Western Cape, South Africa

Well, I'm in the final leg of this journey. I've been in South Africa about a week or so now, mostly in Cape Town, but I've just spent a few nights up in the Stellenbosch and Franschhoek Winelands areas. The first thing I have to say is that this doesn't really seem like the same continent that I've been on for the last few months. It's way more first world - for the most part. There are little things that pop out every now and then that remind you its Africa - like far too many people simply walking down the road miles from anywhere. It is an amazingly beautiful place though.

I'm flying back to SF a week from today and I have to say I'm pretty excited about it. I def feel like I've seen and done a ton of things and I have a much better idea of what this place is all about. I think I made good use of my first few months of unemployment and I'm ready to get back and enjoy some fun in SF with Tully. She was originally going to join me for some version of this final leg of the trip, but she wasn't able to get enough time away from the office to make the ~30 hour flights worth it. I'm heading back a few weeks earlier than planned (but having accomplished everything I wanted to accomplish) and we're gonna hit something a little closer to SF soon (almost anything is closer to SF!). So there may be a few non-Africa posts on here soon...

I may or may not get around to posting again before I head back. If we keep getting a good mix of crappy weather like we have been, maybe I'll get on again, but hopefully I find some things to occupy my time and stay away from the Internet cafes. Its is low season here and there are not many people around...pretty sleepy in general - even in Cape Town.

We were foiled trying to hike up Table Mountain during our 5 days in Cape Town. The 3 pictures here are from the best weather day we had, which still had Table Mountain cloaked in the "tablecloth" of clouds. We hiked nearby Lion's Head instead and got these shots (top to bottom: Camps Bay section of Cape Town with the 12 Apostles behind, the upper part of the City Bowl and some Table Mountain - with and without me).

The final shot is of the little rental car that Purvis and I are cruising around in for the next week with the Franschhoek Valley in the background. Yesterday (when this pic was taken) was nice here, but its shitty again today and we're taking off for some mountain driving and then the coast and hopefully some great white shark cage diving on the way back to Cape Town. It took me a bit to get used to the left-hand driving (including a few high pitched screams from the passenger), but now I'm settled and I'll prob need to do some adjusting when I get back home. Quite a bit more traffic here than on thesouth island of New Zealand, whcih was my only other left-hand drive experience before this.

Victoria Falls

Here are some of the other pics I mentioned from Victoria Falls.

There are 2 aerial shots from the helicopter showing the falls - one that shows the falls and the zig zag canyon downstream that we rafted in (including the bridge that the bungee goes off of). The second shows more of the full width of the falls so you can see how low the flow is right now (the wall shown is 100% falls in the high water season).

I also included 2 shots from our trip to Devil's Pool at the top of the falls. You can see how close we are to the edge we are here and, I have to say, it was pretty scary. We swam out to the rocks where our guide, Prince showed us the pool and we were like "we're jumping into THAT?!?" Once we got it it wasn't so bad, but i never felt comfortabel enough to come fully out of the pool and sit up on the rock like Prince is. You could definitely feel the current pushing!

Zambia Swimming

I'm in Cape Town chilling on a rainy morning so I thought I'd throw up so words to go with the pics I put up yesterday. Someone was waiting for the computer at my hotel so I threw up the pics only yesterday.

We were only in Zambia for a few days, but we (and especially me) crammed in alot of activity. I did the bungee jump, gorge swing, zipline combo over the gorge below the Victoria Falls the day we got there. The next day we went whitewater rafting in the morning and then did a short helicopter ride over the falls to get a very enlightening aerial view. I'll add some of those pics later if I get a chance.

The whitewater rafting was fairly insane, but a TON of fun. We did a half day which is about half the rapids you can do, but they are supposedly the craziest ones. We did 9 of the 10 "official" rapids - they didn't count the class II/III rapids in the 10 count and one of the 10 was a class VI called "Commercial Suicide" that we walked around.

