There's no Hippo in the Bathtub... but...

There was an elephant in the shower.



During our stay at Oddballs, a tented camp in the Okavango Delta in Botswana, we went on daily game walks and mokoro (dugout canoe) trips. Seeing zebras, giraffes, and impala is one thing while driving through the parks; it's another thing entirely to see them at "their" level, without the metal and glass enclosure of the truck. This elephant, a local friend, decided to go looking for an afternoon snack amongst the trees between the shower stalls... while we were in them. We broke records for fastest shower that day!

If you want to see rhinos, you simply must visit the Khama Rhino Sanctuary near Serowe, Botswana. Rhinos were the last of the "Big Five" for us to find, as they're rare and endangered -- you probably know that they've been poached extensively in Africa for their horns, which are highly valued in Asia.



Our morning game drive through the park resulted in no animal sightings, which was more or less par for the course for us. We are simply not morning people; neither are we expert animal trackers! In the afternoon, we decided to try our luck again. Our perseverance was rewarded with several rhino sightings, including one at the end of our drive -- the rhino was so close to the road that he walked up to the truck and tapped our rear bumper, gently, with his great horn. Rhinos are strange; they look like they've been made out of the leftover parts of other animals, with disjointed faces, awkward bodies, and large ears -- to say nothing of those horns, which can be up to a meter long each. They also did a dance that we called the "Rhino Shuffle", as they shift back and forth while kicking up an awful lot of dust.

Spending time with the rhinos, elephants, zebras, giraffes, and all of their other friends in Botswana was a great way to end our safari trip. The last few weeks in Africa were definitely tiring, though thrilling in their own special way. Although we enjoyed our time traveling Africa, we can say very positively now that we're happy and proud to have completed our trip safely and successfully.

Breathe and Stop

After 13 months of backpacking around and moving every night, dozing on buses and striding through markets, changing diapers or feeding penguins, scrubbing mats or cooking a bush dinner via LED light, and lately, setting up camp with scorpions and elephants raiding our camp (and one deciding to have a snack next to the open-air shower I was using), we landed in Mauritius for a well-deserved break.

Do you know what we did today?

Nothing.

Actually, we sat and watched Barack Obama win the US presidential election (yay!), watched Gore Vidal tear a strip out of a BBC anchorman, sat near the infinity pool, went to the beach, and ate roti, ice cream, and fresh pineapple with chili.

You have no idea how happy I am to be here.

Cheetah. Fightah.

One of the great things we've done in Africa is spend a day at the Cheetah Conservation Fund near Otjiwarango, Namibia. Established in 1990 by American Dr. Laurie Marker, the Cheetah Conservation Fund strives to help cheetahs long-term by increasing awareness about the cheetah's plight and providing a safe haven for orphaned cats. They also do research and local education for farmers and students, and even provide working dogs for farms which will protect livestock, and in turn, effectively protect cheetahs from being culled by farmers.



The first thing we saw at CCF was the morning "cheetah run". Hermione, Harry, and Ron are three resident CCF cats that share a pen, and every morning get their exercise by effectively chasing a rag on a string at high speed -- a similar game one might play with a housecat, only deadlier. These cats chased the coloured rag at speeds of up to 45 kph over 500m shaped into a large square and were rewarded with scraps of meat at the end. To see a cheetah stalking prey and running at it (and towards you!) at high speed was impressive, awesome -- and also somewhat terrifying. One misstep and we could have been cheetah chow, since we were inside the pen with the trainers and volunteers.



After the cheetah run we drove into the larger resident cheetah pens for a safari, and paid a visit to some of the locals -- girls like Hershey, Toblerone, and Chanel, and the boys: Darwin, Livingstone, and Armani. These animals were rescued as oprhaned cubs after their mothers were killed, often by farmers who (wrongly) believed that their livestock were endangered by the presence of cheetahs. Now that these animals are fully grown, they can't be returned to the wild, because they were never properly trained to hunt by their mothers. Instead, they are fed and exercised every day at CCF -- they chase the feeding truck at high speed as their lunch is tossed from the back! Some of them will soon be traveling to the United States for breeding purposes.

Cheetahs are fascinating. They're beautiful, fast, and deadly -- just like me. (Haha.) They're also endangered, and for this reason, CCF will continue to exist for a long time.

Thanks, CCF, for helping our cheetahs and our planet.

Intense Dark Brown

My skin has never been this colour.



