QUOTE BOOK! (the tame, censored version)

It has been a while since I’ve posted the silly quotes here and here that we’ve collectively recorded (and contributed to) on our trip and there has been an influx of them lately with the new guys. Whilst most of them are sadly too rude to be published, there are still a few good ones in here.

“The inevitable just happened. Pee just landed on my face.” – A certain person who probably doesn’t want to be named after pee splashback incident that Kristy said would happen to us all at some stage

“I don’t mind bugs at all…only when they bite me or try to *censored* me.” – Lee on road to Luanda with tse-tse fly plague – the flies were trying to get into every crevice

“What do you call a collective group of loose cannons? A ship.” – Dan, Swakopmund, Gruner Kranz, Friday night. Say no more.

“That’s a true friend right there. He seasons your noodle.” – Andrea to Ian when Dan gave him some dry 2 minute noodles but ensured to season them first

“Oh wow! He’s quite attractive for a bald man.” – Karen re: her brother in law’s photo in a Fireman’s calendar, oblivious she was sitting next to Nev

“He’d be great for someone who wants a caveman who drinks a lot and loses his thongs.” – Kristy on Nev’s ideal woman

“They aim so high, but settle for so low.” – Amy about the young boys on the trip re: women

“Nev’s a braver man than I. Except I’m not a man...” – my message to Nev on his bungee jumping video

“It was myself and another girl.” – Nev talking to Dom about a trip he went on to which Dom responded “You’re not a girl.”

“I don’t even know why I began to tell that story.” – Nev to Dom, forgetting the ending to his story. “To show your ignorance.” – Dom’s response to Nev

Me “I was bitten by a monkey.”  Tom “And you didn’t get AIDS?”

“It’s probably a step up from the last one.” – Tom to himself on a dog humping his leg

“We may be disease-ridden but we’re good for a laugh.” – Ian in response to Kristy saying what a fun/crazy bunch we are now

“What are these people from Rome called again? Romanians?” – Raf when talking about the TV series, Rome

Kristy “Tom, have you ever been tasered?” Tom “Not yet.”

Kristy re: private girls’ schools “Too many *censored – female body parts* in one room.” Tom “Is that even possible?”

“You haggis eating twat.” – Bruce to Ron re: thinking someone stole his shoes and then finding them in the room where he left them

Me “Since when did it become acceptable to wear pyjama pants to a restaurant?” Josh “About three months ago.” – Me when wearing PJs over shorts to St Elmo’s restaurant in Harare

“You’ve got a great habit of cutting a short story long.” – Bruce to Lee

Ron “Apparently if everybody in China jumped up and down at the same time it’d shake the world.” Amy “That’s why we want them all to be zen and worship Buddha.”

“Josh’s garden parties will never the same because he’ll just peel off 3 feet from the nearest guest and have a pee.” – Andrea

Karen “What’s that look about?” re: Josh making silly face in a drunk night photo. Josh “I don’t know but I really wish I hadn’t shaved as I thought that was Andrea.”

How to upsell

The answer is simple. Don’t have change.

Zimbabwe adopted the US dollar, but they only have dollar notes (including $2 notes!) and above, no change. At least not in US currency. You can use South Africa’s Rand or Botswana’s Pula but they won’t accept Namibian Dollars. Both Pula and Rand are counted on the exchange rate of 10:1 which is worse than the normal rate of 8:1, but since the Pula is weaker than the Rand, it works out better to use Pula.

If you need change at a supermarket, here’s what you can get:

50 cents = 5 Rand/Pula or a box of Tic Tacs

40 cents = 4 Rand/Pula or a disposable razor

30 cents = 3 Rand/Pula

20 cents = 2 Rand/Pula or a pen or a Fizzer

10 cents = 1 Rand/Pula or 1 piece of bubblegum

Bear in mind that 99% of the time they do not have Rand or Pula for change so you are more than likely going to end up with a few pens or lollies or you could get whatever you want for the remaining change value at the counter. We heard that one local gets tomatoes to the exact value. But most tend to get a receipt with their change marked on it, which they can put towards their next purchase at a ‘TM supermarket’, but then most people lose it or it tends to fade.

At a Chinese takeout, we found containers of lollies to the value of 10, 25, 50 and 75 cents and you take the lollies from the particular container you need to make up your change.