Victoria falls is on the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe (the Zambezi River marks the border). It is 1.7km wide and about 105m high (the bungee from the bridge was 111m). Once the river reaches the bottom of the falls, it runs thru a narrow, zig-zagging canyon, which is where we rafted.

The first rapid is a gnarley class V called The Boiling Pot that you have to approach sideways because of where the entry point is. They used to enter upstream a bit to hit it head on, but years ago a giant boulder fell up there and killed some porters so they had to move the start for safety reasons. We didn't make it thru on our first attempt, but made it out to try again and got absolutely pummeled on the second try. That's the photo you see where only John and the guide, Potatoe guide are visible because the rest of us are underwater. The other shot with the rocks in the background (at the bottom of the post) is right before we enter the full rapid.

I just watched the video they filmed of us and it looks like we were each underwater for anywhere from 10-14 seconds! I was not as scared as I probably should have been. I'm not sure if I was held down or had been sucked down deep (the river is about 50m deep there) - probably some of both, but I did start realizing how long I was under and then finally came up right before I couldn't hold my breath anymore. Quite an intro to the river and the day at 9am.

The 3 pics where we are heading right to left (including the one where more than half the boat is underwater, but upright) are from one of the class Vs that we actually stuck- believe it or not.

The other 2 shots where we are going left to right are from our second class V wipe out of the day, which came fairly early. We were starting to feel like we didn't really need the boat at that point. It was a quite crash, but none of us where held under for nearly as long as the first rapid.

The other boat with us ended up flipping on 2 rapids as well, but they were completely different ones then we flipped on. The guides mentioned that the day had "alot of action."

Some of the people we rafted with recommended sitting in The Devil's Pool which is a little pool at the top of the falls literally right on the edge - something you can only do in low water months like now (low water months also make for crazier rafting). Rob, Tim and I got up early to do that the next day before our flight to Cape Town. I'll put up a pic later.

I wish it would stop raining here already.

Whitewater Rafting the Zambezi River

Some kick-ass crazy Class V fun in Zambia/Zimbabwe!

Chobe National Park, Botswana

From Okavango, we took another 4-passenger flight to Kasane airport in the far northeast corner of Botswana. Kasane is very close to the Namibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe borders. We stayed in a lodge very close to Zimbabwe and did day trips into the Chobe River section of Chobe National Park.

This place kicks ass. Probably my favorite wildlife experience in Africa. There were more cats in the Serengeti (although we saw THREE leopards and followed a lioness and her 3 non-hunting cubs on a hunt of cape buffalo during out 3 days here), but the scenery here is amazing and much more varied and interesting than anything we saw in Tanzania. The Chobe River is home to many crocodiles and tons of hippos and many other waterloving creatures (monitor lizards and a ridiculous number of birds). The river creates the unique scene and we saw many different things while cruising around - African wild dogs (whcih are quite rare), hyena, and the list goes on.

The big thing is the elephants are everywhere here. The park has something like 70,000 elephants and the greater area has suppossedly 120,000. In fact, we're staying at the Elephant Valley Lodge, which has a watering hole in front of it that attracts all kinds of wildlife, but mostly elephants. My tent (nicest "tent" I've ever seen) doesn't look over the watering hole (some do), but all the common areas do and today I took the afternoon off from game drives and river cruises to just chill and enjoy the activity right in front of the lodge (pictures of me and the elephants at the lodge are below - or wherever damn blogger decides to put them).

One kind of weird thing about this place is that the lodge is very close to the Zim border and the land just over the border in Zim is owned by some high ranking gov't official who uses it for HUNTING. Yes, he takes enormous payments from people to come and hunt anything and everything - sounds like mostly buffalo and elephant though. Hunting is being phased out in Botswana (but does exist in some small areas), but Zim is a free for all - especially if you are connected to the gov't. This afternoon we watched a herd of elephants get scared off by a huntng jeep. We heard a gunshot, but saw no evidence of any successful hunting.

