We travel, you work

Early star this morning again as we are crossing the border from Zambia to Botswana. We arrive at the campsite just before 1pm, the complex it's a luxurious 4* hotel, with just one problem, check the picture below.


The next morning: start 5 am. We are going for a Safari in the Chobe national park, no windows, no doors on the jeeps, brilliant for taking pictures. The landscape is amazing, the highlight of the mooring is a group of elephant have a bath and rolling themselves in the mud.



The afternoon is still a safari but this time it will be by boat. The silence of the boat will allow us to see from very close hypos and crocs, as well as elephants. On the way back the boat hit a hippo, the animal ran making a lot of noise an showing off it's teeth.
In the next morning a guard called me to shaw me something, there was a crocodile in the grass a few meters from our tent.

Well we can say we have seen the Victoria's fall in a very unique way: nearly no water! The season being so dry, we could only perceive, from the Zambia side a little spray! So we renamed them the "Victoria's rocks"!
Nothing more to say than 2 days of admin! Trying to send you the blog post, washing, and of course swimming!!! Many activities were available but being at the beginning of our trip, the reason is telling us to be careful on spendings (and Africa Mzungu prices are a rip off)! So no rafting, helicopter, lion walk, rhino walk... For us. Many other opportunities will come around!
The campsite is full of velvet monkey, they are little cheeky buggers. As an example if you leave the zip of your tent at the bottom, the monkeys will open it to look for food, if no food found they will splatter the place with their excrements...nice!
We feel very relaxed from these two days of chill and now ready for the next destination, Chobe national park in Botswana.

We start early again as we have a long drive to arrive in the lodge near the village of Donija (composed of 3 little villages). We arrive in early afternoon and enjoy a few games as well as a small trek in the forest.
The next day we are visiting the village, we have a 12 km trek before arriving. We are sometime, join by locals and children. As we arrive, we are greeted by the head of the village, Vincent Nkhoma, a wise and respected man, but unfortunately for him, blind.

We are learning their way of life. The village is quite remote with no electricity. Vincent managed last year the installation of a clear water pump in each village. He, as well, administrate the village in a incredible manner, making sure nobody is left aside, looking after the development of the village by encouraging Eco tourism.





His objectives for next year: finding a way to install solar electricity (financially and technically very challenging), and more importantly building a local clinic ( as none doctors and clinics can be found within 50-70 km; and they do not possess any vehicles. So when someone get sick, you can only pray. Vincent speak there from experience: he lost sight, and his 3 sons by lack of medical assistance.)

Vincent NKHOMA
PO BOX 35
Champhira
MUZIMBA District
MALAWI

After lunch the locals started singing and dancing. They, of course, invited us to join them!

Today is 2nd of november; which means my 30th birthday...:(( Well, I have to say that apart of becoming 30, and be so far away from my loving ones, it was a fabulous day! We started the day with a fantastic birthday breakfast at Chitimba.


We then took the road in direction of Chinteche beach, on the shore of Lake Malawi. It's a 6hrs drive. We stopped at a local market as we have a mission today: we have 20 minutes, 500 malawi kwata (approx 3$), to find a member of the group a crazy outfit for tonight's party. There is many locals coming, running to us with this big plastic bin bags, asking us: "party clothe, party clothe?". Tonight will be a surprise for all of us as we are not aware of our own outfit.

Cyril made me a nice surprise: an upgrade! No camping tonight! Very nice bungalow on the beach. Wouhou!!! We enjoyed the beach for few hours.

It's now 6pm, time to discover our outfit left on our seat at the truck. Well tonight we will be with Cyril...: Aladin and Jasmin! And the party can start... It was a great party, everybody had fun apart the old fart of the group. Who cares anyway?!

The next day we planed to do horse riding, but when we where announced the prices we did not, it was a total rip off. So we chilled out on the beach for the day it was a good relaxing time.

We are now on our way to Malawi spending 10 to 12 hrs a day on the road.

Everybody is exited, it is the morning we are leaving Dar for the spice island: Zanzibar, the Stone town and it's sandy beaches. We will spend our first night in Stone town, it's a bizarre city where many types of architectures, from portuguese, arabs, are mix; and where Africans live their way.


The following morning we are visiting a spice farm with our guide Ali T. His English is a mix of Ali G and Borat, quite a funny guy. We will see many types of plantation, as pepper, vanilla, curcuma, lemon grass... as well as pineapple, banana, coco...


We are ending the visit with a meal made by the locals: squid with rice. They have 2 very funny boys, posing for pictures and when shown to them they laugh like mad; they have a very contagious laugh, and soon everybody is laughing.


Next day, we are now on our way to the northern beaches of where we will spend the rest of our time in Zanzibar. And as George would say: "What happen in Zanzibar, stay in Zanzibar!"

At 7am we took the truck for an 8hrs drive to Dar el Salam. Everyone is so excited at the taught of seeing the Indian ocean. After spending a week on constant dust and dirt, we cannot be more thankful to go to the seaside. It's amazing to see the landscape evolving. The earth go from deep red to black, to beige, to red again... Trees go from Baobab, to palm tree.

