Africa: Part II

As amazing as the Africa Part I trip was, Africa Part II was even better. Before I get into the details though, let me just answer the question I asked in my Africa Part I post, which was, "What is the capital of Africa?" Okay, it was actually a trick question and kind of a mean little joke. Africa, as I'm sure you all know, is a continent, not a country, so it doesn't have a capital. Africa does have a union like Europe does, which is called the AU (for African Union). The headquarters for that are in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and also sort of in Midrand, South Africa (per Wikipedia). I really just asked the question to bring up the point that Americans (and I'm definitely including myself here) don't really know a lot about Africa. It is the land of The Lion King, poor black people, and evil rulers. And although those stereotypes may be true, Africa has more to offer than just safaris, poverty, and conflict. It is an amazing, beautiful, diverse, continent with a rich and very interesting history. Africa has most definitely captured my attention and interest and I hope to be able to learn more about it. Anyway, my friends that I traveled to Africa with and I were just commenting on how when you tell someone that you are going to Europe they are like, "Ooh, which countries?" And then usually they have either been there, want to go there, know someone there, or at least can picture the country or countries that you mention. On the other hand, if you tell someone that you are going to Africa they usually just say, "Oh, be careful." (And give you a weird, 'are you sure you know what you are doing?' look.) There are 54 countries in Africa. I would dare say that the average American can't name more than 10 or 15 of them without consulting a map. Actually, according to the Miss Teen USA pageant one-fifth of Americans can't even locate the United States of America on a map, so I guess I shouldn't say average American. I would say that probably even the above average American (like my super intelligent blog readers) can't correctly name over 15 African countries without cheating. I dare you to try it. Right now. Before you read this post where I will be mentioning some African countries. Get out a piece of paper and write down every African country you can name. Then look online and see how many you got correct and let us all know how smart you are in the comment I'm sure you will leave me when you are done reading my awesome, and once again, super long post. It should be kind of a fun game. Someday I would like to be able to name all the countries in the world and their capitals like a handicapped kid I went to high school with could. Someday... Anyway, from Ghana my friends Yvette, Brooke, Hailey and I headed to South Africa. The flight I think was 9 hours long. Wow, Africa is a huge continent! Anyway, our flight from Accra to Johannesburg (aka Jo'burg) was delayed a bit and we were only supposed to have a short connection in Jo'burg before heading to Mozambique. Anyway, SUPER long story short, when we got into Jo'burg, Hailey ran ahead to the check in desk for our Mozambique flight because she was dead set on making the flight and also was going ahead to tell them that we were coming and not to close the gate. So Yvette, Brooke and I waited for our bags (and Hailey's) and then went to the check in for our Mozambique flight but got there like 4 and a half minutes too late. So Hailey went ahead on that flight because some of our other friends had left Ghana a day earlier than the four of us and were on that flight anyway. So, she wasn't alone. However, I guess that good things come to those who wait because Yvette, Brooke and I ended up having the TIME OF OUR LIVES in Jo'burg and poor Hailey got stuck in some tiny airport in the middle-of-nowhere, Mozambique for like 6 hours or something because their plane had mechanical problems. Basically, Yvette, Brooke and I somehow convinced the Mozambique airline that they needed to put us up for the night and give us food vouchers, which, after much debate over which airline's fault it was, we got them to do. Secretly, I was glad because we originally were scheduled to spend about a day and a half in Jo'burg but then some of our other flights got changed which messed up our Jo'burg time. So, we got back that time, and got our hotel and food paid for too. And the place they put us up in was AMAZING. It was like this huge conference center/resort thing. They gave us each our own huge hotel room too. And food vouchers to eat at the resort. We got there kind of late morning and so we got checked in and cleaned up and stuff and then went in search for lunch. The resort, like I said, was HUGE, so the lady at the front desk drew us a map of where lunch was being served. We headed in that direction and came upon what we thought was either a huge, fancy, family reunion, a wedding reception, or some sort of business convention where you bring your kids. They had this big outdoor buffet, tables FULL of desserts, waiters dressed in tuxes, champagne, and then also randomly had clowns, face-painters, jugglers, and even a blow up slide and bouncy castle to entertain the kids. I know, completely unbelievable and sort of weird. So we go up to the one of the waiters and show them our voucher and say, "Where do we go for the free lunch included with our hotel room?" Because we obviously didn't think that the free lunch would be at this amazing, fancy, crazy, carnival thing we had just walked into. And the waiter guy was like, "You are in the right place. Just go through the buffet lines", yes, lineS, "and get whatever you want." So Yvette, Brooke and I go pretty much crazy and start half-laughing, half-crying because it was just too good to be true. Also, please remember that we had not only not gotten any sleep the night before as we had been on an overnight flight from Accra to Jo'burg but we also had just come from eating pretty much disgusting food in Ghana and being in the middle of nowhere and now we were in this unbelievably amazing resort and were eating good food for the first time in almost a month. Our lunch was AMAZING, even by U.S. standards. There were two full buffets just of fruits and desserts. There were two buffet lines of main dishes and two of salads and sides. Then also there was a line where they had all sorts of different cuts of meat with a chef guy in a big tall hat to serve it to you. UNBELIEVABLE and all for free. Yay!