Five days of driving around Chobe and Moremi National Parks in northern Botswana have left me bronzed like never before, even with sunscreen. We drove for hours and hours in the blazing sun, windows open because we couldn't use the air conditioning in the name of fuel economy (none in the park!) It was hot and sticky and dusty, there was sand on my lips and in my ears and grit in my teeth and my back and legs stuck to the cheap unbreathable canvas upholstery we were sitting on.

We never stopped for lunch because there was nowhere to stop. I'm sick of oranges and peanut butter sandwiches eaten en-route. I hate drinking water that's been warmed by the heat of the day; our little fridge couldn't keep up with our demands as we guzzled up to five litres each every day trying to stay hydrated. There was no point in putting on clean clothes, because they were dusty on the outside and sweaty on the inside as soon as we stepped outside the tent.

One day I burned the soles of my feet because I had chosen to wear Havaianas the day that our truck got stuck in a single-lane sand track 50km long on the way to Savute. How did we get stuck? We stopped to help a truck going in the opposite direction. How did he get stuck? He stopped to tell us that the road ahead of us was really bad.

Thanks, buddy.

We all had to push; we all had to dig; did I mention we weren't using the air conditioning?

One night by the fire, a traveler we were chatting with got stung by a scorpion. We were all, stupidly, wearing sandals. He was wearing long pants, thick socks, and hiking boots -- smart scorpion, stupid tourists. That night I tried desperately to sleep as the lions growled on one side of the tent and the elephants trumpeted on the other side. Branches snapped nearby and in the morning we followed the elephant tracks through our campsite leading towards the water. The next night our neighbours were paid a visit by a hippopotamous sauntering through their site. They took refuge on the picnic table.

We saw herds of zebra grazing, lines of impala heading for water. Hippos lazed in ponds and tried to keep cool. Crocodiles waited for their next meals. Female elephants and their babies crossed the road in front of us, and we had no choice but to wait for all of them to decide to pass. A cheetah paced around a nervous herd of impala, trying to decide which would be her next meal. Giraffes stared at us as we rolled by. A pride of lionesses and their cubs frolicked in the tall grasses next to the road, and a leopard peeked through the trees at us as we tried to get a better glance at him before he crept away. Every photo opportunity was better than the last.

We spent hours and hours driving in circles, looking for animals. We didn't see as many as we would have hoped to, considering the time we spent. But what we saw -- wow.

Wow.

The Adventure Continues

What IS this place anyway?

Five days ago we stayed at a campsite in north-western Namibia and I got to hold a Meerkat (cue "The Lion King", Timon!) The local springbok wandered through the bar and lounge, and I showered that night in the desert under the stars while a local tribe played music nearby. The next morning we visited rock paintings over 2000 years old. To stand in front of these rudimentary yet somehow sophisticated paintings that have literally survived ages was a humbling experience.

The next night we stayed at another site with an elephant watering hole. Also, with about 30 resident elephants. We stood transfixed (and upwind!) while they drank their fill, splashed about, and had dust baths. Babies nursed and the mothers broke branches from nearby trees. That day, we saw different ancient rock engravings which depicted the transformation of shamans and healers into various animals -- giraffes, springbok, cheetahs, lions.

Camping beside the Zambezi River means that we must be on the alert for roaming crocodiles and hippos, which snort and snarl all night like a band of giant, angry, aquatic pigs. Driving through the desert and countryside, we stumble upon bands of elephants foraging for lunch. Kudu and springbok bound across the streets, and warthogs trot alongside the tarmac as we speed by.

The other day we ventured to see the famous Victoria Falls. I can finally say without a doubt that I have finally seen a natural waterfall which dwarfs Niagara -- and yes, I am still a proud Canadian.

It's hot here, impossibly so. We have left Namibia for Botswana. In the last two weeks, we have seen and done more than I can possibly describe. The contrast of natural awesomeness and devastating poverty and desperation is, at times, overwhelming. My mind reels with the complexity of it all; it is impossible to comprehend, even when you find it staring you in the face.

I am seeing Africa as best I can, but I cannot begin to understand it.

You Know You're in Africa When

• The taxi runs out of fuel two blocks from your final destination, and it's not a big deal. (At least it wasn't the highway.)
  
• The menu lists ostrich filet, springbok, and kudu steaks with chips.
• The band plays 'Stand by Me', accompanied, fabulously, only by tribal drums.
• It takes two months to receive confirmation of a hotel booking, and you're kind of okay with that.
• Food described as spicy is actually slightly too spicy.
• Planning a trip requires asking questions like, 'Is the ferry for the river border crossing actually big enough for a car?'
• The country you're visiting has eleven official languages.
  
