They never saw us coming...

The first thing I noticed about South Africa was this plane. It's the camo plane, with the Kululu company slogan "They never saw us coming" written on it. I love it. They're basically the Southwest Airlines of South Africa.

In the Johannesburg airport I got my first good hamburger since leaving the states. It had "Secret Monkey Sauce" on it, which for some reason I had to try. It's just a tangy sauce with small bits of pineapple in it. When we paid with a credit card, I knew I was going to like South Africa a lot.

The place we stayed at was one awesome location, and all props go to Nik for finding it from halfway around the world. It was a three story, 3-bedroom apartment overlooking the ocean with patios and a laundry machine (there was a laundry machine in Cameroon, but it was still in the box where it has resided for two years). So we were hanging out in serious style.

Cape Town was beautiful, and there's not a lot of cities I'd say that about. Cape Town is up against the ocean with a mountainous backdrop. Its basically first world inside the city (outside there are some pretty bad corrugated aluminum communities [just sounds better than ghetto]). We ate steak, oysters, etc, and drank water directly from the tap. Toilets worked, hot showers (on the second day), and we even drove ourselves instead of taking cabs everywhere. It may sound weird, but it was kind of nice to be able to do regular stuff.

The first day we were there, we first went to see the local market, where prices were extremely cheap. The crisis in Zimbabwe (the leader there has plunged his economy into chaos where they've seen million percent inflation!) has cause many to flee to South Africa. So after looking around the market for an hour or so, we started to get ready to leave when I decided to buy a stone rhinoceros. It weighs something like five to seven kilos (ten to fifteen pounds), and after seeing Mike's love and affection for his "stolen" hippo, I figured why not? That set off a spree of spending at this stone maker's table. We ended up buying seven stone statues, a rhinoceros, and the best coffee table sculpture ever. Vass bought this 15 kilo (~30 lbs) statue, it's a wise man but looks like an alien, and I it's about as big as her upper torso, so she's forced to carry it around clutched to her chest. I still don't know how she's going to get it home.

Later that day we hiked Table Mountain, which overlooks the city. It's a great hike, and significantly easier than Kilimanjaro, and is supposed to have an awesome view. Unfortunately, it was really cloudy at the top, so we really couldn't see anything. I am still glad we went to the top though, because I thought it was fun going up.

The next day we went to go to the Cape of Good Hope. It's a short drive from Cape Town, and it is kind of neat seeing the Southernmost point in the world you'd want to live. We got to see some penguins on the way, which was kinda cool, but the highlight of that day was the baboons. At the end of the day when we were ready to leave, we decided to get some ice cream, and when we went outside a baboon attacked us. Nik and Sheila threw their ice cream at the monkey and ran into the car, but Vass and I decided that monkey would have to pry it from our cold, dead fingers.

We had hoped/feared we would be able to go great-white-shark-cage-diving, but unfortunately the weather wasn't cooperating. When the water is too choppy, the boats can't safely put you in the water with the cage. I don't think any of us were all that upset we couldn't go. After Kilimanjaro, bungee jumping and car accidents, I think we did ourselves proud, and a five a.m. wake up call didn't sound very fun.

So instead, the last day we went wine tasting, which was really nice too. I was the designated driver, and chauffeured everyone else around. Sheila had the most intricate record keeping of any person I've ever seen. She literally has graphs of how the wine tastes. When she explains it, it makes sense, but I just can't see myself going back to look at the graph before I buy my next bottle of wine.

My time in South Africa was particularly short, but I have to say I loved Cape Town, and if you really want to visit Africa and go on Safari, but still live with all the comforts of home, I'd say you can do it all easily from Cape Town.

Before I even knew it, I was off to go home.

One last bit of random pics before I'm done:

This is security at our hostel at Victoria Falls

So in ten weeks I took 16 flights totaling 68 hours, 25 hours of layovers, and 22 more hours in the airport arriving early. After my last flight I finally arrived home in Detroit with a solid 8 days before I started work. That's cutting it very close when you haven't moved in yet, but I had a great time, and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Depends Adult Undergarments – There when you need it!