What works much better though is their bottle deposit system. Bottles are usually worth 20% of the value of the drink, for example Sparletta (soft drink bottles) are 20 cents and 500ml bottles of beer are 40 cents. It doesn’t matter where you buy the bottle from, you take it back to the supermarket and they will cash you out – well when they have cash otherwise it’ll be pens or sweets as mentioned above. The result – no-one throws bottles away – a fantastic recycling initiative.

I’m wondering why they stopped giving out the larger refund amounts except for South Australia in Australia?

Zim Ruins

The Great Zimbabwe Ruins, said to be Africa’s second largest pre-historic structure after the Egyptian pyramids, is made up of the Hill Complex, the Valley Structures and the Great Enclosure. It was once a religious and political capital city.

Our guide told us that Zimbabwe means ‘the big house of stone’, apt given this huge maze of dry stone walls. The structures were built between the 13^th to 17^th centuries and were constructed without any cement. During excavation, they found eight layers of stone work, meaning there were eight Kings during this time.

The Hill Complex was the most fascinating. We walked up the steep Ancient Path through a narrow blood passage,

named appropriately as enemies that came through it would be killed by falling rocks or with spears and their blood would stain the walls. There was an even narrower passage, however, that the King would use to disappear mysteriously from his spot atop the ritual area.

All of us were waiting to see Garrett try and squeeze through the secret passage but he made it!

King of Beasts

The African lion, King of Beasts and one of the Big 5, is under threat. In 1975, over 200,000 lions roamed the African continent. By 2002, this had declined sharply to around 23,000 to 39,000 – an 80-90% decline in the last 30 years, leading to it being placed on the IUCN list of vulnerable species.

African Lion and Environmental Research Trust (ALERT) was founded in 2005 at Antelope Park, ‘Zimbabwe’s Premier Private Wildlife Park’ set in over 3,000 acres of open savannah grassland,  in order to facilitate and promote sound conservation and management plans for the African lion in consultation with governments, wildlife authorities and communities. They release wild-born offspring from rehabilitation captive-bred lions.

Antelope Park should really be called Lion Park (except that another ‘Lion Park’ already exists) as the main attraction here is the lions. From the campsite, you can even hear the lions growling in their enclosure at night and in the early morning.

In just over two days, I went to the night lion stalk, lion research ‘Stage 2’ (living in the wild), lion feeding, lion walk, cub feeding, lion breeding, and game park.

Night lion stalking

At 6pm, we piled into two 4WDs, packed like sardines, four to a row. Amy and I were in the back row with a tracker either side of us. They jumped off only briefly at the musky lion enclosures, amidst a series of growls and ‘humpfing’ noises, to release the four lions that would be coming on the night stalk. After the trackers jumped back in and we were all tucked up under the provided blankets, we headed off in the park with the lions, using a red light to find prey. Most animals cannot detect the red light and hence the element of surprise is not lost.

The trackers were whistling and calling out ‘Kom on, kom!’ to the lions, but they really seemed to be on their own schedule, wandering where and when they pleased and lying down every so often. The first animal we came across was a hare and one of the lions attempted to chase it but it bounded off too quickly. We came across several impala but they also ran away very quickly. All of us were hoping the lions would catch something but the closest they got to catching was a civet. The civet was obliviously digging around the edges of a burrow whilst being stalked for the night’s meal (or more likely a snack), but as soon as it realised two lions had gone in for the kill, it disappeared into the safety of the burrow. Although we didn’t see a kill, it was still exciting watching the lions hunt at night.

Even when the lion stalk was over, the lions were still on their own schedule. None of them wanted to return to their enclosure and it took the trackers an extra half hour or so to round them up and lock the gate firmly behind them.

Lion research Stage 2

Antelope Park follows four stages of lion conservation from Stage 1 when they take them in and interact with them to Stage 4 when they release them into the wild.

Stage 2 is lions living in 500 acre enclosure with zebra and impala, the cubs of which grow up in an essentially wild environment with no human contact.

Most of our group was interested in the Stage 2 research but the vehicle could only fit four so they ran morning and afternoon trips for us over the two days we were here. A videographer creating a doco for ‘Animal Planet’ came out with three of us at a time.

Dom, Chris and I were the first group, and we piled in to the back of a bakkie. It was covered with a metal cage that had just enough room at the top for all four of us to poke the top half of our bodies through, though any bumpy driving would send us (and our cameras) lurching into each other.

We came across the zebra first though there were only four left. The lions have developed a preference for zebra, leaving the impala alone for the most part. We joked that the impala would have a great life in this enclosure and pronk around freely.

