Hello Again

It's been a while since I've written - I've either been really busy or really busy doing nothing. When you have nothing to do, it's really easy to do nothing (seems obvious enough). But these last few weeks have been very chilled, highlighted by hikes up Table Mountain, and visits to Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens and Old Biscuit Mill. Nothing too exciting, so I'll keep it short.

I decided to take after my good friend Clayton and start keeping a playlist for each month. If I find myself coming back to the same song again and again, I'll add it to the list. It gives you a way to chronicle what you've been listening to, and I bet it'll be pretty cool to come back in a few years and look at how my tastes have changed and evolved. That said, here's my September 2010 playlist:

Cowgirl In The Sand - Neil Young, Live at Massey Hall
In The Midnight Hour - Wilson Pickett, In The Midnight Hour
Santo Domingo - Rodrigo Y Gabriela, 11:11
For You Blue - The Beatles, Let It Be...Naked
Dissident - Pearl Jam, vs.
Doo Wop (That Thing) - Lauryn Hill, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill
Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology) - Marvin Gaye, The Very Best
Sweet Virginia - The Rolling Stones, Exile on Main Street
I Am Trying To Break Your Heart - Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

Two notes on the above songs. First, that version of Cowgirl In The Sand might be the defining Neil Young song for me. If you haven't heard it (or, for that matter, the entire Live at Massey Hall Album) do yourself a favor and pick it up. Apparently Neil Young secretly lives in Cape Town and is married to a Capetonian - I haven't seen him around but definitely have my eyes peeled. Second, the lead acoustic guitar on Sweet Virginia - I can't even describe it, it's just perfect. Makes me get goosebumps when I listen to it. After seeing Phish play the entirety of Exile on Main Street on Halloween last fall I started to get really into the album, but nothing like I've gotten into it here. I've never heard anything like this album. The Stones manage to find a way to all play on different beats (I'll call it "playing around the beat", if you will) but still have a definite structure to their songs. It gives a really airy and down-homey feel to the album. Pick this one up, too. You will not regret it.



I gotta say, my two new favorite bands that I've started listening to since I got to South Africa have got to be Wilco (I really hope you're reading this Elan) and Radiohead. I really dig Wilco's lyrics and pentatonic jams - though a lot of their songs use the same chords they find ways to use them differently. And I don't know why it took so long for me to discover Radiohead, but damn they're talented musicians. And their producer - that guy has got an incredible ear.

A few random musings before I gotta run..

1. The best way to avoid beggars is to put on a pair of headphones and sunglasses. It totally removes your connection from the outside world.
2. Peri-peri is the best spice in the entire world. Think a spicier, more flavorful cayenne pepper. I'm definitely bringing a few bottles of it back with me. I can't remember the last time I made a dinner that didn't incorporate peri-peri in some form.
3. You know you're an old man when you wake up from napping with your arms behind your head and then can't raise either one straight up. Man my shoulders are fucked up.
4. You know your beard is in full force when a random dude on Table Mountain approaches you and tells you that you look like "Moses. You know, Mr. Moses. From the Bible." Definitely not shaving til I get home.
5. Wireless internet works in the dorm roughly 10% of the time.
6. Why eat regular beef when you can have ostrich instead? Ostrich burgers, ostrich bolognese, ostrich steaks. You name it, I promise you it's better with ostrich.
7. Not being able to watch football (because the stream requires too much bandwidth and because they don't have CBS or FOX or NBC in this country and ESPN decided they would rather show random tennis matches at 2:30 am on Monday nights than Monday Night Football) has got to be one of the must crushing parts of being here. I'm fiending hardcore. When I get back to the US, don't try and contact me on Sundays.

That's all for now - I can't believe I only have 50 days left in this country. Got a lot of cool stuff planned: music festival, trips to Namibia and Mozambique, and, two days before I leave (and the day of my last final) Bafana Bafana vs. USA at Greenpoint Stadium. It WILL be shown on ESPN, and I WILL get on TV. Somehow. Hopefully I'll be allowed back into the US after I'm through.

