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.