When I left you last, I was in Livingstone, Zambia, home to the magnificent Victoria Falls. Hillary and I were planning on heading south through Botswana on our way back to South Africa. The plan was to get down to Johannesburg and catch the Shosholozameyl train which goes across the country, ending in Cape Town. I was quite excited to see Botswana as I had heard nothing but good things from fellow travellers and, unlike Zambia, the entry visa was free (most countries in East Africa, for example, charge US$ 50 just to get in). Unfortunately, a little research revealed that independent travel through Botswana was anything but cheap. The cheapest dorm bed I could find near Maun (gateway to the largest inland delta in the world, the Okavango Delta) went for $20 a night. Furthermore, Botswana’s claim to fame and main tourist draw is that it has the highest density of wildlife in Africa, and some of the continent’s best wildlife reserves. It would only really be worth travelling through Botswana if we could afford to indulge in some of these activities but, of course, we could not. So we now had no idea which route we would be taking to get back to South Africa for our flight on March 19th. The other overland possibility was Zimbabwe, but to be honest it was hardly an opportunity at all. The entry visa for Canadians travelling through Zimbabwe is $75 and the country is a little bit volatile. It’s quite peaceful actually, or so I am told, but their government is all sorts of batshit insane (Mugabe is a terrible human being) and the prospect of travelling through the area was not one we seriously considered. I’ve heard it’s a lovely place, but every one that has told me that visited the country on an organized overland tour (usually a Cairo to Cape Town kind of thing).
So we were left with little other option but to try to find a flight. It seemed a little bit mad to be flying from Zambia down to South Africa in order to catch a flight to Tanzania (which borders Zambia) but that’s how it worked out, and these sorts of mild fuck-ups are commonplace when you’re backpacking. We looked up the airline that Cathy and Joe used, called “one-time” (terrible name for an airline) and found a flight from Livingstone to Johannesburg for under $100. We booked the flight, which left a week later. We then decided that, since we were skipping Botswana and completely avoiding Zimbabwe, we would try to make it to Malawi and back within the next week. It didn’t seem like too ambitious a plan; a quick glance at the map showed us how close we were to Lilongwe, the capital city of Malawi, and I’ve wanted to visit the country for as long as I can remember. I was very excited at the prospect of it. Again, unfortunately, some planning revealed that it was close to impossible to get to Malawi and back within a week without being pressed for time. To get to Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, it was an 8-hour bus. Then, to the border of Malawi, it was yet another 8-hour bus, from where we would need to get a special hire to Lilongwe, which could apparently take a few hours. Then, to get to Lake Malawi (the purpose of going to the country) would take another half-day of travel. In the end, we would have only had maybe two days at Cape Maclear (our destination in Malawi, at the southern tip of the lake) before starting our return journey. On top of that, we had only paid for a single entry visa to Zambia, and if we left and returned, we would have to pay for another visa, another $50. Also, we were still desperately trying to sort out our journey from Johannesburg to Cape Town, and the reliable, if somewhat expensive internet service at our hostel in Livingstone was a huge plus. Trying to deal with that while travelling through the middle of some of the least developed areas in Africa would have been too much of a stretch and not worth the stress and extra cost. So, we decided to drop anchor in Livingstone and spent the next week relaxing at our hostel for the most part. While it was a little upsetting that we would not get to see either Botswana or Malawi, it was not long before we accepted that our ambitious plans were never possible, and the ladies at the reception of our hostel agreed that getting to Malawi and back within a week was all but impossible.