More hunting evidence: the elephants in the NP actually do a daily commute across the Chobe River into Namibia to graze and then they run back across the river every evening becuase they remember the days when large scale hunting in Namibia was commonplace. It still hapens I guess, but not as much - but they remember! Chobe has been a NP near the river since the 60s so its been protected here for awhile (and apparently Botswana gov't makes enough from its diamond mining that it doesn't feel the need to take payoffs from poachers like the Tanzania's gov't more or less openly does).

Chobe rules. Botswana is pricely (not really any midrange accomodation options here and lots of expensive flights), but worth it.

Tomorrow off to Victoria Falls and then Cape Town on Tuesday.

Finally some of my own pics on here.

Okavango Delta, Botswana

From Mozambique we took a series of flights ending in a small (4 passenger) flight to an airstrip in the middle of the Okavango Delta in Botswana. The Okavango Delta is the world's largest inland river delta. The Okavango River flows down into Botswana and empties ito the Kalahari Desert creating a huge oasis for wildlife in the middle of a very arid landscape.

We had a relatively luxurious (free wine, beer and booze) tented "camp" out in the middle of the wetlands and we took mekoro (local wooden dugout canoes) everywhere we went, which was basically back and forth to the main island in the delta to look for wildlife.

The first thing that hits you when you get there are the sounds. The place is teaming with so many birds, frogs, hippos, etc. that the air is costantly filled with a chorus of songs - especially at night and in the early morning. We saw plenty of hippos in Tanzania, but never once heard one. We heard them almost constantly in Okavango. They would start their part pig snorting part dog barking in the early evening and start venturing out to graze on the long grass that was everywhere in teh shallow water. I feel very sorry for the hippos in Tanzania after seeing this place - this is definitely hippo heaven. Unfortunately we didn't really get to SEE many hippos becuase of the tall grasses and their refusal to come out into open pools when we were watching.

We also did some walking safaris here, which are very cool and very different than driving in a Land Rover like you usually do. The big game is less common here (which I guess is why they can do the walking safaris safely), but we did come across giraffe, elephant, zebra, and many different species of antelope on there terms, which felt pretty cool. We spent most of one day tracking some lions (following prints, looking for vultures that might be heading towards a kill, etc.) but never found one. Finding them would have been amazing, but fun nonetheless.

A very cool introduction to Botswana!

These are Rob's pics again as all mine from here are in fancy non-compatable with regular software format.

Maputo, Mozambique

Maputo is thecapital of Moz and we stopped there for a few days at the end of our trip before flying up to Botswana (via Jo'burg).


Shot #1) a view of the Maputo skyline from out hotel in the upper part of town, Hotel Cardoso. Maputo still shows plenty of signs of the long civil war years (burnt out buildings, torn up roads and sidewalks), but they look like they are getting things together somewhat. There is a massive cleaning effort going on and many of the hotels and other facilities are newly refurbished. It was nice to be back into some sort of civilization after spening so much time in the middle of nowhere. We were able to catch some live music in the Africa Bar Saturday night and we watched Moz beat Kenya in a World Cup qualifer soccer game in a local bar on Sunday. Pretty cool stuff.

2&3) The Maputo Municiple Market from the outside and me, Wortman and Eberly inside. This place is one of those markets that has everything thta the locals need to live - literally eveything is under this one roof.

4&5) Frelimo is the ruling political party in Mozambique and they are gearing up for the October 28 election by posting signs all over town. Frelimo was the group that lead Mozambique to independance over the Portuguese in the 60s and 70s and then they were the group fighting Renamo (now the other polical party in Moz) for ~16 years in the country's devastating "civil war." Kind fo crazy that they went from civil war opponents to peaceful political opponents. And from the sounds of it, Frelimo still relies heavily on the "hey we won independance for you guys" platform when it comes to elections.

