all the in betweens

kristin-----> wow as if im not overwhelmed enough about our plane tickets home at the moment (yes we finally booked them) now i have to remember where we left off from antelope park. so let me think in between there and capetown we hit zimbabwe, zambia, botswana and namibia. so the first thing that makes me think of is victoria falls. they are huge! i really cant think of any other way to describe it i have never seen so much water falling down and we walked for what seemed like a mile or more and they just kept raging on. and im not even over-exaggerating, i have been to niagra falls and was impressed. but vic falls makes them look like water coming out of sink and on top of that you are guaranteed to see a rainbow, or 3, or maybe even 2 at a time if you are lucky like us. we didnt stay the night in zambia but since it borders zimbabwe and we are addicted to passport stamps we caught a taxi over and spent the day. we even got to stand in no man's land on the bridge leading from one side to another just hanging out over the falls. we went with our friend ciarin and funny shit, on the way back over the border a baboon stole his passport and money and basically everything that was completly neseccary for him to continue travelling. the locals didnt even hesitate to grab some huge rocks and chase that bastard down. within about fifteen minutes ciarin had everything he needed back and the locals had a tip to fight over. Sean----> Ezus Cheezus! I feel like we'll be lucky if anyone even keeps up with this thing anymore! We're sorry for not keeping up with it. As we've gone further South, we've gotten to the more "westernized" and developed Africa and have consequently been bizzyer! Sorry if I seem like a weirdo right now, but my brain is off. It's midday, I'm already on my fifth beer (which is not normal for all you worryers of Kristin), and I've been on the next computer trying to find somewhat decent priced hotels for our two-night layover in Abu Dhabi (what seems to be the most expensive hotel city on EARTH!). It's actually seeming cheaper to sleep in a rental car (which we had to do the other day {again, don't worry}). The good news is that we'll be getting another passport stamp for the United Arab Emirates. That'll be our twelfth country (thirteenth if you count Zanzibar {the birthplace of Freddie Mercury, who knew?}, which did stamp our passport upon entry and was at once it's own country. We've had a shitload of other stamps when you consider how many we've bounced back and forth in between and each border crossing had an entry and an exit stamp: GANGSTER! Oh snap! I just realized I'm rambling. Ok. What am I doing? Oh yeah. Blog. So a few days after our last blog, we reached my highlight of the overland tour. Just outside of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, we stayed the night at a mansion that had enough space for us to pitch our tents, and we were offered an optional excursion that wasn't detailed on our itinerary. It was to hop in a 4 x 4 with a knowledgeable guide and go into Matopos National Park. No one on the truck had money "budgeted" for this, but they mentioned rhinoceroses (rhinoceri?) and I had to go. So only ten of us went, and Kristin and I hopped in the smallest truck with only one other couple (John and Jo {we miss you guys} ) and the guide. We lucked out! We got the all-knowing wilderness genius of the universe named Andy. This guy was my hero. Everyone else hauled ass through the park all day looking for rhinos (and found three). Andy was a hardcore hunter (native of Zimbabwe) for eleven years and got paid big bucks to take rich Americans hunting in reserves throughout Africa. He had to take some kind of certification course on survival "in the bush", which means literally in the middle of nowhere with no contact with people or supplies. The course was supposed to be something along the lines of coming out alive after four months. he opted to do six months and came out two years later. As soon as we entered the park, he slammed on the brakes and we all looked out the side of the vehicle for an animal. He stepped out of the truck, picked up a handful of giraffe shit from the middle of the road, and spent twenty minutes explaining how you can tell the difference between a boy and a girl, the age, if it was sick, what it had been eating, based on the shit and nearby tracks how long ago it had been there, etc.,... At first we thought, "Great. We picked the little truck and got stuck with the guy who's not gonna find any rhinos because he's gonna teach us about shit all day." We were wrong. We were pulled over while he was teaching us about wildebeest shit and a bird flew over our heads. He took off running into the woods and came back a half hour later and brought us walking in the middle of NOWHERE within twenty feet of a mom rhinoceros and her baby. He said the bird that flew over earlier always hangs out with rhinoceroses because it feeds off of some parasite on it's back. Long story short (Kristin says I'm ranting! Oops!) we found eight rhinos, walking. It's an entirely different experience leaving the truck, walking, following tracks with someone who knows their shit, picking up shit, looking at broken twigs, blah, blah, blah, and