Plettenberg Bay

I ended up in Plettenberg Bay (known as “Plett”) for one simple reason- on warm days I’m liable to leave my jacket in the overhead of a bus or train and forget about it, but always realize the error of my ways and get it back.  This happened when I stopped off at George and the driver dropped it off at a Plett hostel, so there I went.

As far as places to randomly end up in your  world travels that you weren’t expecting, Plettenberg Bay is a top choice.  A small seaside resort town on the Garden Route frequented primarily by South Africans on summer holiday it was a little quiet in wintertime, but the view more than makes up for it-

So gorgeous and so startlingly like California it was hard to believe Santa  Cruz or Santa Barbara weren’t just around the bend.  Look, there were even surfers!

A view from the water back towards town, every available surface with an expensive vacation home perched on it, shuttered for winter.  This was also the first place in South Africa were all the houses weren’t surrounded by tall fences and the like (maybe a third weren’t) and it’s funny how houses that don’t look like miniature fortresses seem like the odd ones so quickly-

Anyway, one of my primary goals while in Plett was to do something very special that occurs every South African winter- go say hello to the whales!

Every winter the Southern Right Whale comes to shore to calve, meaning so close that you can see them from shore if you’re lucky.  I’d seen whales twice before- once on the way out to the Great Barrier Reef, once briefly in the Caribbean when something large enough to resemble a house surfaced briefly to breathe- but whales are cool and are a lot smarter than they let on so I wanted to check them out.

Back in the days of commercial whaling these guys were named the “right” whales because when you harpoon one when it dies it floats instead of sinking.  Hooray!  They’re still endangered from that chapter of gruesome carnage, but luckily rebounding very well in recent years.

Anyway, whales are cool but it’s really hard to take impressive pictures of them.  So we shall move on.

Near Plett is a place called Robberg Peninsula, where there is a seal colony.  Thousands upon thousands of seals.  It turns out seal colonies smell really bad so your only defense is to pray the wind blows in the other direction, but they’re plenty cute so tourists will still flock to see them.

Finally after all that getting acquainted with some aquatic-leaning mammals, I took a page out of their book and helped participate in the Beach Relaxation Project of Plettenberg Bay.  Because if I have learned anything on this trip it is that perceptions of weather sorely depend on what you’re used to- sure it’s winter here but it’s probably warmer than it gets in some places in the US in summer, so why not?  The water’s plenty freezing though; turns out the surfer guys are a touch crazy…

Yvette and the Infamous Ostrich Ride

For anyone who plans to do so be forewarned, if you decide to ride an ostrich on your round the world trip it is the activity that everyone most wants to hear about (with the close second being tiger petting).  Screw the third world bus journeys, or getting charged by an elephant, or leaping off of platforms with arguably flimsy support- is that an ostrich in your Facebook profile picture?!

Anyway, the area around George on the Garden Route is famous for its ostrich farms, the feather dusters gotta come from somewhere and ostrich is a tasty lean red meat, so naturally touring them is always an option. And by touring I mean everyone half pays attention to how the farming part works and then goes to the paddock to ride an ostrich because of the sheer spectacle, even if it only lasts about a minute.

Ok the lighting in these first two pictures are terrible because of the shadows despite the best efforts of the German guy who had my memory card in his camera and promised to take lots of pictures (camera was dead, next best solution), but this is me climbing up onto the ostrich  at the ostrich hitching post.  There’s a small cloth saddle behind the wings so you don’t disrupt the feathers to sit on, and you’re supposed to grab onto the wings to hold on.  The reason the ostrich stays put is right now it has a bag over its head, and the animal is so stupid it thinks if it can’t see you you can’t see it.   Having about 50 kilos climb onto your back is apparently no issue either!

Properly mounted on the ostrich smiling an “ok what the  hell happens now?” smile as the bag is about to be taken off its head…

And they’re off!  The second the bag got off its head it became very evident that ostriches like to run like crazy once they can see and realize there’s a person on them.  Fast. And there’s no real control so it just runs willy-nilly around the paddock while you hold on and two guys run behind you in case you fall off suddenly.

To give you a time scale, this is maybe fifteen seconds later rustling up the ostriches on the other side of the paddock.  Haven’t fallen off yet!

Runrunrunrunrun Facebook profile picture! runrunrunrunrun…

And this was snapped just about the time when I was told “ok, jump off now” so I did.  Total time of ostrich ride: just over a minute.

