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Published: July 23rd 2008
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"Out of touch in Africa was where I wanted to be." That's what Paul Theroux writes in his book 'Dark Star Safari'. "The wish to disappear sends many travellers away. If you are thoroughly sick of being kept waiting at home or at work, travel is perfect: let other people wait for a change ..." Well, neither of these statements really fits my situation, I suppose, although I like the idea. In contrast to Theroux I obviously do not desire to be unobtainable. As promised I am trying to keep in touch by means of this blog. And (!) I do not really want to keep you waiting for too long. (You also did not make me wait and sent lots of messages. Keep them coming! I love hearing from all of you.)
But let me fill you in on some of my adventures:
Both the truck and the group of people I am travelling with are great. Those of you who haven't done so yet check out the truck - which is called 'Benji", by the way - on the homepage of Africa-in-Focus. Imagine me sitting in the backrow. The food, too, is absolutely amazing. Our cook Jay Jay has
Hippo Pool
Could have been one of them been headhunted by all the other Overlander companies but will, of course, stay with us as we are all sooo nice. Here I was thinking I would be shedding any number of pounds pretty soon but so far there is no sign of me losing any weight. We even got Marshmallows to toast around the campfire.
That, by the way, was in a wild camp in the Serengeti. And what a scary scary night I had there. I had sent my tent up right at the edge of the campground where the grass was getting higher. Our tourleader Jo said that there was a chance of animals walking around close to the camp or even through it but as there were so many people there it would be quite unlikely. So I didn't really think about it any longer. At 3 o'clock in the morning I was woken up by the sounds of any animal which seemed to be grazing (hhrrmmpfff hhrmmmpfff) quite close to my tent. Now I know that sounds carry quite far in the night so I shouldn't worry but I had also heard the sof the son and father who slept in their tent with the
Maasai Warrior
A group of Maasai were partcipating at the celebrations for the opening of the new Nungwi hospital flap open and a hippo grabbing the father and mauling him right in front of the son's eyes. And what I was hearing sounded remarkably like a hippo heffalumping about. What to do? What to do? I kept holding my breath but, of course, knew that that was not going to help a lot. I moved to the middle of the tent which would give me a hundredth of a second longer before I was going to be trampled to death. And then the sounds stopped. Okay ... relax, breathe, lie down again. ... Oh, no! Here it comes again! ...
So far I was only guessing, of course, and it was the middle of the night and it could have been only a warthog or something even smaller,but the next morning we saw the signs of a large animal grazing about 12 feet (3 meters!!) away from my tent and it had been a hippo (Theresa and Scott in the tent next to mine had actually peeped out and seen it! Well, they admitted that they had tried to take a photo of it without the flash popping but then it went off anyway which the hippo noticed, of
and I was right to have been so scared.
Not all my experiences have been so exciting I have to admit. In short: good group of with, besides me, nine very funny people from the U.S, Canada, Australia, England, Ireland, and Werner from Austria. Our crew is the best, our truck the most comfortable in the business, we've seen, except a leopard, all of the big five and lots of more or less smaller animals. And we have seen a cheetah kill, which is supposedly very rare. It was in the Ngorongoro crater (which got its name from the sound of the Maasai cattle's cowbells - ngong ngong) and we all cheered for the cheetah to get the little baby gazelle. I mean, if mommy and daddy gazelle are not paying more attention ....
We have been on Zanzibar for a couple of days now, it's raining of and on, but as we have bungalow accommodation over here it does not faze us much. And even though I would still be on holiday I went to school today! I participated in an English class at the Nungwi school and could refresh my memory regarding everything about If-clauses!! Tomorrow we are
heading down to Stone Town the capital of Zanzibar or Unguja as the locals say.
Das wars dann fuer heute, bis auf eine kurze Notiz fuer Maria. Ja, ich kriege deine Mails, herzlichen Glueckwunsch noch mal und wenn ich gleich noch Computerzeit habe und er auch nicht abstuerzt schicke ich dir noch eine private Mail. Liebe gruesse auch an Jonte, Olaf und Jenny. Und auch noch einmal einen herzlichen Glueckwunsch inzwischen nachtraeglich in den Droegen-Hasen-Weg. Schade, dass die Verbindung so schlecht war, ich hoffe, du hattest einen schoenen Tag.
P.S.: I was going to put quite a few photos into this blog but to upload one takes about 10 minutes so I am giving up.
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