So, for the next week we just kicked back and enjoyed the comforts of our hostel. To this date, it is one of the best hostels I have had the pleasure of staying at. It was safe, had a great atmosphere, lots of interesting people, and had a pool and an awesome relaxation area (or “chill-out zone”). We visited some markets and did a bit of exploring around the area, but for the most part we just chilled out and watched “An Idiot Abroad” (best travel program ever made – check it out). Those that have been following this blog will remember that while in Uganda, I spent some time at a place called Jinja, supposedly one of the best white-water rafting spots in the world. The other big, exciting river in Africa for adrenaline sports is the Zambezi, which forms the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe and contains the famous Mosi-Oa-Tunya (the actual name of Victoria Falls, before David Livingstone decided to rename it and claim it for the white people, fucker). We had been tempted by the white-water rafting before, but decided it was out of our budget ($135 per person is not cheap). Seeing as we did essentially nothing for a week in Livingstone though, and seeing as we were saving quite a bit of money by not travelling to Malawi and back, we justified it and decided to sign up for the trip. On Monday we rafted the Zambezi River, one of the highest volume rivers in the world. While the Nile is the longest in the world, the flow rate is relatively small. In terms of volume of water rushing past a given point in a given amount of time, the Zambezi is something like 200 times the size of the Nile.
We met some cool people on the truck down to the put-in (starting point) including two Canadian girls and one of the gayest people I’ve ever met in my life, a Californian. To get to the put-in, we had to walk down a rocky path and it took a solid twenty minutes. It was hot and by the end we were insanely tired and our legs were already turned to jelly. As we got ready to go, I realized that there was only one proper raft, while the other was the “safety raft” that is legally required for white-water rafting trips. There were eleven of us, so I knew that some unlucky rafters would be in this one. It’s called a safety raft because instead of just having a guide with a standard paddle at the back, it had a gigantic piece of wood at the back with two huge wooden oars. It was meant to not flip over (or at least not as much as a regular raft) and is overall just sturdier. When I rafted in Jinja, that was the raft you went in if you were a complete wuss, and only one person ever did. Of course, we ended up in the lame raft, and I was not happy about it. I paid to go white-water rafting, not so take the easy lines on the safety boat, and that’s what we did. This was my fourth time rafting and I’ve figured out, more or less, how it works. Through almost every rapid, our boat took the easy line, around most of the big stuff, while the other boat went straight through the heart of it all and had a way more intense trip as a result. Overall, it was definitely the tamest rafting trip I’ve ever been on and it was a bit of a disappointment. However, there was one moment of intensity. We flipped once, probably due to the fact that I was bitching about being in the safety raft and so our guide took us straight through a wall of water, finally. I’ve flipped while rafting a number of times, but this was easily the most intense. I was held under for what felt like at least five seconds and, not being able to swim to the surface, I panicked and swallowed a huge amount of water. When I finally surfaced, there was a free helmet floating next to me. I grabbed it, and it turned out to be Hillary’s, who had been clocked in the face by one of the gigantic wooden oars (this is why you shouldn’t raft in the fucking safety boat) and had lost her helmet. The calm section following that rapid was not long enough to sort us all out, so most of us ended up hanging on to the safety kayaks for dear life through Class 4 rapids, Hillary without a helmet. I was hanging on to the back of one of the safety kayakers while a Chinese couple held on to the front. We were approaching another rapid and the kayaker told us “if I flip over, just let me go so I can roll back up.” Right.Understood. Or so I thought. The rapid tossed him over, of course, and, of course, I let go. The Chinese couple didn’t though, they just held on, preventing him from rolling up. When he finally shook them off and rolled up, he was maaaaaad, and out of breath. After that, we eventually got back to our raft and started to recover. Hillary had a huge bump on her head from where she had been clocked by the oars of the “safety boat” (can you tell that I’m pissed off about this?), and one of our rafters ended up in the other raft for the time being. After that, our guide took us down the absolute easiest lines possible. The Chinese couple was happy about that because I don’t think they were expecting such a wild ride, but I felt a little cheated. $135 is a lot of money to pay, especially if you’re avoiding the very rapids I came to raft. But whatever, there was nothing I could have done about that. On to some more positive stuff: the views were absolutely magnificent. To our left was Zambia, and to our right was Zimbabwe. There were towering mountains of rock, dense patches of forest, and several white sand beaches along the way. The river is also apparently home to a pretty high population of crocodiles but, perhaps luckily, we didn’t see any. Overall, the rafting trip was very fun, while a little tame for my tastes. We met some cool people and had a good lunch, included in the price, and the most intense flip of my brief rafting career, so I’m glad we did it. Also, we took a cable car from the take-out up to where the bus picked us up, and the view was awesome.