As a final entertaining note, if anyone’s curious we got a demonstration of an experienced ostrich rider as well.  This means he can make the ostrich head in a particular direction, which is done by grabbing the neck and pointing in the direction you want to go.  Probably not a particularly convenient method of travel and you probably don’t want to rely much on a creature that can shred you to death with its talons, but in the ostrich’s defense it is a smoother ride than a horse.  Pity the whole thing is more difficult than it was in Super Nintendo though.

George and the Garden Route

The Garden Route of South Africa is a lovely stretch of coastline that begins about 400km from Cape Town and ends 300km later in Port Elizabeth. For all intents and purposes it is like driving down the Pacific Coast Highway in California because the arid mountains meet the pounding surf, there are lots of cute little towns, and the whole area is filled with surfers. I’m not saying this like it’s a bad thing or anything, quite the contrary, just you need to pinch yourself to remember you’re not on the opposite side of the world.

I was heading from Cape Town to Johannesburg overland on the Baz Bus, the South African backpacker bus that you should look into when traveling alone, hard to beat the price even if schedules can be a hassle, and my first stop on the Garden Route was at George. Which it turns out is a town in addition to a popular name in my family, and location of a very nice place called Outeniqua Backpackers run by a brother-sister couple. Oh, and where it turns out one is strange for not knowing that if you want to order a pizza you call the town deliveryman rather than the pizza parlor, as in a person whose job it is to deliver things. Once you get over that and realize this one man could conceivably deliver flowers and pizza on the same trip the possibilities get rather exciting.

The view towards the mountains from the tiny botanical gardens in George, which I confess I will always remember more for losing a favorite Bosnian earring over anything else. (On this trip my souvenir of choice have been earrings- easy to carry, unique to each place, and makes you feel like you’re varying something even if it’s not your wardrobe.) George is a few miles in from the sea, but you find something very cool just across the mountains…

The Cango Caves! Yay! The caves have a lovely set of limestone formations, but the best thing to do is sign up for the “Adventure Tour,” meaning “crawl through narrow spaces kilometers underground and try not to think about how many people have gotten stuck here before.” Got to do the tour with a rather nice South African family on vacation, where the kids were really excited to meet an American and for some reason kept referring to me as “Miss Pennsylvania” as clearly all American chicks enter beauty pageants, or some such.

Anyway, the bad news about this day was how my camera abruptly decided it needed to be recharged, so I didn’t get pictures of the rest of the tour and need to steal them from the Cango Caves website-

The entrance to the Tunnel of Love on the Adventure Tour, also known as when things start to shrink up a little. Our guide says he lost all tact in telling people they were too fat to do the tour when a woman got stuck in this tunnel, sideways and in a split position, and was still hyperventilating after a few hours until he frankly told her “ma’am, if you don’t calm down you are going to die.” Personally such a statement would make me even more upset, but that’s just a South African guy for you.

This is the narrowest part of the tour- a 30cm (less than a foot) gap called the Devil’s Post Box that you have to slide through. In actuality this wasn’t the hardest part of the tour- the hardest was a tiny 45cm (17″) chute called the Devil’s Chimney (clearly Lucifer was intimately involved in the naming process of early explorers). Said chute extends about 3.5 meters upwards, so there is much inelegant wiggling involved to get up there.

I should also note that this was all about 1.5km below the surface and when one of the South African kids asked their dad what would happen should there be an earthquake right then the nervous-looking dad who tended towards claustrophobia told his offspring to hush up.

I did one more thing in George while there but it deserves a post of its own. So moving along…

Stellenbosch

About an hour outside Cape Town you come across fertile hills and rolling valleys, all covered by the lovely tangle of grape vines. This is Stellenbosch, the Cape winelands region.

If you get anything out of what I’m saying today it should be this- South African wine is severely under-appreciated on the world stage. This is mainly because for years no one bought the stuff because of an international trade embargo against the apartheid government, but nowadays the exchange rate is good and the wine is better. In a few years when South African wine becomes really popular (and it’s only a matter of time) don’t say I didn’t warn you.

I went to the Stellenbosch area twice, once with my family because my dad was giving a talk for some engineers from the University of Stellenbosch (they held the talk at a winery by the way which made me jealous- I think we’d no longer have attendance rate issues if we held our colloquiums at a winery!) and once on a wine tour on a backpacker tour that resulted in 27 tastings at five wineries. At least I’m pretty sure it was 27, no one spits out the wine on the backpacker tour so there were quite a few “where the hell did that picture come from?!” moments when reviewing my photos, as the end was quite fuzzy. But because it was a wine tour that means we were being classy about it, right?

