Day 40 Dust And Thorns

I mentioned the dust yesterday, but it bears mentioning again. Waterholes aside, Etosha is an extraordinarily dry place this time of year. I have never before encountered such pervasive powdery dust. It quietly invades everywhere, in every pocket, in every crevice, on every surface. The apples in the bowl in front of me look like peaches now.

I posted a photo of the surreal wintery white of much of the landscape and the dust does account for some of that, but I should also mention the thorns - the ubiquitous acacia are armed with countless bone white thorns, to the exclusion of any leaves. They are as long as a child's fingers and as sharp and tough as surgical needles. One shredded the sleeve of my shirt without me even noticing until after.

The clever among you will note that day 40 marks the halfway point of this trip. Time has however lost its usual meaning for us and feels formless and vast, so we've taken no particular note of the day.

Day 39 The Lions Of Maringo

If the stench of rotting elephant isn't enough to discourage the antelope from coming to Maringo watering hole, then surely the regular roaring from the pride of lions feeding on the carcass will do it. Consequently no Springboks, Gemsboks or Grisboks (it's bok bok bok in southern Africa), but a giraffe came up and assessed the situation for an hour or so before venturing a drink. And the rhinos didn't care at all. In fact, when the lions got too close one rhino turned around and casually ambled towards them, scattering them.  Skittish jackels darted about and the thin shrill laugh of hyenas was heard. This is all happening a five minute walk from our tent.

Etosha National Park. Four times the size of Prince Edward Island. You cannot leave your car, you must stay in fenced in camping compounds, there are no signs, no picnic sites, no hiking trails, no anything except a network of dirt roads and the open Africa of 100 or 10,000 years ago. And Etosha is white, looking hoarfrosted with talcum fine dust. Even the sky is bleached. No colour anywhere, but animals, so many animals, drawn in by the scattered water holes.

I will be listening to lions roaring all night (no, the lion does not sleep tonight...) until I finally put the earplugs in.

If you go anywhere in Africa go here.

Day 38 Alexander Is Armed

I didn't catch his name, but even if I had I wouldn't have been able to pronounce it as it contained one of those tongue click sounds the San (previously called Bushmen) language is known for. He was making a bow and arrow for Alexander. Alexander had thus far had a, shall we say, mixed experience in Africa. He is as excited as anyone when wildlife is spotted, but soon loses interest and spends most of the long truck rides drawing, reading Tintin and complaining. When we stop to set up camp he walks in circles obsessively making what I can only describe as exploding noises, waving his arms about. 

But once it became obvious what unpronounceable San man was doing for him a sly smile crept across his face and he became rapt with attention. Alexander had trouble firing it, but the San are among the most patient and good humoured people I have ever met, so eventually he fired off a decent shot. He was also deeply impressed by their snare making, fire building and poison finding skills. The bow and arrow plus his Australian boomerang are creating an unintended weaponry collection. I am a bit nervous about what he'll find in the Istanbul bazaars...

Day 37 I Froze My Ass Off In Africa

Before I describe the advertised ass freezing let me offer a heartfelt apology for having used the phrase "hippo infested" in two consecutive posts. I have no reasonable excuse.

Before coming here I knew it was "winter" in the southern hemisphere and I knew that deserts can become cold at night regardless. Yes, I knew these things. Lorraine even suggested we bring light gloves. I guffawed. Gloves? Come on, winter, desert, whatever - it's Africa! Freaking Africa, the hottest continent!

It was 3c this morning. Lorraine's being good about it...

What do the locals do about the cold? We toured a village yesterday and saw that they sleep four or six to a bed and we did also see a brisk trade in firewood, enormous bundles of which are seen carried on women's heads everywhere. And people, especially the elderly, go to the shebeen. In this village it was the only business - a tiny tin shack that sold a grisly grey homebrew sorghum beer and some kind of clear(ish) firewater in a range of repurposed bottles. People were decked out in their Sunday finest, including one gentleman sporting caving shoes and a cracked pink bicycle helmet. And these old people were absolutely ripped. Singing, staggering, swaying. Comprehensively hammered on a sunny Sunday afternoon. The guide said that village social constraints were so strong though that this never led to violence. We were greeted by joyous ululations because the guide bought them all a round (50 cents a bottle for the stronger hooch). To me he said, "sniff only, definitely no taste".

Day 36 Looking At Angola Through The Sausage Tree

And that is exactly what I am doing. Angola is across the river, the Okavango again, and a sausage tree is on the bank immediately in front of me. Its fruit look exactly like large sausages. You would just need to plant the beer tree next to it... Before going on about that though I did want to finish catching up and mention our time in Botswana's Chobe National Park, between Vic Falls and the Okavango.