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| Nearly falling into the Zambezi River |
Most of the people on the trip had also signed up for the sunset booze cruise on the Zambezi, which Hillary and I had already done. But, instead of letting them get ahead of me, I started drinking immediately when I got back to the hostel, and by the time they rolled up at about 7:30, wasted, I was right there with them. We had a nice round of King’s Cup and some good socializing that night. I somehow got in a very heated and loud discussion (read: argument) with one of the Canadian girls regarding the state of the Toronto Raptors franchise. I don’t even really follow basketball that closely, but it was quite a lively debate. I tried to shift it to hockey once or twice, but she didn’t feel like talking about the Maple Leafs (I wonder why….) while I was perfectly content to talk about the Canucks, as long as we avoided the topic of last year’s playoff run. We also met someone from Wales who knew quite a lot about the Cornwall area, where we will be working this summer, so we had a good talk with him. I learned that, while in Cornwall, one mentions Bevan at their own peril. (“Don’t mention Bevan! I mentioned it once but I think I got away with it.” Someone please get this reference.)
The next couple of days before our flight back to South Africa were spent trying to arrange this highly recommended train journey from Johannesburg to Cape Town (it’s in Lonely Planet’s top 12 things to do in Africa or something). I couldn’t figure out why booking it was so hard. I had emailed them something like five times, and even tried calling them, all to no avail. I eventually found a different website and filled out the booking form there. By this time though, of course, there was no room left for the date that we needed. It was a little annoying because I had emailed them about a week earlier (it is necessary to book well in advance for the journey) but I was never told that my emails were not going through. When I finally reached them, they were all full. So this meant that we had to get yet another Intercape bus, this time from Jo’burg to Cape Town. It was really frustrating that it worked out this way because the reason that we had booked a flight to Jo’burg and not straight to Cape Town (where our flight to Tanzania left from) was so that we could take the train journey. So we flew to Johannesburg and stayed there for a couple of days before catching another 20 hour bus across the country.
While lining up for security at the Livingstone airport, we met an older American man and had a good chat with him. He briefly mentioned that he didn’t have his yellow fever vaccination and kind of passed over it like it was no big deal. I’ll be clear about this: people travelling to certain countries in central and eastern Africa are required to have proof of a yellow fever vaccination in order to leave the country. If you don’t have one, you can’t leave until you do. I had to show proof when I left Uganda, and I was sure we had to show proof to leave Zambia. But anyway, this guy treated it like it was no big deal, like he was going to get through anyway. We kind of laughed with him, but deep down I knew he was fucked. After we split up to go through the security and passport control, we never saw him again. He clearly got told “no, you need a vaccination” and he is probably currently still in Zambia, trying to find somewhere safe to get vaccinated, but he still won’t be able to leave for at least a week. I’m sorry, but what an idiot. We boarded our plane with no trouble however, and in a couple hours we arrived in the notoriously dangerous Johannesburg. We only had two nights to stay there however, and our hostel picked us up from the airport, free of charge. The place we had chosen was called Bob’s Bunk House and it was delightful. It was in Evandale which is the area right by the airport, far from the centre of the city. We didn’t feel like visiting Soweto (I’m kind of against township tours, I like to avoid treating people like they’re animals in a zoo) and nothing else really seemed interesting, so we hung out at the hostel for the next day and a half, venturing out once or twice to get groceries (read: the cheapest possible way of eating). So while Johannesburg is notoriously dangerous, we didn’t experience any of this unpleasantness.