When we found the pride, they were half-heartedly chasing a confusion of guineafowl, which flew off up into a tree. The cubs, full of energy in the morning, were playing around with each other.

The pride had eaten several days ago and we were hoping they might be ready to make a kill. At one point, a couple of them attempted to catch one of the four remaining zebra but both the zebras and impalas detected their presence, barked in alarm and ran away. The lions then succumbed to the warming sun and lazed around, taking consolation in gnawing on the hoof of an old zebra kill.

They finally made a kill on the last night we were there, though sadly none of our group saw it. And then there were three…

Lion feeding

The lion feeding was intense.

We were dropped off outside one of the lion enclosures into which a huge, stinking pile of offal, hooves and tails had just been dumped. The hungry lions were in an adjoining cage, pacing up and down, waiting to be released.

Once we took up our positions, lying on our stomachs right next to the fence, the gate was opened and seven male lions came racing towards us in bounds, diving onto the pile and landing about 20 centimetres away from our faces.

Photo courtesy of Raf

Flecks of dirt and offal sprayed onto us and I cowardly jumped up and back from the thin wire fence separating us from the crazed lions. They were in a battle for dominance as well as a feeding frenzy, and were snarling viciously at each other, defending their part of the pile. The researchers find it vital to observe the lions’ dominance behaviour and then use the most dominant to breed. Three male lions had settled on top of the pile, leaving the less dominant ones to sneak off with a piece of intestine into a quiet corner or to go hungry for now and wait for the spoils.

The three lions were munching noisily on the flesh, crunching the bones between their teeth. I mustered up the courage to lie back down again, just 20cm from the dominant male’s powerful jaws and could even smell his foul breath. Shaun did the same and it locked eyes with him for about 20 seconds, nearly making him soil his pants!

Lion walk

At 6.15am, a group of us went on a walk through the bush with Laili and Laiwa, two 17 month old lions. As it was morning, they were frisky and were more interested in playing around with each other than posing with us for photos.

When they walked alongside us, we were told to be confident and to give them a firm pat. We were also not allowed to run, crouch down or stray from the group, otherwise they might see us as prey. We were allowed, however, to pick up and hold their tail whilst walking beside them! I was joking around trying to steer one of them by the tail, but it ended up taking me off into the bush on its own agenda! We all had to carry sticks which we were only allowed to use as a warning tap if they turned on us but luckily none of us needed to use them.

The guides led the lions onto a termite mound and we all took turns of kneeling down on one knee behind them – they told us it was the most stable pose and would enable us to get back quickly on our feet should we need to.

Lee ran down the termite mound and for a second the lions reacted as though she were prey. Fortunately the guides managed to distract them with the tip of their sticks. At the end, one climbed up a tree and we posed for shots underneath it. This time I posed hesitantly, not being entirely comfortable turning my back on a lion that was in a tree above my head.

Cub feeding

We walked over to the cub’s cage where the volunteers had hidden chunks of meat on the ground and in trees in an attempt to initiate their instinctive scavenging behaviour. Penya was born in Zim on 24/02/11 and Paza was born in South Africa on 01/03/11, making them both 15 months old. This feeding was different to the last one as we actually went into the cage with them this time. Penya and Paza found the hunks of meat on the ground first and then spent a while trying to detect the pieces in the trees and work out how to get to them. They were hanging off the trees by their claws at one stage which was quite a funny sight. At one point, one of them came towards me and I hid behind the guide! I was also keen to get the hell out of the cage once they’d found and eaten all their chunks of meat as they again came wandering towards us.

Lion breeding

We drove back to the enclosure where the lion feeding was and saw only a tail, a hind leg, and a few intestines left. There was also a mass of black and white feathers which we found out was the carcass of a crow that had been stupid enough to pick at the spoils but then became another meal.

At the surrounding lion enclosures, Colin, our guide, told us all about the 98 lions here and the breeding program at Antelope Park. He also told us that lions mate for half a minute every 10-15 minutes for three days. The male’s penis has barbs on it so it’s very painful for the female and it’s not surprising then that she chases him off after every half a minute, tries to bite him and then lies on her back with a leg in the air to aid fertilisation.

They also have a separate cage far away from the others with Big Boy, Amy and Mel who sadly have FIV – feline AIDS, spread by saliva and potentially even sneezing. They are currently using them to take regular blood and stool samples from in an attempt to further their knowledge on the disease and hopefully develop a cure for it.