After Zanzibar we took a ferry to Dar Es Salam to take a plane to Livingstone, Zambia. What was weird was that while our bags were checked all the way through, our ticket itinerary said "Lusaka". Okay, that's strange. So we asked the ticket agent about it and she said not to worry, the plane would go straight to Livingstone after unloading some passengers in Lusaka. When we landed in Lusaka, it turned out we had to run through customs, boarder control, etc to make our flight in time and they completely ignored the fact that we had no tickets to get on the next plane, just let us on. Kind of weird. Also randomly cool, Irish citizens don't need to pay for visas in Zambia, awesome!

On the plane we met some really cool ex-Merrill Lynch bankers and we ended up hanging with them most of the nights as we stayed in the same hostel. Stephanie, Pricilla and Alan are taking a half year off to tour the world after five years hiding from it as bankers. In fact, we met more people at the Jollyboys backpacker than through the rest of the trip. We had tons of fun playing yet more games of Taboo and drinking card games, and always had a large crew that wanted to play.

Livingstone is the home of Victoria Falls, one of the largest falls in the world. It is amazingly beautiful, even though we went during the low season (apparently in March the falls have much, much more water). While there is tons of fun activities in the area, most of what we ended up doing involved lots of adrenaline. We ended up skipping the walk with the lions and safaris and horseback riding, too easy thank you. Instead Vass and Mike started off white water rafting. I skipped it because I was still sick and I've been rafting a lot before. After a quick day of rafting (nothing compared to the Upper Gulley apparently), we went on a quick booze cruise. All in all, a pretty laid back day.

The next day we started what I like to refer to as the "pee my pants" tour. As I said in an earlier post, I'm scared of heights, and the pictures coming up will prove it in spades. The first activity of the tour was called gorge-swinging. It started with some repelling down a 60 meter cliff, followed by a zip-line, and finished up with the gorge-swing itself. The swing is absolutely terrifying. You start by getting in the harness, hooking up to a pseudo-bungee cord and walking to the edge of a 100m cliff. The sight alone nearly caused me to puke. You then have to hang your toes over the edge, and take one large step into nothingness. This insanity is followed by a 3.5 second freefall until the slack in the rope is gone, and then you get whipped across the gorge, where you swing back and forth until the guys at the top lower you down to the ground. Completely terrifying. I was trembling for nearly ten minutes afterwards. Random note of interest is that the harness really cuts into you so all of us have some very hard to explain bruises on our legs.

While we were there, we met a really nice Irish family (who were also staying at the Jollyboys hostel). Niles, Connor, Sarah and their mom, who all shouted words of encouragement to me when I had difficulty and was hesitating before the gorge-jump. Some of the nicest people we've met since Africa, and we spent the whole day taking turns jumping down the gorge and screaming support from the ledges.

In case you can't hear it, Mike's saying "Smile for the camera, Joel" "GIMME A SECOND!". I'm a happy camper for all of these things. You can also hear all the Irish children shouting for me, which I still think is funny.

That night I slept maybe two hours. I'm not sure if I had nightmares, but I did wake up a whole lot and I had a hard time getting back to sleep. I think it might have had something to do with the bungee jump the next day too.

Again, the bungee jump was not something I was looking forward to. It more like dreading. I tend to ask questions before the jump like "What's your safety record?" The lady who ran the "office" said they had no complications, ever, and if they did they would be shut down as the government is very strict. Mike told her it would probably be her last day then. Not funny.
Stephanie (one of the Merryl ex-bankers) took a video of the jump. I don't know if you can hear it, but right before I keep on muttering "this is stupid, this is stupid…"

Okay, top nine reasons why I didn't like bungee jumping (I can't believe I'm one short!):

1. The way they hold you up is by wrapping towels (Yeah like I'm about to take a damn dip in the river below) around your ankles, then putting a seatbelt like thing around that. The only way I was able to jump was because they give you a safety harness.
   





