Last time I wrote I didn’t actually get a chance to proofread the blog and I just read it and I apologize for anyone who has ever had an English class and had to read that.
It has been a number of weeks since I last got a chance to write a blog post. I am currently in the town of Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe. As I am sure you have heard in the news Zimbabwe is going through a huge economic crisis and political crisis currently but I will get to that later.
Since the last email I have gone from Namibia to Botswana to Zimbabwe. The experience has been amazing and the days were long but the weeks quite short. After leaving the relative comfort of a real bed and roof in Swakopmund, Namibia we made our way north to an area with ancient cave painting and strange rock formations. Their the camp site had little to no amenities. We had to bring in all the water we used from outside and there was just one lone toilet for use. Even with the minimalist conditions at the camp it was not in short supply of amazing scenery and interesting people.
Perhaps the most interesting and horrific story I have heard of my life was told by a Swedish biker we met here. He started peddling in Norway and made his way south through eastern Europe, the middle east, Egypt, and down the eastern coast of Africa to the western coast all by himself on a bicycle. His total time biking was 23 months and his destination of Capetown, South Africa was only a few weeks away. On his face there was a long scar going from the bottom right lip down past the jaw. We asked him to tell the story about it and we all shocked as we heard:
“So I was originally going to finish the trip in 2006 but I had an incident in Tanzania that forced me to go home for 13 months to recover. I was biking down a lone road when I came up to four men walking in the same direction I was going in the middle of the road. As I came up the men split to the sides of the road and I thought it was to let me pass. However, as I came inbetween them they ran up and closed on me. One guy swung a huge knife and hit me right across the jaw. I blacked out for a few seconds but when I came to I was still luckily on my bike so I peddled as hard as I could until I got away from the four men running after me. I felt my face and saw that my jaw was completely split open and I couldn’t move my mouth.
A few kilometers of peddling hard I came across two people who looked at my face and flagged me down. I stopped the bike and they helped me off and one guy ripped off his shirt to try to tie my jaw together and stop the bleeding. In a few minutes a truck came by and they got me on the truck to the nearest village. The village didn’t have a doctor but it did have a police officer who insisted on asking me questions before I went to the hospital. I was unable to talk to I kept writing on a piece of paper…’I NEED A DOCTOR NOW’. After about an hour of no treatment they finally got me a taxi and sent me on my way to the next town with a doctor.
The doctor only had stitches and sewed my skin together but said that the bone was completely split and that I need a hospital immediately. So he got me on a bus to Dar es salam (capital of Tanzania). When I got there I found that the doctors were on strike and they refused to help me. So I had to contact the embassy who got the hospital to open the doors for me and get me some treatment. Here they used metal stitches to sew the bones back together and got me and IV to rehydrate myself. The next thing I knew I was on a plan back to Sweden where I needed a number of surgeries and 13 months to recover from the attack.”
The most amazing thing about the whole story is that when he recovered fully the first thing he did was resume his trip and when we met him he was almost done. Also he had nothing but good things to say about people from Tanzania, saying they were some of the nicest he had met on his whole trip. I was amazed at his acceptance of what happened and the ability to shake it off so easily.
After the night in the bush camp we made our way to a cheetah sanctuary in the north of Namibia. Here we got a chance to pet and see live semi-wild cheetahs in action. The cats were absolutely amazing and everything about their body proved that they were percise killing machines. Continuing on the game trend we then made our way to Etosha national park, also in the north of Namibia. We spent a few nights there looking at wild game and taking game drives.
In Africa there is a group of animals known as the “Big 5″. They are the lion, leopard, elephant, rhino, and water buffalo. The name big 5 comes from hunting where those animals were by far the hardest to kill…and most likely to kill the hunter. So far on the trip I have seen everything but the leopard with the lion being the most spectacular. On one of the nights in Etosha the group was sitting by lighted water hole just viewing game as it came to get a drink. The night had already been amazing as we had seen the extremely rare black rhino, herds of zebra and giraffes, amongst a number of elephants. After about 10 minutes of seeing nothing a huge cat moved into view absolutely not worried about the surrounding and went straight for a drink. It was a massive female lion. At least 2 or 3 meters long the cat destroyed my conception of how big a lion actually was….it was clear that it was the king of jungle because as it drank every animal was at least 200 meters away from the hole.
The game viewing continued throughout the rest of Namibia and into Botswana. In Botswana we went to a place known as the Okavango Delta….a huge swamp/grass land area in the north of the country. The place completely covered in water and reeds is only accessible through canoe. Even the canoes are forced to go on paths that hippos have cleared out by swimming through the water for years. Since the delta cannot have any cars or trucks the game viewing with did there was done entirely on foot…with lions and leopards both on patrol. If the giant cats weren’t enough of a threat we also learned that hippos kill more humans than any other animal in Africa because they are the most aggressive of all animals. In fact, the kind of trip I am doing does not have an 100% survival rate due to hippos.
A few years ago an over-landing group was at a campsite on a river…a river with a number of hippos on it. The travelers were told that they should not walk near the water at night due to the hippos but one night 2 people decided to take a shortcut by the water to reach another camp. On their short cut they crossed the path between a hippo and the water…an extremely aggressive move according to the hippo. The giant 3 ton beast rushed the two and trampled them on the spot. Needless to say I am staying a good distance away from the water at night when hippos come out to graze on the flat land.
After all the worry about the cats and the hippos we were glad when walking around we saw mostly the calm herbivores of zebra, giraffes, elephants, wild boars, and wildebeest. However, after a few hours into the trip we came to a watering hole and saw a hippo or two and some crocodiles in the water. It was nice to get some pictures and we walked back towards the cover of trees to return to our campsite. As we came from the clearing to the trees we heard a massive crashing sound only 20 meters away. We looked up and saw a massive elephant clear the trees with ears spread out and tusks up…a sign of extreme aggression from the beast. The guide we were with looks at the five of us on the walking tour and yells, “RUN!!!”. We turn as quickly as possible and run like 50-100 meters away from the elephant which had luckily been startled by us as well and ran the other way. When we all stopped the guide told he had never had to run from an elephant before and it was kind of scary for him too!
Well I still have hundred things to say about the rest of the time before Vic Falls. Really ridiculous funny stories from the group and our first encounters with poverty and aids in africa. However, this blog is getting too long and I am getting tired. I will try to write again soon and definitely post some photos tomorrow.
Hope everyone is well
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