Oh yeah, and granite counter tops. The buffet line had granite counter tops. Was this really Africa?

Here are Brooke and I getting ready to gorge ourselves on the delicious food. After lunch we decided to take a tour of Jo'burg and particularity of the township of Soweto which back during the Apartheid was an all black neighborhood where some major crazy stuff occurred, one uprising in particular, which is called the Soweto Uprising, made the place famous. I think that the apartheid is pretty fascinating, especially since in didn't end until 1994. Legally enforced racial separation happening in my teenage years?...crazy! Anyway, we waited at the hotel for our tour guide who was going to take us to Soweto to come get us. I noticed a car pull up and said to Yvette and Brooke who were shopping at the hotel gift shop, "Girls, our Mercedes is here." And it was. We all just started laughing when we realized that not only were we going to eat in style in South Africa, but we were going to tour in style too.

Here is Soweto. Pretty much everybody is black there even still today.

Even Jesus and Mary are black in Soweto...

Soweto is the home of Nelson Mandela.

And what do you know, while we were in Soweto we ran into Winnie Mandela (Nelson's ex wife who is a famous powerful S.A. woman) and the famous rapper R. Kelly who were just touring around together. Everyone was going crazy and I mean crazy. And then we started going crazy too and getting all excited just because the locals were too. And I don't even know why, because:

1) I hate rap music (and actually don't even think it should be considered music).

2) Wouldn't even know who R. Kelly was if there hadn't been a kid when I worked at ARUP whose name was Ryan Kelly but who everyone called R. Kelly (after the rapper).

3) Think that R.Kelly is a complete creep as I think he has been charged with rape more than once and at the age of 27 was married to a 15 year-old. Yuck. But, it was still fun to be part of the craze and to see all the locals going loco.

Here's just another view of Soweto. Anyway, the next morning, an adventurous day and three delicious meals in South Africa later, we finally headed to Mozambique.

Here's the place we stayed...right on the ocean. It was in a little beach town called Vilanculos. Seriously small...the whole town only had two taxis and is pretty much all tourism.

The group in Mozambique, once we all met up, minus Yvette.

Mozambique was absolutely gorgeous. I cannot take credit for the next five pictures as they are ones that Ryan took (he has a nice camera and is a better photographer than me). But, I was there, and it really was as beautiful as the pictures make it seem.

One of the days that we were there we hired a dhow (a type of sailboat I think) to take us out to one of the little islands off of Vilanculos. We just hung out there, went swimming and snorkeling, and had lunch. On the way there one of our sailor guys jumped into the ocean and grabbed up a bunch of oysters for us to eat. I don't like oysters or clams or anything with that texture, but of course I ate one, because everybody else was doing it and also, I needed to add a raw oyster to my "weird things I've eaten" list. Here he is getting back into the boat after grabbing the oysters...

and here the other guy is cutting them open for us to eat. I'm sure eating raw oysters in Africa is safe, right? I didn't get sick anyway.

Dead jellyfish. I was glad to see some dead ones on the beach because one of these little jerks stung me while we were snorkeling. It was the first time I'd ever been stung by a jellyfish. The little guy that got me was pretty small so the sting wasn't too bad.

