Terminator 2

Finally we get to fill you in on our very eventful last several days. We just figured out tonight that the campsite we're at in Vic Falls has wireless Internet. What a luxury! Speaking of luxury, this campsite has afforded us certain luxuries we haven't had elsewhere thus far. For instance, we have now had two consecutive days of hot showers! Actually, I have. Katie had her first hot shower in a while this afternoon. Yesterday she wasn't so fortunate. We've realized that plumbing standards aren't really up to the standards we're used to in Canada. The showers behave very strangely at times, and just when you think you've got it set up just right, it goes cold again or you lose all your pressure. Katie spent about half an hour in the shower this afternoon she loved it so much. When she came out she was tempted to roll in the dirt so she could do it again. If you think this is a waste of water, our cold showers have been so short, they easily make up for it! Other luxuries include: toilets that aren't holes, toilets that have seats, toilet paper, and toilets that flush. Katie thinks this is the first time she's had all those things in one place. I, on the other hand, have rediscovered what a blessing it is to be male. The other wonderful thing about our current accommodations is that we're here for a few days, so we don't have to be setting up and taking down our tent every day. We've only had one other place where that's been the case. (Although, we've had some days where it's done for us, which we love!). Just when you thought our luxury could not possibly be greater, we've also taken advantage of their laundry service for basically everything we brought. Clean clothes are awesome!

The first leg of our tour ends today. Tomorrow some of our group changes, as do our crew. We liked our first group of fellow travelers and our leader, cook and driver, so hopefully this next bit is at least as good. There are 9 of us from the current group continuing on, so we're hopeful for a good last leg.

As we mentioned in our last update, Chobe national park in Botswana was fantastic. It really was an unforgettable experience to see the concentrations of animals that we saw on both our boat cruise and game drive. We took about 100 trillion (a significant number as you'll find out later) pictures which we'll be sure to post later. Some other things we saw that we didn't mention in our last update are: a huge herd of probably about 100 elephants, many of whom trumpeted at us as we went by; babies of pretty much every kind of animal (giraffes, elephants, hippos, and crocodiles among them); giraffes drinking from the river (a comical sight as they have to spread their legs out in all directions to reach the water!); crocodiles sunbathing; and lions getting ready for an evening hunt. That night we camped inside he national park and managed to escape and middle-of-the-night wildlife encounters other than a honey badger that went through our garbage.

We drove to Victoria Falls yesterday, and in doing so, crossed from Botswana into Zimbabwe.  It was quite a long border stop, and we found out that our Zimbabwe visas were going to cost $75 each instead of the expected $55 each.  When we got to Vic Falls (the Banff of Africa), we set up camp, enjoyed some showers, had a brief driving tour of the main area of the city, and were given a presentation outlining the main activities available to us here.  We decided to do white water rafting and massages (to ease all the tension from the rafting)!  Before supper, we had an "impromptu" performance from a really good African song and dance group.  They were so tight, and the dancing was incredible.  The main story from yesterday, though, was our supper.  We went to a restaurant called "Boma".  It was $40 each for the meal, but it turned out to be much more than a meal.  This place was an experience!  When we arrived in front of the restaurant, we walked down a path, where we were given the traditional African toga-like thing to wear (sorry, I don't know what it's called!) over our clothes.  At the entrance to the restaurant, we had little markings painted on our faces (three dots for girls, two lines for guys).  After we were seated, we were invited to go up and get starters, which consisted of crocodile tail, impala, mushroom rolls, butternut soup, and about 5 or 6 other things.  The main course was a meat grill.  You went past the grill and ordered whatever you wanted from the grill.  They were serving sirloin, buffalo, warthog, fish, chicken, boerwors (South African sausage) and pork sausage.  The warthog was our favourite.  It was amazing.  The desserts were also incredible.  As we were eating, different things were going on.  First, a person came by and painted everyone's face with a different animal.  He was really good!  Katie got an eagle and I got a hippo.  There was also another singing and dancing group that got up and did their thing during supper.  After supper, everyone in the restaurant (probably a couple hundred people) got a djembe (an african drum) and this drumming group led us all in some drumming.  It was amazing to see and hear everyone in the restaurant pounding out all kinds of beats.  Later, a fortune teller (who throws bones to tell your fortune) came around to invite people to come have their fortunes told.  We didn't do this one, but it was interesting nonetheless.  If you're ever in Victoria Falls, go to Boma.  It's worth it!  I was at another game meat restaurant in Nairobi, Carnivore, and while that was great too, this one blew it out of the water.