finding a huge rhinoceros in the middle of the woods than riding in a truck in the Serengheti while the driver with his cat eyes somehow spots shit from over a mile away with no binoculars drives you right to it so you can take pictures like a silly tourist. Andy apparently had some epiphany. While hunting trips make him ridiculous money (he used to hunt elephants, lions, anything you can think of), he spends his time and money towards tours and educating people on the animals he used to hunt. now he's a conservation type of guy. Interesting... I've got to piss. Kristin------> (She's writing T) ------> i was writing t but the stupid internet just decided to erase my email. anyways andy was definitly a hunting prodigy/most amazing guide ever and we didnt just find rhinos we actually had two run at us and andy had to break out his gun. now they didnt stampede towards us on purpose but they thought we were on the other side of them and actually took off in our direction as me and jo hopped behind a bush, not that it would have helped. sean and jon froze in their tracks, it was hilarious afterwards, and andy started shouting and they got the hint and stormed off the other way just barely before running us over and turning us all into mush. my heart was beating out of my chest and we were all scared shitless when andy put away the gun, after thankfully not needing to use it, and asked us if we were ready to continue tracking down these huge beasts. we all agreed. im not going to talk much about botswana because its holding me back from namibia which was where we did some of my favorite shit. dont get me wrong, botswana was super cool too. one of the prettiest places i have seen by far. we went with some guides to a bush camp in the middle of fucking no where. we took some homemade wooden canoes out to the deserted campsite that these natives pole around through the reeds as you lay back, relax, drink a bottle of wine or whatever else you can think of. im sure sean will extend on this (or ramble as i like to say haha) so im going to talk about namibia... specifically swakupmond. we were here for 3 nights and the first started out with a centurian competition thing that the crew does every trip where every minute you take a shot of beer, no standing up, no leaving to piss and so on. i didnt even want to join in since it was all guys but then hannah, whose irish as fuck husband won, talked me into doing it with her. so there we are shot for shot minute after minute and at 31 i have to pee really bad. but i wait and wait and when i think im going to explode sean drops out. i thought he was going to win but my point is i was still in the game and lasted to 78... considering the winner made it to 200 this meant nothing but im determined that if this game incorporated height and body weight i would have dominated. the last day we went sand boarding. it was awesome its like snowboarding minus the cold and the pain of falling because its on a giant sand dune. we did like four runs down the hill and then we got to do one more before we headed back with the option to use the jump. my dumbass decided sure why not and i totally beefed it after the ramp and had a miserable time on the way down. but i would most definitly do it again. we did the lay down boarding to where you lay on this piece of wood and just go head first down the dune... i got up to 64 kilometers an hour which is pretty damn fast when you are about to get a face full of sand. about an hour later we went quad biking on the dunes which was by far some of the best riding i have ever seen. there was a group of like 30 of us and we just went out and followed these guides straight up the dunes until it felt like the bike was going to start falling back and then you got to haul ass down them. we even hit some jumps and went straight over some edges where you would pull up and not no what was beneath you and until before you know it your racing down some extreme angles at about a 50 foot drop. i even managed to flip by the end of it and nearly get ran over by chris the kid behind me. this was probably due to the teachings of josh and paul for all of you back home that went riding with us. what can i say? sand is just such a soft landing so its just really hard not to see how fast you can go at the wrong times. o yea, sad ending, i left my camera at this place called spurs we ate at before we left and am finally getting it tomorrow. cross your fingers one hand! Sean-----> Kristin somehow skimmed through in one sentence the Okavango Delta (one of the last true wilderness and most untouched beautiful places on Earth)! We both loved it, but she was more focused on hauling ass on these four-wheelers (which scared the piss outta me). The Okavango Delta is a must if you come to Southern Africa, which everyone should. These locals carve out of a tree a makuro (what we silly Americans would call a canoe). This guy or girl then stands on the back, like a gondola and uses a pole which they're digging into the river bottom (and is damn near impossible: I tried it), to navigate you through these super skinny canals (just wide enough for your makuro). They're so skinny you've gotta push the reeds out of your way and duck under things that I don't like (those of you who