Apr 2008

Well everybody, it's officially half-time of the Mary and Colin Adventure. We reached the midpoint a few days ago and it seems both impossible that we've travelled for 45 days and unbelievable that its only been 45 days since we had a Portillos beef and cheddar or washed our clothes in a real washing machine.

We celebrated our official halfway day in the small yet stunning country of Malawi. Some of you may be familiar with Malawi's famous citizen: Madonna's new kid. Others of you may have visited yourself to swim in the fresh waters of Lake Malawi- home to an astounding 900 varieties of fresh water fish. I saw an ad for a dive school in Malawi that said "diving in Lake Malawi is like diving in a giant aquarium" and I have to believe it's true. We manged to see a couple while snorkeling.

I'd love to astound you with tales of adventure but Col and I literally did nothing while in Malawi except sit on the porch of our beach chalet, read, eat and occassionally take a dip in the water. Some of you may recall that we were weary of exposing ourselves to the water in the lake due to the parasite located under it's shimmery surface. Well, to be honest, it's one thing to vow staying at bay when you are in your cold Chicago apartment but it's a completely different story when you are standing on it's sandy shores in your bathing suit. Besides, we learned that the showers we were taking pre-visit to the lake were just as likely to contain the parasite as a swim in the lake so we were already tainted by the time we reached the beach. Oh well. Skank says we just need to go to the pharmacy here and grab an anti-parasite pill and we should be good. It's somewhat reasuring that he's never contracted the illness and he's a prime candidate having swam in the water numerous times. Then again, the guy walks around the less-than-desirable streets of Dar Es Salaam during a rain storm without shoes on with no consequences. Hmmm.

Anyway, due to our total lack of interaction with culture, community or wildlife (aside from a trip up the mountain to the fabled Livingstonia), I'll share with you a few minor observations on Malawi:

1. They are really concerned with drinking and driving. In a country almost absent of any advertising (except for the always present Coke or Celltell painted huts) we noticed numerous signs that said "don't drink and drive." The other signs we saw said "Reading road signs saves lives." We assume they meant the road signs about drinking and driving. As it turns out, we learned from the owner of the campsite that this is a relatively new law and they are really cracking down on it. HOWEVER, when the law was first introduced it was a bit lost in translation. She told us that a man who worked at the camp had been pulled over when the police saw that he was drinking a Kouche Kouche - a local beer that means "sun up to sun down" - while driving. The policeman waved him over and told him about the new law. He then told the man to get out of his car and finish drinking the beer by the side of the road. Once he finished doing that he was free to carry on driving. She said they've since clarified the issue. Likewise, she told us to find a Malawi "rules of the road" book. Supposedly there is a no doing drugs and driving policy listed. Makes sense. However, she said the book states "doing drugs while driving is detremental because you end up speeding trying to get to the next place to do more drugs." So I guess it's okay to take drugs while driving as long as you aren't rushing anywhere to buy more.

2. The second observation about Malawi is that they've really mastered the art of woodcarving. Malawi is known for it's handcarved wood items - in particular their elaborately carved wood chairs. I am known for wanting the thing a country is known for so Col and I hit the wood market to bargain our way into some wooden delights. After about an hour in the heat I had decided that one of these wood chairs would be both easy to transport home and a real conversation piece to have in our imaginary condo. The promise of "looking good in the condo we'll have someday" has led to many travel purchases in the past: tapestries in India, bowls in Croatia, waterford in Ireland, etc. This time Colin wasn't going for it. Not being the interior design visionary I had put my faith in, Col said he could picture where it would go in the storage space but not in the ficticious condo. Oh well. We walked away with a small table and rhino bookends (which will look great on the bookshelf we don't have in the mythical condo).

Note that I did the bargaining in the wooden goods deal. That's one of my jobs on the trip. Col deals with the money, electronics and rational thought. I deal with the laundry, market bargaining and spirit of adventure. It's working out quite well.

So where are we now? Well, we pulled into South Louongwa Park yesterday. It's located in Zambia and is known for it's large hippo population. We can vouch for this large population by the sheer lack of sleep we received last night. We had just finished our first night game drive (cooler in theory than in practice) and slipped into our hot tent. It wasn't 10 minutes later that the hippos came on shore to feed. Now a hippo can feed for a long time and in doing so makes snorting/laughing-like noises. I may have mentioned this before. When you get a lot of hippos doing this it kind of sounds like late night after the bar closes. As frustrating as this is when you are trying to sleep I still like the idea that we are surrounded by hippos in our tent. Just one of those things I'll miss when we go home. Maybe I can find a "hippo sounds" white noise maker for the imaginary condo.

