared taps with beetles, colonies of ants, spiders, furry worms, wasps, grasshoppers, and countless other creepy crawly and flying insects. I don't even want to get into the details of the bathrooms. Just imagine having to drop your drawers in a neglected, therefore thriving, insectarium. Actually, no don't do that. Therefore dim lighting is preferred; the less seen the better. But the worst is when the power goes out. Then you want to flee but are too afraid to move and the words 'they're more afraid of you than you are of them' sounds ludicrous.

The hot bed of malaria

That's the unofficial byline for Malawi. The country is stunning with its rolling green mountains strewn with straw huts, kids playing with balls they made with blown up condoms wrapped with plastic bags and twine. Lake Malawi itself is a site; a massive ocean sized body of fresh water plagued with balharzia (a parasite that grows in snails and follows the trail of urine to their human hosts). Its sandy shores were perfect places to pitch our tents and camp a few lazy days away. It's a very quiet, subdued country where the only hustle and bustle is at the souvenir shacks where they try to sell all kinds of wood carvings including the famous Malawi chairs and tables that they've polished with Kiwi Shoe Shine. One day as we were looking out over the water we saw what looked like smoke rising out of the water in the distance but there was no visible fire or island. It turns out that they have colossal fly storms with literally millions of lake flies swarming around blocking out the sky, so dense that it looked black from miles away. We also happened to be there at the beginning of rainy season and half way through got hit by a riotous storm. It was during spiked punch night so while many were wobbling around camp the lightning show was exploding over the water. First the thunder approached us with increasing volume, then we noticed the heightened lightning activity (which was phenomenal to watch). When the galing winds hit us and the first few drops fell we ran to get the tarp over our tent. We tried to warn the drunken crowd but their hearing was impaired. Just as we were about to finish staking in the tarp the downpour (and here I stress DOWN POUR) hit us like a wall enclosing us under Yosemite Falls. The lightning and thunder were on top of and each strike was deafening and not only shook our bones but sounded like the earth and sky had cracked open in unison. The seams in our tent started to leak but there so was nothing more we could do but sleep it out. In the morning everyone was trying to recover from the camp site turned swamp. Walking around meant sloshing in six inches of water and some tents fared better than others. There was a direct correlation between how much punch people drank and how soaked their stuff got.

A Boy and his Hyena

There's more to Snake Camp than snakes. There are also crocodiles, a rare narrow snouted alligator, injured endangered owls and hawks. Their newest edition was acquired 9 months ago when the local Maasai killed a striped hyena and found a helpless 4 day old pup. The Maasai didn't know what to do with it so they gave it to the camp. Striped hyenas aren't just endangered but they're almost never seen in the wild because they're skittish solitary hunters, much more elusive than cheetahs. A simple inquiry and we found ourselves locked into the makeshift space between the snake cages with a gray and silver furball energetically bounding directly at us. She was a pretty sight with all the hair on her back sticking up, wild wide black eyes, black stripes traveling up the legs, and a big gaping mouth full of sharp teeth. You could tell she was being playful and at the same time sense that she was wild. At nine months she was as big as a grown lab and you couldn't help but wonder when her instinct would overcome her domestication. She was romping on Steve, using him as a chew toy and teeth sharpener. First she had her jaws wrapped around his ankle then caught his forearm with her canines. The more she played the more aggressive she became and you could tell her self restraint was waning. The guide wasn't able to calm her down so he said it was time to go. In two weeks the hyena would be handed over to a group that would release her back into the wild so we were lucky to catch this rare opportunity.

- Mary

Morbid Curiosity

Just outside Arusha, Tanzania we stayed at a compound called Snake Camp. And you betcha they had snakes. They had an impressive collection of deadly reptiles including pythons, vipers, cobras, and mambas. The owners were kind enough to arrange a feeding frenzy for us. One by one guinea pigs and baby chicks were tossed to their doom. Some of the snakes struck before the furry snacks ever landed on their feet. Others slowly slithered toward their cuddly new friends, tasting them with their forked tongues before lounging at them with lightning fast attacks. One, two, even three bites! No mercy. We all watched with gruesome interest, yelling instructions to the guinea pigs to play dead and a chick to stop pecking the black mamba in the head. It was really neat to see the hoods on the cobras expand before the strikes. Once the critters were paralyzed by venom the snakes opened their hinged jaws and ever so slowly swallowed them whole. We could see the muscles of the python undulating beneath the skin as it wound itself tighter around its gerbil turned marshmallow.

Seriously, little buddy, don't peck at the viper.

