The 'burg

If you've just logged on and started reading here, I've written up three weeks worth of stories in one go, in 4 separate posts - so scroll down to read them in order and finish with this one.

I'm in Johannesburg at the moment. First thing I did when I got here is track down some Kosher meat - I was living as a veggie for 3 weeks and not liking it! Stumbled upon a deli run by a proper yiddishe couple, straight out of a cartoon.

I spent a day at the Apartheid museum and in Soweto (the township where Mandela lived, and a lot of rebellion started). It was an amazing day, the museum was really thought-provoking, and the township eye-opening. We went into the poorest part of the township, where tens of thousands of people live in small corrugated metal shacks, with no electricity or water, about seven people living in a space smaller than a regular bedroom in the UK. At lunchtime, I picked up a newspaper - the front page was about a school where 131 kids were Aids orphans, and inside the paper were loads of stories about sexual abuse, poverty, and crime.

Despite all this, Jo'burg doesn't feel depressing, and I really like the city. To be fair, I haven't seen much of it, and I've stayed away from the dangerous parts. But there is a real feeling of a city that is moving (hopefully getting better), and even the people in the shacks were full of positivity and hope. I enjoy being in a city where the things people worry about are things that really matter.

I'm travelling on my own now, which is incredibly scary and exciting all at once. Tomorrow I go to Durban, where I plan to learn surfing. Then to Sodwana Bay, one of the top diving sites in the world, and on to Swaziland, a small country where hopefully I'll watch the festival when all the teenage girls dance in front of the king with reeds they've collected, for him to pick his next wife.

Row, row, row your boat...

Last stop on the truck tour was Victoria Falls, on the Zambia / Zimbabwe border. The lowlight of Zimbabwe (which seems to be a desparate country, thanks in a big way to Mugabe) was having my day bag stolen, with expensive things like my digital camera, ipod, phone, and more annoyingly things like my journal and addresses (please send me your phone number agin - I've lost them all). It was partly my own stupid fault - I forgot about it and left it lying around in the campsite - but the campsite is walled and has security so it was either a staff member or tourist.

The perfect antidote though, was a day of white water rafting on the mighty Zambezi river with some incredibly huge rapids. It was one of the most fun things I've ever done, even if I thought I was going to die both times the boat got flipped (towards the end we seemed to have the boat under control and stopped getting flipped, which helped!). The scenery was awesome - the river runs through a huge gorge. The climb back out at the end wasn't so fun - the equivalent of a 90 storey building. That was the end of the organised tour (met some cool people - big shout out to y'all), and I hopped on the plane to Johannesburg, South Africa.

Attack of the Elephants

The highlight in Zambia was in South Lwangwa National Park. First I have to explain that I was travelling on a huge truck (more like a lorry) with about 20 other tourists, staying in campsites. The campsite in South Lwangwa was quite special - in that it was right next to the river used by lots of animals, so elephants and monkeys were a regular sight in and around the campsite, and hippos could be heard wandering through at night, honking (if you see Jenny ask her to do an impression).

We had to take a few precautions - not getting too close to the elephants, being careful wandering around at night, and not keeping food in the tents otherwise they'd get ripped open. Of course, I got a bit eager taking a photo of a big elephant, and it made a move to charge me. Luckily it changed its mind, otherwise I could be sporting a pair of lovely tusk holes.

That evening, the campsite was pretty deserted - most people were on a night safari and the monkeys had moved in to eat any rubbish lying around. I was sitting by the truck reading, while a few of the others were making dinner. Suddenly I heard the tour guide going "Move away! Move away!' and turned around to see a HUGE elephant, which had snuck round the truck in silence, and was right behind the others. We backed off and made loads of noise to scare it, but it ignored us and went straight for the open food locker on the side of the truck. It had smelled something it wanted, and dragged out big crates of food onto the ground with its trunk, until it got to its target - a huge watermelon at the back of the locker which it stuffed in its gob and swallowed whole, with some difficulty.

It finally ran off when the guide bravely crept round and started the engine. There was only one photo of the episode, on my camera. Unfortunately, I no longer have it - read on...

And All Things Nice

OK, I know I've been rubbish at kepping this up to date. My excuses are: expensive / slow internet connections, laziness, and just having too much darned fun!

Where was I? Zanzibar. After a day of deep sea fishing which involved catching no fish but lots of throwing up on the rocky seas (not by me), we drove through Tanzania to get to Lake Malawi, which has great beaches and is more like a sea than a lake. Did a lot of intense chilling, and became a bit of a pro at volleyball (well, I managed to keep the ball in a few times).

The highlight for me was a great bit of haggling. We stopped at a small roadside market, and although I had very little money I fell in love with a beatiful carved table, with backgammon inlaid on one side and bao (a popular African game) on the other. He wanted 8500 Kwecha (about 35 quid - a similar table would cost about 100 in John Lewis), I didn't have enough, and the games began. After a long tete-a-tete I finally got it for about £10, plus my watch. I'd got the watch for free so it didn't bother me that much, but I keep looking at my wrist now and never know the time! Funnily enough, it hasn't seemed to affect my punctuality much...

Having bought a Bao table, I had to learn to play, under the tutelage of the stall keeper who called himself 'Sugar and Spice'. He taught me three versions: the girls' game, the boys' game and the mans' game (in order of difficulty). I was well chuffed as I beat him at the boys' and mens' games! Sugar & Spice's story was interesting - he was 19, and made enough money working the tourist market during the holidays to go to boarding school. At $60 a term, most children in Malawi can't afford this - the average income is $170 per year. He was saving hard to go to college to be a journalist - at 200 quid a year.

Anyway, onto Zambia... Which deserves a whole new post...

Hakuna Matata

They actually say that in Eastern Africa. It's Swahili (for Disney fans, Rafiki means friend and Simba means lion!). I'm writing this a few metres from the white sands and crystal clear water of the beach in Zanzibar, an island off the coast of Tanzania. If that hasn't made you jealous yet, I've just finished three days of safari, where I saw (among other things): zebras, giraffes, wildebeest, hippos, jackals, hyenas, leopards (one was licking its paws, having just been chased off a kill by two lions), elephants, cheetas, lions (including cubs). The highlight was seeing a male ostrich doing a crazy flapping mating ritual dance before mating (had us in hysterics!).

Also saw a Masai tribal village which was interesting but also a bit depressing - we paid to get in and it was like a zoo. They had a "school' at the back which even looked like a cage, and the kids were doing nothing until tourists went past when they would start reciting 1 to 40 in English. Don't think they even understood the words, but there was a money box for 'donations'.

Been taking lots of pictures with my old school SLR, but can't get them developed. Everything is manual and there's lots to remember, so I think I keep messing up - I think I'll have missed out on lots of pictures. Got some with my digital though, which I've uploaded the best of - click on the link on the right of this page.

There's so much to tell, this is just a snapshot. Hope you're all having good summers - email me or leave comments here. But the beach is calling so that's all from me for now.