Victoria Falls: Adrenaline Capital of the World

I must say – going into this trip I thought that Victoria Falls was going to be totally lame. It seemed to me like we had way too much time there, and we had to pay exorbitant amounts of money for the extra activities. That said, I think that the three days I spent at Vic Falls were the highlight of the trip, and I will never forget all the crazy shit I did there.

After a hectic morning crossing the border from Botswana to Zambia (which included putting our truck on a ferry), we finally arrived at the falls around 4 pm. Though we’re now in low-water season in Zambia, the amount of water rushing over the top of the waterfall was unbelievable. In fact, in rainy season, you can barely even make out the cliff that the water flows over – it’s just a sheet of water spraying mist at you. Probably a totally different experience to see it in March as opposed to September. We explored the falls from the Zambian side for a little over an hour, and then decided to get crazy. (This deserves it’s own paragraph.)

The view from the Zambian Side

I had heard that there were calm pools of water literally at the edge of the falls that you could swim in. Notice I didn’t say that they were safe to swim in – people die every year doing this type of thing – but you could swim in them. I didn’t believe the myth until I saw people walking right on the edge of the falls, and upon seeing them I knew I had to make it over there. At around 5:15 we trekked over to the high side of the waterfall (the sanctioned viewing area is opposite the falls) and found a few local guides who were happy to take us across the top. We carefully maneuvered across the top of the falls for around 30 minutes, holding hands to keep our balance and fight the strong current trying to take us over the edge. We were told to fall forward if we needed to fall so that the current wouldn’t sweep us over the edge, leading to sure death. As we got further and further away from land the sun got bigger and bigger, closer and closer to the ground – another beautiful Lion King-esque sunset, this one from on top of one of the seven wonders of the world. Eventually, we reached the Devil’s Pool – it is real! – but by the time we had gotten over there the sun had virtually set and it was approaching darkness. Six of the ten people we had walked out with were begging the guides to take us back so we wouldn’t have to walk in the dark (and, as they warned us, avoid the hippos which come out after the sun sets) – not me. I was at the Devil’s Pool – there was no way in hell I wasn’t going in. Our guide showed us the way – jumping off a twenty foot cliff into the pool – and the four of us, powered by the biggest adrenaline rushes of our lives, followed suit. The pool definitely wasn’t deep enough – I hit my foot on the bottom and sprained my right ankle – but my adrenaline level was too high to even notice. We all approached the edge of the falls – literally could see the drop – and decided we had gotten close enough. No point in pushing it too far, we’d seen exactly what we’d come for. I cannot remember the last time I felt so alive as I did right then. An unbelievable feeling. The walk back was definitely sketch – we were fighting the dark and had to rush and I wound up twisting my left ankle as well. Another battle wound. I didn’t care. It was totally worth it.

The view from right next to the Devil's Pool at the very edge of the falls

The next morning I woke up with my right eye almost swollen shut and totally crusted over – hooray pink eye. That wasn’t going to stop me from rafting the Zambezi, hailed as one of the mightiest rivers in the world. Nor were my two sprained ankles, or my surgically repaired shoulder. I wasn’t missing this rafting trip for anything. Our leader fashioned me a hilarious eye patch (unfortunately I have no pictures since we weren’t allowed to bring our cameras rafting – if you wanted pictures you had to buy them) and off I went, the ultimate gimp, to raft the Slambezi. With one eye. I’ve been rafting before and have seen what I thought was some serious white water. Nothing compared to the Zambezi. Nothing I could’ve imagined could have prepared me for the Zambezi. Their Class IV’s would have been Class V or Class VI in the US. Their Class V’s had 14-foot waves crashing down on you. They wouldn’t even let us raft their one Class VI – rapid 9 – since it was “bad for business”. Most of the river wasn’t extremely technical, just insane amounts of white water that would flip you whenever it felt like it, no matter what you did. Every single boat flipped at least once throughout the day. We flipped three times.