It must be laundry day! Near by every village we pass you can see women washing traditionally all their laundry. And what make it so spectacular is the meters and meters of beautiful bright coloured clothing all over the grass (drying system, very straight forward!)

We finally arrive in Dar after a long drive, direction the supermarket for some supplies. As we all finished the shopping the truck went towards the exit gate, but there, big problem, they didn't wanted to let us go. On entry they did not gave us the card to present while going out. As we learnt in many situation, when there is no process already establish, most of African do not know how to deal with the situation. The only solution they found is to call armed police to take away our cook Simon who was dealing with the situation. We never thought to be stranded in an African supermarket! After a call from our tour leader the cops let us go. We arrived to the beach resort where a modest hut facing the beach was there for us.

Location:Livingstone,Zambia

I have been very lucky, as after the help and good care of everyone, I could drink back water and keep it! Which was not the case for everyone. In the next morning, not just me but 5 other persons started to feel unwell. And unfortunately for them we were already on the truck on direction of Lushoto, 4 hrs drive, and 45 celsius. A few people had a plastic bag with them, filling it from time to time.

Suddenly, screams came from 2 seats behind. One other of the sick group started to have a seizure! We stopped the truck and to care for her. In the meantime another girl was very sick and was sleeping in the driver cabin, with ice on her head and a bucket held by Simon, our cook. A few minutes later and the same person had a seizure again, very serious this time. We stopped again an put her in recovery position at the back of the truck, it was very very serious and we were in the middle of nowhere. Then the race started to find the nearest hospital, 2.5 h away! The group had to take care of these 2 like in an intensive care room, they were weaker and weaker, fainting time to time, and had difficulty to breathe. So serious than one of them had to have an adrenaline shot to keep her in world of the living!

We finally made it to the hospital, it was a freaky day. The girls made a splendid recovery and came back to the hotel the next afternoon. What happen to us is that the group of sick people ate the same thing in the same place and catch salmonella, which is fatal; we were part of this group. I think we will never eat chicken again in Africa.

The following day we visited Lushoto, lush and green town in the middle of the mountains.

The safaris in the Serengeti and Ngorongoro crater were great, we are now on our way to Moshi to see the Amani orphanage. A project started by the founder of Guerba. The orphanage is for the street kids from the region of Arusha, they accept anyone who is on the street. They give them a home, food, education until the age of 17, and most importantly, consideration and love.
The kids are great, very happy to see some new faces. We get a tour of the facilities and some info on history and how it's run. As well as some very moving stories about these kids, Africa can be a very cruel place.
Most of the kids are not around anymore, they preparing for something they have been waiting for more than a month: a football match against us!
These kids have amazing skills, even with flip flops they have a good ball touch, and we get trashed 7-1 (we had only 4 guys in the team, the rest was girls!!!)






We leave Moshi for Marangu, on the foothills of Mt Kilimajaro. Marangu is amazing, very green and beautiful, nothing like we saw so far. It' a much richer area of Tanzania, they live mainly from tourism, they are all guides or porters.

1 am : Emma loves this time to express herself in the most bizarre behaviours.

How well! Thank you Cyril! But true!

I am going to avoid giving you to much details this time...! Let's just say that I experienced that night, all that a foreigner has to experience going and eating bad food in Africa. You just try to survive a night evacuating from devant and derrière!!!

It's an early start, we are leaving the truck behind and will be using jeeps for the next 3 days as we are going on a safari. Packing very light, meaning smelling very bad!
Pure wildness, it's magic, the landscape is beautiful and the animals are at the rendez-vous. The following picture will describe better than words, except a little story.







We are camping in the middle of the Serengeti. No fences! It means wild animals like Lions, Buffalo, hyenas, jackals will be near us wondering around the camp at night. We have orders to not quit our tent at night.

1am: "Oh my God! Cyril. I have to get out. I cannot breath, I am boiling, I am going to faint. " "Emma, are you not crazy! You have to stay in! You know what they say about going out at night. "No no no, I can't. I have to get out." "You have to calm down. You need to breath slowly, you are hyperventilating." "I told you I am going out, I need some air." (I was actually doing a panic attack on the middle of the Serengeti! How amazing is that!)

I finally put my shoes on and got out of the tent, and finally managed to breath but...
...I am looking on my right, then my left and I see 2 eyes ( they told us that the first thing you would see are their eyes!), then just 2 meters away from me a "very ugly shaped animal" is passing, I confirmed it to be a hyena. I can tell you that at this moment, I ran back in the tent and I never found it so comfortable! My panic attack was all gone!



But this was just the beginning of many adventures! We didn't know that yet...


Reminder: we just want to clarify one thing; we have not being sick for the past 10 years, neither physically ( just few coughs in winter, like everyone), neither mentally (unless...!)

(more pictures coming, a soon as we get a better connection...!!!)

Location:Tanzania