The one winery whose name I remember from the backpacker tour was the Fairview Winery- part because my elementary school was called Fairview, and mainly because it was first. The above tower for their mountain goat mascots is their symbol on all their wine label (they make some mean goat cheese as well!), called Goats Do Roam. I was also very excited to discover my local liquor store here in Cleveland carries bottles from this winery, so it’s worth keeping an eye out for them!

Switching gears, this was lunch at the winery after my dad gave his talk- no, all those glasses were not mine. Rather I am taking this moment to give you the general advice about South African wines is that their reds are far better than the whites from this region- in particular you should keep an eye out for a variety of wine called pinotage made only in South Africa. It is a cross between pinot noir and cinsaut, and I’m sort of in love with it.

Speaking of things I am in love with, I don’t think I’ve introduced you to the sunbird yet. They are a lovely nectar-drinking bird found down here that I never ceased being happy to see the whole time I was in the country.

Finally, Dutch-style architecture typical of the Stellenbosch region, complete with European trees planted around here so you fully feel like you’re a few thousand kilometers north (the peaks around here even get snow in the winter!). I was confused about the whole history of the area for a little while- what on Earth were the Dutch doing running vineyards when they don’t know the first thing about the craft? But it turns out this area was settled by French Huguenots in the seventeenth century fleeing persecution in Europe at the time. Back then the Dutch colony was really only the size of Cape Town so they sent the Huguenots out into the boonies of Stellenbosch, where they proceeded to make delicious wines. Funny how these things work out.

In short, if you are out in the store and see a bottle of South African red, particularly a pinotage, do yourself a favor and buy it. I promise it’s worth your while…

Robben Island

It’s hard to go long in South Africa without seeing the remnants of apartheid wherever you go. What always shocks me about it is how very recent it is- the new South African government is celebrating its 15th year and Nelson Mandela celebrated his 91st birthday while I was in the country.

I’m going to place a bet that a lot of readers my age only have a fuzzy idea of what apartheid means as it’s not like you studied African history in school, let alone something that happened so recently. (It’s like how anything you know about the end of the Cold War was probably self-taught because your history teacher doesn’t realize you were a toddler.) So here is the bare-bones explanation: during the majority of the 20th century South Africa had the apartheid system in order to maintain white supremacy in their majority-black nation. (“Apartheid” is the Afrikaans word for “apart.” The Afrikaaners are descendants of the first Dutch settlers in South Africa from the sixteenth century, also referred to as Boers by the other main white group, the English. The English invented the first concentration camps during their wars against the Boers in the turn of the 20th century so the two don’t like each other, but that’s another story.) Under apartheid everyone in the nation was classified as “white,” “black,” “colored (Indian/Malay descent)”, or “mixed,” and you could only live in areas designated for your race, had to carry a passbook at all times showing you were allowed to be where you were… you get the idea.

South Africa officially got its new democratic government in landmark elections in 1994, but the most enduring symbol of apartheid government preceding it is Robben Island, seven kilometers out from Cape Town. Robben Island was where all the (black) political prisoners from the apartheid era were held, most famous of whom is Nelson Mandela, leader for several decades of the African National Congress (ANC, the illegal political party arguing for black equality) who served eighteen of his 27 years in prison here. Nowadays it’s a popular tourist attraction in Cape Town, sort of like Alcatraz but these guys didn’t deserve to be here, so I took the ferry out one afternoon.

The view from Robben Island back towards Cape Town, a half hour boat journey away. Robben Island has been a prison of one sort or another for several centuries and it’s worth noting that only one man in history ever managed to escape- he stole a small boat, and did this in the seventeenth century. So you needn’t bother with a swimming attempt!

Oh yeah, and it’s hard not to notice that the island is overrun with bunnies- giant, fat bunnies introduced a few centuries ago to an island with no predators so they do nothing but casually hop along the roadside to eat more grass to give birth to more bunnies. They’re trying to cull the rabbit herd by 10,000 or so, we’ll see how well that goes.

To continue the island tour, this is the infamous lime quarry where the leaders of the political prisoners did forced labor for several years (the rocks were used for an extensive road network on the island). Most political prisoners were members of the intelligentsia- primarily lawyers but a host of other educated people- so the work was supposed to be punishment but ended up being the only time many people in solitary confinement could share ideas. So that backfired on those in charge of the prison, sort of like how they used to house political prisoners with the dangerous convicts until the political ones started converting the convicts.