• And the taxi driver can speak six of them.
• People finally know what I'm talking about when I mention Mauritius.
• The mosquitoes are positively nuclear. (Not nucular.)
• People talk about driving over 340m high sand dunes without flinching.
• Campers gripe about the pea-sized sand fleas, adders, and scorpions like we talk about black flies. It's the crocodiles and hippos you have to really worry about!
  
• Everything can be braiied (barbequed.) Everything.
• People own SUVs not for status, but for survival. Land Rovers aren't pretentious, they're practical!
• Chocolate bars have the consistency of candles.
• You're a 12-hour flight from Europe, but in the same time zone as Germany.
• Local wine is divine, and the fruit juice is magical.
• You can wake up and look out to the ocean, and then look the other way to Table Mountain.
• People eat corn porridge for breakfast.
• Tofu is exotic.
• All of the east-flowing rivers in the continent are infested with little tiny snails that become parasitic worms that burrow into your skin and invade your bloodstream. Don't swim in them.
• The people are beautiful, the beaches are to die for, and the air vibrates with exotic culture and energy.
• History is horrific but there's always hope.
  

This is Africa II

Never before have I seen anything like this.

In Fish River Canyon, we stood awestruck at the enormousness of it all, and marvelled at the emptiness. The Grand Canyon might be bigger, but it certainly can’t beat being one of the only four people having breakfast at the viewpoint of Fish River Canyon in southern Namibia.



In Sossusvlei, we watched the sand dunes, red and orange in the blistering heat of midday, change to brown at sunset and again to gold at sunrise. The undulated ridges and waving surface contrasted with the sky, which was purple and pink at one side of the horizon, and orange and red at the other.



In Namib-Naukluft Park, the plains stretched out to the far, far mountains. We were utterly alone except for the zebras, warthogs, and ground squirrels whose home we invaded for the night.

In Walvis Bay and Swakopmund, the sand dunes touch the raging ocean, and the salty mists shroud both sleepy towns in a chilly blanket. North of here, on the Skeleton Coast, rusting shipwrecks rest in their salty, shifting graves before being swallowed by the sea.



Nomadic tribespeople walk through city parks. Baobabs and quiver trees stretch from desert sand to blue sky. A million stars twinkle against inky blackness.

I can't wait to see what else Africa has in store for us.

This is Africa

We’re a week into our Southern Africa 4x4 sojourn, and have spent a quiet day in the coastal Namibian “city” of Swakopmund recharging and relaxing. Let’s recap what’s happened so far:

Day 1: Alan and Catherine arrive in Cape Town. We are late to pick them up, but our defence is that they arrived at the airport at 5:00 am. From there we drive a bit up to Chapman’s Peak and have “THE BEST FISH AND CHIPS IN CAPE TOWN.”

Day 2: We take our guests to see our friends the penguins at SANCCOB and buy supplies for our upcoming trip. The truck we have rented arrives, and is missing the following things:

• Maps, spare key,and GPS as promised
• A working tire jack
• A usable spare tire release rod
• Four functional tires (the two in front are bubbling off of the rims, and one of the rear tires is a road tire. On an off-road vehicle.)
• A second spare tire (***this is important later.***)
• A functioning interior cabin light
• Cattle/bull bars on the front of the truck
• Extra tank for fresh drinking water
• A functioning front passenger seat belt. Luckily, the front seat slides forward and backwards, so you can adjust your seat to fit the seat belt, which does not move.
• A full tank of diesel
• A functional brake light/tail light

Day 3: We depart after running around Cape Town to pick up the new tires, GPS, and diesel which were thoughtfully left out. We spend the night alone in Garies and wonder why the night in Africa is so freaking cold.

Day 4: Enter Richtersveld National Park in northern South Africa and enjoy a terrifying 4x4 route complete with sand, big rocks, and 45 degree inclines. At our campsite, a friendly neighbour offers us a bottle of wine, two bottles of drinking water, and some firewood. We like South Africans.

Day 5: Drive to the Orange River, still in Richtersveld. It takes us five hours to drive 40 km to our campsite, which is supposedly remote and rustic, but is crawling with tourists. We choose a shaded spot next to the river, and a local family promptly drives up and sets up their tent and diesel generator next to us. We wait until they finish setting up, and then drive two sites over. We like South Africans less. Discover that the compressor for the tires doesn’t work properly and that the cigarette charger has been blown (and no, it wasn’t the fuses.)

Day 6: Cross the border into Namibia. The border is the Orange River, and we are taken across on a small pontoon. It’s the quickest border crossing I’ve ever encountered. We’re in Namibia!

Day 7: Head to Fish River Canyon and get a flat tire as soon as we pull into the campsite parking lot. Have a nice dinner.