2. They explain the towels by saying "the towels are for comfort", twice. I was too scared to complain, but I kept thinking "screw comfort, how 'bout we focus on me not falling to my death?"
   





3. The concept of "don't look down" doesn't work at all because as you're getting your ankles wrapped, which I felt compelled to watch, you can look through the damn floor to the river below.
   





4. The bungee cord itself can hold up to two tons, but the cord appears to be frayed when you look at it from the top, not exactly confidence building.
   





5. The jump. Nothing else needs to be said.
   





6. After you reach the bottom, you bounce back up, and fall all over again. Repeat ad nausium. Literally. It feels like it never ends.
   





7. When you're done bouncing around, waiting for someone to pick you up, your feet feel like they're about to slip out of the towel/harness, so you spend 15 harrowing minutes twisting your ankles in all sorts of directions to prevent yourself from falling.
   





8. After the entire harrowing experience, you have to climb off the bridge. Since the bridge was built for traffic (not bungee jumping), you have to use the catwalks and ladders to get to the top, and you get to see the state of the bridge, which I'm doubtful would pass a US inspection.
   





9. After you get off the bridge, you have to get back on the damn thing to get the stuff you left at the bungee point, which is pretty much the last thing you want to do.
   

All in all, I felt like I needed to throw up for about a half hour to an hour after jumping. If you're afriad of heights like I am, I highly recommend skipping the whole thing and just watching.

After finishing the bungee jump, we went to Livingston Island with our new Merryl friends. It's an island, right off the edge of the falls, and the Royal Livingston Hotel offers trips out to it. It is absolutely breath-taking. What's more, after you get to the island, you can swim out to a pool at the edge of the falls. It's called Devil's Pool, and you can jump into it, and you then sit on the edge; literally less than two feet from a few hundred meter drop. This is where we got the best pictures of the entire trip. The guides at the island are absolutely fearless and walk right up to the edge, lean over it, and then take pictures with your camera. It's awesome and probably the coolest thing we did while in Zambia, possibly all of Africa.
After the quick trip to Livingston Island, we decided to grab a drink at a bar in the hotel, called the Royal Livingston. It's probably the nicest hotel I've ever seen, and it's got an incredible atmosphere. The only reason we weren't staying there is that it costs something like $500 per person per night! So in this elegant of a place, there's only one thing to do after getting your martini: eat your leftover pizza in your takeaway box. Yup, I'm f'ing classy. What's even cooler is the monkeys that hang out at the bar started trying to get our pizza, and the bar employees started chasing them away! So after making a menace of myself and getting ready to get thrown out, the other people at the bar, who can actually afford to stay at the hotel, asked us where we got the pizza. Gotta love Americans!

The next morning, it was off to South Africa!

What happened to relaxing on vacation?

Our next exotic destination was Zanzibar, an island off the coast of Tanzania. It is known for its beautiful beaches, relaxed atmosphere, and some pretty killer parties. I'm hoping someone else can help fill in this section, as I ended up spending 90% of this time sleeping because I caught some sort of bronchitis and sinus infection while I was hiking Kili, and I was trying to work it out of my system. Until it gets improved, I'll say that there was some absolutely beautiful beaches, lots of celebratory drinking involved, lots of drinking-focused card games, and a bar tab that we accumulated over 2 nights including 70 beers which equaled about half the annual salary of our bartender.

One other cool note. We got in yet another car incident, when our taxi's spare tire poped out of place and here's picture of us waiting yet again for the car to get fixed...