-Mary

Cheetah Stalking

The highlight of our second trip into the Ngorongoro crater was a cheetah sighting. We were wow'd by how close we were able to get to the gorgeous creature. Her spotted skin and supermodel skinniness gave her a sleek stealthiness. We followed her to a patch of grass from which she surveyed the green plain. Then something in the distance caught her attention and she rose with purpose. Her target was a lone gazelle cluelessly fattening itself up. The cheetah quickened her pace, lowered her stance, and never took her gaze off her prey. Whenever the steak paused from grazing to look up the cheetah immediately stopped and ducked under the grass. She was down right sneaky. But it was effective because she was within striking distance and we were all holding our breath in anticipation. Then a stupid LandCruiser got too close to the gazelle and spooked it off. I think I actually saw the dismay in the cheetah as she watched her filet mignon hop off into the distance.
- Mary

Overland Truck part Deux

We've spent the last week back in Nairobi doing a bunch of research for our travels post Africa and getting ready for the next overland truck that will start on Feb. 9 (tomorrow) and take us down to Cape Town, South Africa over the next 2 months. We will cross through Tanzania, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Botswana and I forget what else. We're nervous about meeting our next group and crew but at least we've got the camping part down (if our cheap tents from Cairo survive).

After the last 6 weeks on our own we've grown accustomed to clean rooms, bathrooms, and sleeping on beds so it'll be hard to go back to questionable/lacking hygiene. That and we won't be able to have bacon everyday for breakfast any more. That may be the hardest adjustment of all. *sigh*

Island hopping in East Africa

From Zanzibar we continued our island exploration first in Pembe, Tanzania then Lamu, Kenya. Our tans needed to be refreshed but its kind of hard in muslim countries where skin is definitely not in.

In Pembe there was nothing to do but dive in their hurricane class currents and wait for the next home cooked dinner. Seriously, its so untouristed that there is literally nothing to do but watch each other perspire in the heat. We did a lot of that because the power would sporadically go out, alot taking the oscillating fans out with it.

From there we flew back to the mainland and took the long bum bruising bus ride to Lamu. This small island off the coast of Kenya is still deep in swahili culture but the tourists were running rampant. That detracted the charm of the island for me but they had awesome fresh fruit drinks for basically free. Our favorite combo was mango and passion fruit. The crab was barely edible though, but the seafood samosas were deliciously dripping in grease. Atleast here the electricity rationing was scheduled so we could plan ahead for dark, dark nights.

Crab People

Generally speaking, the food in Zanzibar sucks eggs. Considering the island is historically famed for spices and is now completely overrun with Italian all-inclusive resorts, there's just no excuse. Stonetown has a couple decent places. We were tipped off to a good Chinese restaurant (Pagoda) and a great gelateria and pizza shop (Amore Mio). Good stuff - ate a lot of gelato here. But that's two restuarants and it doesn't matter because we're staying over an hour away. The rest of the island seems to offer very few truly local restaurants and the hotel / resort establishments offer sub-mediocre fare.
But thinking ahead, we picked our hotel by stomach. Our bungalow complex is an Italian family run joint (Rosa dei Venti) and Francesco can cook. Dinner orders have to be in by lunchtime so he can pick everything up fresh daily. Did I mention neighboring Nungwi is a fishing village and we'll see locals walking down the beach with 10-20 pound tuna?
Seafood, the saving grace of Zanzibari cuisine. The fish is good. The lobster yummy. The calamari is great, but the crab takes the cake. We have spent the last two weeks almost literally surviving on calamari and local mangrove crab. The crab claws are as big as Mary's head. Really. I'm afraid to get back in the water. Francesco serves up a killer grilled crab plate and the chinese restaurant cooks them in a ginger/onion sauce to die for. I have eaten more crab in the last two weeks than in my entire life. Seriously.
Forget the white sand beaches lapped by warm waters and cooled by soft breezes. Nevermind the culture or fresh fruit. Ignore the diving. Come to Zanzibar for the crab.

Our Vacation from Travelling

(not quite paradise with this kinda scene going on, eh?)