To tour the prison itself is a fascinating experience because the tour guides are actually former prisoners (something tells me they never thought at the time that they’d be doing this!). This is our guide whose name embarrassingly eludes me who spent ten years in Block C of the prison. His story went something like this: at the age of eighteen he was living in Soweto township in Johannesburg frustrated by his lack of educational prospects, so he joined the youth branch of the ANC (illegal act #1). He also left South Africa (illegal act #2) to recieve guerrilla training in Angola (illegal act #3) before coming back (second illegal border crossing) and was an ANC organizer (#5) until he got caught. Back in those days you were held at the local police station up to six months until you got charged, and it was a bit eye-opening to listen to someone describe the torture that occurred at the police stations in those days.

It’s also I confess hard to listen to a man who freely admits that at your age he was becoming well-versed in guerrilla warfare training. There really were no prospects so far as education goes in South Africa at the time- even the education minister is on the record saying “what is the purpose of teaching a Bantu [black] child mathematics when it cannot use it in practice… it’s absurd!” so only 5% of blacks got even secondary education. As someone who has always had the chance to make something of myself it’s a tough one to think about…

At this point it seems appropriate to mention the Afrikaaner view of apartheid, which I heard from a very kind but opinionated hostel owner a few days later. He says the international opinion of apartheid (which resulted in sanctions by most other nations during the era) is grossly exaggerated, as the main reason for apartheid was the blacks were backed by the Communists and you couldn’t let the commies take over South Africa. He has never been unkind to black people and never knows any other white people who were either and things are pretty much the same as they were during the apartheid times anyway, as you still have blacks as the poorer class and whites on top. Some people got a little beat up by police who didn’t deserve it but that happens all over the world, right?

Then there was a slight pause, followed by the comment “it’s just that we know black people can’t do politics well, so we couldn’t let them to vote.” Right. Moving on…

This is the cell where Nelson Mandela spent eighteen years in solitary confinement. It’s hard to describe what an incredible statesman Mandela was throughout his life, but what amazes me most is what he did after his release in 1990.  For starters, he forgave the government that had imprisoned him for so many years, believing there was no way forward as one country without this.  Second, he kept the most prosperous nation on the continent together during a tumultuous transition in which frankly a lesser person would have failed (case in point: virtually every other African transition).  The more you look into it the more impossible it is to not fully admire the man.

The effects of apartheid are still around, but South Africa is definitely moving forward.  To end this whole sobering topic, though, I will just close with Nelson Mandela’s words as he was on trial in 1964, about to be sentenced to life imprisonment-

During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for. But, my lord, if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.

Return to Cape Town

If you learn anything about South Africa, it is that you should avoid flying with South African Airways whenever possible.  Why, you ask?  Because three people in my family tried to buy tickets with them, with the following results-

1) My sister tried to buy her Victoria Falls- Johannesburg ticket online with a credit card, but was told the card was flagged and she needed to call them.  In South Africa.  Where she was on hold for about a half hour each time, one of which resulted in learning she had to try later as everyone was out to lunch.  They did things like saying the bank was at fault whereby the bank said “what the hell this should be fine!” and all such issues with the card.  Finally my sister just ended up going to the ticket counter for South African Airways in the Jo’burg airport when we first arrived there, where the ticket was issued with no problem.

2) It turns out South African Airways has a policy that you need to show the credit card you purchased your ticket with.  Fine, no problem, but what if you’re issued a new credit card in between the purchase and the flight?  Happened to my dad so there was some excitement when we tried to check in involving more running around to ticket offices in the Jo’burg airport.

3) At this rate, I’m sure no one is surprised that I got an email whilst in Namibia that SAA had flagged my card for the Jo’burg-Cape Town leg of my journey from Victoria Falls. (I’d decided to go back to Cape Town because the travel worked better that way, and I suspect the ticket out of Vic Falls wasn’t flagged because I bought it via the Zimbabwe office which has little capability to check these things.) Assuming I found an international line I didn’t want to think of how much it would cost to be on hold a half hour only to hear everyone was out for a tea break, so I decided to settle the thing in Johannesburg before my connection.  But by the time I got there it turns out they’d canceled the ticket without telling me and would take me only for three times the original price I’d payed.

To which I said “screw you, let the free market decide!” and started ticket hunting.  It turns out there are three other airlines that fly the popular Johannesburg- Cape Town route, so I proceeded to do the entertaining routine of going up to each desk and saying “I want to fly to Cape Town tonight, what have you got?” (I’ve never done this before of course- my American flight experience made me feel like I’d end up on some terror watch list or something for doing this.)  A subsidiary of British Airways named Kulula would take me that night for ~$10 more than the original price of the South African Airways flight.  And they gave me wine and ice  cream en route, so why would you ever bother flying SAA in light of all that?!