This is Africa (Random notes part three)

So there's a lot of things that happen here that don't really make sense, which is normally explained away by saying "well, this is Africa". For example, when I wanted to make sure there were seat belts in our vehicles, no cars had any and when I asked about it the reply was: "Well Joel, this is Africa, and most of the cars here don't have working seatbelts." It's been how a lot of things were described to me: lack of toilet paper in bathrooms; gaping holes in mosquito nets; why potatoes are individually chopped and peeled for french fries; etc. After a while you get kind of used to it, but the "this is Africa" (abbreviated TIA) starts to stick with you.

Okay more fun stuff:

• In Cameroon, Andre invited his friends over to drink the Johnny Walker Blue, and they were gracious enough to show us a Cameroonian tradition. Before you start drinking, they pour out a small amount of the bottle for friends and ancestors who couldn't be there. They pour it out at the threshold of the doorway to invite in more good luck and success. So the origin of "pouring one out for my homies" actually does have roots in Africa. Who knew?
  
• We got some Mzungu t-shirts at a flea market (Mzungu means white foreigner in Swahili)
  
• You'd be amazed how fast you can get sick of "pit" toilets, which are latrine shacks with a hole in them. They're all over Tanzania, and I wish I could go back to the care free days of Cameroonian toilets without the seats.
  
• Hippos are the most dangerous of all the African mammals (the mosquito is technically the most deadly of all animals), and are also apparently the most disgusting, as they tend to sleep in ponds and slow rivers during the day and their crap tends to accumulate near them. It's worse than you think, the smell and noise is horrendous.
  
• Altitude sickness sucks. It also tends to ruin your immune system, as I have now contracted what I like to call Tanzanian Mountain Sickness because my cold just won't go away. As of the beginning of October, I was still battling my cold.
  
• Checkpoints are really common around here. To get anywhere you need to go through checkpoints, often more than two or three. I think that's just really strange when you can drive across the US without ever being stopped.
  
• Hakuna Matata actually does mean "no worries" in Swahili. You say it a ton around here, and I still always think of the Lion King.
  
• In Cameroon, in order to get your attention, people will make a hiss or "psst" sound. However, sometimes it sounds more like they want to kiss you. In the end, it feels like you are in a national geographic episode of snake mating rituals.
  
• Mosquito nets look kind of funny. It feels like you're trying to protect yourself from some scary monster by hiding underneath the covers. Only in this case, I guess it kind of works

So after spending nearly a month squating, apparently there's a toilet seat under the sink (of course, why didn't I look there?).

In Nairobi, apparently everything is both directions. So no one gets to see the wizard.

Luckily gernades are forbidden...

I wish I knew where this guy got his hat, it's awesome!

Vass found a new boyfriend in Kenya.

Vijay's with the pimp sunglasses we rented from Shidolya

The nicest toilet in Serengeti

The car accident didn't agree with my personal hygene habits.

Vijay MAXX

Now that we were up to full strength with Nik and Sheila, we were ready to hike Kilimanjaro. Don't worry, we were extra loud, the way good Americans travel.

Kilimanjaro was both the part of this trip I was most excited about, and yet feared the most at the same time. Ever since our excursion up mount Cameroon, I have been a little bit worried that the altitude might make it too difficult for me to climb. Luckily, I didn't have too much time to think about it because a day after we got back to Arusha, we were already packed and hitting the trail to the top of the mountain.


For those of you who have never hiked with porters before, it's a bit of a strange experience. It kind of feels like you have slaves or something. "Here, take my stuff up this mountain, I'm tired." They set up and break camp for you, cook, and clean up in general. They even spend time making sure you like the food (though I don't know what they could do about it). It takes a while to get used to, and I'm not sure if I like it more than carrying all my own stuff. I can tell you that it cuts nearly any trip in half because you can cover a lot more distance with these guys. They are absolute beasts, and nothing slows them down.