Just a picture of me and Hailey our last night in Vilanculos. We all went out to eat at a pretty nice place. I even dared eat the salad, which I don't normally do in developing countries, and didn't get sick so it must have been safe or something. Did I end up going SCUBA diving you ask? Yes, yes I did. I'll share more about it in a later blog post but for now here I am with my SCUBA masters or whatever you call them. They were great and were really good at making me, the aquaphobe, comfortable with jumping into the middle of the ocean and then going 40+ feet underwater where the sharks and dead people live. Let's just say that everybody (except me of course) went a little granola in Africa. Oh well, why waste time shaving on vacation? JK. Well, Mozambique was AMAZING and beautiful and a place that will be always be dear to my heart since I conquered my greatest fear there and went SCUBA diving. Our time in paradise had to end though and before we knew it our group was splitting up again. Brooke, Hailey, Yvette, Julia and I headed back to South Africa to catch our flight to Zambia, Ryan and Kathy headed back to the U.S. of A. And Terri and Meghan headed to a different part of Zambia to visit some of Meghan's cousins who I guess live there. Our first day in Zambia we headed right over to Victoria Falls. I think it is one of the seven natural wonders of the world and it was pretty wonderful. Just me with a little bit of the falls behind me. The only problem with Victoria Falls is that it is so huge it is hard to take in all at once. The five of us travel buddies. We all really got along and had a fabulous time. I would travel anywhere with these girls. Some people travel well and others just do not, so when I find good travelers I try to stick with them. And yes, Brooke and Yvette got their hair done rasta style just for fun. Here is a view of the Victoria Falls bridge from the Zambia side of the Falls. Here I am getting drenched. The water was so high when I was there that we couldn't even see parts of the falls because of all of the water spray. Well, you can see it, but you can't catch a very good picture of it. It was amazing to be there but hard to really show in a picture how cool it is. Yvette and I at the falls. Yvette is now my roommate. I guess we both figured that if we could travel around Africa together for 5 weeks without problems that we should be able to get along as roommates. Here I am with the mighty Zambezi River flowing behind me. I'm at the top of the falls, so that water is about to go crashing off the edge of a cliff. That night we took a dinner cruise on the Zambezi. It was beautiful.

Here we all are.

The next day we woke up early and headed to the country of Botswana, which is really only about an hour drive away from Livingstone, Zambia where we were staying. We went there to see Chobe National Park which is a huge awesome game reserve. Even though I'd already been on safari in Kenya (so I thought I'd be bored with another safari) I still really enjoyed Chobe because you take about half of the safari on the Chobe River so you get a more up close view of the crocodiles and hippos and stuff and it is a different kind of safari from the ones I went on in Kenya and Ghana. This is the Chobe River. It forms the border of Namibia and Botswana so the land you are seeing is actually Namibia, although we didn't go there. Just some fat, hungry, hungry, hippos. Can you imagine how much you'd have to eat to stay that big on a vegetarian diet? You'd have to have a super slow metabolism and eat all day, which I think is what they do. It was nice to see some hippos out of the water because when I was in Kenya it was hotter and the hippos really only come out of the water at night when it is hot. It was winter in Botswanna so the weather was actually really nice jacket weather. I think Chobe is also famous because they seem to have TONS of elephants there. Elephants are the coolest animals ever so I was glad there were a lot. We got quite up close and personal with the elephants. I don't think I even had to zoom in with my little point and shoot camera to get this shot. We were safely up in the jeep though since I think elephants kill (by trampling) more people each year than any other safari animal. I think our tour guide got a little nervous when a whole family of elephants surrounded our jeep at one point. We did get to get out of the jeep and walk around a little, once we were away from the elephants. But then we had to watch out for these guys. Luckily I don't think they eat much at all during the winter. Our guide said that even if you stood right by their head they probably wouldn't bother you. I wasn't willing to try though so I kept a safe distance. Just a little elephant family getting ready to take a bath or get a drink or something. I LOVE watching the elephants down by the water. They are just cool. What else can I say? The next day we went to Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe and Zambia share Victoria Falls. Zimbabwe used to be the more popular side of the falls to go to until the president of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe went COMPLETELY crazy and single handedly ruined Zimbabwe. He actually lost the 2008 presidential election but has refused to leave the office. Zimbabweans are pretty peaceful people though and don't want to start a big war in their country so everybody there is basically waiting for Mugabe to die. Luckily he's his mid to upper 80's now so, hopefully for the people of Zimbabwe, he won't be around much longer. I loved Zimbabwe though. They still try to keep the Victoria Falls part of Zimbabwe safe to try to bring the tourists back, but that side of the falls is basically a ghost town now because people are afraid to go to Zimbabwe. We weren't originally planning on going but we met a bunch of Zimbabweans who were living in Mozambique who told us that the Victoria Falls part of Zimbabwe was safe and was definitely worth seeing. They were way right. Anyway, Zimbabwe is a pretty messed up country. I think they have the worst inflation in the world right now. In fact, they don't even really use their money as far as I know anymore. They just use USDs, Euros, and the currencies of the surrounding countries. In fact, according to this sign, in that part of Africa they are even asking people not to use Zim dollars as toilet paper. Wow. Here is a 100 Trillion Dollar Bill. It is the biggest bill they printed in Zimbabwe before their money became basically worthless. They now sell their money as souvenirs. I bought a few trillion and billion dollar bills just to remind myself that things could get worse with our economy if we don't get control of our little version of Mugabe soon. Anyway, I won't go into ALL the details because I really don't even know all the details, but basically Mugabe has been the leader of Zimbabwe for quite a few years and wasn't maybe too wicked (at least by African standards) until the last decade or so since he's gotten all old and crazy. Zimbabwe has one of the worst cholera outbreaks in the world, has the worst inflation rate in the world, is running out of food, and recently Mugabe threw himself a birthday party that cost over 250,000 dolars US. Nice. He took away all the land from the white farmers that had been there for generations and gave it to his friends and family who, unfortuately, don't farm. Zimbabwe used to have a lot of farming exports and now has basically none. So the economy is completely ruined and almost all food and supplies have to be brought in from neighboring countries. The whites and the blacks in Zimbabwe get along really well. It is basically everybody against Mugabe and his people. I really liked alll the Zimbabweans that I met. I hope that they can get their country back from Mugabe's evil rule soon.