Game drive

This is definitely the funniest game drive I have ever been on. The guide was not only incredibly informative but also incredibly funny. And the highlight was when Shaun was allowed to get out of the vehicle and chase the giraffe on foot to see how they run.

Walking with rhinos

Thirteen of us decided to go on a rhino walk in Rhodes Matobos National Park about an hour away from Bulawayo. As we were about to leave, Norman, our guide, told us he couldn’t guarantee rhino sightings as they are pretty difficult to find. We were disappointed as it was quite an expensive full day trip and the rhino walk was the main reason I was going.

We spent the morning learning about plants and ended up passing through farmland so we amused ourselves by looking out for the ‘Domesticated 5’ (something we made up to pass the time, similar to the ‘Big 5’ but we decided it contains cows, goats, dogs, chickens and the elusive sheep!) Clearly we didn’t see any sheep hence why we likened it to the elusive leopard.

We climbed up a steep rocky outcrop to an overhanging rock filled with Bushman rock art – the highlight was a delicately painted termite with clear wings.

After lunch by a bilharzia-ridden lake,

we were back on the search for rhino. We got out at many different viewpoints but saw nothing. In the late afternoon, just as we were losing hope of ever seeing any rhino, we got out of our vehicle, walked through the bush and found five rhinos in front of us.

The first thing that I noticed was that they have been dehorned

and later Norman told us it was done between September and November 2010 in an attempt to deter poachers but as per my rhino poaching post, sadly poachers still slaughter dehorned rhinos for the small stump that remains. Poaching was at its peak here in 2010/11

and the black and white rhino skeletons we saw in the park are testament to that. The black rhino died of natural causes but its horn disappeared ‘mysteriously’. The white rhino, however, was poached – it had AK-47 bullets riddled through its skull and saw marks on the bone where its horn would have been hacked off whilst it was still alive.

These five white rhinos were quite happily munching on grass

and we got closer and closer until we were about 20 metres from them. ‘Swazi’, one of the males who had evaded capture for several months being one of the last to be dehorned, sat down in front us – a sign he was comfortable despite being aware of our presence.

At one point, however, he stood up

and some of us (myself included) freaked out a little but he didn’t start coming towards us. Nonetheless we backed away giving the rhinos their space. It was pretty incredible being so close to them and I really hope future generations will have a chance to witness these beautiful creatures.

The scariest thing I have ever done

Here I was, feet bound, shuffling towards the edge of a bungee platform, absolutely petrified with my heart palpitating, and my head wondering why I had decided to jump off a fully-functioning bridge.

We were at Victoria Falls, World Heritage Listed and otherwise known as ‘Musi-oa-tunya’ or ‘The smoke that thunders’. The falls are 1.7km wide, 108 metres high and reach their peak flow between March and May when the average volume of water rolling over the lip of the cataract is approximately 550,000 cubic metres per minute. As a point of comparison, Khone Falls in Laos is the widest at 10.8km, Angel Falls in Venezuela is the highest at 807 metres and Iguaçu Falls in South America has the greatest volume at 55 million litres per second.

The day started out serenely enough with a 15 minute helicopter flight over the falls.

The falls were almost at maximum volume so the spray coming off them was impressive.

As we circled around the falls, it was interesting to see the zigzag of the gorges and I later learnt that the site of Vic Falls has moved upstream eight times leaving that series of gorges on the way to the present site.

The day then ramped up in excitement with our ‘half day adrenaline’ package consisting of the flying fox, ziplining and two gorge swings.

The flying fox is essentially a horizontal cable that runs across the gorge – you run and jump off a platform and with a clip attached to the harness on your back, fly over the gorge like a bird. Dom took it perhaps a little too literally by flapping his arms up and down and the staff mentioned they’d never seen anyone do that before. Dom and Nev were both naturals and definitely have the knack for jumping off things. Karen held onto the straps which kept her in a more upright position. And I was somewhere in between, holding the straps initially but then letting go one arm at a time and eventually flying like a bird. The view of the gorge on the way back to the platform was spectacular – the river was rushing through below me and an eagle was circling above.

The zipline sent me rushing down into the gorge via a clip attached to the front of my harness and sent me into fits of laughter.

Karen was particularly scared on this one and screamed loudly the entire way down, stopping only to draw breath and then scream again with the full force of her lungs!