The first day was easy enough, requiring only a few hours of hiking. We ended up choosing the Machame route, mostly because it would give us the most time to acclimate to the altitude. Our guides were again from Shidolya, and they were awesome. In fact, they gave Vijay the best nickname of the trip: Vijay MAXX. I don't think any of us knows where it came from, but I get a serious kick out of it every time they said it. For some reason, they just loved Vijay. Every time we took a picture, started hiking, took a break, etc. "Vijay MAXX, get up front", "Vijay MAXX, how do you feel?", "Vijay MAXX, are you ready?" It was somewhat ridiculous, yet by the end of the day, we all thought it was fun.

Throughout the trip, we were playing a game called Taboo, in large part because it's loud and broadcasts us all as Americans from miles away. What's great about this game is that your mind tends to not work the same way as others and some obvious clues are missed. My favorite is when Vijay was talking about an "old salad, like turn of the century but named after a famous ruler", the response: Napolean Salad. Another great one was "he's a basketball player, uh…he's tall…you guys know this person!!!" It was Bill Bradley.

The next day was also relatively uneventful, but it did give us our first view of the mountain. And it did look very foreboding. After that, I think we all had a better appreciation for what we were up against, yet we were all very optimistic that we would make it to the top as the first two days were relatively easy.

Day three is kind of a weird hike when you think about climbing a mountain. Instead of making a whole lot of progress up, you instead hike up a thousand meters, but then go back down a thousand meters. The main idea is to get high to let your body acclimate, but then sleep back at a lower altitude to rest. While all this makes sense (kinda), when you start hiking back down it feels like you are losing ground.

That day is also when we went to the top of the Lava Tower. It's a really cool tower of…you guessed it, cooled lava rock that's about a hundred meters high. If you can see my expression here, and I don't look overly happy, it's because I'm particularly scared of heights, and I can see 300+ feet straight down to my death, so smiling is hard to do.
Climbing the tower itself isn't all that hard, but for those who haven't ever been rock climbing, it can be a little tricky. Vijay showed us all a little bit of grace by slipping a little down part of the rock face you climb up. Luckily for Vijay, Mike was there to catch Vijay MAXX by the butt. Due to Vijay MAXX's propensity to fall during descents, we decided to change our vocabulary. From that point on, you didn't want to Vijay on the trail or you could scrape your hands or hurt your butt.

Day four is actually pretty short. Since you head for the summit at midnight, hiking is done around three or four. It was great for some awesome pictures, but then we grabbed a quick (Africa quick, so about an hour and a half) dinner, and we tried to get some sleep before the big ascent.

Five hours later, our guides woke us up to get ready for the final summit. All of use donned every layer of clothing we had, and most of us were still cold. It was absolutely freezing. We started up around midnight, in the dark, with our headlamps as our major way to see the road ahead. What made this so weird was the difficulty to have a goal to focus on. You can't see the top of the mountain, so every time you look up, you can always see some lights ahead of you. It's incredibly frustrating because it feels like you never make any progress at all. The stars also kind of set this feeling of a never ending mountain, because you can't tell which lights are stars and which are lights of people at the top of Kilimanjaro.

All of us were doing pretty well until the about five hundred meters up, when I started struggling. For those of you who know me well, this was hard to admit, but I was by far having the hardest time. You could hear me all the way up and down the mountain, just by my breathing. I sounded like Darth Vader trying to sip the last of a coke through a straw. And there was still 800 meters to go.

All of us continued to suck it up and push upwards, though the going was incredibly difficult. It's a very steep ascent, and there are no breaks in the trail. To make things worse, you can't breathe well at all, so you feel more tired than you actually are. Our guides kept on telling us that we were almost there, but after a couple hours of "almost there", you tend to tune them out. They also told us to breathe out every step, which does help, but once you start doing that, there's not really anything else to do. For the last half of the hike I was panting like I had just run a few miles at top speed. Darth Vader would have told me to stop overacting.