While rafting the Zambezi you are at the mercy of the river. Mother nature is stronger than measly humans. If the Slambezi wants to flip you, it will. Nothing you can do. (I know I just said that but it needs repeating – think about your rafting experiences and how foreign this seems.) Our guide, Tembo, has been working as a guide for ten years. He’s flipped eight times in one day before. As we would approach a rapid he would describe it to us – what the rapid was like, what we needed to do, and almost every single time he added at the end “and then we’ll see what happens”. Only so much you can do to fight mother nature. We managed to make it through the morning totally unscathed, despite being warned that it was the more difficult and scarier part of the river. After lunch, our confidence was high, and we got straight rocked. We got flipped on the third rapid after lunch, named Mother. It shook us all up – I got stuck under the boat for a second, and when I finally made my way out got submerged under waves and was struggling for breath through the end of the rapid – but it was definitely good to get flipped once to get a sense of what it was like. Then, on rapid number 16, named Terminator 1, one of the guys in our boat got thrown at the top of the rapid. We got him back in, only for our boat to be flipped under three seconds later. We all floated down the rest of the rapid cracking up that we had managed to flip again. But it wasn’t the end – we flipped at the very start of the next rapid, aptly named Terminator 2. I swallowed a huge amount of water because I was laughing so hard that we had flipped again. This time, however, the joke was on me – I got a huge gash on my nose from the raft hitting it and a huge gash on my elbow from scraping it against a rock. All worth it. After three flips we had had enough, and after that we were intense even on Class IIs. Definitely the most intense day of rafting I’ve ever had in my life.

After going to the doctor the following morning to get my pink eye medicine (they didn’t know how to work a credit card machine, so I had to do it for them), our whole group crossed the border (the bridge that you see above, which people also bungy jump off of) to Zimbabwe. We first went to a local market, where we were hassled incessantly to buy or trade for their goods – so much so that it became uncomfortable. Everyone tried to guilt trip us into trading for their stuff, and it definitely worked. I wound up with a lot of useless shit, but it makes for a funny story.

After the market, we went to see Vic Falls from the Zimbabwe side, which we had heard was far more badass. Indeed it was – you can see five parts of the falls from the Zim side, as opposed to only three parts from the Zambia side. I got totally drenched walking along the path opposite the falls – the flow on the Zim side is so much stronger than it is on the other side. The weather seemed almost rainy, despite the fact it was totally sunny away from the falls. I could barely see the falls through the mist; I can only imagine what it’s like during rainy season. I hadn’t truly appreciated the might of the falls from the Zambia side, but this made it totally clear. So much better than the Zambia side, no matter what any Zambian will tell you.

The falls from the Zim side - notice how much mistier they are

The next morning, the last of our trip, I decided to get really crazy and go hang gliding over the top of Vic Falls. It wasn’t exactly hang gliding, since we had an engine to get us to cruising altitude and didn’t have to ride the thermals to start, but after we got up there we turned off the engine and rode them. It’s pretty crazy to feel the differences in air pressure smack you in the face. The ride over the falls was, of course, unbelievable, and allows you to appreciate the beauty and extent of Vic Falls unlike looking at it from the ground. There’s just a giant gorge in the earth – it drops off out of nowhere and comes back up on the other side just as quickly – and such a huge volume of water flows over it (I think my guide told me 500 kiloliters per minute, but that seems low to me). From on top of the falls you could see the beautiful rainbows rising really high – higher than the falls themselves. You could also see the mist created from the water hitting the river below – that, too, rose above the falls. To top it all off, we saw a huge pack of elephants, as well as a huge pack of hippos. I can’t think of a cooler place to go hang-gliding, and I definitely don’t think I’ll ever do it again since I felt really weird afterwards for a few hours, but there was no way I wasn’t going to do it while I was there. That became the theme of Vic Falls – “I’m here, there’s no way in hell I’m not going to do (insert crazy activity here)”. I’ve never felt so alive in my life as I did after leaving Vic Falls. If you are an adrenaline junkie and haven’t been, book the next flight. You will not regret it, unless you accidentally slip and go over the edge of the Devil’s Pool.