Some more Moz transportation pics:
6)Its hard to tell from this picture, but this chapa (going from Tofo to Inhambane) is crazy full inside and then these guys are riding the outside of the chapa with the sliding door open. Thankfully we were NOT on this chapa or one like it.

7) Me going thru airport "security" in Inhambane airport with my passport (and a beer - Laurentina, a nice Moz brew)

8) While waiting for our flight from Inhambane to Maputo, which was delayed by 4+ hours, we noticed the Inhambane airport workers firing up a tractor and then loading it with lanterns. They were to light the runway for our plane to land and then take off! Nothing like flying by candlelight.

Thanks to Wortman and Purvis for their pics on this post. I've been taking shots with my DSLR that are incompatiable with these computers so my shots will have to wait until I'm back in SF to be shared.

Transportation in Mozambique

I have some time so I'm going back and throwing up a few more pics from Mozambique. These are some pictures from various transportation scenarios we ran into there. As I mentioned before, Moz was amazing, but the transportation really leaves much to be desired. Thankfully flyng wasn;t so bad. A 4x4 would have been SWEET.

From top to bottom:

1) Eberly and Me waiting for the flat tire to be fixed o nour 14 hour chapa ride from Beira to Vilankulo. It was only bearale becaus e knoew I didn't ever have to step foot on one of those things again. At least we had Pringles. P&G has some good distribution on those things.

2) The ridiculously cracked windshield of said chapa. Its a wonder he coudl see teh road. He drove about 25 mph after the flat tire anyway so i guess it barely mattered.

More Moz pics

A couple other shots from the Quirimbas

1) a pic from our small plane flight to Ibo of one of the other very small islands of the Quirimbas Archipeligo (near Pemba)

2) Rob and I enjoying a post dive beer on the deck of our dhow dive boat in Ibo with one of the DMs (a South African named Stet) in the background.

Moz Pics

Our itineraty in Mozambique has been from north to south:

Pemba
Quirimbas Archipeligo (Ibo Island)
Beira
Vilanculo/Bazaruto Archipeligo
Tofo Beach, Inhambane

These pics from top to bottom:

1) Leopard shark that my Dive Instructor (his pic) and I saw this morning at the "Amazon" dive site about 15km off of Barra Point near Tofo

2&3) 2 shots from my second dive at "Giant's Castle" in Tofo (a drift dive at about 30 meters near a manta "cleaning station") where we saw MANY huge manta rays (about 5m from wingtip to wingtip) on both dives

4) One of my first underwater photographs! Using my instructors camera for the photography section fomy Advanced PADI course. I think this is a Stoen Fish, but whatever it is, it looks cool.

5) a humpback whale calf jumping just a few yards off of my dive boat earlier this week in Tofo. My Instructor, Ed took this shoot and I didn't have my camera, but this calf and its mother hung by our boat forever. An amazing site, but I've gotten used to whales here - they are everywhere.

6) me standing on to of a crazy ~600 foot high dune at the southern tip of Bazaruto Island in between dives on Two Mile Reef.

Mozambique rules

Sorry for the lack of posting recently. Internet has been pretty tough since we landed in Mozambique on August 19th. The one time I had a good connection, we had shitloads of power outages that prevented me from doing more than just taking care of business. but I'm here in Tofo Beach, Inhambane, Mozambique and I just finished my PADI Advanced Scuba Diving Course.

Mozambique has been unbelievable. The vibe here is much more laid back than in Tanzania. The things we did in TZ were fun (Kili, safari, diving in Zanzibar), but the country itself and its cities we visited really lacked something and the people we ran into had a sharpness too them that I have to say was a little unpleasant - especially compared to what we've been experiencing here over the last 2 weeks. Most of the places we've been in Moz are not that heavily touristed yet - I hope the laid back vibe of the people doesn't get corrupted too much when tourism floods in a bit more, which it undoubtedly will at some point.

