Across into South Africa

The end of the 9 week trip is in sight. After going quad biking in Swakopmund for the second time and visiting Fish River Canyon, we crossed into South Africa yesterday. Today we came within sight of Table Mountain in Cape Town before we turned off to Stellenbosch. Tomorrow we go off on a wine tasting tour, visiting 5 wineries and sure to drink way too much wine. It should be fun, but I hope that the day isn't spent with people telling me that I should be able to taste the nutty overtone or expecting that I should be able to differentiate how the wine is casked by swishing the wine around my mouth. I only want someone to say "This is what good wine tastes like" or "This is vinegar." There isn't too much grey area for me when it comes to wines, and I wouldn't know a bad wine if you handed me one.

I am sad that the 9 week trip is ending. The other passengers, the guide and the driver have been fun to travel with. The big thing that I am not looking forward to is being on my own and having to plan more than 3 hours in advance. I have 9 days in Cape Town following the end of the trip, and I have a few things that I need to do: visit Robben Island (where Nelson Mandela was held for 27 years), ascend (in some form) Table Mountain and go snorkelling with the great white sharks. It should be a great way to spend my last few days in Africa before heading to England, Scotland and Ireland.

A Good Day in Swakopmund

Yesterday was a great day for me in Swakopmund. I spent the morning sandboarding on the giant sand dunes that surround the town. I did 4 runs standing up, snowboard style, and 3 runs going head first on a piece of press board (similar to what I did in New Zealand last year). It was a lot of fun, even though I was not so good at the stand up portion (the sand is much slower than snow and I lost speed too quickly in my turns to toe side and fell a lot), but the head first was a blast, particularly when I nearly took out the guy with the radar gun (I hit 75 kmh, roughly 45 mph). In the afternoon, I headed back out to the dunes, this time for a little fun riding ATV's all over the dunes. Having grown up near the shore and always being told to stay off the dunes, it was nice to finally be able to just go out and rip up the dunes. That being said, the dunes are mostly about 50 to 100 meters tall, and nothing we did to them changed them in the least. The rush of driving up the face of the dune and turning around at the top and heading back down (they call it doing roller coasters) was exhilarating, especially on the way down. And the occasional feeling of being slightly out of control got the adrenaline flowing nicely. Our group had such a good time on the quads that we decided to extend our stay in Swakop an extra day so we could go again.

After we leave Swakop tomorrow, we head to Sossusvlei in the Namib desert to climb a dune and witness the sunrise. The dunes are a wonderful shade of reddish orange, and the light the sun throws on them in the moments after sunrise is supposed to be amazing.

Through Botswana and into Namibia

I have made my way from Zimbabwe to Namibia, passing through Botswana. The trip keeps getting better, which is hard to believe after nearly 8 weeks in Africa.

Botswana was very different than the previous countries I had visited. It is very large, the population is very small, and the country is very wealthy. There were street lights and cars where there had been none since Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. The scenery was amazing as well, with the destruction of the 70,000 elephants in Chobe National Park to the pristine beauty of the Ockavengo Delta. Chobe was a great place to see large numbers of elephants and hippos. We camped on the Delta for 3 days near hippo pools and went on safari walks, during which we came across some elephants. Not a comfortable feeling to be 20 meters from 4 elephants with nothing in between. The Delta itself is huge, and the scenic flight over it was amazing.

After the Delta, we crossed into Namibia and went to Etosha National Park. Etosha is a very dry, arid park, with animals clustering around the water holes in the dry season. Unfortunately, we arrived just after the big rains, so the animals were a bit more spread out. We still saw heaps of lions, oryx, giraffes and springbok, so it was a great experience.

Once out of Etosha we stayed overnight at a cheetah sanctuary and then took a ride down the Skeleton Coast to Swakopmund. Swakop is amazing, and tomorrow I go sandboarding (snowboarding on the sand, basically) and quad bike riding on the massive dunes. Swakop itself is very German, and it is easy to forget that you are in Africa and not Europe. It is a nice change of pace.

Fun at Victoria Falls

I have finally made it back to the world of computers in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. The last week or so has been great:

• We spent 5 days on the beaches of Lake Malawi, a large fresh water lake in Malawi. I went snorkelling, which was amazing. It was like swimming in a large aquarium with thousands of brightly colored cichlids swimming around. The people in Malawi are the nicest people you will ever come across, which considering Malawi is one of the poorest places in the world speaks volumes about them. They were so nice they talked me into buying two hand carved chairs for the low price of $14. The only problem will be shipping them home.
• After Malawi, we headed to Zambia for 3 days on the houseboats of Lake Kariba. This was more of a relaxing stop, with a lot of time spent on the boat watching people play Scrabble and Jenga while sipping on a cool refreshing beverage. A nice diversion from the days spent on the truck.
• From the houseboats we headed to Livingstone (which is on the Zambian side of Victoria Falls) and then to Victoria Falls (on the Zimbabwe side). The falls are amazing, much larger and higher than Niagara Falls. Looking at them from the ground is amazing, but the best view is from a microlight (a hang glider with a motor on the back). The flight was amazing, and also included a flight over a game park where we spotted giraffe, elephants, rhinos and hippos from above. The next day I went to an adrenaline park, where they have abseiling, high wires and a gorge swing. The gorge swing was great. It is basically a rope that is hung across a gorge that is 200 feet deep and attached to your harness. You can either step off the ledge or fall backwards, at which time you freefall for 150 feet and then go into a swing. There is no jerking like a bungy and it is smooth as can be. I bought the DVD of the swing, so I can relive the moment again and again. And if that wasn't enough, today I went for a walk with lions. There is a park where you can walk in the wild with hand reared lion cubs; there are no leashes and they walk amongst the people. The best part is watching their reactions to the environment and the opportunity to pet them when they let you (the teeth and claws are a bit of a worry, but it went well).

From here we head to Chobe National Park, which is home to some 70,000 elephants. Three weeks left on the trip, and so far it has been better than I could have expected.