know me know what I'm talking about). All while this is going on, you're lying on your back, not budging (because it's so top heavy and will tip over), watching out not only for crocodiles, but mainly for the most dangerous animal in Africa (no joke) the hippopotamus. We got some amazing pictures of these scary bastards from the makuro, and saw what I believe was the most beautiful sunset in the history of the universe. Dammit! I keep itching my new tattoo. That's saved for Part 2. Namibia was super badass. The weirdest shit ever was catching the first glimpse of the Atlantic Ocean on our trip. I can't think of words to explain the feeling I got standing with my feet on the opposite side of the same ocean I've lived on my whole life. To look across and know that Brazil was on the other side. It's hard to make sense out of. Throughout the trip, we were told how meat was so expensive up North (East Africa), and how it would get cheaper as we progressed. When we made it to Namibia, it was STEAK STEAK STEAK every chance we had a day away from the truck. We had to go to Windhoek, pronounced (Vind-hick), the capital of Namibia because of some mechanical problems on the truck. We found a steak restaurant (like a shitload we've been to up to now), and went all out with bottles of wine, appetizers, sides, steak, chicken cordon bleu, dessert for like thirty bucks! That'll conclude the Part 1 of 2 in the catching up section. Oh yeah! The Cape Cross Seal Colony was badass! Picture about 80,000 seals on a single beach. Pictures to come. If we're too sick of writing by the time these few pictures upload, Part 2 will come later tonight. PEACE! kristin----> the seals were super cool and ill never look at them the same way. but since we have literally been on the computers for four and a half hours responding to every text, email, comment and so on im going to finish this with some pictures. p.s. dont think im an asshole for not elaborating on the delta. it was amazing and i cant wait to paint the sunset in my head that we saw. but come on, do you really want to hear it from both of us? alright sean is being impatient (and just got stuck sitting next to some talkative weirdo) so we are going to post pictures later.

coming attraction...

kristin---------> so i just spent about 2 hours putting pictures on all the old blogs while sean looked up plane tickets. yes, sadly its that time. but now we are sick of computers and its 2:30 in the morning here and on top of that the next blog is going to be stupid long... so we are going to do it tomorrow. so check out the pictures in the meantime. also, we totally left out zanzibar island, oops. but we are finally in capetown, our future home, and it is BADASS as sean would say. take a peek and get back online later for the details. peace :)

Where the Malawi were we?!

Kristin-----> so im going to start this one which is difficult because we havent posted anything new since... jesus zanzibar! so since then we have been to malawi and now we are in (sean's favorite zimbabwe). so let me think back, first of all in malawi i was laying on the beach, still loving the indian ocean, when i saw a rainbow. then i did a double take because it was upside down. then i looked again because the fucking thing made a complete cirlce around the sun right smack in the middle of the sky! i had never seen anything like it and it even cam out in pictures which is super cool. our tour trainee andy says its because of ice crystals in the clouds or because of a miracle from god. haha take you pick! now im going to jump ahead like a week because the past 2 days have been just ridiculous. first of all we woke up yesterday at antelope park and went to play with some 7 week old lion cubs. they are ridiculously cute and just tumble around on short little legs and bellies that almost touch the ground. we even got to feed them right out of a bottle which was even more cool. then we go to the bar before lunch to grab some chocolate or something when 4 elephants come striding by to play. we hung out with them and fed them and took some hardcore close up pictures. it was the weirdest thing they love corn and when you have a handful it just goes at you with its trunk and waits for you to pour it in, like a giant straw or something. and if you are lucky they will just stand there looking like they are smiling with their mouths wide open waiting for you to throw their food in. it was soooooo awesome and i really hope that we can get some pictures up this time because we probably have some of the best ones yet. one more thing before i let sean ramble :) he cut his hair! ahaha but it was for an awesome cause. we went to an orphanage and since we raised enough money for them our guide andy agreed to shave his head. the kids got such a kick out of it that sean jumped in and another kid went for a mohawk. that was awesome too the kids loved stealing our cameras and talking about everything they could think of. Sean ----->Oooooowwweee! So The rest of Tanzania was aahhight. Malawi was supercool. The nicest people ever. For some weird reason, Malawi has a unusual amount of albino people, so it's a big deal when people donate sunblock. Our first two campsites were right on the lake (Lake Malawi), and from the first one, we