Anyway, a few hours after that excitement I was back in rainy Cape Town nestled in my cozy bed at The Backpack, perhaps the nicest hostel I have ever been in. (They had a bar/restaurant, great travel desk, en suite room with no one else in it, and a complimentary water bottle.  South Africans are big on water bottles, and after a few weeks I can understand why!) After three weeks of camping, I don’t know if I can fully explain my excitement at sleeping in a bed again, indoors, listening to the rain pattering on the roof.  I also had a stack of new books and magazines and candies I’d purchased in a mini-shopping spree at the Jo’burg airport- after Zimbabwe going into a store and actually being able to purchase stuff was a sincere novelty!

That’s the funny thing about me and culture shock by thee way- I’ve noticed that I have relatively little by now going into a 3rd world culture, and have a much more pronounced effect when I come back to modern civilization and realize all that was missing.  Transition from Zimbabwe to Cape Town was by far the biggest shock I experienced- a simple act like buying a magazine in a store is not a universal thing, though you’d never realize it until you go through a period where you can’t.

I spent two weeks going from Cape Town to Johannesburg, filled with interesting stories of the most diverse country I’ve been to, but until I get around to it here’s a picture of a cute seal who was hanging out by the Cape Town waterfront-

Summary of Zimbabwe

I don’t think there’s any country I wish well more than Zimbabwe.  It is filled with the kindest people you can find anywhere, yet living in the most desperate conditions one normally delegates to “somewhere else.”  Except when “somewhere else” it makes an impression that guarantees the place will stay with you long after you leave.

Also, if anyone can give me the opportunity to meet Robert Mugabe let me know, I want to sucker-punch him.

Highlights-

Victoria Falls- “wow” doesn’t quite begin to cover it.  So long it takes 20 minutes to walk from end to end, so loud you can hear it day and night in town a mile away, and so wet half the tourists don garbage bags to avoid getting soaked (which begs the question which is the stupider half, the ones who look silly or the ones wet to the bone?).

- Beer was a dollar and really quite tasty.  I can never say anything completely terrible about the dollar beer countries.

- On an arguably similar note, due to a combination of great locals and overlanders you can have a very fun night in Zimbabwe.  Probably bad if you actually plan to catch up on sleep, but on the bright side the murmur of the Falls makes for excellent white noise!

- If you want an adrenaline rush in the middle of Africa, come here.  You can jump off cliffs and whitewater raft down world-class rapids and all sorts of fun stuff that makes you sound more hard-core than you really are.

Lowlights-

- Want to see what happens when the fabric of society breaks down?  Zimbabwe is unfortunately the classic case for what it’s like right now, with buzzwords like hyperinflation, rampant poverty, and epidemics you only read about in history books.  I wouldn’t wish such things on my worst enemy frankly.

- Another odd thing I frankly cannot begin to understand- a few of the girls did the one-night stand thing while in Victoria Falls.  Ok, I understand some people indulge in such things, but in sub-Saharan Africa? Where the HIV rate is a scary high number so high the odds are almost on par with flipping a coin?  Geez, people.

Adrenaline Rush

I realize I am terribly behind by now in this trip blog.  Please address all complaints about the matter to the Case Western Reserve University Physics Department Graduate Program.

Before anyone gets too confused, yes, this post is categorized under “Zambia” as well as just “Zimbabwe.”  Why?  Because most of the adrenaline activities in Victoria Falls center around the narrow gorge the Zambezi River fills after the falls- about 100m high, filled with whitewater, and having Zimbabwe on one side and Zambia on the other.  The dividing line is of course in the middle of the river so we technically have been to Zambia when we did whitewater rafting.  We have just never set foot on Zambian soil!

So we had a multi-national gorge as our playground, what crazy things did we do first?  Jump off into the gorge a few times-

This picture is more to show the scale of the gorge than the jump- if you look carefully you can spot me in the middle of a flying fox leap.  Flying fox is when you’re attached on your back and run down a platform and fly like Superman- really fun, naturally, but I realized it got me in the precarious position of getting a too-good view of the gorge for the later jumps.  It’s one thing to have bravado to jump off a cliff when you’ve only looked at the thing from the edge, quite another when you had a good thorough look and plan to jump again…

And jump we did- #2, the zipline!  Had a bunch of experience with these in Laos and it was the only jump we could do together so we decided to, on the grounds that you go a lot further on a zipline if you have more mass.  No guts required in jumping here as you’re sort of left to dangle and they do the letting go and hey, it was fun to have a sister to scream with as we flew above the gorge!