The gorge swing was by far the scariest of the three. I was pretty nervous walking up to the edge of the platform and was leaning away from it. The first gorge swing I decided to do as a handstand where you put your hands on the edge of the platform and then someone lifts your legs up while you keep your body straight. Then you get yanked over the edge of the platform. I flipped and plummeted towards the water before swinging back up laughing hysterically and watching the eagle soar overhead. I had a few minutes break so my heart could stop pounding so hard and then got back up on the platform again. I decided to go backwards with my arms crossed over my chest. I was pretty terrified this time and got flipped around, thinking at one point that my leg was going to get twisted in the rope but managing to untangle myself before swinging back up.

As soon as I’d finished, Nev, Andrea, Dom, Josh and I were driven to the Zim/Zam border where we flashed our passports without getting stamped out of the country. As we approached the bridge that lies between the two borders a fine layer of spray from the falls landed on us, quite refreshing in the hot midday sun. Once we were numbered and weighed, we waited our turn in the middle of the bridge. Andrea jumped first though she needed a second countdown from 5 as she didn’t jump the first time ‘round. She screamed the entire way down. Josh jumped next on the count of 3. Dom swan dived off the platform and looked like a natural. Then it was my turn.

So there I was, absolutely petrified, feet bound in thick layers of pink towels, weak at the knees, toes shuffling reluctantly towards the edge of the bungee platform, and wondering why I’m jumping off a perfectly functional bridge.

I’m 30 and I’ve never bungee jumped before, perhaps as I’ve always been told never to bungee as it’s too dangerous. Add to that the recent accident at the same bridge that I’m about to jump off and it’s fair to state that I am crazy. One of the bungee prep guys spent 10 minutes talking to me and trying to convince me that I really wanted to jump off the bridge and that was because I am crazy…  I may well be and I had all the support I could need from Nev and the growing crowd, but I still didn’t want to jump off the bridge. I found myself edging away from the platform instead of towards it, and everything in my head told me not to jump. I gave up. I had failed. I was a complete chicken.

It took me another 10 minutes (and Nev jumping like a natural in between) to talk myself into giving it another go and just doing it. I think I needed that time to compose myself and get over (most of) my nerves. The second time my feet were bound, I had to switch off all the negative thoughts in my head and took more comfort in the prep guy’s words that I was 100% safe. I felt his hand placed gently on my back

and I think gravity took over and I must’ve just fallen (very ungracefully) off the bridge. It’s probably safe to say I didn’t jump – I just bungeed…

I closed my eyes, was too terrified to scream and don’t remember much apart from rebounding at the bottom back high into the air.

I was then alarmed when I fell again, but after several bounces found the humour in it and began to laugh uncontrollably. I then started to spin around and around and only stopped when a guy lowered himself down and clipped me onto a safety rope before hoisting me back up onto the gantry.

My flipflops had been lowered down to it via a rope (much earlier!) and then I walked out over it which was also a little nerve-wrecking as you could see the gorge below. I felt relieved coming back onto the solid bridge and rejoining my friends.

Other people that jumped before us had been raving about how incredible it was to jump through the rainbow. But all of that beauty was lost on me as I was too terrified.

I certainly was not brave but at least I have now bungeed and probably never need to do it again. I thanked the prep-guy profusely and tipped him generously, as I wouldn’t have been able to do it without him.

It took a while to calm down after the jam-packed adrenaline-filled day, and our group sundowner cruise on the Zambezi with free-flowing beer, wine and spirits was the perfect end to a crazy day.

The following day I came back to explore the falls on solid ground. A group of us started out on the Zim side and walked up to Devil’s Cataract where we were amazed by the volume of water gushing down the falls.

We took photos hesitantly and put our cameras away when the spray became a little too heavy – only my little waterproof camera was suitable for taking pics. On the walk up to Danger Point we began to get more and more drenched

and I later had to pay for lunch with water-logged US dollar bills (though they said they’re used to it). From Danger Point, we walked to a lookout over the bridge which had another rainbow under it.

Lee and I then continued on to the Zam side as she and I were the only ones who had second passports – all of us had sent our first passports to our home countries to get Ethiopian visas. This time we got stamped out of Zim and as we crossed the bridge I’d spent so much time on yesterday, I looked over the edge and was still just as petrified thinking about the jump!

The Zam side of the falls

was even wetter than Zim so we rented double-layered raincoats and braved the drenching spray. Some visitors were singing melodiously and dancing in the spray,

others were sliding barefoot across the (smaller) bridge to Livingstone Island.

On the walk back, there was a double rainbow on the other side of the bungee bridge. And now finally, I could appreciate its beauty.