Remember when you were a kid and the Africa you knew was from shows such as Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom ("Jim will now jump in with the starving crocodiles... ")? Remember how many animals there were and how wide open the land was with no fences or roads? Remember then the letdown as you realized Africa probably wasn't like that anymore? Well, take heart, some parts still are and Chobe is one of them (minus Marlin Perkins in his natty safari suit). So many elephants that they become almost boring, but only almost, and ditto for the hippos (sorry...). Perhaps the single best day of wildlife viewing I have ever experienced.

Day 35 Zambezi Flashback (photos)

Day 35 Zambezi Flashback

I'm going have to jump back and forth a little in time. The last post had us in the Okavango in Botswana and today we're in Namibia, but I want to go back to Zimbabwe first.

A week ago today the Dragoman truck arrived, with Emma, the Welsh leader, Denford, the Zimbabwean cook, and Chris, the Kenyan driver. Four other families joined us - two from England and one each from Australia and Switzerland. Plus my brother Daniel who had spent the previous week to roaming southern Zimbabwe on his own (ask him about his train out of Bulawayo...). Dragoman runs long distance overland trips in Africa, Asia and South America. Lorraine and I crossed Pakistan. India and Nepal with them in 1993. "Overlanding" is a very particular and special form of travel. I hope to give you a better sense of this in the coming posts.

But Zimbabwe. The reason this trip starts in Victoria Falls is immediately evident when you arrive. The spray is visible from a great distance and the sound was often the only thing we heard late at night, four kilometers away. Words and photos and even panorama shots and video can only provide feeble representations. Victoria Falls are enormous and deeply impressive. Being in a wild National Park they are more dramatic than the more domesticated and developed Niagara.

And the Zambezi offers more than the Falls and the gorge below (earlier post) -  the wide meandering hippo infested stretch above is also attractive. A sharply dressed fellow named Reliable, whose phone kept going off with a Mission Impossible theme ring tone, sold us tickets on a upper Zambezi sunset cruise. Yes, pretty much as romantic as it sounds (if you plug your ears and squint enough that you don't hear or see the children...).

Photos will follow. Internet remains wobbly.

Days 32 - 34 Out Of The Okavango

Four hours in a truck on washboard, an hour and a half in a speed boat winding through papyrus, a half hour in another truck on a sand road and then an hour in a mokoro (dugout canoe) - this brings you into the Okavango Delta, an enormous expanse of hippo infested marsh where the Okavango River meets the Kalahari Desert, the largest river on earth not to reach the sea.

Here we bush camped for two nights under fruit bats and stars. Here Manpower and Ciga  ("like cigarette ") guided us and showed us the difference between elephant, hippopotamus, baboon, and impala poo. Here Manpower demonstrated the impala poo spitting game. Here we swam among the reeds ("no, no crocodile right now") and sang (sort of) and danced (also sort of). Here we stared at the campfire drinking beer and lay anxiously in our sleeping bags, our bladders quietly stretching, as we listened to hippos and elephants ambling by our tents.

Days 29 - 31 Not Eaten

No, we have not been eaten by lions or crocodiles or leopards. Nor have we been  trampled by rhinos or elephants or Cape buffalo. We have, however, entered the zone of little or no wi-fi, little or no cell service and even little or no means to charge our phones. We are in the African bush. Botswana yesterday, Namibia today and then Botswana again tomorrow as we nip back and forth along the wild borderlands of the Caprivi Strip. This is why there have been no blog posts and why there will probably be none for a few more days, and why some of you who might have expected emails haven't gotten any. I'm tapping this out in my tent using a dodgy Namibian SIM card to the sounds of hippos grunting in the nearby Okavango river while Alexander sleeps quietly next to me.

Day 28 Zimbabwe Haircut

Although my hair continues to grey (prematurely I say!) it is thick and grows weedlike, rapidly becoming unruly and curly. In the tropics it feels like I'm wearing a dead angora goat on my head. So I tried to get it cut in Bali, but by the time I got around to it it was Galungan, the major Balinese Hindu festival and all the barbers were closed. Now we're about to head deep into the African bush and I was beginning to feel desperate, so I headed into town yesterday.

The town of Victoria Falls is a ramshackle  accumulation of tour offices and local businesses. Among the latter was a dark hole in the wall called Tyress Hair Salon And Health Spa. I stepped inside, was welcomed and was motioned to sit against the wall and wait. Two men were busy shaving the heads of their customers. They glanced nervously back and forth at each other and at me. There were no scissors in sight, only electric clippers. The posters and photos on the walls all featured handsome black men with closely shaved heads, one advertising the possibility of having a Bart Simpson silhouette carved in. It was around this time that I began wondering whether this was a good idea.

