Africa

Well, it's a wild continent, this African place. It took Shannon and I a bit to get into things here, as we spent the first 24 hours ensuring I had enough room in my passport (no problems most likely) and changing all our US dollars into post-2000 bills. That was quite a headache, as no one in this country wants to accept old bills, but it we got it done, met our tour buddies, and we're now on our way through Africa.

The very day we started, we did a game drive that night. I don't think much is going to top that first night, as we got within centimetres of a small pryde of lions in the park. We parked our truck only a few metres from a few females lying in the grass, with another female and a male lying another few metres away. They stretched, yawned and splayed out lazily for a while, before getting the scent of a pack of impalas a few hundred metres away. One by one, the females got up and started moving along the edge of the bushes, looking to start hunting the impalas. Impalas by the way are a deer-like animal, like a small gazelle.

The lions started by using the truck as cover, which meant that one by one, they would walk alongside our vehicle, before creeping into the underbrush. The impalas, which we could only slightly see through the trees as they moved, got extremely nervous, and started letting out a call which sounded like something between a dog barking and a whale exhaling. Our guide pointed out that two lions were hiding on our left, one was deep to the right, and the last was in the middle of the path, acting as a visual decoy to the impala. It was quite a clever plan the lions had, using the wind direction, the vehicle, the bushes and the decoy lion all as cover for the hunt. Unfortunately, lions compensate for their ingenious hunting techniques by being extremely lazy. While three of the lions still were intent on the hunt, one of the females seemily decided things weren't worth the effort, broke cover, and flopped down in the middle of the road. The male soon followed, brushing alongside our truck, and stretching out as well. And so, only a few minutes after it started, the hunt was over, with the lions having nothing to show for it but some very excited tourists.

The next day we spent in Kruger National Park, which is one of the big 3 famous game parks in Africa. It was a good (long) day of seeing animals, but hard to compete with the intensity from the night before. Still, we got up close to plenty of impala, elephants, rhinos, buffalo, wildebeast, giraffe, and even some smaller creatures like a chameleon and a vine snake.

This was all in South Africa, the first stop on our tour. Since then, we've traveled through Botswana, and are now in Zambia. It's getting to be pretty intense, as western goods are either expensive or hard to find (grocery stores are often lacking groceries here), and since we're right on the Zimbabwaean border, there's an eery feeling sometimes when you hear stories from people about the neighbouring country. Things are nearly impossible to get there, and our tour driver, who is from Zimbabwae, spends his days off shuttling food he bought in South Africa to his family in Zimbabwae. Some of the people on our tour took a white water rafting trip down the Zambezi river, which divides Zambia and Zimbabwae, and they came across some people trying to cross the river and smuggle food into Zimbabwae. They stopped the boat and helped everyone across, but apparently it's quite common for people to smuggle like this - something that would blow your mind if you saw how big and scary this river is and how massive the gorge surrounding it is.

Before I go, I'll also mention Victoria Falls (or Mosi-Oa-Tunya as the Zambians call it). I think they're some of the biggest falls in the world - the longest I'm pretty sure, and taller than Niagra though with less volume. Right now the "smoke" or spray coming off them is quite small, though when we got there we coudn't get more than a kilometre close to them without getting absolutely drenched. In the high flow season the water sprays for up to 10 km. I've never felt anything quite as powerful, and when you get close to them, you really do feel them with all the noise, water spraying you, and the ground shaking all around you.

Anyway, gotta run, it's expensive and slow here, which sadly means no pictures (I've been trying for an hour, which means $4 wasted). I'll try again later, but it looks like Africa will have to be photoless. Oh well, use your imaginations.