We ended up taking a much easier route of travel than I had originally planned to get here. I think the realites of days and days on cramped buses really hit me once I got to Moshi and I was more than happy to sign up for flights vs. buses - especially in Moz where there aren't really any "tourist" buses yet - you are riding with the locals and all that goes with that.

We ended up skippign Malawi entirely and going from Dar right to Pemba, Mozamabique, which made for an easier entry visa experience - we heard some crazy stories of the Tanzania/Moz border and the "ferry" (3 small wooden dhow boats tied together with planks for one car at a tiem on top "piloted" by drunk people) they use to get cars across the river - nuts! Iwouldn't pu my car on that thing, but I wouldl love ot have my truck right now.

I did want to experience the local "chapas" (buses) at least once and we were forced to when we left Beira (the second largest city oin Moz) for Vilankulo and the Bazaruto Archipeligo. Chapas all leave form a central spot at around 4am. We went the evening before to line things up with the driver and found what was the shittiest looking bus in the area with the "Vilankulo" sign on it. I won't get into too much detail, but what was suppossed to be a 9 hour ride, turned into 14 hours on seats with almost no padding and crammed into with too many people and everything they all owned. Add in a flat tire at one of teh amusing stops along the way and it spelled for a painful ride, but a worthwhiel experience. We had no realistic flight option for that leg and the fact that we even got on the bus and got the seats we asked for the day before made it seem not THAT bad (but it was). We found out later that a new "luxury" tourist-focused line runs the same route in less than have the tiem ti took us, but the word isn't rerally otu on that yet. Oh well.

Now I'll post some pics from Moz.

Last Day in Tanzania

We took the ferry from Zanzibar to Dar Es Salaam this morning, then we fly out to Mozambique tomorrow morning. I really enjoyed Stone Town and I think I could stay here one more day (despite the lack of bars and the fact that we get woken up by Islamic prayer calls at 5am). Everyone keeps reminding me that its better to leave a place before you want to then what we did in Kendwa (get bored out of our minds and ready to bolt).

So the ferry today was interesting. We took a "fast" ferry that was about 2 hours and the boat itself was decent and we had plenty of legroom, etc. And it did go pretty fast, but the seas were not flat and the boat had a fair amount of sway. It was something like that scene in Stand By Me where the room full of people start puking on after the other until everyone is puking. It started with a couple of women in birkas across the aisle from me. I put on my headphones and turned it up load so I couldn't hear. It gradually spread around the cabin and Wortman was even unlucky enough to get bit by it. Somehow I managed to avoid the smell, or else who knows what would have happened to me. I was def ready to get the hell off the Puke-O-Rama Ferry!

One funny Zanzibar story I was reminded of as we talked last night: the crazy Italians and their sunset photo shoots. Apparently Zanzibar is a HUGE Italian vacation spot. There are plenty of Europeans here in general (and very few Americans), but the beaches seem very geared towards Italians. Apparently some of the towns on the east coast are literally built for and run by and for them.

Anyway, like I said in my other post, Kendwa has the best sunsets of all the beaches and our silent relative solitude was broken up one day by (literally) 200 or so Italians who came to the beach at 4pm to camp out and watch the sunset. The whole men in speedos in public thing (even fat ones) has got to be the most offensive cultural difference I've seen - ha! These people proceeded to pose in various hilarious ways (although it in no way seemed funny to them) in front of the setting sun for 2 hours. It was one of the most ridiculous things I've seen and I pretty much sat there and laughed my ass off the entire time (granted some of these women were ridiculously hot, which excuses it somewhat, but fat-guy-speedo posing is WAY over the line).

Anyway, That's it from Tanzania. All in all is was a great month here, but the towns near Kili and the safari launch leave alot to be desired. The whole attitude towards tourists is pretty fucked up as well. They don't seem to realize how much they screw themselves over with the constant nagging and leeching. Maybe we'd actually buy something if they backed off for a split second. We did meet some good people though, so its tough to let the bad apples totally ruin the bunch.

