Africa part 3

Africa part 3

Zanzibar to Livingstone.

After leaving the beaches and old buildings of Zanzibar we set off on the final leg of our over landing expedition. The ferry ride back to the main land was anything but peaceful. The waves were big and it felt like being on a rollercoaster ride. I enjoyed myself but many people were feeling ill by the end of it. This made the rest of our travels on the truck much less enjoyable.

 Upon arriving back on the main land we set off on an adventure through the bayobab forests in the aptly named bayobab valley.  I would like you to take a moment to appreciate how cool bayobab trees are. Usually they grow to be thousands of years old. Yes thousands of years. At about a 2 meter diameter they are generally 2000 years old.  They have extensive root systems and comparatively little in the way of branches and leaves up top. Some people used to call them upside down trees and believed they were dropped from heaven by the gods when they were done with them.

One day after a morning on the truck we arrived at camp to an afternoon of free time. For the most part this was spent chilling and doing laundry. However part of it was spent playing extreme soccer. This is basically regular soccer but with a lot of shoving and full contact body blocking… and in one specific case jumping on peoples backs. This makes it much more fun for me then regular soccer as I am bad at kicking the ball in the right direction but am very good at shoving.

That night we had dinner in what used to be a broken building but had been given a new roof and new life as what can be considered a fancy restaurant. After dinner it was amarula and hot chocolate time. I have a new favorite liqueur. Move over bailey’s you have had your day in the sun.

The next adventure in our story takes place in a clothing market where “you can buy back any of those old clothes you ever donated to the salvation army” we had a party to prepare for in Kande beach, a costume party as it were and the theme was reggae. So off we went through a maze of small clothing stalls each with a seeming specialty all of them wanting to buy my shoes from me.  Some stalls had shirts others dresses some even had socks and bra’s by the armful. All the while as we made our way through the rows of clothing guys followed us around trying to sell everything from pants with cat tails to skirts with feathers and flames on them. Yes these men had bags of halloween costume pieces and they just knew you wanted something special.  In the end I got out with a green dress and a red head scarf. Erin had a white dress while jamal had a white shirt with reggae style hat and scarf. One of our friends came away with a party time shirt and alex… well alex managed to find himself an elf outfit… not really on purpose but that is definitely the overall effect it produced.

Once at kande beach we acted on the idea placed in our heads by GP to go swim out to the island about 800m off the shore. It was a fantastic swim. The current was not overly strong and once we made it to the rocks we had a great view of a lot of cool looking fish. By we I mean alex and I enjoyed the fish and erin got on the rocks as fast as she could. After exploring the rocks for a while alex and I decided it was going to be safe to jump off a particular rock face into the water. So we did. Then it was time to swim back. After being traumatized by the fish erin speed off through the lake and probably made it back in 10 minutes. Taking our time to look at the fish alex and I probably spent 20 swimming back. 

The next morning a group of us went for a 2 hour horse back ride and then swim in the lake. It was a great deal of fun. I have never tried English saddle type riding and it was really nice except for the part where I came quite close to falling off. This was caused mainly by lack of balance any semblance of skill and being surprised at a sudden change of speed.

After lunch I went for a snorkel around the island once more to have a more up close and personal look at the fishies. Then it was back to dry land for party time.

And boy was it a party. We all dressed up in our thrift store reggae costumes and sat around the truck drinking what might possibly be the tastiest alcoholic beverage ever. The punch GP made was less like alcohol (although there was a lot in it) and more like tasty tasty juice  mixed with awesome. For dinner we had what can be reasonably described as the best butternut squash soup on the planet and spit roasted pig. It was delicious in every way. For desert we had birthday cake as jen had had her birthday 2 days earlier.  After the feast we set off to the bar to commence with more drinking and some dancing. The music was a mix of things I knew, liked or recognised blended with a few strange south African songs courtesy of the 2 large very drunk south African farmers at the bar.  Then came the dancing, beside the bar, in front of the bar and on top of it. Yes it was a fantastic time. In the end people drifted away slowly leaving GP a british girl whose name I cant remember one of the drunk south Africans and I to shut down the night.  I stumbled off to bed at around 3:30 drunk, tired and not sure how I was going to accomplish the whole changing and brushing my teeth thing as both my flashlights seemed to be broken at once.

The next morning at around 6 I was packing my bags onto the truck and GP and I shared a moment. A grimace if you will. A friendly greeting of.. so how was your nap. We both knew neither of us was sober yet and this would not be the most fun day on the truck ever.

The rest of the trip down to livingstone passed in a fairly uneventful manner… well uneventful for Africa. There was the time we had to drive all over the place to convince some idiot that he was wrong about us needing a permit and that no we would not bribe him. Or the day a piece of the transmission broke off the truck. But nothing overly exciting. The truck still moved and we got to livingstone in the end.

Once in livingstone we had all manner of activities to choose from and ended up having ourselves a fantastic last few days with our group. Erin and Jamal went for an elephant back safari while I took a ride in a microlight. It was extremely fun. The falls looked fantastic from up in the air and I got to see elephants, crocodiles, buffalo and hippos from the sky. It was a fantastic trip and I fully recommend the experience.

In the afternoon Erin, jamal and I went bungee jumping along with a few other people from our group. To say the least it was terrifying. Not only did I end up going bungy jumping but also did a canyon swing off the bridge and a zipline over it. The rush was fantastic. After I finally got over being chicken and got close enough to the edge to jump off it was soo nice. The falling sensation was amazing but more then that the weightless feeling you get after about the 3^rd bounce on the bungy cord is really fun.

Once we got back from Zimbabwe and our bridge jumping experience we changed to head to our farewell party with the group. It was a fantastic night filled with perhaps my new second favorite drink ever ( the first one being that punch) amarula and peppermint, affectionately called a springbock. It was sooo good. Shanon and I decided we were going to “get drunk and make bad desigions ” and as a result decided on a shots only night. It went well. About 7 people had gone on the sunset booz cruse and showed up at dinner already drunk. One particularly drunk finnish man ( danny) stood up on the table at one point inorder to announce to GP  that “you, look like a hobbit! ” it was not long after this that the really fun part of the night started. After the heart felt speaches and the thankyous had worked their way around the table we felt it was time to start with the shinanagans. This was facilitated by the pool being right in the bar airea. How convienent is that?! The first one in the pool was GP carried by jamal, alex and danny. In soon after that was danny, alex myself and jamal. At that point all bets were off and everybody eventually made their way into the pool. Ither by choice or by dragging we all got wet. Once our truck had been thrown in GP decided that his tour guide friends needed to go in aswell and then that the people who would be on his truck next had to go in. going so far as to drag people out of tents where they had gone to hide.  By the end of the scuffle even the camp manager had gone into the pool ( leaving some interesting questions for the next day, like.. so did you hear that he camp manager got thrown into the pool. It was crazy I cant believe it… nope nither can we)

The next morning it was time to pack up and say a final good bye to people who had once again become very close friends in a very short time. Something about 24 hour proximity and late night conversations under the stars seems to speed up the transition from strangers to friends. I am really going to miss everybody but am excited for the adventures and the people Im going to meet on the next leg of our trip.