We reached Stella Point around six a.m. I thought the guides had told me that was the half-way point, and I had reached my limit. There was no way I was going to be able to make it another five or six hours of hiking; I was sitting still for over a half hour and I couldn't catch my breath, let alone get the strength to climb up more. I was sitting, trying to catch my breath and just overall being disappointed with myself when the first light of sunrise started to show.
As the light started coming out, I could see the top of Kilimanjaro in front of us. It turns out that Stella Point is almost at the end of the climb, and it was now in sight! Only one hundred more vertical meters to go and we were at the top!

We all started off again, with some renewed exuberance, and focused on trying to make it the last couple meters. You can see here that I'm within 50 meters of the top, and it's a pretty awesome spectacle when you get up there.

With glaciers on both sides, the mountain is a sight to behold at the top. All six of us made it to the top, and I can say that even I couldn't have hoped for a better outcome of the trip. It's pretty rare for everyone to make it, and I like to think that we all helped each other achieve this feat. I think that is most evident in how I got around the top of the mountain.

When I got to the top, I had finally cashed in my last chip, and I needed to sit down. I was kind of hoping to strut around and check out the area, but it just wasn't in me, so Mike and Vijay helped me back to my feet and started helping me walk around. Our guides gave me an extra jacket and a scarf, and we took some quick pictures. After that, I needed to head down as I was in pretty bad shape. I basically pushed myself past my limits and no matter how much I tried to command my legs to hold me up, they just buckled. I never actually got sick (no vomiting or big headaches), just couldn't catch my breath or get any strength.

After the pictures, our guides took over for Mike and Vijay, and they helped me down to Stella Point. I started feeling a little bit better, but it wasn't until another hundred meters or so when I could walk down on my own power.

We took an hour nap at the camp we had slept the previous night, and grabbed lunch (our first real meal in 18 hours). I wasn't feeling well at all, and luckily Vass had a thermometer and I checked my temperature: 102.5! Apparently, while sleeping at altitude I had developed a pretty serious fever, and so I packed my daypack and started running down the trail to get to a lower altitude campsite. Eventually my fever dissipated, but I think it shows how serious this climb can get.

The last day is pretty easy, and you just descend to get off the mountain. There's certificates and champagne at the bottom, and everyone is in a really great mood because we all made it to the top.

If you're thinking of going up the mountain, I highly recommend Shidolya tours, our guides were awesome. Ask for Eric and Roderick. They made sure we all had fun, helped us when we started to fade, and overall made for a great trip.

The last cool thing about hiking Kilimanjaro was our drive home. Yet again we had some car troubles, so for those of you counting at home, we're up to four auto-related mishaps (broken radiator, accident, broken drive shaft, now this). Our van was driving an average of like 20 kph, so we were all getting pretty restless, especially when it started stalling on the hills. After a few stalls, they asked us to get out and start pushing the van! Eventually it was determined that even that wasn't working, so they sent another van to come pick us up. Again, I'm just glad I don't have to do the driving.

Short Random Notes from Kilimanjaro

• Mike found the pickiest toilet on the mountain. He went to the bathroom in a pit toilet, and after he threw his toilet paper in the hole, it came back out the hole at him! (It's a little windy up here)
  
• Mike brought some really cool portable speakers, and with our iPods, we were playing music every night before dinner. The favorite of the group was also supposed to provide encouragement near the summit. "You're the best around, no one will ever get you down!" (think Karate Kid if you still don't know it)
  
• After Vijay's fear of snakes was reinforced by our time with Hussein, we asked Eric to tell Vijay that dinner would include "sauce of live Puff Adder", but it came back out as "Sauce of Live Puff Wader" (or as Nik thought – bath water). Vijay still said he wouldn't eat anything with puff anything in it.
  
• We ended up eating some Pumba (Swahili for wild boar for those of you non-lion king fans out there) at Assy bar. It was pretty good, but was really fun because we got one more chance to hang out with Hussien, Eric and Roderick one last time before we left Arusha.
  
• Our car broke down, again! This time we never found out why, but we did push it up a hill to try to get it running again.