VICTORIA FALLS & BACK TO SOUTH AFRICA
Livingstone & Cape Town

There's nothing like squandering the precious time after an exciting event where people are actually interested in your trip details and then forcing them to read about it after they've lost any ounce of interest. So here you go!! (I'll try to make it quick)

I thought I'd make it quick and here I go starting with a small detail, but I have to say the 1.5 hour plane trip between Johannesburg and Victoria Falls is utterly delightful (Victoria Falls is on the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe for all of you challenged by African geography. I'd point and laugh at you but today I had to look at a map to distinguish Vermont from New Hampshire, so you know-glass houses and all). See look how happy we are:


Even though the trip is the same amount of time for a flight from say Raleigh to Boston where you're lucky if they let you get up to use the bathroom, on British Airways they actually give you food. And it was tasty!! And you top it all off with a view of Victoria Falls from the air. What could be better?


Approximately 15 minutes after arriving at the hotel in Victoria Falls, Ime strolls up to Emma and me and says he booked us (him and me-Emma's no fool) to go bungi jumping in about 45 minutes. Now to be fair, I had already told him I'd do it but I was like "can a girl get a shower first?" Apparently not.



We made our way down to the bridge that you jump off of and that joins Zambia and Zimbabwe. Ime was a champ but as we later found out it was all false confidence. I cannot tell a lie--I was about to pee in my pants. This is about how sure I was:


Clearly Ime's false confidence was working just fine.





Here we are having survived our death-defying jump. I think it's safe to say we were both on a pretty big high. This jump was so scary that I was having nightmares the evening AFTER we jumped.









The next day we had our "Day of Adrenaline"--activities not quite as horrifying as bungi jumping, but nauseating nonetheless. Here is the greatest picture of Emma you will ever see. If possible try and enlarge it to get a really good look at her face.



This was on the Gorge Swing and shortly after this picture was snapped, Emma let out a scream so guttural, so earnest, and so utterly from the depths of her soul that the next time anyone hears it she will be birthing a child.





After two days of adventure, we finally made it to the actual Falls and they're just as amazing as you'd expect them to be. Even in the dry season. I could torture you all with the multitudes of pictures Ime made us take but I'll just give you this nice one of all three of us.


Interestingly enough, the guys who took this picture were the same ones we overheard calling our hotel a "glorified motel." Now maybe we're all just a bunch of yokels but we found the hotel lovely. What a couple of jerks. But they take a damn fine picture.




After four days, we headed back to South Africa and the gorgeous Cape Town. Weirdly, the area we stayed in, which was right on the beach, looked exactly like South Beach. I half expected Diddy to show up and either shoot a video or have a shoot-out. We took multiple tours to the Cape of Good Hope, Cape Point, Hermanus, etc. Here's what you need to know about that--the tip of Africa is very very windy. In preparation you should just shave your head and save yourself hours of detangling later. Our tour guide, Jonathan, was hilarious for many reasons, but mostly for sneaking us into tourist spots so we didn't have to pay the fees (which forever endeared him to Emma) and, when speaking about crime in Cape Town, saying "murder--that's life."

Alas, it was my last night so we decided to forgo the frozen pizzas and actually pony up the money for a real dinner. After driving around for 20 minutes trying to find a specific curry place (Jonathan's last parting gift-a restaurant that doesn't exist) we settled on this place and chowed down. The naan was yummy.



And so we said good-bye to Africa and hello to the US.

Emma, am I missing anything good?