South Africa

Hey Sportsfans,

Well we're now here in capetown with a latte in one hand and typing furiously with the other. The waistline is expanding in an inverse relationship to the bank account but hey! it's party time.

To recap the last week:

Since Swakopmund where I last wrote from we shifted the setting south to Sossuvlei(pronounced soft souffle) . This is a desert area with sand dunes approaching 400m high. They were large, orange and sandy. Pretty cool to see, hard to climb up but hilarious fun to tumble/run down. It's an awesome part of the world but amusingly enough it rained on the day we were there. The local chap who was our guide was a San man and he was 37 years old. This was the third bout of rain fall for 2008 and the first time in his life he's seen rain in June. He didn't know why and we didn't have the heart to explain why global weather patterns are changing. Sad.

Next from Sossuvlei was the desert/dessert (omit one) . I could decribe for the entire world the inside of our bus which I studied intently during thes time but i think not. We eventually ended up at fish river canyon which is the second largest in the world (the quite grand canyon) and took many obligatory photos. It was actually really pretty though and a nice spot to hunker down.

From there we basically drove to Capetown. We did stop in cederburg for an im-port-ant night of rest but didn't do much else. Next stop was the end of our tour in Capetown...

Capetown is glorious. It has a harbour 10 times that of the viaduct and long street is a much cooler, larger and more amazing version of Cuba Street. It also has rather a lot of violence and a few large townships/ghetto's but nowhere is perfect. The mountain is also spectular. We've so far visited ~6 cafes in two days to get a statistically significant cross section of the Capetown coffee's. Not bad. Kate bought jeans and I've acquired such interesting stuff as camera batteries. There is an "investment car dealership" which I find amusing - obviously their cars don't depreciate like all other ones.

Yesterday we made the obligatory trip to Robben island. It was quite an experience. Our tour was approximately as follows "HI, I AM YOUR FRIENDLY GUIDE. I AM VERY FRIENDLY. ASK ME QUESTIONS. MORE QUESTIONS. DAMMIT PEOPLE HARRASS ME. BLAH BLAH YELL YELL" etc. The other funny thing to me was that he presumed we were interested in parts of hte island unrelated to the prison where the political prisoners were kept. I couldn't believe it when he pointed out the lighthouse (it's 30 metres high - the tallest point on the island). Needless to say some people took photos of said lighthouse. After exactly 45 minutes (THIS VERY FRIENDLY TOUR IS EXACTLY 45 MINUTES HA HA HE HE OR ELSE I GET FIRED HAW HAW) we were delivered to the prison proper where an ex inmate met us. He had a fantastic voice, an interesting/sad story and 45 minutes also. Anyways, Mandela's cell was rather small, his story rather inspiring and the tour was overall excellent. The oppressiveness of Apartheid is not the best legacy I can safely say.

Anyways. We have 4 more days here before going back to East Africa/Dar es Salaam/the third world. It'll be a shock to our increasingly pampered systems but that's okay. In the meantime we'll go wine tasting, go to simon's town for food and latte ourselves stupid. Hurrah.

Congrats to Dave, Pete Reeves and other people who have things to congratulate. I love news from home. Who on earth is Adam Thompson? Casedog must be beside himself that Tanerau Latimer is getting talked about (and don't forget that he is about to be a dad).

The situation in Zimbabwe and South Africa's treatment of it is in the news here a lot. Grrr. Richie McCaw's knee dominates the sports news headlines here though. Funny.

Party on.

Jeff

Zambia, Bostwana, Namibia

Well.

I can' believe it's been 10 days since our last post. We've been flat out on tour. Today is a bit of a down day so I finally get a chance to catch my breath and type gibberish on the internet.

I can't possibly run through all the stuff we've done and quite frankly it would be a tad boring and mired in too many details. Instead i'll just talk about the odd thing here and there.

First of all Botswana - this country has all of 2 million people, a massive desert, a strong currency and fluent tourism. We loved it there and especially loved Chobe National Park. We also spent 3 days on the Okavango delta including 1 night bushcamping on an island in the delta. Interestingly enough, the island had lions, elephants, zebra, kudu and snakes on it. Thus our position seems a tad precarious - a restricted geography with carnivorous predators who have a dwindling source of food looking favourably on maybe a nice thigh of Jeff or arm of Kate, but it was fine... We even managed to find ourselves on a Cessna 206 (7 seater) on a scenic flight over the delta. Stunning view and semi-mad english pilot who delighted in terrorifying us with his tricks...

Botswana though has quite a lot of sadness too - mainly in the form of a mile high HIV rate and the slow eradication of the Kalahari bushmen. These people were awe inspiring and despite the highly touristy nature of our encounter with them it is safe to say they left a strong impression on all of us. Fences are also strangling the Kalahari which is terrible.

Namibia - amazingly german, clean and sausage ridden place. It's very western and treats us to Windhoek lager, Herero women and treats such as strudel. This country is very much first world and the areas we have been have been awesome. We camped a night at Spitzkoppe which is a rocky outcrop in the Namib desert. Very flintstones...

Right now we are in Swakopmund. It is again delightful. Anyways, the coolest thing here are the sanddunes. We went yesterday and jumped on quad bikes to explore them. Wel;l I thought it was an exploration trip. INstead though I was put on a 350cc quadbike and after 30 seconds of induction we were driving straight up 30 metre sanddunes at maybe 50-60 kmh. It was frankly terrifying and the only reason we kept going was a small touch of male ego! Twas like skiing on steroids! Very cool and luckily we weren't injured.