At this point I feel I need to mention something that may not seem like a big deal but, to me, it was huge. In Livingstone, my iPod crashed (for lack of a better word). It needed to be restored, which was fine, before it could work again. However, there had been a new version of software released for my iPod a while ago but, seeing as how I was dealing with slow, unreliable internet connections, I had yet to download it. Before restoring an iPod, it must be up to date with the latest software, so this meant that it could not be fixed until I could somehow download the new software; the file was 750MB. For those who don’t know what any of this means: I was fucked. The download would take at least six hours, and I did not have a connection that would stay up for that long. What this meant is that until I got to Cape Town, where our hostel had a good and fast connection, I was without an iPod. My music is the one thing that I could not live without, and those few days sucked big time. It was alright doing a two-hour flight without it, but taking a 20 hour overnight bus without music is something I would not wish on Kony himself. This may not seem like a big deal, and you’re right, it isn’t for most people.But, on a regular day I listen to probably six or seven albums, and when I can’t, I’m a miserable little fucker. I’ve had nightmares about losing/breaking my iPod and going without music. When I finally got to Cape Town and was able to download the proper software in under an hour, I was the happiest I’ve ever been and listened to The Mountain Goats for the next four straight hours. Never again.Never ever again.
Our bus from Johannesburg went relatively smoothly, if you don’t count the fact that I was a huge grump without music, and if you don’t count the overbearing stench of onion-esque body-odour emanating from one of the passengers (we were hardly the only ones upset by this). At about 2:00PM, we rolled back into Cape Town, and it felt like being home again. It’s been my base for most of the second half of this trip and I know the area so well. We checked back into our tried and true hostel, showered away the filth, and chucked some Rand at some cheap but delicious Indian food. We didn’t do much for the next day besides kick around Long Street and Green Market Square. Our flight to Tanzania left at 9:50AM on Monday morning, but the cheap airport shuttle left at only 6:10 or 8:30, so we of course had to pick the earlier option and were up disgustingly early. Monday was a full day of travel, including a few hours of layover in the Johannesburg airport. Last time I connected through that airport, I have some stuff stolen from my bad, so we decided to get our bags wrapped in plastic wrap at the Cape Town airport. This put our minds at ease during our time in the Jo’burg airport as we didn’t have to worry about stuff being stolen from our backpacks, and we instead were able to enjoy the airport, which is, somewhat ironically, one of the nicest I’ve ever been in. We got a meal at a reasonably priced restaurant. We picked it because they advertised that they accepted US Dollars for payment, and we had less than 80 Rand left between the two of us. Hillary had loads of American cash kicking around so we thought, great. However, upon getting the bill, we realized that we had been royally screwed. To convert the bill from Rand to USD, the restaurant used a rate of 5.5 Rand/dollar. The actual rate is about 7.8, and we were fuming. Why would they advertise that they accepted American Dollars but not mention that you get a terrible rate? Well ok, I know why, but it’s still upsetting. We tipped poorly, put that unpleasantness behind us, and boarded our four hour flight to Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, biding our final farewells to South Africa, a marvellous but perplexing country.