did some really long hike to the top of a flat-topped mountain where there's a town on top called Livingstonia. Supercool. The next campsite was also on the beach, and we swam out to an island which looked really close, but was actually far as fuck. I thought I was gonna drown. If you Google it, it's right off of a place called Kande Beach. I didn't think I was gonna make it back. We stayed for a few nights in the capital Lilongwe, at a pretty cool place that actually had hot water. Then we crossed into Mozambique, where we didn't do much but pass through for two days, stopping only for lunch and to camp off the side of the highway litterally in the middle of nowhere. Oh snap! And in Mozambique we crossed the Zambezi River and stopped in a place called Tete, where Kristin stubbed her toe, which sucked that it was a night we were bush camping the day before we got to Zimbabwe which has a pretty bad cholera problem. OH YEAH! Kristin just reminded me that at the place in Mozambique in the middle of nowhere where we were camping, we had to watch out for LANDMINES! True story. The sky in Africa is beautiful and ten times bigger (I don't care what anyone says) than it is in the US. Kristin-----> hmm the timer says 21 minutes and counting so im going to end my part super quick so that i can try to get those damn pictures up. just popped into my head, me and sean quit taking our malaria pills! we had to. they were crazy, or rather making us crazy. we finally noticed some sick side effects and decided to look at the information about them. turns out they cause everything from paranoia to crazy dreams to suicidal thoughts... and on and on. so we decided its better to die of malaria then the malaria pills. right? but no worries there are people on our tour that have had it multiple times and turned out just fine. but we still feel the side effects so if we seem weird when you run into us back in the states that is probably why. speaking of which yesterday was a sad one, halfway between nairobi and capetown. im done here is sean! sean---->So we're gonna try to get some pictures up of Zimbabwe (my new favorite place on the planet). Their currency is about invalid now. We traded a US dollar bill for a hundred billion Zimbabwean dollars. Probably the best deal in the history of trading currencies, I'd say. Tomorrow morning, before we head to Bulawayo, there's a lady here that's going into the nearest city (Gweru) for some stuff and hopefully she'll bring us a ten trillion dollar bill. She only wants one US Dollar for it. I'm scamming these people left and right. Super quick: Our last campsite, Kuimba Shiri, was just outside of Harare, and it's right on a big manmade lake. They have two pet lions at the campsite (in a cage), and we had to watch out for zebra shit every time we walked to the bathroom or the bar. Zebras roam freely around the campsite. They also had a shitload exotic birds, and after that, the orphanage, and yesterday hand-feeding elephants and lion cubs in the same hour, after seeing a red dragonfly and a HUGE monitor lizard where I was just playing frisbee, this has gotta be the coolest week ever. Tomorrow we head to Bulawayo, where we're outside of a black rhino sanctuary, and there's only 500 left on Earth, then it's Victoria Falls! Woo hoo. Miss youse guys. Be good. Should be back on here in three days.

The Overland tour has begun!

Wow! So I have absolutely no concept of what day, date, or time of day it is, ever. It's a little weird, but I'm pretty much used to it. Whenever our last full day in Nairobi was (I think maybe a Friday?) turned into a nightmare! Just trying to change money. It's a long story. I actually just typed six lines about it and erased it when I realized how boring it was. ATMs, Forex Bureaus, taxi to airport, blah blah blah. Wow. I just rambled about rambling. Not a good start. So the group on the tour is super cool so far. We're the only Americans. There's a few Australians, a Scot or two, a couple Icelanders, a New Zealander, and I think everyone else is from UK. There's a few eighteen year olds. The oldest is probably forty-ish? We're running low on cash. Trying to average a few bucks a day each for sodas and bottles of water and some snacks for some of the super long truck rides. It's a huge bright yellow truck with seats along the inside that face each other. It's filled with all kinds of storage space for food, bags, tents, cooking stuff chairs, spare parts, and lots of other stuff. The sides are open, and there's a sort of loft thing behind the driver where the roof comes off if you want to lay in the sun. It's nothing at all like I pictured. The guide is cool, and there's a guide trainee. The driver is from Australia. I want the driver's job, but you gotta be able to fix about anything that could go wrong on this huge diesel engine on the side of the road. I don't know shit about cars. The crew has got some super cool stories of doing other trips through the Middle East, Southeast Asia, West Africa... The trainee lived in Zanzibar for three years (where we'll be tomorrow for the next four days) and he knows all the spots. Hmm. What else? Kristin's on another computer. She'll take over in a second. Here she is.