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Published: December 24th 2005
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Himba warrior
He's wearing my hat, my sunglasses, and my sandles... Hello hello hello,
I'm sure you have all missed hearing from me but there is a rather large shortage of computers in central Africa. If you're at all mad you might wanna take it up with well all of Africa. I could probably write for hours about my experiences traveling through Namibia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe but I will spare you for the time being. There are a few experiences that stick out in my mind from this trip that I think are really worth mentioning.
First after we left the lovely beach town of Swakopmud we headed North along the Skeleton coats. They don't call it the skeleton coast because of it's lush foliage that's for sure. We drove past about 500 miles of desert along the ocean. Flat flat flat, with vegetation scattered rarely throughout.
Our guide stopped at an awesome coastal area where between 50,000-80,000 seals inhabit the area. It was both amazing and sad at the same time Amazing to see these seals everywhere, fighting, barking, giving birth, swimming, playing. Sad, in the sense that whenever a mother seal dies or is eaten by a shark the baby seals are left to die. Hundreds of
baby seals lined the wall where we stood. Some taking their last breaths as we watched, others staring at us with big eyes crying for help. All we could do was stand and watch.
Anyways on a more positive side we headed to a cheetah farm, where we got to actually pet and have cheetahs like our hands. I hate cats but you can't help but love these cute cuddly and extremely dangerous creatures. After petting the tame ones we headed out to feed the 16 wild cheetahs that are out on the farm. As we entered the gates of the open land where these animals live we were quickly met by 6 cheetahs who began o follow us. It was an crazy feeling seeing these animals look at you like their next meal. They can reach a a speed of around 70 miles an hour!!!... They fallowed all the way to the center of the park, where we met 9 more cheetahs. The cheetah guy got of the car and grabbed his bucket full of donkey parts. This is when the cheetahs started to go CRAZY!!! growling, clawing each other....All the guide had to protect himself with was
I'm in love
This little girl stole my heart. When I asked her if i could take a picture of her..she slowly sat down and looked at me with these big eyes...i missed that moment but here's the next best thing a metal pole....hmmm bad idea.
We began throwing the pieces into the air, and the cheetahs began fighting for them. Each cheetah gets one donkey part, but that doesn't stop them from clawing and trying to kill each other for each chunk.
We then headed to the Himba village. This was one the highlights of the trip for me. This is one of the few nomadic tribes left in Africa and maybe in the world. The tribe is made up of two men (one white and the other black). The white man only has one wife (well he's gay but it's a long story) and 11 adopted children. The other man of the tribe has 5 wives. This is common in their culture. We got to see how these people lived, built their homes, use ocher (red clay) to wash and protect themselves from the sun, and just live. They have 11 villages that they use throughout the year (hence the idea that they are nomadic). I loved playing with the kids, milking a goat!, watching the women sing and dance, and just interacting with the tribe.
The next day we headed to Etosha National game park.
My only goal for this trip concerning wild life was to see a lion and within the first hour of being in the park we saw about eight lying under a tree. At first all we could see were the 3 women and their 4 cubs but pretty soon the big boy sat up and looked right at us. He was huge, magnificent. His head was absolutely massive. I couldn't get over how big he was. He looked like he could tear me apart . Along with the lions we say countless numbers of birds, Zebras, Giraffes, Spring bock, Oryx, Hyena, Jackal, Tik Tiks (tiny cat sized deer), Elephants, Black and white Rhinos, and a whole lot of other animals. I have gotten my fill of wild animals for a while.
The next thing that really sticks out in my mind is Lloyd's and mine experience in the town near the Chobe river. We were walking back from town and this black women started walking next to us. The nice guy that I am I started chatting it up with her, where you from? here. What's your name? Florence. Can you take us to a Shebeen? Umm you want
to go to a Shebeen? (followed by giggles). Yes we actually do. DO you want to drink So gum juice? (nasty warm alcohol for the poor black people). Of course we do.
She took us to her home and then to the Shebeen in the town ship where she lived. We were the only white people in the area and boy did we stick out like sore thumbs. For about 60 us cents we bought a milk carton shaped container of So gum juice. This stuff starts of at about 5% alcohol and is made from some tree in Africa. I can tell you it's a tree cuz there were crunchy pieces of it in my drink. By the time it gets to the factory and is stored in the 100 degree weather it ferments and gets even stronger. All I can tell you is that both of our left arms began to go numb while drinking this alcohol...Hmmm maybe we should stick to beer. While we were drinking this stuff Florence and her whole family sat and watched us. They said it was "good entertainment," watching us struggle to drink this nasty nasty stuff. From here Florence took
us the the "best shebeen where she hid us in the corner in the shadows. I'm not sure if this was to protect us or because she was hidding us. We switched to beer and ended up meeting a ton of Botswans and Zambians. All had moved to Botswana for a better life. We ended up hitching a ride from the rode at 2 am. don't worry our Botswana buddies made sure we were safe and waited with us...
I know this is getting long so I'll try and make the next one short. So our last night on the chobe river we were hanging out at the bar and these crazy locals came in. They filled their cooler with Castle Lager, and a bottle of Whiskey and proceded to ask people if they wanted to go to the mud baths. Lloyd was asleep and the only two people in the crazy enough to go were Tomas (from Belgium) and myself. We got in their truck not knowing where we were going. Oh did i mention that were were going about 70 mph down the road with one of they guys sitting on the hood of the car!!! We
got to the "mud bathes, which turned out to be a mud pit with plants growing in it. We disrobed and started walking out to the center of this mud pit. Every once in a while I fall waste deep into a mud hole. Later I found out that these "mud holes" where Elephant FOOTPRINTS!!!!....hmmm. Anyways the mud at the center was unbelievably warm and some spots we couldn't even get into it it was so hat. We sat their for quite some time drinking beers, taking shots and enjoying the hot mud, which most likely consisted of Elephant pooh and other fecal matter.
After lying in the mud we were obviously too dirty to get back in the so some of the local guys said that we had to go down to the river and Rinse off. I forgot to mention that we had just finished a boat cruise about 4 hours before where we say huge hippos, and Crocodiles swimming in the same freaking river. I stayed very close to the shore and squatted down in the water splashing water on myself, and moving every 30 seconds to new spot, so that just in case the crocks
were hungry I could avoid being eaten. My friend from Belgium had a completely different idea. He came down to the river splashing around in water up to his waste. He used our cooler of course as protection against the crocks but I don' think that would have stopped the 3 meter crock we saw earlier that day. All in all Africa is amazing, and I just can't get enough...
Stay tuned for the second part of this trip
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Jessie and Stacy
Jessie and Stacy
how old is she? you sicko...
so she dropped to her knees... and said ok? and now you are in love?? get excited for thailand if you're into that kinda stuff!