Because there isn't really any food to be found in Zimbabwe, and they only allow the locals to bring like 5 dollars worth of food back and forth from Zambia at any time, my friends and I helped this nice Zimbabwean smuggle suckers for him to sell across the border. They don't regulate how much tourists carry over so we were able to help him.

Julia was the first one who thought we should help him and I was like, "Julia, haven't you seen the movie Brokedown Palace?" But we looked at the packages of suckers and they looked legit and the guy seemed to be telling the truth so we helped him. Besides, one of my talents is smuggling food across international borders and I didn't want to bury my talent, lest it be taken away. And, after we got across the border Julia made him give us each a sucker, which I kind of felt bad about since he's so poor and I don't really even like suckers, but it was comforting to eat one and discover for oursleves that they were NOT laced with drugs or anything. At least as far as we could tell.

The Zimbabwe side of the falls was way better than the Zambia side, so I'm glad we went.

Here is one of the views from Zimbabwe.

And another. It was pretty amazing.

We once again got completely drenched...

but we had fun.

Me with a different view of the falls.

I'm on top of the worrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrld! Maybe those suckers were laced with drugs or maybe I'm just weird. Who knows.

I couldn't leave without taking a typical tourist photo. When you get really close to the falls it is like you are in a big tropical rainstorm.

And here we are at the top of the falls. Yvette was off taking a helicopter ride to see the falls from above and Hailey stayed back in Zambia that day so it was just me, Juila, and Brooke.

Victoria Falls Bridge up close. Julia, Brooke and I bungee jumped off the bridge a few hours later. I'll share more on that in another post though.

After bungee jumping, the other four girls went on an elephant ride in Zambia. Since I had already ridden an elephant in Thailand and wanted to save money, I decided to stay in Zimbabwe by myself. It really was safe, I promise. And just to be extra safe I found an old guy who seemed harmless and hired him to be my tour guide for the day. I was glad I'd hired him because although it is really safe there and nobody would hurt you, people are so desperate there right now that they will try to sell you a souvenir or something and if you don't buy it then they will just start begging for money and food. And my tour guide kept those people from harassing me too much. It was so sad. You could tell that they wanted to make money selling their souvenirs as they always had done in the good days of tourism and not begging, but they really are in a desperate situation there. I bought as much stuff as I thought I could afford (and carry) and left still feeling bad that I wasn't able to do more.

Anway, if any of you are thinking of going to Victoria Falls I would highly recommend staying on the Zimbabwe side. Not only to help out those people but because the falls are better from that side and the town of Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe is safe and clean and the people are super nice. And I didn't even pick up cholera while I was there.

Here is the view of Victoria Falls off in the distance from the old Victoria Falls Hotel which is an old colonial hotel from back in the day when Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe was the place to be. It is over 100 years old. Someday when I'm rich I'm going to stay there.

Here's a picture of the hotel.

Victoria Falls from above. I didn't take this picture but I just thought it was a good one to share to give you an idea of how huge these falls are. Overall, I'd give the trip five stars. I had an amazing time. I didn't get sick, robbed, or killed or anything and saw lots of beautiful things and met lots of great people. I think I might be falling a little bit in love with Africa now that I've traveled there a few times and am getting a little more comfortable with it. It really was the trip of a lifetime.

I guess maybe I should have said yes to our taxi driver in Zambia who wanted me to stay and marry him. But he had a moustache. Sick.

This is the end of Africa Part II, covering South Africa, Mozambique, Zambia, Botswanna, and Zimbabwe. Wow, I bet if you made it through this whole post you are just dying to leave me a comment. Hopefully not one pointing out all of my grammar and spelling mistakes though, because once again, for some reason, I can't get the spell check to work and this is a long post so I'm sure there are mistakes. Please forgive me ahead of time for any errors that may distract you from the content of this wonderful post. Thank you.