June 15, Day 2: i can like totally see my house from here

Slept rough. These new stretchers sleep way hard! And as it turns out our sleeping bags got wet somewhere in the Caprivi Region... so we had to make another plan with the little blankets that where packed in plastic bags. And when the sun sets, it’s coooooold! We kept each other warm and ended up sharing one stretcher but we ended up tossing and turning all night, pulling what little blankets we had off the stretcher, waking up, resetting everything, try to warm up again wash rinse repeat.

This morning I chucked it all out in the sun so tonight should be better :)

Had a more productive day today. Switched my cell phone on, but only after spending 30 minutes trying to find it (it was in one of the bags I chucked out into the sun!). Anyways, message on phone: they’ve found our luggage and it’s on its way to Zim! Good times.

Had a quick breakfast, re-aligned my spine (damn stretcher!) and got dressed in the same clothes I’ve been wearing for 2 very long, very sweaty, very tiring days. We headed to Batoka Sky for our Microlite flights over the falls. And what a day for it! Clear blue sky, no wind whatsoever, and a new addition to my field of reference: a constant haze of spray on the horizon to where the falls are.

I wasn’t allowed to take my gear up there, which is a great shame. They did have a camera mounted on the left wing of the, erm, “aircraft” (2 bucket seats clamped to a lawn mower engine and strapped to a kite) and for $20 you could even have a copy. The no cameras policy suddenly made perfect sense. Got a few good shots actually, mostly of me doing horns. But there are some cool nature bits in there too, and the pilot was quite cool in pointing out any crazing Elephants, Hippos and the fattest crocodile I’ve ever seen! You could spot that big boy from space!

There was this one, truly National Geographic shot which I’m so disappointed I didn’t get to take. We were doing a second circuit around the falls and the bridge which spans the chasm over the falls, with Zim on the one end and Zambia on the other. I looked down and the pilot mentioned that the train crossing over the bridge at the moment was the Rooibos train (I “nodded” and “uhuh-ed” sagely, like I had a clue what he was talking about!). But that view... my goodness. My field of view was filled with this top down image of this simply magnificent waterfall and the sheer drop to the chasm below, white rapids roaring underneath the iron bridge, the ivory train in stark contrast as it eases across. I’m really struggling for words to describe the moment, the colours, the sound of the engine, the wind in my helmet, the giddiness of flight (never done THIS SHIT before!), the giant goofy smile on my face. And this world class view I was beholding. I felt like the luckiest man alive. Beats catching a bus to work... (oh how you London folks are loving THAT snide remark! Heh heh heh ;))

Since it would be pretty darn hard to top that today, we decided that we should part ways with the group somewhat and go do some quick shopping and track down our bags. We managed to find a slice of civilisation where Annelie could buy some underwear (apparently it’s different for girls, so no commando for her then...) and we had some chow, bought some booze and headed back to camp to track down our luggage. We were stopped by a herd of Elephants crossing the road before making our way back to camp. Long story short with the luggage: it DID arrive, but they needed to check if someone was heading to Livingston (so, Zambia) today. But nobody was making the trip, and their offices closed at 16:00. We got a guarantee that it would be here at the camp site (the Maramba River Lodge) tomorrow at 11:00 sharp. Though I’m not too confident about “sharp” in African Time. Translates roughly like GMT, but more like GMT+wheneverwefeelLikeIt or GMT+howManyDollarsDoYouHave. Fingers crossed, again.

Tomorrow some folks are off to the airport, which leaves about 7 of us. I’ll be sure to intro everyone in the follow up posts. For now, It’s getting quite cold, the fire has burned itself out and I’m tired of batting mosquitoes off of me! I’ll go and process some photos that I will attempt to upload later tomorrow.

Highlight of my day:

Doing horns while rocking it spread eagle over the Vic Falls, in a bucket seat strapped to a lawn mower.

Mini highlight: SHOWERING!

[G & A], out

flirting with life