My first trip to Southern Africa, I spent a month living here. I had my hair cut, I bought underwear, I ate whole foods, went shopping, and lead a pretty domestic, sedentary life with our South African friends.
This trip is virtually the opposite -- we are combing across the surface of four countries, a road trip the distance of about half the length of Africa.
Driving is not the only skill we have mastered along the way though. We are also learning how to:
-Charm border guards out of paying heavy registration fees to enter their country
-Name that road kill -- we have identified an elephant, donkeys (although it was difficult to identify underneath a dozen vultures), eagles, something that looked like a baby gorilla, and then the usual dogs and cats.
-Dodge livestock -and- elephants -- we have also shared the road with a giraffe, dozens of baboons, and other exotic mammals.
-BYO-Hotel -- sleeping in the car when we can't find reasonably priced accomodation.
-Have lively filling station conversations -- our most interesting conversations have mostly been with gas station attendees and chats with various Zimbabwean hawkers at filling stations.
-Distinguish between reality and our dreams -- as usual, our anti-malarials are giving us unimaginably vivid dreams to enjoy.
-Entertain eachother -- I think we will have covered every topic of conversation known to man before we reach Cape Town!
Tomorrow we say farewell to Botswana after a week of traversing this vast, barely populated country of really chill people, and a short trip to Zimbabwe to see the absolutely monumental, majestic, and massive Victoria Falls. Tomorrow we head to Windhoek in Namibia, where we will begin our descent through the Namib dunes to the Western Cape of South Africa, exhausting our one CD of Batswana music along the way.
19 December 2007
10 December 2007
Re-thinking xmas.
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