One more thing - for anyone in SF who complains about lack of taxis. I have a good solution for you: come to Dar Es Salaam. They have some new condos going up and you can basically walk the entire city on the roofs of parked cabs. It feels like we are the only 4 potential customers for 5000 empty taxis. I guess it'll be easy to get a ride to the airport tomorrow.

Mozambique here we come.

Photo Update

I grabbed a couple photos from Rob's camera and I thought I'd load them to show a coupel shots of teh 4 of us. The first is a shot of us on our way up Kili the day before the summit day (l to r Rob, John, Tim, me). The next is from a sunset cruise we did on a local dhow boat in Zanzibar with our friend Tsvia from our safari trip and her Swiss friend (l to r Tim, John, me, Rob). Slightly different...

Photos are proving a bit challenging still, but I'm managing to get a few up there. Not necessarily the best ones I have, but some relatively good examples that are coming from my point and shoot (not the DSLR).

The first pic is a sunset from Kendwa Beach with one of us (I think Rob) swimming in the Indian Ocean. We saw some spectacular ones over the course of our week there. Kendwa is basically the only inhabited beach on Zanzibar on the West Coast so its the only one to get such great sunsets. Its also the only one that doesn't have tidal issues that prevent you from swimming either during high or low tide, so we enojyed swimming all day long every day. At some of the beaches the beach dissapears at high tide and at some it goes out as far as 2 miles during low tide making it impractical to walk to the water.

The next couple shots I took during our boat ride on one of the dive trips. We took a local dhow boat that was really cool. In the first shot you can see another smaller dhow cruising under motor power and in the second you can see the front of our boat as well pull into one of the dive shops to let some folks off.

We are in Stone Town for a few nights before heading back to the mainland by ferry and flying from Dar Es Salaam down to Northern Mozambique. So far Stone Town is pretty cool. Either the touts are getting easier to avoid or I'm getting better at pushing them away - I think its a combination of both. Zanzibar is strict Muslim so the nightlife is bascially non-existent, but it will be good to explore the cultural mixtures (African, Arabic, Inidan) here for a few days before heading out.

Kendwa Beach, Zanzibar

Just a quick update as these computers won't read my USB drive so no pics still.

The beach here in Zanzibar is BEAUTIFUL and still seems relativley undiscovered here at Kendwa. Its been fun because we've managed to meet up wit a few of the people from our safari trip who are also here.

A few days of beach relaxing was good but I'm getting ichy to leave now. I just finished my 3rd and 4th warm water scubas dives and they were great. Of the 4 dives I've done its been a good mix of loads of tropical fish (Tuesday at Mnemba Atoll) and then some awesome coral and a sea turtle today at some other dive sites nearby (Misoli Reef and Handu's Wall).

The food in Kendwa is okay, but they have a long way to go to figure out how to run service businesses here. Not that surprising I guess. Last night we took a taxi into Nungwi, the bigger more touristy village for dinner. We had them take us somewhere where we could order fresh fish right off the boats and then have them grill it while we sit at tables that are literally on the beach. I had an amazing whole red snapper for 10,000Tsh (about $7US). They had no electricy in Nungwi last night so we ate by candle light, which made picking the bones out of the whole fish particulary fun.

My African culture shock continues whenever I drive around and see the living conditions of the locals here. Rob and John have been in "poor" places in SE Asia and even they say its not quite the same thing. Not sure how to explain it, but its odd - especially when we sit around ordering beers like water that cost as much as a meal for entire family (at least).

That's it for now. Hopefully I'll get some pics up in Stone Town or Dar Es Salaam on Sun/Mon. We leave for Pemba in Northern Mozambique on Wednesday. We ended up getting a good deal on a very nice place, so we'll be living in luxury for a few days at least. We also found out that by flying into Mozambique (instead of busing across a border as originally planned), we save ourselves some visa hassels, which should be nice.