Finally, the gorge swing.  It should be noted that Linda is a much more awesome gorge swing jumper than I am because by this point the only other guy who had jumped before us screamed like a girl so I was thoroughly rattled- jumping off a platform is always a lot easier when you’ve seen a few people enjoy it in my opinion.  Anyway, a gorge swing is basically like a bungy jump but instead of bounces at the end you go into a huge parabolic arc after a 70m freefall in this case, which is actually more freefall than the bungy jump in Victoria Falls has! (Bungy jumps always just measure the distance to the ground from the platform but you obviously don’t actually want to fall that far, so the ~110m Vic Falls jump is considerably less than that.) And it was fun, really, except my neck was a little sore later from some whiplash when the swinging kicked in- the stuff we put up with for adrenaline!

Death-defying jumps under our belts it was time for some whitewater rafting in the infamous Zambezi River, Class 5 rapids considered to be some of the best in the world, all with wonderful names like “The Overland Truck Eater,” “Corporate Suicide,” and “Oblivion.”  Call me weird but I was much more nervous about this than I ever was about jumping off a gorge, and by nervous I mean this was the first time in my trip I was actually scared about what I was doing because I really don’t like getting thrown into water not on my own terms.  Funny that…

It should be noted that we did the course just at the beginning of high water season, when they only start from Rapid #11.  In low season you start at the beginning of the course I really don’t think I’d enjoy that from what I hear- as YouTube can attest there are a lot of rapids where it’s a miniature waterfall, or your boat can get stuck as the rapid flows up, or a myriad of other things you wonder why people fork over good money to do.

Before getting to raft, though,  you need to climb down to the river!  The gorge is about 90m deep and I for one was happy I had my Teva sandals and didn’t have to do it in flip-flops like many others, as some parts were quite slippery.

(Before anyone asks, the whitewater rafting pictures are funny as they were illicitly taken during the viewing of the rafting DVD they tried to get us to buy.  The girl climbing down this crazy wooden ladder was a British girl in our boat.)

So here’s our raft, practicing our paddling skills before the first rapid.  I am the second person on the right side of the boat (behind a girl who spent a summer guiding whitewater rafts in Canada) and Linda was on the left.

The surreal thing about calm stretches like these in the Zambezi is you are warned in advance not to fall in on them.  Why?  Because this being Africa there are crocodiles- we saw one sunning himself on a rock at some point- and while they avoid whitewater sections for the same reasons sane people do it’s probably best to not go for a swim in a calm patch just in case. And here is the part where we almost died.  Kidding!  No really, this was us on a Class 5 rapid called “The Washing Machine” which is quickly followed by the equally lethal Terminators I and II.  Having so many hard rapids without a break made it the toughest stretch of the river by far- half the rafts in our group capsized, but ours emerged victorious!  Hooray!  And by emerging victorious I mean at some point the front half of our boat was completely underwater, we were crouched down and the water was over my head, so I suspect we were a lot closer to a proper capsizing than we dared consider.

I confess though that after this I was left with a feeling of “that was it?” as far as my fears were placed- having done more whitewater kayaking than rafting in my life I suppose I was pre-biased towards the suicide that particular sport entails, and thanks to luck and general raft awesomeness we didn’t even capsize once!

Last bit of adrenaline relished and numb from being tired, we then had to climb up the gorge again (all the while sending forlorn stares at the cable car the Zambian side is equipped with).  But hey, we survived the part I was scared about!  I guess it’s always important to face your fears, even when something like “crocodile-infested Class 5 whitewater African river rafting” is one of them.

Victoria Falls

I’m sure most people don’t realize it but there is a method to my traveling madness, or at least the Africa portion of it anyway. Two years ago when I returned from study abroad in New Zealand I realized I had no answer to the “where would you most want to go to in the world?” question, so I checked a map to see what corner of the world should top my list. Victoria Falls in the middle of Africa seemed like a suitable candidate because it caught my eye first being in the middle of the map and seemed like a place that would take a couple years to get to.

Two years later there I am, traveling  thousands of miles over bumpy roads in questionable countries, under the technical guise to see Victoria Falls.  Life is really funny sometimes isn’t it?

So anyway, the Falls.  Because most people have been to Niagara Falls it’s easiest to describe them based on Niagara- they’re officially taller but I never noticed a serious difference in height.  Instead what is the most noticeable difference is the length of the Falls- imagine Niagara being twice as long and it will give you a good idea of what it’s like.  It takes about 20 minutes or so to walk from one end to the other in a nice little national park, the entire time enduring a gigantic roar so loud you can continually hear it in the town of Victoria Falls about a mile away.