One interesting thing about Zimbabwe so far is that, far more than in other places, there's people following you down the streets trying to sell you stuff.  What's even more entertaining than some of these people is the "tourist police" that chase them if they see them harrassing you.  We've made "friends" with a guy named Moses (rather, he's made "friends" with us) who really badly wants to sell us some 100 trillion dollar bills (I'm just building the suspense on this one).  Yesterday, while he was following us down the street, the tourist police came chasing after him, and what ensued was a strange little chase not unlike a game of tag.  In the end, they ended up on opposite sides of the street, both laughing. We ended up just inside the gate of our campsite watching this, also laughing.  Okay so, about the 100 trillion dollar bills... As you may know, recently the political situation in Zimbabwe hasn't been terribly stable.  A few years ago, their currency (the Zimbabwe Dollar) started to rapidly lose its value at an exponential rate.  This necessitated the government's printing out higher and higher denominations of bills very quickly.  The result was bills in denomations of things like 50 billion, 500 billion, and best of all, 100 trillion dollars.  Obviously this couldn't go on forever, and their currency was quickly abolished and replaced with the US dollar (the "official" currency of Zimbabwe today).  So now we have these people running around on the street selling worthless 100 trillion dollar bills as novelty items.  Their initial asking price is $10 for the "set" of all the different bills.  I think I'm going to see tomorrow if I can get him to take $1 for two 100 trillions.  This Moses guy is pretty amazing, though, because even when he catches a glimpse of us through the campsite fence (a fair distance from where he's standing), he whistles and waves to us something about how he's still interested in trading for my shorts!

Today was also an eventful day, starting with white water rafting in the morning.  (We've been in Vic Falls for a day and a half now, and we have yet to see the falls!  That will happen tomorrow.)  After a good long training session, it started with a loooong walk down the steep gorge to the Zambezi River.  The gorge is stunning, and incredibly scenic.  Once we were at the bottom of the gorge, we boarded our rafts, six people in each, plus our guide.  Our guide was Lee, and he was really funny.  He liked to trash talk the other boats the whole time.  After some practice in the calm water, we headed out into the rapids, which bear names like "The Washing Machine" (self-explanatory), "Creamy White Buttocks" (so named because of all the white people that lose their pants in the waves), "Obvivion", "Terminator" 1 and 2, and "Judgement Day", among others.  We started on rapid number 11, as the water is still high at this time of year, and rapid number 9, which too crazy for rafting, can't be walked around.  (Someone apparently died in number 9 a few years ago on a kayak.)  The first few rapids were tamer ones, but since they were our first ones, we found them quite scary!  Just when we thought we were getting pretty awesome at everything, we came to rapids 16a and 16b, "Terminator" 1 and 2.  Terminator 1 was fine, and we actually thought we were through the rapids, but Terminator 2 came suddenly.  These were by far the biggest waves of the day (Class 5 rapids).  It's amazing when the waves are so big that you just see the water disappear from beneath you when you approach them.  We approached one big wave, and despite our guides best efforts to keep us facing the wave head-on, we turned just a bit.  This sent our boat flipping into the air, and all of us hapless passengers flying in various directions into the raging rapids.  Katie ended up under the boat, but handled it like a pro.  Soon, we were all hanging on to the side of the boat (still flying through the churning rapids, alternating being under water and above water), our guide flipped it over (on top of me), and we were all able to help each other back in.  Apparently a day rarely goes by when someone doesn't flip on Terminator 2.  Our boat flipped over sideways, but some of our traveling companions in another boat had an even crazier wipeout on the same rapids.  Their boat went  off the same wave straight, but did a full front over back flip into the water.  On rapid 18 ("Oblivion") our boat almost flipped again, but one person from our boat fell off (just before I and the person behind me went into the drink too) and that seemed to stabilize us.  He had a nice little swim through Oblivion with some help from the safety patrol guys on kayaks.  After our harrowing adventure, we made the long climb back up the gorge, where a nice lunch and cold drinks awaited us.  All in all, it was a great adventure, something we would definitely repeat given the chance.

When we got back into town we went for our massages (my first one ever!), which did wonders for easing the tension from our morning's escapades.  At 6, we went to a nearby hostel to watch the video of our rafting.  The video was amazing, and there was fantastic footage of all the big spills!  They were selling it for $30, which we found a bit steep.  However, one girl in our group bought a copy and promised to put it on YouTube for us to see.  We really want to be able to show everyone at home our awesome wipeout!

Tomorrow we're going to actually go to the Falls in the morning, and in the afternoon exercise our bartering skills at some of the many curio shops in town (shops with all the random carvings, jewellery, drums, and anything else you'd expect to get as African souvenirs).

That was a long update, and if you made it this far, you must a) be related to us, or b) have nothing else to do.  Perhaps I could also add "c) be enthralled by Derek's amazing blog writing", but that's unlikely.  It's hard to believe that in only 12 days, we'll be over the Atlantic on our way home.  The second leg of our tour through Zimbabwe back to Johannesburg starts tomorrow.  We'll be sure to keep you posted.

D&K