I was heading back to eastern Africa, where I had previously spent four months, but the relative safety and comfort of southern Africa had made it seem like ages ago that I was in “the real Africa.” I was immediately reminded of what we would be dealing with upon landing. Stepping off the plane, we were greeted with a wall of sticky heat; it was like walking through soup. “Ok, that’s fine, it’s going to be hot, I can deal with that,” I told myself. Was I couldn’t deal with though, was the complete lack of logic that people in eastern Africa apply in frustrating areas. As soon as we exited the plane, we had to fill out the necessary forms in order to obtain the visa required for entry. It was all going well, and I had my 50USD in hand before the clusterfuck broke out. I should have seen it coming because I knew that this is how they deal with things in east Africa, but it still pissed me off. Instead of having an effective queuing system, or any halfway efficient way of assuring that the 100 plus people got their visas in a timely manner, it was an inefficient mess of lazy officials taking their sweet, sweet time. To start with, there was an officer that we had to give our passports, money, and visa forms to, and he then walked across the room and handed them to clerk, three or four at a time. I was at first worried that he was pocketing our money, but that was soon at the bottom of my list of legitimate concerns. I was near the back of the plane and so was one of the last to have my passport handed in for processing. There was a crowd of people standing in the room waiting for their visas. I asked why people weren’t lined up and a seasoned pro of Tanzanian visa acquisition told me that there was no point. They called names randomly, whenever the passports were ready, and the order in which you got there hardly mattered. Like I said, we were near the back of the plane, but ours were ready relatively quickly. There was a guy standing there that was obviously among the first to have his form completed, and grew more and more impatient every time a name was called that wasn’t his. I felt bad for the guy, he’s probably still waiting. Basically, it was an insanely frustrating experience and the lack of logic applied to the situation by the officials was mindboggling. The flight that my parents are on is about to land in a couple of hours and I want to warn them about what is coming when they land, but I can’t. I know my Dad is going to be beyond frustrated and will try in vain to get them to apply some efficiency to the process, but it will be at his own peril. They’ll just get angry at him and put his passport at the bottom of the pile.
Anyway, when that unpleasantness was finally behind us, we got a lift to our hotel. If the passport fiasco hadn’t already reminded me where I was, I was quickly reacquainted with the region during my car ride. It was after dark, but all the busy street-side activity was still very observable. Hawkers were selling anything imaginable, the traffic observed no rules, and ahead of us a pickup truck carried thirty passengers in its bed. At one traffic light (the intersection had police officers directing traffic, rendering the traffic light obsolete), a young boy tried to wash our window, but the driver shooed him away. When he noticed there were mzungus in the car, he came to our side. He looked each of us in the eyes and flashed us a peace sign (two fingers extending upward, palm towards himself) which at first I thought was quite sweet of him. I soon realized that he was probably actually flipping us off, prick.
We finally arrived at our hotel late at night, dirty and tired. It was called the New Bondeni hotel, and its illuminated sign read NEW B__D_NI, a sure sign of things to come. It’s a pretty cheap rate, so I don’t know why we were expecting anything but, but this place is a little bit of a shit hole. I mean by east African standards it’s actually probably pretty nice, but coming from the comfort of South Africa, this was a bit of a shock. The bathroom smells of eggs, and the “shower” is a spout in the middle of the room and a hole in the corner, behind the toilet. When you use it, it soaks the entire room; you must remove the toilet paper first so that it doesn’t become soaked to the point of uselessness. At least it has air-conditioning though, because I doubt I could sleep well, if at all, without it. Oh yeah, there is a TV as well, which is nice, and it has some good channels. But, when you turn it on, the default channel plays hardcore porn. We didn’t even order it, it’s just there. It’s not even hidden away on some faraway channel either, it’s on channel 2. News, sports, soaps, and porn; fuck me, we’re set.
Hillary and I went and had a bit of a wander today around our area in Dar es Salaam. We managed to track down an ATM and a soft drink before the heat did our heads in. I have no idea where in the city we are located, but it’s definitely not the main area. Most of the people around here act as if they have never seen amzungu before, and many of them may not have. So, here we sit: in our hotel room with the AC on full blast, porn playing in the background, waiting for the rest of our family to arrive. They land at 10:45 PM, and I imagine it will be after midnight, at the earliest, that they show up at the hotel. I’m sure they will be wiped from the flight and dealing with customs (not to mention the heat). In a few days, we head to Arusha and will shortly after start our twelve day tour of the Northern Tanzanian safari circuit, including the Serengeti, Ngorongoro crater, and Oulduvai gorge. I’ve been backpacking mainly by myself for the last six months, so it will be nice to have the family around, even if it’s just for two and a half weeks. So this is it for now, I won’t likely post again until after the safari. So, until April, keep it classy people.
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