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Firstly. We've never written a 'blog' before and to be honest, am abit concerned the whole idea is a bit naff but.... we're going to give it a go anyway.I'm the queen of ranting on with too much detail and Stef would never in a million years do something like this so you're going to have to work with me here.Hope I don't bore you to death but we really wanted to share our little story with our near and dear and share a few pics of adventures along the way.
So. We survived and LOVED Africa.
It is nearly impossible to sum up our experience and our thoughts on Africa but taking a stab at it we would say that it's WORLDS AND WORLDS away from our westernised day to day lives with amazingly friendly people and diverse and beautiful scenery.
We did an overland trip with the African Travel Company and camped from Zimbabwe up through to Uganda over 6 weeks. We pretty much did the trip in two different parts.One, from Victoria Falls up to Nairobi and then we joined a new group and did the Kenya and Uganda trip.Thankfully, neither group was full of 18 year old drunken types and we had a really good mix of people, obviously there is always ONE but we managed to survive that. Well Stef managed not to take anyone out so that was a good start.The camping was 99% of the time completely fine and we had good mats, pillows and thankfully bought a few Masai cloths along the way to keep us a bit warmer in places.The whole camping experience did take me back to the 'ol Contiki trip 12 years ago at times though - ie flapping dinner plates dry....nice!!!!The truck we travelled in was great and fully equipped with everything we needed, it was a bit bumpy sitting at the back at times and we were airborne way too many times - especially in Tanzania.The roads in Africa are generally pretty horrific and I don't think we'll ever complain about a pot holes in our own roads ever again.
So the big trip started in Zimbabwe....
Victoria Falls was our first official stop and it was amazing (this is a word you'll hear alot of btw!). We were there for literally about 15 minutes and the next thing Stef was jumping off a bridge with a bit of elastic tied to his feet while I watched and nearly threw up.He loved it though and added that to his list of jumps around the world!! On the way to the bunjee jump we met loads of locals who would chat away to you and of course then try to sell you things.About 10 mins into the walk I caught up with Stef who had bought about 4 copper bracelets.I realised early on that Stef had to be held tightly by the reigns in this department otherwise, we would be broke by Zambia. But this is the only way they can make money so we didn't feel too bad really.Zimbabwe was extremely poor and although they were selling all these curios, what they really wanted was the clothes off your back rather than money.I wish we'd known this coz we could have played the trading game so much better.They were also trying to sell their own currency to us which consisted of notes of ten trillion dollars.No joke.The economy is in really good nick.Stef made lots of local friends here including the lovely George IV.We met up with our group on our first night here and they were a good bunch thankfully so we were quite relieved - pretty much full of Aussies!
The following day, we did white water rafting at Vic Falls down the ZambeziRiver.I hadn't done white water rafting before and Stef had only done it in Scotland.I was terrified but we had a lot of fun!!!!It was just brilliant and I just hung on for dear life most of the time.We got thrown from the boat a good few times and inhaled most of the river at one point but even after getting thrown from the boat and thrashing around the rapids, we knew we would be spat out at the end and be ok which was a comforting thought. The downside to rafting in a gorge was that we had to get out of there somehow and let's just say the 'hike' out of there was a nice challenge for day 1!!
The actual Victoria Falls were just breathtaking. The amount of power behind that water was quite unbelievable.It was amazing to finally see them in 'real life' after wanting to see them for such a long time.We had a nice walk around the area, got soaked and then went back to the campsite for our first official night of camping.
After Zim, we headed to Zambia.
Zambia
We just touched on a small part of this country really.We stayed at quite a nice little campsite that overlooked the Zambezi.A few of us did a sunset cruise which was really nice. Not quite what we were expecting - we were expecting some sort of 5 star luxury cruise but instead got a boat full of the 18 year old drukens ( the ones we were trying to avoid) along with lots of cheap white wine and z-grade food!!But we had good company and it was gorgeous on the river.Great views of sunset and we saw our first hippos and elephants.So amazing to see these animals in the wild.
The next place we stayed at was literally in the middle of nowhere and it was the first time that I felt far away from real civilisation which is a strange feeling.The campsite was surrounded by animals and we saw our first giraffes, antelopes and zebras here.Stef obviously slept well (goes without saying) but I didn't sleep so well that night - think that was down to the combination of being in the middle of nowhere for the first night and good old Larium!!!
We drove through Zambia and onto Malawi.Along the way through most of Africa we went through small villages where the locals live in little thatched huts and the women go and get their family water and make food while the kids run around like adorable little munchkins. Most of the kids see the truck coming and run along side it waving, some of the kids literally get so excited you think they'll self combust.It was beyond cute!!!
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