Eventually the younger of the two barbers couldn't stall any longer and invited me to his chair. His name was Neo. To my relief he asked me whether I preferred clippers or scissors. He rummaged about,  produced a pair and began to consider my hair with a mixture of anxiety and skepticism. Evidently having reached a decision he dowsed it with an astringent smelling liquid that ran down my forehead into my eyes. I smiled. Neo smiled. Then the cutting began. These scissors had apparently been last sharpened when this country was still called Rhodesia. Consequently Neo had to resort to more of a sawing and yanking technique with the blades open to a narrow v, interspersed with episodic redowsing. I tried to make conversation with him, but between the noise of clippers in the next chair and my thick Canadian accent (English is an official language in Zimbabwe and everyone speaks it) he had trouble understanding me. Each time I said something he would stop cutting and would pop his head around to face me and say "Hello?" I eventually gave up and Neo eventually began to relax, engaging in lively conversation with the young women that had gathered around. It was all in Ndebele but occasionally Neo would insert the phrase "I am living dangerously!" in English and laugh.

Ultimately my hair got cut to the perfect length and both Neo and I got stories, albeit probably different ones.

The photo is of truly living dangerously: an employee going out to... check? maintain? repair? the bungee jumping cables over the Zambezi Gorge.

Day 27 Crumbled Warthog Schnitzel

A man named Blessing drove us from the airport to our spartan white cindercrete bungalow, laughing with us about the fancy Zimbabwe visa that took $300 and the better part of two hours to obtain. Admission to Zimbabwe also involved passing an infrared Ebola fever detector. The woman we assumed was monitoring it on her laptop turned out to be watching an action movie.

We're in Africa. Surreal.

Alexander shouted and pointed, "penguin!!" It was a monkey. He was very tired. We had been traveling over 30 hours from Bali. I had "lunch" three times in various time zones. But I was still hungry so I ordered the "crumbled warthog schnitzel" at the In Da Belly restaurant, thatch roofed, cricket on the big screen TV.

There are monkeys everywhere here and now it is dark and there is singing and drumming. The stars are lower. I need to sleep.

(What looks like smoke is spray from Victoria Falls, a couple km from our bungalow.)

Day 26 Bali Bye

Bye bye to swimming under frangipani blossoms, to lounging on batik cushions, to watching firefly reflections in rice paddies, to listening to otherwordly gamelan music drifting across the valley. Bye bye to a place of smiles, of unlocked doors, of omnipresent art, of omnipresent kitsch, of fragrance, of stench, of glimpses of... something. 

Hello to eighteen hours in airplanes and twelve hours in airports. Hello to flying across the southern Indian Ocean (transindian? transindic?), passing over a point on the exact opposite side of the globe from Winnipeg (remember the old digging to China joke? It's not China.) Hello to Africa.

Correction and clarification:
Yesterday I accidentally damned Melissa Gilbert. It turns out that she's the beloved former child star of Little House On The Prairie, Diary Of Anne Frank and The Miracle Worker. Whoops. I meant to damn Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love.
And I don't "hate yoga". Far from it. In fact I like to think I do a damn fine tree. Nothing else mind you.

Day 25 Among The Seekers

I was going to write about ear wax today but after careful consideration I decided to write about Ubud instead. Ubud is a half hour walk from the house and is the artistic, cultural and spiritual capital of Bali. The partiers go to the beaches at Kuta and Sanur and the seekers come here. When we were last here it still had the air of an out-of-the-way backpacker's secret with $10 bungalows and a steady diet of banana pancakes and chicken satay. Now it is definitely in-the-way, sporting more high end yoga retreats, botanical meditation spas and cruelty free tantric bee pollen smoothy emporia than anywhere this side of California. (I made the last one up.) Damn you Melissa Gilbert and Julia Roberts.

But here's the thing about Ubud, like most places it has layers. The most recent, most superficial layer described above may make you want to run screaming back to the village, especially when Ubud's main streets are so crowded you can barely move, breathe, think (except you can't because you can barely move, breathe, think, and its way too hot to run or scream anyway). But duck down a side lane, peek into a courtyard, come early in the morning and that layer instantly evaporates and the banana pancake layer reappears and, beneath that, the actual Bali layer. As stated before, Balinese culture is very much alive, admirably unflappable and serene in the midst of the tourist tumult. 

One of my less attractive qualities is that I like to judge people based on flimsy evidence. Like how they dress. I was in the Ubud Clinic (see disturbing ear wax reference above) when I saw the layers collide. Literally. A pair of westerners had foolishly decided to rent a car. Then they foolishly proceeded to plow into several Balinese motorbikes (not one, several!). Nobody was seriously injured, but the waiting room was entertaining. To begin with, Indonesian police uniforms are deeply impressive, especially when accented by dark sunglasses and especially when a whole bunch show up at once. The injured locals were accompanied by an array of family members coming and going, everyone appearing remarkably relaxed under the circumstances. My attention was however primarily focused on the anxious culprits and the golden opportunity to judge. Both were clad entirely in white and off white apres-yoga chic. She in layers of expensive looking scarves and fluttery gauzy garments and he in harem pants (!) and a t-shirt boldly emblazoned with the word "simple" in a faux Hindi font. I'm shallow and I'm mean, so I had a hard time concealing my mirth.

And what about me, am I a seeker? Yes, I  suppose I am. And yes, I'm a bit simple too.