------>wait back to kenya... the last night we were starving and the only place open was this chinese restaurant. so we walk in and i literally thought we just went in someones house but sure enough this guy leads us to this room with a table sat for 6. we go in and he closes the door. so we are just hanging out in this room with karaoke going on in the back ground, some chinese guy teaching his son karate out front, and a menu in chinese serving things like pig intestines. to top it off our waiter came in to put gospel songs on the tv. it was the creepiest dinner i ever had... like a bad trip on shrooms or something. we paid and left asap but i dont think i will ever be able to explain the weirdness of that situation. anyways we are on the safari now and its totally awesome. all the people are cool and at the moment we are camping right on the beach. literally, there is sand under our tent. and in it for that matter. the safari we took was insane. we literally were camping in the middle of no where. i had a incident with an elephant when i was trying to go to the bathroom sean turned on the flashlight and there he was! i turned around and decided to wait until he moved on... they look even bigger when you are on the ground next to them. and we got really good pictures too, even a video of the elephant coming at the truck so close we could have reached out and touched it. and we saw a cheetah with 4 cubs teaching them to hunt which as far as i hear is a rare spot. o yea and a lion with its cubs. im running out of things but i did just remember when we woke up to leave the campsite there were tons of girraffes just hanging out around us eating leaves and just doing their thing. it was nuts. Sean----->Hmm. So I just went to go smoke, and the security guard for this bank nextdoor is just a regular guy with a t-shirt and an M-16. Anyways. It's cute that Kristin always refers to the whole overland trip as a safari. The actual safari was BADASS! The Ngorongoro Crater was supercool. While we were eating lunch these babboons jumped into our truck and started stealing shit! Then the brave little bastards walked right up to this girl and took her banana! Then we went literally right smack into the Serengheti and camped after looking at supercool animals all day. Everything you can think of. I got some badass pictures. I was sitting on the roof of the truck when the elephant chraged at us and the driver had to floor it in reverse. Don't ask me how, but I somehow managed to stay on and catch the whole thing on video! There were lions in the campsite the night before we were there, and while we were sleeping, our cooks had to chase off some hyenas that were getting into the garbage. Those damn hyenas. I hate when that happens. After leaving the Serengheti, we headed east. Now we're in Dar es Salaam. It's not the capital, but by far Tanzania's largest city. It's right on the coast, and we leave tomorrow to Zanzibar Island. After that we're headed for Malawi, with a night of bush camping (somewhere "safe-ish" on the side of the road because it's so far). I was trying to think of good ideas to help out the people and Africa, and I came up with a really good one. Tell me what you think. I'm going broke, so if anybody wants to get my bank account number from Brooke, you could donate money to me so I can drink more beer and less sink water. It's for a good cause, because cholera is a problem here, so I'm safe as long as I drink beer. Just trying to make the world a better place. You guys are welcome to help. Kristin---->we have like 11 minutes left so im going to wrap this up. i have to cook dinner tonight with the 2 other ladies in my cook group tonight. it should be interesting coming up with something for 24 people considering we only have a bunch of fruit and veggies, rice, and whatever else we got at the market that i already forgot about. its good to be back at the ocean its piss warm again. we went out last night at low tide and looked at some sea anenomes and stuff. just a typical night in africa. i know there are more stories but as soon as i sit down at the computer my mind goes blank and ill remember them again tonight when im sitting by the fire or something. happy early valentines day to everyone following! Sean ----->Oh yeah. So we're in these cook groups. Every night a different group cooks. My group went last night (our first night at the ocean while everyone else swam in it), and we made this badass stirfry. It's hard shopping for twenty-four people, especially when they only give you 35,000 Tanzanian shillings! Those cheap bastards! That's actually about twenty-something dollars. Check it out. Zimbabwe's currency: I don't know what the exchange rates are, but they have these bills for like one and ten million dollars, which apparently aren't worth shit. AND THEY HAVE EXPIRATION DATES! To top it all off, the government just recently came up with this brilliant idea to print a bunch of 500 dollar notes, when there is absolutely nothing you'll find that cheap. It would be like if the United States just all the sudden decided to make a coin that was worth less than a penny. Those guys are geniuses. Obama should go to them for advice to fix the economy. Shit. Well, we're outta time. Gotta go eat, and jump on a ferry and be stared at like we're aliens.