We will be baking in the hot sun here for another few days before we make our way to Victoria Falls. Until then I'll leave you with a fun fact:

A group of zebras is called a Dazzling of Zebras. Giraffes a Tower of Giraffes. A Raft of Hippos and a Parade of Elephants.

Good to note that we are learning on the trip. Love to all!

We have managed to find the rare combo of free time and a decent internet connection, so we decided to post some pictures from the last couple weeks. Hopefully this will keep everyone entertained until the arrival of Brangelina's twins.

We have to admit we were not expecting a whole lot from Ruaha National Park. No reason really... just that we hadn't heard much about it and we figured we were just stopping there since it was on the way to Malawi from the Tanzanian coast. But Mary and I are definitely in agreement that Ruaha has been our best national park experience in Africa to date.

We went on an 8-hour game drive yesterday through Ruaha and it was amazing. We entered the gates at about 6:30 AM, just as the sun was rising. The park is slightly elevated, so when the sun did rise, it revealed a thick layer of mist surrounding everything, a very spooky effect when combined with the many baobab trees in the park (some of which are absolutely enormous and can live up to 3000 years). As the sun gradually burned off the mist, we saw our surroundings: baobab trees everywhere, lush vegetation (a pro to being here during rainy season), and rolling hills and mountains topped with enormous granite boulders. And it was around this time that the wildlife started to appear as well. Giraffes were all over the place, seemingly peeking their heads from around every acacia tree. And they were accompanied by hundreds of zebras, impalas, eland, and the odd kudu.

We were just about to head to lunch very satisfied with our drive so far - despite having seen no animals we hadn't seen before - when we came across the mother lode of lion prides. Somehow, our guide spotted them about a hundred feet from the road under an acacia tree. We got the binoculars out, but they wouldn't be necessary... the driver promptly swerved off the road and drove right over to them. Startled, they spread out to a few different trees, and we drove right smack in the middle of them. Now, I should mention at this point that we were in a completely open safari vehicle with no doors, so this was slightly unnerving. However, the lions didn't seem bothered in the least and just kind of watched us watching them. It was unreal. Hanging out in the middle of a pride of nineteen lions, probably no more than 10 feet away... I couldn't believe it, and still almost don't. Needless to say, we and the other couple we were with had plenty to talk about over lunch.

Then after lunch, we had an even rarer experience: a cheetah sighting. How the guide spotted it's ear sticking out of 6-foot high grasses, we have no idea. But sure enough, there he was, eyeing a small group of impala. I suppose we would have been satisfied with seeing just the ear, as cheetah are apparently extremely tough to find especially during lush rainy season, but again our guides apparently went to the Doc Brown school of safari driving ("Roads? Where we're going we don't need roads...").

So before we could even think about snapping a photo, we were off the road and into the bush. Not heading in the general direction of the cheetah, rather heading STRAIGHT towards it. So the cheetah pops it's head up and then makes a break for it, right towards the impala, who start barking and scattering. Our driver decides to follow the action, and while we we're trying to keep an eye on the cheetah we have a slight incident. Our first clue that something was wrong was the "Ah!!" cry that we heard from the driver or guide (we're not sure which). This was then followed by the unmistakable feeling of the front left of the car heading straight downwards into a ditch with a thud. We were stuck, and what a moment to be stuck in. As we spun our wheels loudly and in vain, the cheetah was standing a mere 30 feet away from us, still eyeing the remaining impala (why there were remaining impala at this point, I have no idea), and a lone giraffe was peeking over a tree to keep track of the goings-on. You could almost here him saying to himself: "This should be good."

When it became apparent that 4-wheel drive was not going to save us, the guide and driver got out and started trying to dig us out, yelling at each other in Swahili. And after a few minutes of this, the cheetah turned around and just looked at us with this look on his face that said "Are you kidding me? I'm trying to get a meal in here and you're not helping!" We eventually got the car out of the ditch and headed back to the road, so we're not sure if the cheetah managed to snag himself an impala or not, but it was one surreal experience. We can't wait to post the picture of what we saw. It almost looks made up.

So in closing, Ruaha was amazing. We both agree that it was exactly what we thought the Serengeti would be like (don't get us wrong the Serengeti was great, just different than we imagined). Miles and miles of open wilderness, barely visible roads (unlike the Serengeti which had paved roads everywhere), lakes and winding rivers, and we were clearly on the animals' turf. In the Serengeti, there were so many people that it almost felt as if humans belonged there as much as the animals, but not in Ruaha. We only saw one other car the entire time we were in the park, so during our lion and cheetah encounters, we were the only humans around for miles. Now THAT's how we pictured a true African wildlife safari.