After two months on the happy bus and two weeks of fast paced safari driving in Kenya and Tanzania, it was time for a break. We've been settled in the remote beach town of Kendwa on the northwest coast of Zanzibar for the past couple weeks.Well, we found isolation. It takes us half an hour walking on a rocky dirt track to get to a bus stop to wait for a daladala (bus) that'll take over an hour to get to the islands only real town (Stonetown) depending on how many cops the driver needs to bribe. But the powdery white sand beaches and relaxed atmosphere make up for any minor inconveniences. Best of all, there's not much to do. Lots of sleeping or reading on the beach. A bit of scuba diving. Walking down the beach to the nearby village of Nungwi for skewers and fresh fruit. That's a fine point missed in the travel literature: Kendwa is not so much a village as it is just 6 shacks on that rocky dirt track half an hour from the main road with absolutely no services. Have to walk to Nungwi for anything your hotel can't provide. Of course, the beach path to Nungwi is covered in a foot of water crashing against the rocks around high tide.That's ok because the beach moves around during the day. Zanzibar is a shallow island that very slowly rolls off into the ocean. On our west side, low tide can move the ocean out 20-100 feet. The east coast is much worse. We drove over for lunch one day and the water must have been a kilometer off the beach. Major bummer.Getting around the island is a bit crazy. It's only 50 miles or so from top to bottom, but that's a 2-3 hour drive in the rare rental car or maybe 4 or 5 hours if you tried to bus it. Driving the rental Isuzu 4x4 was a blast. Pavement is available for 25km out of Stonetown, but then it is pothole ridden dirt road and periodic unimproved rocky mess. Driving is a constant balance of hitting the potholes, pedestrians, bikers, cows, swerving cars, maniacal daladalas or chickens - or just driving off the road in disgust. Oddly, it's actually not too bad as everyone except the potholes and cows seems to know how to get out of the way.But maneuvering the roads is necessary if you want to check out Stonetown, with it's mix of old world Europe and Islam. It looks so cool in the brochures, but it's so riddled with rundown buildings, masses of souvenir shops, tshirt salesmen and other annoyances that you've really got to work hard to see anything real. We'll run into town for gelato and Chinese food, then head back to hide on the beach.We did get off our beach beds for a little diving. The visibility is low (15'-40') but the reef life is good and makes diving worthwhile if you're here, but you'd never come here just to dive. We played with a few turtles and saw some new fish species, but no big scary predators to keep Mary interested. Although we did run into absolutely the biggest puffer fish that we've ever seen. Must have been three feet, all covered in battle scars and with big buck teeth. I had the camera practically in it's mouth and it didn't budge. Just not afraid of anything. Tomorrow (1/20) we go to the nearby island of Pemba for some more diving. It sits in a deepwater channel and is surrounded by mangroves instead of beach. It's supposed to be home to hammerheads, mantas and other biggies with teeth. Of course, by telling you that, I just jinxed our chances of seeing anything...

White man can jump, with flare

One of the touristy side trips to do when going through the game parks is to visit a traditional Maasai village, called a boma. These are villages made of sticks, mud, dung, and hides with all the huts facing inward forming a protective circle. The Maasai take turns living there for 2yrs at a time to show tourists their culture while lighten their wallets. Our steadfast inclination was to avoid these genuine fake abodes, but in a moment of weakness mixed with mild curiosity and fear of missing out we held back our cynicism and found ourselves standing outside their thorny acacia lined fortification. A group of women and men came out to greet us chanting and parading as if we were coming back from a successful lion hunt we were told. Right, we just came from their hole of an outhouse. I suppose that's adventure in itself. We follow them inside where the women are standing in an open area to the left and the men just opposite. Both groups take turns ceremoniously singing and jumping. Then the mzungus were invited to join in the exercise. Steve hops in and starts bouncing like a bean in a hot skillet, flashing a boyish grin on his face. I get my turn over as soon as possible. Then we are led into one of their chest height homes where our guide, the chief's son, chats with us about their way of life, how to hunt a lion, and the many ways we could give him money. Yes, it was hokey but we were glad we did it because we learned interesting things about the Maasai that we wouldn't otherwise have. For example Maasai warriors still hunt lions, their food staples are blood, milk, meat, and fat, and the women rebuild the homes every eight years.

-- Mary

And now the picture Mary didn't want you to see

The lion, the itch, and the dirt road

We spent two weeks with my mom and brother John on safari in Kenya and Tanzania. We hit all the big parks, Ngorongoro, Maasai Mara, Serengeti and several of the lesser known ones. We saw all the big including lions, leopards, hippos, rhinos, crocodiles, and a cheetah (from far far away). After a while the elephants, giraffes, hyenas, gazelles, impalas, jackals, baboons, wildebeest, and zebras got a little blasé. It's amazing how close you can get to the animals. In fact we downright hunted them down in our 4x4s, going offroad to loom over lions that were trying to nap and leopards looking for a good tree to climb, at least until the rangers spot us then we had to hide. Yeah, you're technically not supposed to harass the wildlife, but the drivers get bored and find ways to entertain themselves.
We got to stay in some cool safari camps where bats lived in our bathroom and rangers armed with bow and arrows escorted us back to our tent to protect us from curious predators. All good fun, but the animals we feared were the biting insects that feasted on us despite the DEET.
This was supposed to be dry season but all of East Africa had a late and extraordinarily heavy rainy season. The problem with rain is its affect on the otherwise crap dirt roads. Other than the typical spinning out and getting stuck in soggy mud so the Maasai had to push us off their farmland, we also waited 3hrs in a queue 30 cars long to be towed by a tractor across a road turned river where the water actually flowed into the cab when we crossed. That section of road was so notorious that government reps had flown out in helicopters to watch the full extent of carnage. Our night game drive at Serengeti stranded us in the exactly nowhere with nothing in site but the waning moon, lighted only by our headlamps in the pitch dark when our open top truck careened into a mud ditch after 11pm. At Ngorongoro we drove into mud that tilted the car 30 degrees to the left, stopping at the verge of tilting. Steve hopped out and pushed the left side of the LandCruiser up while our driver dared forward. We made it through but another after us actually fell over and had to abandon the vehicle. Good thing we carried a Steve with us.