Africa - Update Numero IV (email from Africa)

Greetings from Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe - one of the seven wonders of
the world, twice as talls as Niagara and 1.7 km wide. Just finished
rafting the Zambezi river this morning and nearly drowning while trying
to riverboard (think boogie boarding down a class IV rapid - scary
stuff). Anyway, good day, but tomorrow should be better when I bungee
jump 111 m off the Victoria Falls bridge - why? I haven't a clue.

Anyway, since I last wrote, we hit the Okovango Delta in Botswana,
which despite being wealthier in GDP per capita than Namibia, looks far
poorer. Anyway, after a long journey, we jumped into wooden canoes to
be "poled" for 3 hours into the deep bush where we camped for a few
nights and did bush walks during the day. Let me tell you it's a
little scary when you come across elephants when you're on foot - those
suckers can charge you (which one did to a few people in our group!).
Also, saw lots lion and hyena tracks - that's pretty freaky when you're
on foot. Other than that, shared the hokey pokey with the local
Botswana people (not my idea!), listened to hippos grunt 100 m away
from our tents, and saw tons of giraffes, zebra (they're everywhere),
birds.....

After that, we heading to Chobe National Park - awesome! Really
amazing experience taking a cruise along the river - saw another wild
animal ever 3-4 minutes - elephants from 10 m, hippos, crocs, monkies,
baboons, eagles, vultures, dead elephants being eaten by crocs, impala,
elephants swiming across a river, two lions 50 feet away, cape buffalo,
and a ton more - really cool - best part of the trip hands down.

Now we're in Vic Falls, actually relaxing for a few days, decided to
get a hotel room than we're splitting four ways to break up the camping
a bit, but let me tell you, Zimbabwe is really struggling. Very 3rd
world, lots of harassment on the streets offering all matter of carved
wood, trinket, marijuana (yep, got that last night). Don't feel too
safe walking here at night, but totally fine during the day and our
campground / lodge is like a fortress. Their economy is a mess, and
their currency is laughable - 100,000 Zim dollars per US dollar (was 57
Zim dollar per US Dollar 2 years ago - you can imagine what it's like
here), and the largest bill is 100,000! But, given that, Vic Falls is
pretty touristy, and much more expensive than expected - actually cost
$15-20 for dinner and more shockingly, beers and $3-4 dollars rather
than the $1.25 I've been paying all along!

Anyway, the falls are simply stunning, really beautiful gorges all
around and the people, while poor and looking for money are really
friendly - just desparate, with something like 80% unemployment at the
moment and dictator who's been in power since 1980.

Leaving my group of 20 tomorrow morning, four continue on with Shalini
and I (two british folks in their 20s and an Aussie couple in their 50s
- really cool people). A bit sad to leave this group behind since it's
been good, but looking forward to having more space on the bus (only 8
total on my trip from Vic Falls to Kili). The journey's ahead will be
long (I've heard 14 hours some days) and the road's bad, but the
journey's been awesome so far and things are going great.

Thanks for all your emails, it's great hearing from you.

Til next time,

Rob