Back in Mombasa... Ugghh...

Oh snap! So we had to leave Malindi, and now we're back in Mombasa. We're jumping on the overnight train back to Nairobi in about an hour and a half. Trying to kill some time in this fun city. Yeah right. Kristin-------> but wait back to malindi we went snorkeling with captain isaac which was super awesome. there were hundreds of fish and they swarm all around you and dont mind all the human interaction at all. i held a starfish, saw an octopus, and got a really good picture of a lion fish. we are sun burned bad and i dont think i have ever peeled this much in my life and it sucks. it sucks even more when your killing time in a room full of computers that doesnt have air conditioning... because even though its super hot everywhere you go here air conditioning doesnt even exist. saturday we leave for the safari and im really really excited. we got an email about it saying thats its going to be a pretty full trip though, 24 people! i hope its not a bunch of really old people or annoying kids. Sean--------> Oh yeah. So we went snorkelling in the Malindi Marine National Park. It's a protected area, where there's no fishing or taking shells (supposedly). When the low tide occurs, there's a few islands that pop up a few miles off the shore. We got to stand on one. It was super cool. They're not too much bigger than a house. And yes. I've got one of the top three worst sunburns of all time. It hurts to exist. What else? OH YEAH! We went to the casino, and I kicked ass on the roulette table two nights in a row. made enough to pay for our train ticket back to Nairobi and a few nights stay when we get there. Woo hoo! I still haven't cut my hair. Longest it's been in a while. We only have a few more days until the overland trip. Should be in Zanzibar Island soon. Back to the ocean. Yes! Hmmm. What else. I've been thinking about New York a lot lately... A lot lately. I've been trying to learn some Swahili. It's a really interesting language. So far I can count to about thirty. Say thank you, please, hello, and I can recite almost all of the surgeon general warnings they put on the cigarette packs. For example: ONYO: Matumizi ya tumbaku husababisha ugonjwa wa Mapafu. Good, huh? When you read it out loud, it sounds way cooler if you say it in a really emphatic tone as deep and scratchy as possible. There's been all kinds of disasters happening here in Kenya this week. Fires, tankers exploding, trains derailing. We've been lucky. We get on a train in about an hour. Yikes! OH GOD! Enrique Iglesias! You'll walk into a really cool restaurant or bar in Malindi, and they'll have some good African music playing. Then once they bring your drinks and the menu, almost EVERY restaurant seems to mysteriously have the most OBNOXIOUS Enrique Iglesias CD. If you're lucky, it'll be a greatest hits album, so you'll at least have some variety. If you're not so lucky, you'll hear like seven different versions of that song, "I can be your hero Baby..." CONSECUTIVELY. An English version, a Spanish version, a dance version, the instrumental, etc... When the songs are over, instead of playing a different CD, IT STARTS OVER! TORTURE! Aahhight. Enough whining. Waa waa. Kristin says bye.