Chobe: The Real-Life Lion King (Minus The Lions)

After three days in the Delta of fending off spiders, swimming in grimy water, and basically rolling around in elephant dung, I was, needless to say, stoked for my first shower of the trip. Unfortunately, I had to be that dirty hippie on he bus ride from Maun to Kasane, where Chobe National Park is located. The drive to Chobe was filled with roadside animal sightings - cows, horses, and goats crossing the road every few kilometers; giraffes, ostriches, and gansboks (a type of antelope) chilling right next to the road; and, as we got closer and closer to Chobe, elephants. I saw so many elephants on the ride in to Chobe that I had almost become desensitized to them by the time we reached Chobe - almost.

We arrived in Kasane in time for a hurried lunch, before heading down to the water for our sunset cruise down the Chobe River. Our cruise took us only a few kilometers downstream into the park over the course of three hours, but I don't think I've ever seen as much wildlife in one sitting as I did on this ride. Let me tell you: getting plastered while floating down the Chobe River and watching animals as the sun set behidn me - it was truly sublime. Our pontoon boat (see, Carrie, I now know what a pontoon boat is) took us through the African "four corners" equivalent, where the borders for Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Namibia meet. A bit cooler than the Arizona-Colorado-Utah-New Mexico dealie. We could literally watch Namibian elephants change nationalities to Botswanan elephants in the course of two minutes.

The cruise reminded me more of the Lion King than anything I’ve ever seen in my life, though there were no lions (I still can’t believe I have yet to see any lions here, we came close on our game drive in Chobe but couldn’t see them through the thistles of the bushes). I’ve never seen so many different types of wildlife chilling side by side, grazing on the grass, and not paying any mind to each other. On the same island, I saw hippos, buffalos, and elephants – three of the most dangerous animals in the world – all just kicking it right next to each other and doing their own thing. Pretty cool. We saw a bunch of other animals: kudus, impalas, a few fresh-water crocodiles, a water monitor, and a huge pack of baboons. One kid on our trip managed to get a picture of baboons having sex – one of the funniest pictures I’ve ever seen.

The highlight of the cruise had to be the ride back, when we spotted a pack of about 20 elephants on a ledge right next to the water. The sun was setting right behind them, and, through the camera lens, literally silhouetted the massive animals. One elephant in particular seemed to be posing for the camera – the dude who I caught in the picture below – and loved the attention of he people. Very different from the elephants in the Delta, who were afraid of humans. The sunset cruise spoiled me and will forever ruin how I look at safaris – I will never again see that much wildlife in one sitting (until I’m back at Chobe in two years doing the exact same sunset cruise, right mom and dad?).

We awoke early the next morning – try 5 am early – so we could be en route for our 6 am game drive. I had learned the hard way on my last safari in Hluhluwe-Imfolozi – it’s cold as hell in the morning in Africa. Even if you think you’re going to be warm since you’re in Africa, you are wrong. I was the only person who brought gloves and a hat – and I was the only person who wasn’t freezing my ass off. Literally seconds after going through the gate to the park, we encountered a pack of elephants. Chobe is famous for it’s elephants – home to 120,000 of them. In fact, it has so many that it’s become a problem since they knock over too many trees and eat too much of the vegetation. Definitely not a problem for me to see that many elephants though. Like the previous night, we saw an insane amount of wildlife: water buck, hundreds of impala, baboons, hippos, buffalos, a huge snake, kudus, giraffes, zebras, jackals, hyenas, and, most hilariously, a baby warthog and its mom sparring. As I mentioned above, we were right next to a pack of lions, but couldn’t see them through the thistles. Weak. The highlight of the game drive was, again, elephants at the end. We saw a pack of about 5 or 6 right next to the road – literally feet away from the edge of our vehicle – and one of the babies started posing for us. Doing it’s elephant thang, making them elephant noises, the whole shebang. Thankfully, it didn’t charge at us like the baby elephant did in Hluhluwe in July. Really cool to see an elephant so close that you could reach out and touch it.

I mentioned this above, but it’s worth noting again: the animals in Chobe seem unphased by humans. In fact, I think they like showing off for humans. They know that the humans in the park are not going to harm them, and our guide said that they don’t even see the game trucks as people, but as vehicles. The vehicles have never hurt them, so they’ll get up nice and close to them and pose. Very different from the animals in the Okavango Delta, where the majority of the humans they encounter are poachers there to kill them. This makes both places extraordinarily special: any wildlife sighting in the Delta is a treat, while Chobe is amazing because of the amount of animals you see and how close they are. It’s reputation as the best game park in all of Africa stands pat, as far as I’m concerned.