Day 8: Wake up early to see the sunrise over the knee-buckling grandeur of Fish River Canyon. Realize it’s overcast, sleep a bit more. Also realize that the transmission in our car is dead after visiting three mechanics in the desert of Namibia. The 4x4 part of our 4x4 doesn’t work, and we have only a 4x2, which puts a serious dent in our plans.

Day 9: Drive to Sesreim, home of Sossusvlei and some of the biggest sand dunes in Africa. Visit a sand dune for sunset after waiting three hours in the hot desert for the truck company to call us back. Nearly have a heart attack trying to climb the dune, since it’s the only exercise we’ve had in a week.

Day 10: Wake up ridiculously early to see the sunrise over Sossusvlei. We can’t drive there ourselves, since our 4x4 is now a 4x2. Wait for a shuttle to take us to the dunes for sunrise, which never shows. Instead, we watch the sun rise over the outhouses in the Namibian Desert, five kilometres from Sossusvlei. The shuttle shows up 40 minutes after sunrise, and we get on it. Temporary replacement arrives from truck rental company, and is much smaller than our original truck. Has no jumper cables or proper stove, but two dining tables. We shove everything into it and move on.

Day 11: Enter the Namib-Nakluft Park for more 4x4ing, since we now have a 4x4. We camp for the night at a lovely site patrolled by gigantic baboons.

Day 12: Fail to complete 4x4 trail as we’d hoped, since the new truck lacks the suspension and power to go over the rocks. Leave the park and stop for lunch in Solitaire, where we run over a piece of barbed wire and get a second flat. Luckily this new truck has two spares. The apple pie in Solitaire is really good. Spend the night at a very remote site in Namib-Nakluft Park, where we are visited by warthogs and zebras, who clearly don’t mind that we haven’t had showers.

Day 13: Drive to Walvis Bay, realize there’s nothing there. Drive on to Swakopmund, a neat little Germanicized (?) town along the coast, and camp at a lovely site where we have get to park on grass for the first time ever and have our own private bathroom. We are ecstatic until the fog and mist and chilly wind move in. Sealing the rooftop tents up tightly for warmth means I wake up at 4:00 am with chilly condensation water dripping onto my face and neck, Chinese water-torture style.

Day 14: Have a relaxing day off in Swakopmund, only to find that since it’s Sunday, half of the shops, restaurants, cafes, and pubs we wanted to visit are closed. Find out that the guy we’ve been dealing with at the truck rental company has gone on vacation for a week and left no instructions for anyone. Then find out that since it’s the weekend, the truck hasn’t even been looked at and won’t be done for at least three days, meaning delivery in Swakopmund, as originally planned, will not be happening.

We’re out of here tomorrow. Onwards and upwards!

p.s. Photos? Pfft. Are you kidding? This is Africa.

Plunging Back In

Catherine and Alan have arrived, and we're getting ready to leave Cape Town in a fully loaded and completely packed Toyota Hilux quad-cab 3.0 litre diesel "bakkie" (pickup truck.) There are a few problems with it, like the fact that one tire AND the spare are completely wrecked, the interior light doesn't work, and we have no GPS. It'll get sorted.

In the meantime, we're enjoying each other's company and getting ready to head into the wilds of Namibia and Botswana. Internet may be sporadic, but I will try to update Love and Chopsticks whenever I can, including photos. Otherwise I've scheduled a few posts to tide you over until we return to civilization.

Peace, people. Peace and love.

A Funny Anniversary.

One year ago today, I found myself at Lester Pearson International Airport in Toronto, the departures lounge, Terminal 3. I was beyond exhausted and petrified. The check-in to the flight to Kathmandu via Delhi went smoothly. We visited Starbucks for our last refreshment stop on Canadian soil, and tried to use up our last few Canadian coins.

Strangely detached, I watched BG say goodbye to his baby sister. They clung together, tried to draw apart, and found that they could not make the break. I found myself dragging him through security -- I who had always said that it would be me that would be unable to take the first step. Catherine turned into her mother's arms for consolation, we saw, as we turned our backs to them and all that we knew.

When we emerged from the safety of the airplane bubble, we found ourselves in the dusty chaos of Kathmandu, and everything changed for us all at once. The cares of our old lives floated away as we cut the strings from the responsibilities we had. We missed our friends and families, met new people, and gradually learned that the two of us were an entity: a two-party system on a single journey. Our cares were now of day-to-day existence and of the possessions on our backs, though we soon found those excessive as well. Gradually we established routines and habits within the ever-changing path we had set ourselves on. Sometimes we couldn't wait to see what the world had in store for us. Sometimes we gobbled it up, hungrily, appreciating and seeing everything all at once. Sometimes we saw nothing and plodded through, our minds full, our bodies exhausted. Sometimes we did nothing and spent hours in a vacuum, despairing of all we had left behind and the idiocy of what we had done.