Road to Kampala/Rail to Mombasa

Oooowwweeeee! Been a crazy few weeks! We thought it'd be cool to go to Uganda, just to say we did and see the equator. We expected Kampala to be a real shithole, but it was actually super cool. Kampala is the capital of Uganda, and there's all kinds of UN stuff going on there. We booked a bus through Akamba, which is supposedly the best line in terms of comfort and reliability. About 1am, I had a splitting headache, with no idea why. I smelled a faint scent of what reminded me of when somebody doesn't know how to drive stick and there burning the clutch. It was pitch black in the bus. We were driving through a section of Kenya that has no elctricity. When the bus pulled over and turned the inside lights on, we then saw that the bus was full of smoke! That explains my headache! Silly Africans! The bus broke down, so we had to wait on the side of the pitch black highway for another bus, which had about half as much legroom. Waa waa. We left Nairobi at 7pm. It was supposed to be about twelve hours to Kampala, but it somehow turned into TWENTY! As soon as we left the bus station in Uganda, we found that there's some ridiculously huge stork/vulture/pelican that hangs out on trees smack in the middle of downtown all around the Parliament buildings. Crazy shit! Kristin------->so that was our awesome adventure there but it turns out uganda is super cool. we went to the equator in a matatu and took some pictures. then we stayed in galaxy hotel for a few nights where we saw how crazy the city gets at night. the streets are filled with people and it feels like mardi gras. brooke you asked about the food. hmm there is coke everywhere they are making a fortune off of kenya. everything comes in a glass bottle which you have to return because they reuse them. everything comes with chapati its like a flour pancake bread thing. ugali is what looks like a white brick that is made of maize... its a corn type concoction we havent felt the need to try yet. the passion fruit is kick ass best juice ever. o yea and the main course is usually BBQ goat, havent tried it yet but will let you know how it is. Sean ------> The matatus here are CRAZY! It's more or less East Africa's version of public transportation. If you're white (which myself and Kristin happen to be), you wanna try to agree on some kind of price for the ride when you get in, otherwise, they'll charge you quadruple. What exactly is a matatu, you ask? Picture this: It's like a Nissan version of the Scooby Doo Mystery Machine/Volkswagon rectangle bus/van that has fourteen seats and normally about twenty people crammed inside (not counting the driver or the "conductor" who is basically sitting on someone's lap hanging fully out the window screaming at people on the street in Swahili trying to get more people in.) Tha's a matatu. So far we've spent some two and three hour rides on those. FUN! The equator was super cool. In a little town called Kayabwe. Long story short, Uganda was surprisingly badass. We super considered going to Congo, because I want that passport stamp so bad, but everything we read and heard said it was a super bad idea. Oh well. In Kampala, there's shitloads of little kids that surround you if you're white and they beg you for money. It's crazy. They say God bless you a lot too. Don't think about giving one money unless you have the same amount to give to the other five. Kristin's teacher suggested an awesome idea which worked great. We carried a lot of pens with cool designs on them, and the kids were super happy with them. Some tried to get more! They're even at the border. I've got a feeling we'll see a lot more once we go South into Mozambique and Malawi. Doesn't seem to be too many in Kenya though. When we got back to Nairobi, we were exhausted, because the overnight bus we took was almost entirely on a bumpy dirt road. We slept a few hours in a hotel, and then we went to go see the Jopmo Kenyatta mausoleum. He's a former President with every other street named after him and on almost all of their currency. The guards wouldn't let us to the grave (which is in the Parliamnet grounds), but as we left to cross the street, a guy told us that we had to wait because the President was coming! We saw the whole motorcade! Mwai Kibeki and his whole entourage passed right in fromt of us. Super cool. Then we took a BADASS overnight train to Mombasa which is on the coast. Mombasa turned out to be the exact opposite of Kampala. It used to be the capital before Nairobi, it supposedly has some cool history, and it's right on the beach. We were excited to see it, but it actually turned out to be a real shithole. We took a ferry over the harbor, walked forever in the blistering sun, and caught a matatu to Tiwi Beach. Our hotel was right on the beach and we spent all day in the Indian Ocean! Badass! The water was piss warm! It was great! Just like swimming in an entire ocean of beautiful blue, crystal clear warm urine! There's a phenomenom here called beach boys. Local guys that walk up and down the beach offering to sell you stuff, open coconuts for you, sell you weed, etc... Some were cool, others shady. Yesterday we left, and headed north. Now we're in Malindi. About the middle of the Kenyan coast (halfway between Tanzania and Somalia). Vasco de Gama put a pillar here, I guess. We were thinking about continuing north to Lamu, but we got a great deal on a hotel. For just over twelve bucks a night, we got a double bed, with a balcony right SMACK on the Indian Ocean! Our balcony overlooks the beach. The bar downstairs is open twenty-four hours, and the beer is cheaper than anywhere we've seen in Africa so far. It's cheaper than a bottle of water! There's no hot water or a/c, which is normal. But it definitely works. We chewed on miraa on the way to this internet cafe. It's like an African version of chewing on coca leaves. When low tide is out, the water goes out so far. We walked out today about a mile onto this coral reef, where we saw zebrafish, starfish, and lots of shells. Blah blah blah. Kristin says I rambled! We're gonna go eat something dirt cheap. Hopefully goat or fried monkey brains. Woo hoo!

Kenya, Tanzania, & Obamamania!