Sit Back In My Dream, Just Drifting Downstream

The world's only inland delta, the Okavango Delta is home to every species of wildlife you'd expect to find in Southern Africa. Unfortuantely for us, this year is the most flooded the Delta has been since 1921, and, as a result, a lot of the islands the animals normally walk around on were submerged beneath the surface. As a result, it was nearly impossible to find any animals, since the islands we visited didn't have many and the islands are hard to travel between since they're so far apart. That said, we still did see quite a few animals - elephants, buffalos, giraffes, hippos, and a few antelopes. However, most of these we saw from the air, and we didn't get a chance to experience the wildlife upclose. That said, the two and a half days we spent in the Okavango were among the most rugged shit I've ever done.

After one and a half LONG travel days from Cape Town to Maun (in Botswana), I was feeling really beat. Despite knowing I really should have taken a nap, there was no way I was going to miss the opportunity to fly over the Delta in a helicopter. We were intially told it would be $60 USD to do the flight, which would last 45 minutes. However, when we arrived, the company told us it would be $65 - or, if we wanted to pay in Rand (which we did, of course, since no one brought US Dollars), it'd be 565 Rand, the equivalent of about $75. After feeling like I was nickel-and-dimed all over South Africa during my travels with my brother, I was furious to hear from the get-go that the same would continue. Yeah, I understand, "they need it more than I do", but when it happens every single place you go it gets really frustrating. That said, I wasn't going to not do the flight. Our flight lasted exactly 45 minutes and took us further than we would be able to travel in the coming days on our makoros (dugout canoes, more to be explained later), and gave us a sense of a. how vast the Delta was and b. that animals really did live there, even if we wouldn't have the chance to see any while we were on our makoros. We saw all the above animals I mentioned - elephants, buffalos, giraffes, hippos, and antelope. Watching the sun set from the helicopter / once we landed on the ground - wow. My first HUGE African sunset. They're not like that in Cape Town. You know those stereotypical Lion King sunsets? Yeah, it was one of those. And we had them every single night on the trip. Unbelievable.

An aerial view of the Okavango Delta from the helicopter

We woke early the next morning and traveled to the makoro station an hour and a half outside of Maun. We left our bags behind and brought only our day packs filled with our toiletries, sleeping bag, a 5 liter jug of water, and a bathing suit (no changes of clothes - we wore the same thing the whole time), and said goodbye to the real world: electricity, toilets, and unlimited water. I, of course, brought my Tempurpedic pillow - how could I go without it for two days? The makoro station was a bit of a clusterfuck - everyone seemed really confused, the makoro guides who were to push us through the Delta for the next two days, called pullers, barely spoke any English, and most of them were really stoned - you could smell the weed through the bushes and watch them come out from behind them giggling. What else would you expect them to do when they're floating down the river and pushing around loud Americans all day?

The makoros we boarded at the docking station

Riding in the mokoros was a pretty interesting experience. You sit two people in each one, plus one puller who stands in the back and pulls you through the river with their giant sticks. The mokoro barely sits on top of the water - your ass is below the water level and if you reach your arm out straight it is about a foot and a half above the water. The pullers push you through the water, but often times you couldn't even tell that you're traveling through water - reeds rise up to 6 feet above your head and you feel like you're traveling through a field of tall grass. Mad spiders live on these reeds, and pretty much every time you go through a patch of them at least one spider will get in the mokoro. The biggest one that jumped into ours had a body about an inch wide - freaking huge - but most of them are tiny spiders that you can just flick out.

More on the guides - they spoke very little English, which made the little amount of English they did speak hilarious. The main guide, named Pilot, had one of the most interesting English vocabularies I've ever heard. His favorite phrase, which he called the golden rule, was "More chances of talk, less chances of sight". Seems pretty self explanatory. We didn't get to "see" the animals, instead we would "meet" them. In the mornings, he told us to take a "nature walk" instead of going to the bathroom. When we would travel to a different island to go on a game walk, we were actually traveling to a different "planet". He told us not to wear bright colors like "green, yellow, and pinky". Pilot seemed very knowledgable, despite his lack of English, and I can only imagine how much of a baller guide he would be if I could speak Setswana.