It hasn't been easy or smooth for us. We thought we knew each other, and we certainly thought we knew ourselves; I can say now that we didn't, and probably still don't, but we know more than we did. People are not static entities. Even today's self is different from yesterday's self. At the same time, there are some parts of a person that don't change and never will. The great Nelson Mandela has said that the hardest thing to do is not change society, but to change ones self. We left home believing that things about ourselves, about each other, and about our relationship would change, and we despaired when these seemingly heinous traits seemed to not only remain, but grow stronger. Learning to accept what we are and who we are has been the hardest challenge.

When I reflect on what we have done I can only marvel at our accomplishments. We have seen much, and we have done much. Not only have we seen the things we set out to see, we have also been challenged, overcome fears, and have learned -- new things, new skills, and things that we knew all along, but ignored.

Today I am very proud of what we have done together, what we have shared so far. We still have three months of traveling and working together through this journey, but today I am happy to give BG back to Catherine, his rock and his closest ally, as she steps off the edge and joins us in Africa.



Happy Anniversary to us.

Bye-bye Birdie

It's time for another goodbye. The six weeks spent in Cape Town, and more specifically at SANCCOB with our penguin friends, have sped by.

Only six weeks ago we arrived back at our guest house after the first day of work, convinced that we were in for a long, dragging time. The birds were terrifying, and the work was exhausting. I couldn't believe how much laundry these birds produced, and the thought of pushing a meal of whole fish down the throat of a struggling bird wedged between my knees -- it was overwhelming. The first two days we counted the hours and minutes until lunch, and then we counted down to the end of the day.

Then we started to see the birds' personalities. We knew which ones were docile and sweet (relatively), and we knew which ones were positively evil. We watched them float in the pool, flipping from side to side. We herded their waddling, wiggling butts in and out of their fenced pens as we chased them, and we learned how to catch them without drawing (our) blood. At first it was a thrill -- dodging the mayhem of 30 penguin beaks reaching for your hand was an adrenaline rush unlike anything ever experienced. It was like... Fear Factor. The cuts and bruises we garnered became like war wounds, things to be displayed proudly to anyone who showed an interest.



Yesterday I sat next to my penguins and washed their feathers after a particularly messy feed. I sprayed them with the hose, lightly, and they stretched their necks high and fluttered their flippers. Their bodies plumped out as they ruffled their feathers and preened, and they wiggled their little tails as the droplets of water fell on their little torpedo bodies. I was hit with the realization that I was sitting next to a bunch of penguins. I was washing penguins, and for the past six weeks I'd been part of a team that's responsible for rehabilitating them and returning them to the wild. I realized how lucky we were to have had this experience, and how precious an experience it really was, how rare.



In our time at SANCCOB we've helped wash oiled penguins. We've helped penguins with crooked beaks, huge bite wounds, only one eye, and we've watched as penguins with missing or amputated feet have found a way to stand, walk, and run (waddle) again. We've seen skinny, weak babies leave a few weeks after admission as fat, vicious juveniles, and though they nip at our knees and bite our fingers, we cheer them on as they gain strength and vigour with every fish we give them. These penguins can't thank us, but we feel a sense of satisfaction in working here, because every bird that has left SANCCOB a healthy and strong is one more African penguin in this big, dangerous world, and that's a beautiful thing.

What's Happening To Me???

Today I found myself making reference to the 'rubbish bin'. Then I paused and actually had to think really, really hard about what I used to call the bin -- the garbage can.

Oh my goodness, I've gone International English. What's next, petrol and car boots and going to the cinema to watch a film after going to the shops? Am I wearing pants underneath my trousers, or did I forget my underwear which I wear under my pants? Did BG crash the rental car or the hire car? Do I have a mobile or a cell phone? Is it dinner at six thirty, or supper at half six? Did I just eat a whole bar of chocolate, or was it a slab? (Let me tell you, the slab of chocolate sounds way worse.) Did my strawberries come in a container or a punnet? Do I have to do the laundry or the washing? There's nothing on TV, or is it the telly?

This reminds me of the time I bought a can of 'tomato sauce' in Australia, and it turned out to be ketchup. First of all, who puts ketchup in a can? Second, ketchup is ketchup and tomato sauce is for pasta or pizza.

Also, it's raining. Again.