Other than dimensions, I’d say the biggest difference between Victoria Falls and Niagara is the mist.  You never really get wet while at Niagara Falls if you don’t want to- the gorge on the other side is significantly wider, and there’s probably less water going over because of the hydroelectric station- but in Victoria Falls you’re a lot closer and there’s so much mist it’s more like rain (there’s even a small rainforest, the only one for hundreds of miles in any direction!).  Some of the tourists will hence bring rain jackets or don trash bags sold by the hawkers outside the park, but Linda and I didn’t realize this would be an issue and it was a warm day so we instead got completely soaked.  But the rainbows created by all the mist were quite lovely…

Me in my “looking like a wet rat” phase after getting soaked by the mist in front of the famous Victoria Falls bridge, linking Zimbabwe with Zambia (we never went to the Zambia side because it was an additional $45 for that visa and Zimbabwe has most of the view).  The bridge was originally built at the turn of the 20th century by Cecil Rhodes to link his mining fields to Southern Africa and as part of his (never built) “Cape Town to Cairo” railway scheme.

A word about Cecil Rhodes because the man is the only person I know to have two countries named after him (Northern Rhodesia and Southern Rhodesia, now Zambia and Zimbabwe respectively), and I suspect having even one country after you is grounds for being a little crazy.  He started out in a little diamond business called De Beers, and was briefly Prime Minister of the British Cape Colony until forced to resign because of an attempted take over the Boer colony of Transvaal (ie where the Boers discovered gold) which failed miserably.  Undaunted, Rhodes managed to consolidate de Beers to control the diamond market that still exists today, partly by going north and creating colonies by getting mining concessions from tribal chiefs in his former-namesake countries, most questionable at best, then forcing the native tribes to give him cheap labor through taxes in a system Mark Twain dubbed “worse than slavery.”  Rhodes was an imperialist because he believed the Anglo-Saxon race to be the most superior on Earth- in fact, he included the United States in the famous Rhodes scholarships because he wanted to breed an elite of philosopher-kings who would get the US to rejoin the British Empire.

Ok, so Rhodes was probably a combination of crazy and a product of the colonial mindset (“the white man’s burden” and all that).  Regardless, it is hard to find a man who shaped modern African history more.

Except perhaps this guy could make an argument for that title- Dr. Livingstone, I presume?  Livingstone was a Christian missionary and explorer who among other things was the first white man to glimpse Victoria Falls.  He accomplished all this by traveling light and (gasp!) respecting local chiefs he met which caused everyone to say he was crazy.  The famous quotation was uttered by the journalist Henry Stanley who was sent to find Livingstone after he’d been missing for four years or at least allegedly uttered- Stanley tore the pages out of his diary detailing the encounter.  Either way, Livingstone intentionally or unintentionally set in motion the European colonialist movement in Africa, and in turn the mission schools whose foundation inspired ended up educating most of the leaders of independence movements on the continent years later.

So there it is, I have finally been to the place I most wanted to visit on Earth.  Which leads to an interesting question- what should I choose as my place I most want to visit in the world next?  I’m not sure yet but I’m tempted to continue the waterfall theme and say Iguazu Falls on the Brazil-Argentine border- after all, I have never been to South America…

Welcome to Zimbabwe

When it turned out that my overland trip in Southern Africa would end in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, I can’t say I was certain what to expect because of all the stories you hear about on the news these days- nations associated with words such as “hyperinflation” and “cholera epidemic” and “lowest life expectancy rate on Earth” (37 for men, 34 for women) do not exactly sound like premier destinations. But people on the ground said “Vic Falls” is safe so I decided to trust them.

I should also note that about two weeks after I went to Zimbabwe the main story I saw that day on BBC News was about how they were finally back in Zimbabwe and showing the conditions. So on the other hand of the above advice, I have officially visited places the BBC doesn’t dare go! Wimps.

The reason Zimbabwe is such a bad place to live these days can be seen above- hyperinflation. The notes above, all printed in 2008, range from ZA$200 million to ZA$50 trillion, which if you stop and do the numbers is the same as going from $1 to $100,000 in a year. Obviously these notes are worthless now- they stopped printing the notes this past April because they literally ran out of paper to print the money on, and the Zimbabwe dollar ceased to exist on July 1, about two weeks before we were there. Nowadays everyone uses American dollars or South African Rand in the country, and you need to bring in all your currency as there is no money in any of the ATMs. Makes for interesting planning.