Serengeti NP, Ngorongoro Crater, and Lake Manyara Safaris

Back in Arusha Tanzania after a 5 day safari in Lake Manyara, Seregenti National Park, and the Ngorongoro Crater. I have a RIDICULOUS number of pictures, but this connection is too slow to upload most of them since I used my DSLR. We saw lions, a leopard, elephants, buffalo (4 of the "big five" missing the elusive rhino, which has been decimated by poaching and is very difficult to spot), cheetahs, zebras, impalas, Grant and Thompson gazelles, ostriches, wildebeests, hippos, hyenas, jackals a bunch of cool birds and many other things I'm sure I'm forgetting at the moment.

It was a camping sarari so we spent 4 nights in dome tents at various camp sites aroud the 3 parks. Wildlife was very close to us in most cases - including buffalo, zebra and elephants and one unsubstantiated report of a lion sleeping outside someone's tent. There were 14 people on the trip - mostly Canadians and Brits and we were the only Americans. The group was splt into 2 and we traveled in two 9 person Land Rovers that had roofs that popped up so we could stand and check out the wildlife. It was a great group and I had a great time on the trip. Unfortunately the trip was a litle too short...by the time we really started to get to know each other, it was over. We were all ready to get out of teh dust and dirt and back to a shower and a bed at the end though. I need to do some serious landry when we get to Zanzibar tonight.

We hit 3 parks to space out the driving a bit- the Serengeti is quite a long way from Arusha (or anywhere for that matter), so Lake Manyara makes a good first stop and then the Crater breaks up the trip some more. We spent an enormous amount fo time in the Land Rovers. Quite a bit of it was doing game drives in the park with the top open for game viewing, but we covered a ton of miles (or kilometers I guess) on very bad roads to get to and from everywhere. Sometimes our driver would pull off of the road and cruise along thru the open dirt becuase that was better than the actual road. If anyone is thinking of doing a Serengeti trip, be prepared for lots of bumpy car travel. They do have flying options, but they require private charters so they are expensive.

Anyway, I need to go pack for our afternoon flight from Kilimanjaro International to Zanzibar, a tropical island off the coast of Tanzania. We're going to spend a week there and then head into Dar Es Salaam to take care of some business for our trip into Mozambique. The original plan was to travel over land into Malawi and then over into Mozambique. We knew that was ambitious but, the more we looked at it, the more we decided that we didn't want to spend a minimum of 2 days of bus travel in and 2 days of bus travel out to get into Malawi. So now it looks like the plan is to fly from Dar Es ESalaam to Pemba on the coast in northern Mozambique. We'll explore the islands off shore there for 5 days and then fly down to Beira in central Mozambique and pick up the overland travel down there where the stops are closer together. Kili->safari->Zanzibar is a pretty well traveled tourist route so we will be excited to bust out of that into Mozambique next week. Hopefully LAM (Mozambique Air) will cooperate. Booking and paying for flights is not that easy and the flights are only once a week in many cases, so we'll see how it goes.

Off to pack for Zanzibar!

Kili pics

Better late than never here are some Kili pics.

The first one is me with our 3 guides back at the hotel after the climb. From left to right, Moses (who made the summit with Wortman), Dixon (the lead guide who summited with Rob, John and me), and Prosper (the #2 guide who summited with Aileen and was usually good for some funny conversation along the trail over the course of the trip - he taught us "poa coma ndizi" - cool like banana - which we have still been getting good milage out of in our travels.).

The secodn pic is me with our entire support crew at teh last camp on the way down.

The final pic is Rob, me, and John on the summit of Kili pre-sunrise. "Kilimanjaro" is actually made up of 3 volcanos, the biggest of which is called Kibo and the official summit is calledUruru Peak of Kibo.

Many of th pics I took with my DLSR are in a very large format that I'm afraid to try and upload with this slow connection - these are some I happen to have on my point and shoot camera.