Map updated!

My GPS Logger is giving me hassle, in that I cannot seem to connect to it. Yes. Big hassle. Tech support is damn hard in this part of town!

 

Anyhoo, I’ve add some points of interest. J

 

Much love,

 

[G]

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

14 June, Day 1: Zimbabwe or bust!

The time has come! We have spent the last few days selling / flogging / trashing and storing all our possessions, fit whatever was left into 4 impossibly small bags, re-packing said bags, weighing, repacking again, chucking more stuff, drinking heavily, forgetting that you actually give a shit and go!

So off we went, all dressed up and ready to safari the bejeezus outta this trip! We were quite fortunate to have one of our friends take us to Heathrow’s shiny new Terminal 5 for our flight (thanks Dan!!). I gotta admit, it’s the only way to get to the airport. Rock up at the drop-and-go, head into the building, and in retrospect I should have known that something was about to go horribly wrong when we couldn’t print our boarding passes...

In the queue we go, only to find that our flight has been delayed by 2.5 hours... What’s more is that we would probably also miss our connecting flight to Victoria Falls. Which shouldn’t normally be a big deal, but they only fly there 3 times a week! In the end, we took a gamble and checked our baggage all the way to Vic Falls, in the hope that the pilot steps on the gas a bit so we can make up lost time. This adventure is starting early.

To the bar (well, restaurant... but we got pissed anyway) , got some dollars at the forex counter (dollar is king in Africa) and onto the plane.

Arrive in JHB pretty much on the original flight schedule (we-hey!!). Off the plane 1^st, onto a shuttle, to the terminal, off the shuttle, do the hokey-pokey and we turn around, onto the shuttle and back onto another plane! At this stage, I was quite impressed with the efficiency of it all, quite unusual for South Africa. But we arrive at Zimbabwe relatively refreshed and well rested. Go through customs aaaaaand (drum roll, please)... our luggage isn’t here.

Fuck

We go through the rigmarole of reporting our missing bags, feeling pretty grotty as you do after long haul. This Le Grott is amplified by the realisation that we’re gonna be STUCK in these clothes for the foreseeable future. And... it’s hot. Like, really hot, adding some more flava. Swell...

Quite liberating actually.

Stranded, in Zim, without our clothes, without comms to our tour group and a sinking feeling of dread that every person in the building is out to get me. Plan B for this situation was to haul ass to the border and trek to the Zambezi Sun. The taxi driver was very helpful and gave us all sorts of info during the 27km ride to the Zim /Zambia border. Quite a quick affair, just a stamp here, stamp there and stroll over the bridge.

Breathtaking. After all the BS, the sight we met on the bridge was breathtaking. We could already feel the fine spray and mist clinging to our skin as we approached the vantage point. Victoria Falls, in all her 1.7 km wide, 93m high, 6000 cubic meters of water per second glory! How can you NOT forget about everything else??

We lingered a bit; batting all the vendors trying to sell us all manner of merch, and headed in the general direction (we were told) the Zambezi Sun hotel should be, crossing in Zambia (where the staff was playing a mean LAN game of Need For Speed 2 on government Pc’s nogal!). Stopped at a shop, bought a Sim card and got online! Managed to fire off a flare to the parental units and our tour group and a rendezvous was arranged. Rocked up at the Hotel and was greeted by nothing but smiles. Paradise!! Finally, something is going right! Truly an oasis in this desolate place. Even spotted a dude rocking on a Sedgeway! My kinda place.

Here we met up with our tour group, and immediately ferried to a boat cruise on the Zambezi! “Don’t worry man, you don’t need luggage, let’s go drink!”. Lekker.

We boarded the River Queen and cast off. Open bar, good food off the grill and more breathtaking views (I saw a hippo)! Drank our first Zambian Beer, called Mosi, and it tasted sweeeeet. Enjoyed our first epic African Sunset and tried our best to just relax. To be fair, it STILL didn’t feel like we left London, even with overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I kept thinking that we should get going, I’m working earlies tomorrow (that’s a 07:30 start, so 6am wake up call).

After the cruise we headed to our (temporary) base camp for some more chow and drink, signed up for Microlites at 09:00 the next day before tucking in. At this stage I just want to thank my folks for rocking so god damned hard!! Thanks for organising all the extra boxes with supplies of all sorts, our sleeping gear and the extra clothes (which we intended to give away to under privileged folks... which now turned out to be us!). Love you guys!

So that’s it, for now (phew, that was a marathon!). I’ll try and keep the posts shorter, and I actually skipped over quite a few things. But thanks if you stuck around to the end :)

Till tomorrow

[G & A], out.

In the jungle, the mighty jungle