ANyways, onwards and downwards from here. We are off to see some dunes that are 100 m high which should be cool. Then through down to fish river and into capetown in only 6 days. Better leave now and google me up a place to stay.

Poor NZ cricket. I wonder if Dan Carter can swing a bat? Seems he can do most things.

Ciao.

Central Southern Africa

Hey World,

Man, I cannot believe it's been so long since we last blogged. So much seems to have happened. I'll try to get through it chronically although rambling may be permissable so we'll see.

The end of our time in Nkata Bay was excellent. Kate qualified as a diver which was great. We also spent most of a week helping the staff at Butterfly Lodge with the opening of their information centre for the local community. It was cool to head out into the community and meet local NGO people who, despite being poor themselves, were fully committed to helping others who have AIDS etc etc. We also managed to attend a concert of a band called "Souls of the Ghetto" who are a Malawian Reggae Group touring Europe soon. We had a great night dancing with the locals. One other thing I managed was a night dive in Lake Malawi. Pretty scary but worthwhile. The dolphin fish are apparently rather famous (think BBC documentaries and english accents describing their incredible lifestyles) and I certainly enjoyed watching them hunt.

After all this action it was time for some bussing. We cracked into it with a nice wee 8 hour ride on the bus from hell. The first four hours were spent standing in the aisle. Not merely standing comfortably either - more contorted and funky like. At one point I thought a little kid was touching my leg. Turned out it was a chicken. A couple of police inspections and a couple of litres of sweat later and we arrived in Lilongwe at dusk. We stayed at Mabuya camp which was rather cool. We had the following day for rest but typically spent it shopping. This time though shopping involved heading to the Lilongwe markets where we each got a zip up sweatshirt. Kate managed to get a "Vegetarians are more fun" tshirt and I scored a sweet chocolate brown vest. These items should keep us warm as the temperatures plunge in the desert. Total cost of the 4 items was $5 bucks. Thanks to whoever donated them to their church back home.

Next was a 530am start and a minivan to the border of Malawi and Zambia. We managed this without a hitch and found ourselves in Zambia by 8am. We promptly hired the first taxi we found only to learn that we'd hired the passenger seat. That's right - the "nice" man expected both me and kate and our backpack to sit in the passenger seat. We packed a sad and so Kate was allowed in the back seat which was good. Bad though was this meant the guy from the backseat attempted to share a seat with the driver. Thus picture 2 guys sitting in the drivers seat, cracked windscreen and potholed road going 90 kmh. Good times. The saving grace of all this was that the taxi driver abruptly pulled to a stop next to a large bus. This bus happened to be going to Lusaka and so we jumped on (much to the annoyance of the driver who'd had to stop when our taxi driver parked infront of him). Luckily we had scant quantities of US cash with which to pay for our tickets. The next 9 hours were spent in relative comfort driving through Zambia although to be honest it looked more like the set of the flintstones movie.

Lusaka was nicer than expected but we were quickly on our way at 530 am the next morning again. This time though we were on the Mazhundu family bus - an exiled zimbabwe company who were unbelievable - movies, individual seats, a/c and cans of coke as part of the service. We arrived in Livingstone around 2pm. By 330pm we were on a "booze cruise" taking in the glorious sunset on the Zambezi river. This night ended with a little madness but was all good. Next morning was Kate's birthday. We celebrated this with a wee visit to Vic Falls. Currently gushing 10 million litres per second across a 1.7km expanse down 106 metres, the Falls are certainly cool. It's funny that you can only see water gush over the top of a tiny section at once. The steam/spray it generates means you can't see the bottom or across the whole falls at once. Doesn't much matter though as the roar, the sensation and the view are unreal. So unreal infact we went back the next day with the camera and got a few cool pics..

Zambia though maybe 3 times the price of Malawi. Beer = $3 a bottle for instance. Cigarettes still cheap as chips.

Anyways, 4th June and our Acacia tour starts. It seems like a cool group of people and the camp grounds we've had are nice. The water is now safe to drink and the beer is certainly cheaper here in Botwana. The infrastructure is on par with Zambia and thus light years ahead of Malawi and Tanzania. We are now staying in Kasane which is a really cool wee town on Chobe national park. Last night we went for a game cruise on a barge. We saw greater kudu, Botswanan baboons, fish eagles, hippo's a plenty and then elephants. The elephants were unreal. Around 40 of them showed up and drank from the river 5-8 metres from 50 wide eyed whities. The girls still managed to coo at the baby elephants and the boys were impressed with the large bull elephants... The only problem with the drive was that our bus and thus our camera were stuck at Zambian customs and thus we went without photos :( (guess you had to be there!) This was a real shame as the photography would have been so easy. Any fool with a half decent camera could produce a coffee table book.

Then this morning we were up at 530 again for a game drive in 4wd. This was cool although the game didn't really show up. To compensate for hte lack of camera last night I took 190 photos of mixed quality (like a fool) . Am still waiting to see most of the more famous animals but it's awesome cruising round at dawn. Can't wait for the serengeti...

So yeah, that's all our news. We are now living like kings, eating and drinking whatever we like and regaining much weight. The next few days see us driving to more national parks and the Okavango delta. Sounds cool to me! Hopefully it doesn't get any colder though as it's already down near freezing most nights. Our 12 dollar nylon sleeping bags are certainly gonna struggle.

Jeffo. (Oi Jeff, aren't NZers meant to be tough? I heard you were born frozen)

PS, if you want a postcard send me your address.
PSS got ma head shaved. la viva moce. doesn't look much different to normal to be honest. how odd.