We arrived at our campsite, if you can call it that, after two hours of being pulled downstream. We had to fit 30 people (including the pullers) in a space that was comfortable for about 8 people and no tents. We managed to fit everyone, barely, and as a result our campsite had a lot of character. Our toilet - a hole in the ground - was about 20 feet from the middle of the camp site, and sent beautiful fumes through the campsite always. Luckily we didn't spend too much time at the campsite ever - we were either out doing game walks, on makoros going to do the game walks, or chilling in the swimming hole. Which brings me to my next point - the swimming hole was grimy as hell. It was really muddy, full of lillypads and reeds, and was downright gross. I spent most of my time trying to learn how to pull the makoros, which, I promise, is a hell of a lot harder than it looks. After about 3 hours of makoro-ing around I finally started to get the hang of it, but lost it all the next day and needed to relearn.

Our game walks were pretty uneventful - we saw a few elephants and a few antelope, but nothing up very close. My favorite part of the walks was the makoro rides over to them - it's just so peaceful sitting in these things, being pushed around, and hearing the sounds of nature and nothing else around you. Sitting in the makoros, you can almost feel the curvature of the earth - probably due in part to there not being a single cloud in the sky. In fact, the sky was so blue that it was almost white on the horizons. The sun was huge - the setting sun even larger - and temperatures reached over 100 F by 11 am. In the summer months, temperatures go as high as 140 F with high humidity - it makes Washington DC seem like paradise. It's really impossible to capture the essence of the Okavango Delta in a picture, a description, or a Planet Earth video - it's something you just need to experience.

Our last night in the Delta, we were treated to a performance by our guides. They sang traditional Botswanan songs, along with dances, and it really was special to watch. Of course, we couldn't receive such a performance without showing them some of our own culture, and, as a group, we performed - a very loose interpretation of the word performed - such American staples as "Buttercup", "Lean on Me", "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air", and ended with a freestyle by one of the kids on our trip, featuring a good old boots-n-skirts beatbox by yours truly. The guides seemed to love the beatboxing - I don't think they'd ever heard it before - and a few of them even tried to join and and started dancing around like clowns. It really was a special experience.

I'm not sure where I'm going at this point in this entry - I presume that my other two entries will be rambling quite like this one. It's really hard to put all my memories and experiences into a coherent flow, but I'll try my best. Hopefully you got somewhat of an idea of what the Okavango Delta was like - though, keep in mind, nothing you see or read will possibly do it justice. A lot of people (read: Jappy girls) on our trip bitched that it was too rugged for them and that we didn't see enough animals, but I thought it was a great start to our trip - very chilled, very authentic, and very not touristy. Everything I love. More to come on Chobe and Vic Falls later.

This photo is in no way, shape, or form doctored. I promise.

Have I Got A Little Story For You...

Twenty-four hours after arriving back in Cape Town, I’m still not even sure how to describe what I’ve experienced the past ten days. I’ve added three new stamps to my passport, argued exchange rates with border officials, seen the most beautiful sunsets imaginable, and done some of the most downright crazy shit I’ve ever done in my life. I’ve suffered two sprained ankles, gashes to my nose and elbow, and pink eye (don’t worry, mom and dad, I’m fine). For now, I’ll just post some pictures of my travels. Expect a full report sometime in the coming days, but know that I’m still alive – as alive as I’ve ever been.

I thought they said animals didn't actually walk around in the streets here...

Outro

In under 24 hours I will be on my way out of South Africa for spring break! We're heading to Botswana, Zambia, and Zimbabwe for safari. Spending 3 days in the Okavango Delta doing safari on dugout canoe, 2 days in Chobe National Park, and 3 days at Victoria Falls, including white water rafting the grade 5 rapids of the Zambezi River. I will report back once I get back to the RSA, assuming and I don't get eaten by a lion.

Peace and Love.