As I was sitting in my hammock a few minutes ago I got news that the internet was (finally) up and working again. It's been raining all morning- we woke up at 6AM to a torrential downpour/lightning storm outside and closed the bamboo shades to try to block some of the rain that's coming down sideways from our little 2-person hut on the beach. Fortunately there are blue skies peeking out now, 7 hours later, and maybe we'll have a little sun to dry up all this water! We're in Malawi right now, actually on the shores of Lake Malawi, and just heard the rumor that Madonna is somewhere in the country. If we happen to bump into her during a village tour I'll definitely take some photos, but I'm not getting my hopes up too high, this is still a big country! :-)

Since my last post, which feels like ages ago, we finished up our last tour, have crossed multiple country borders, and are now on a new tour with a new group of people that will take us into East Africa. There are so many things that I would love to post, but for your benefit and my wallet's benefit (internet is about $10 per hour here, the most expensive yet) I will try to summarize as much as possible!

After we left Durban, we headed to Kruger Nat'l Park. We did our game drives in our Nomad Tour vehicle (basically just self-guided along the roads of the park, where our tour driver Noel and guide Nathan sat up front in the cab looking for wildlife while we all sat in the back with our cameras and binoculars ready.) There are very strict rules regarding speed limits in the park- there are even traffic cops with speed cameras, because Kruger is a popular cut-through for truck drivers delivering goods- and you absolutely cannot get out of your vehicle at all (which meant we were on strict water rationing, because bathroom breaks aren't exactly available with wild lions and everything on the prowl!) As it turns out, despite it being the rainy season so fewer animals congregating at the big watering holes, we had two days of absolutely successful game drives. We saw tons of elephants, much bigger than those we saw in Addo, as well as a family of hyenas, zebras, lions and lionesses up close, hippos, giraffes, warthogs. We saw white rhinos, as well as 3 of the very endangered black rhinos (they're not actually different colors, the two types have different mouth shapes), and probably the most amazing sighting was that of a leopard that was lounging in the shade of a tree in the road in front of us. There are very few leopards in Kruger, and they typically only come out at night, so to see one at 2 in the afternoon was incredible. It was incredible to see the animals up close, in much more of a natural habitat than that of a zoo.

We also did a sunset game drive with a park ranger in one of their safari vehicles- so an open air vehicle with canvas doors. This was when we had our second run-in with an elephant. It's breeding season for elephants so the males are constantly on the look-out for femals and are very protective of their territory. We had just pulled into a turn-around at a watering hole (translation- a dead end) when a huge male elephant came and blocked the road in front of us. He was obviously not pleased with us being there- he was shaking his head, trumpeting, and generally doing everything he could to tell us to go away. We were downwind and he absolutely reeked (one way of attracting the females is the males urinate all over their back legs- needless to say, he was quite fragrant.) The park ranger revved the engine several times, moving forward a few feet and the elephant started to back up- and then he turned around and we were chasing this elephant down the one-way road. He was kicking up so much dust and we were so close that you could taste the dirt in the air- we chased him for over a kilometer, at the main road the elephant swerved off to the left as we took a sharp right. The chase wasn't over, though, as the elephant started to run after us still shaking his head and trumpeting- the park ranger drove as fast as he could over the bumpy roads and after what seemed like an eternity (more like 2 or 3 minutes) the elephant gave up chase and we all calmed down enough to stop screaming at the ranger to drive faster. As far as I'm concerned, we've had enough run-in's with elephants and hope there are no more, but it makes for a great story!

After a few more adventures in South Africa, including less than 24 hours in Johannesburg (which was more than enough for me in a lifetime) we bid farewell to our group of 11 and boarded a flight from Johannesburg to Livingstone, Zambia, where we would meet up with our new tour group. Our new group is much larger than our last, with much stronger personalities (fill in the blanks as you'd like)- 25 of us on a vehicle slightly larger than our last- so no more luxurious two seats to a person and easily stowed baggage- the new adventure begins. Steve and I made an afternoon of going to the Zambian side of Victoria Falls- not sure of the actual accolades, but it's either the largest by volume, or the longest waterfalls in Africa (or the world?) , and they are amazing. When we landed in Zambia I thought there was a giant fire burning somewhere out in the countryside, but it turns out that it is the cloud of mist rising up from the falls. When you walk towards them, there is so much water coming off the falls that it's as if it's raining from every angle- we had our raincoats/pants on and still got absolutely drenched. We would like to come back in the dry season and see the falls from the Zimbabwean side, where you can see more of the actual rock formations/falls.

We left Zambia behind a couple of days ago, and are now in Malawi for about a week, tomorrow we head further north along the lake where hopefully it will be a bit drier than it is here! One interesting note on our tour is that it's a German tour, so there's also a translator- although only a handful of people actually need the translator, and a majority of the group doesn't even speak German. This has gotten us into a couple of sticky situations, though, as the message of "absolutely do not take photos at any border crossings or police checkpoints" must have gotten lost in translation, because at three different instances in one day we had run-in's with the local officials due to photography. At one point, a police officer jumped up on the side of our vehicle and started screaming at a German woman who speaks zero English (except "okay" and "alright") who was taking a photo of the countryside not realizing we were at a police checkpoint. Another incident involved several people taking photos of a large beetle at the Zambia/Malawi border, right after we got our passports stamped (I'm not joking here) and the border patrolman said that they'd damaged the screen where the beetle was sitting and insisted on payment for repair of the screen. Fortunately for us, our guides and translator were able to diffuse the situations and no money was ever handed over and no one was thrown in jail. Since then, the photography has decreased somewhat..... but we still have many many more borders to cross!

Lunch is ready so I have to run. I have one parting piece of information to leave you with- so far, 3 out of 3 Zimbabweans confirm that they either like / love Dolly Parton's music. Our last driver had several of her CD's and would play them for us on the bus (until one of us begged him to turn it off ), and our 2 new guides are both Zimbabwean as well and agree that they dig her songs. It's not a big sample size, but still- 100% like Dolly Parton. Now THAT is a fact I didn't expect to find out in our African travels.

Cheers,
Anna