Whew! What a crazy place! This is by far the most unorganized/laid back/impossible place to accomplish anything that would normally be easy in the States. Obama here is an even huger deal than back home! Don't ask me how, but we made it up that mountain, and summitted on my 10,000th Day, just as planned! By far thye most difficult thing I've ever done. I wouldn't trade it for a million dollars, but you couldn't pay me a billion dollars to consider doing it again. More than half of the people we were on the way up with didn't make it (some not even halfway). Lots of altitude sickness, splitting headaches, vomiting, etc. etc. They teamed us up with this supercool couple, Karl and Marketa. He's from UK, she's from Czech. They were about the only two other people that made it besides us. Tanzania was badass. As soon as we left Kenya, on the way there, Kristin saw two giraffes on the side of the road! Whenever you're in a super poor place here, every random person is super helpful, usually to the point where it's annoying, to assist you to a bathroom, or walk you to the counter to buy a candy bar, so then they can ask you for a tip. It's crazy. The coffee here is awesome. Oh! And don't ask me how, but I somehow managed to smoke a pack of cigarettes a day the whole way up the mountain. Woo hoo! Kristin------> not only did he smoke a pack a day up the mountain but he also scared the shit out of me once we made it to uhuru peak by telling me my lips were purple and proceeding to ask our guide if this was normal. thank god i was already in a state of delirium and altitude sickness to think about anything but getting back down. never have i ever been so close to something that i could literally see the end of and still so willing to turn right back around... its was definitly quite an accomplishment. since then we have just been trying to get typical daily things done in this country but it always turns out to be a mission that lasts hours because nothing here is up to standards, and this is nairobi! its awesome though and the pictures will make it even better once we find a computer with the memory big enough to upload them in this decade. watched obama's amazing speech! its crazy being somewhere that allows you to actually see what a huge impact america has on the rest of the world. animals seen so far: monkeys (with pics for brooke), impalas, giraffes, and zebras. -------> sean The fireworks shot off at The University of Nairobi for Obama's speech were comparable to 4th of July in America! When we were trying to sleep in the hotel last night, (none of which usually have hot water) we thought we heard a riot! It was actually super happy people rallying down the street chanting Obama. In his speech, when he mentioned Kigolo, the little town where his father is from (about 200 kilometers from here{yes kilometers}) the whole bar we were in was in an uproar. The energy was crazy. OH SHIT! I found out the point of the fly in the toilets in Holland! Karl, the British chap we hiked up the mountain with, explained to me that it's to keep people from pissing on the floor. When I told him about it, he said, "You pissed on it didn't you? You couldn't help yourself, could you?" He was right. When I saw it, I had to piss directly onto it the entire time! It's like a Jedi mind trick. Those dutch are geniuses! No wonder they conquered so much! Flies in toilets! We went to Carnivore the day wot back from the mountain to celebrate. Karl and Marketa came with us. It's rated in the top fifty best restaurants in the world. Like a Brazilian all-you-can-eat churrascaria. Only difference is, in addition to beef, chicken, blah blah, that stuff: They also have ostrich, crocodile, stuff like that! They used to have zebra and giraffe, but then a bunch of whiney animal rights activists put an end to it. It took me two days and a million glares from strangers to realize that smoking cigarettes in public is illegal in Nairobi. It's so weird. You walk into any random hotel, tell them you want to smoke, and they direct you upstairs or to the pool, even if you're not buying anything! Oh God! We finally rid ourself of our giant bag. We paid a local to take us all around the city centre until we actually found someone to buy our sleeping bag and sleeping mat! Even better: We sold it USED for more than we bought it for NEW IN THE US! Funny shit. I didn't feel bad about it. These Kenyans ripped us off on laundry. They charge by the piece. So stupid. So now we're super mobile and down to just our backpacks. We're about to jump on a bus and go fourteen hours to Kampala, Uganda. That only cost us about twenty one dollars each. We should be there in the morning. We're about eight hours ahead of the East Coast US. OH! Before we go. I've got my next tattoo figgered out. Alhamisi, Mwezi wa Kwanza, juna na tano elfu mbili tisa. Something like that. It's Thursday, Januray 15, 2009 spelled out in Swahili. It's my 10,000th day. Kristin says bye. Hopefully we'll have pictures soon. Peace