So what is the effect of such massive hyperinflation unparalleled anywhere else in the world? Well the way to imagine Zimbabwe these days is it’s in a state of decay- when a window breaks you just cover it up because you can’t purchase or even find the glass you need for a new pane, and when you can’t afford money to treat the water anymore you get a cholera epidemic. (To be fair the epidemic does not exist in Victoria Falls, but everyone showered with their mouth shut to be on the safe side.) Even in a tourist town like Victoria Falls some of the big expensive hotels had collapsed roofs because there’s no way to get new thatch or pay people to re-thatch the roof.

As a result of the hyperinflation, you can’t assume on any given day that you’re going to get the supplies you need to survive, as everything even very basic needs to be brought in from outside the country.  This is the sign at the Victoria Falls gas station- they had diesel the day before, but guess they ran out.  No paraffin on any of the days we were there, which is a pretty basic thing to have when the electricity is known to cut in and out erratically.

The advantage of hyperinflation is the price of the local beer at the tourist bar (called Zambezi) is US$1.  The bad news is, believe it or not, these are two brand new beers just handed over from the barman!  Obviously these bottles are recycled as long as they don’t leak beer and the machine filling the bottles is a bit eccentric as well, but everyone just hopes that the alcohol has killed off whatever might have survived what must be a rigorous disinfecting process. (Like that cholera bacterium- yay?)

Of course there’s only so much I can say about the current situation in Zimbabwe because I only went to one town in it, which was a tourist town on the border at that.  Having said that I think my heart would absolutely break at seeing the conditions in the rest of Zimbabwe, because the only word I can use to describe the people there is desperate.  Absolutely desperate, to a degree I did not come across even in Asia or other places in Africa.

Take going to the market.  My sister and I had heard you can barter for souvenirs at the market with old stuff you don’t need anymore, so we took her pair of six-year-old tennis shoes to see what we could get for them.  We couldn’t have gotten a better reaction had we showed up at the market with a bar of gold- every person at that market greeted us with a “hello sister,” breathed down our necks, asked if we wanted something if we so much as looked at it, and generally harassed us more than I ever have in any other 3rd world market before.  My sister and I were lucky we were able to speak in Hungarian before, but we needed to make up code words for things that sounded too similar to English pronunciation because the hawkers would latch onto any small indication that we might be interested (elefant became a szurke, “the gray one,” for example, hippos became “the fat one”).  We also said we were from Hungary instead of American when asked- God help us if we ponied up on that detail- but one guy decided to give us the standard “oh Hungary, I love that country and have friends who live there!” shpeel.

“Do you even know where Hungary is?” I asked in an exasperated tone, getting pretty worn out by the harassment by this point.

“No, but I’d rather be there than here,” he pointed out, and I really couldn’t argue about that.

Anyway, pictured above is the lucky guy who got my sister’s old shoes, which we exchanged for two beautifully carved sets of stone bookends and a stone soap dish, the whole lot probably worth US$100 in the rest of the world. (I just typed “the real world” actually but deleted it- we often forget stuff like this is in the real world!) I took this picture after we confirmed the deal and immediately he became overjoyed that this was his lucky day- said the shoes were for his wife- and became the nicest guy you could imagine.

You’ll run into this a lot in Zimbabwe by the way- you will be harassed within an inch of your life because you’re probably spending more in a few days than many will have in a year because there’s 80% unemployment, but once they realize it’s a good day they relax and smile and engage in great conversation.  Two brothers even threw in a pair of necklaces and showed us a shortcut out of the market as a gesture of goodwill.

I spent my weekend in Zimbabwe enjoying the Falls and doing various adrenaline activities I will outline in a later post.  But as the final note on the “current situation in Zimbabwe” post, it should be noted that I while getting into Zimbabwe was pretty easy (hand over US$30, you are handed a visa to stay as long as you like), I had a surprisingly hard time getting out.  See my handwritten airline ticket above for the flight to Johannesburg, complete with handwritten luggage check of the same type, which I got at the counter next to the giant old definitely-not-digital balance scale.  I had an electronic ticket for the flight, and it turns out if you’re doing so you need to make sure you document it within an inch of your life because (obviously) the computers were down.  So we needed to call Johannesburg for me to get on the flight- lucky the phones were working!- so I was luckily able to get the hell out of Zimbabwe.

The other object in my lap there was one of two postcards my sister and I purchased for US$2 each, probably the most expensive postcard I have ever purchased especially when compared to the prices of everything else in the nation.  Why so expensive?  Because they’ve ceased printing Victoria Falls postcards, of course, so if you want one you’ll need to pay dearly for it.

What a heartbreaking country.  I cannot think of any nation on Earth where I wish the people a better life and future more than Zimbabwe.