Victoria Falls to Marrakech

Here is my massive blog since I owe everyone about 2.5 weeks worth so get ready!

Nadine and I arose at 4am from Cape Town to catch our 2 flights that eventually took us to Livingstone, Zambia, host of Victoria Falls. After being back in the developed world for almost 3 weeks we returned to the land of the developing.

We checked into our hostel which was full of British teenagers enjoying their gap years between high school and university. Let’s just say we felt slightly old despite our young age. We decided to take the Booze Cruise on the Zambezi river our first night and to our surprise and delight these British teens joined us for the adventure. Not quite at the stage where they can hold their liquor, the lot of them got pretty inebriated which culminated with one of them smacking their head on the ceiling walking down a flight of stairs and nearly falling all the way down.

The next morning we headed over to Victoria Falls which are twice Niagara in height and about five times in width. They are quite something but because they are so huge when you go to see them you get completely drenched and most people, including us, are forced to rent ponchos. Also due to their size it’s hard to see the whole thing at once unless you take a helicopter or microflight and those are wildly expensive. Either way they are still worth it.

In the afternoon we decided to simply walk around Livingstone and try to get involved with the people a bit. Nothing really exciting happened so I won’t dwell on it.

The next day we were scheduled to fly out of Zimbabwe so we took two cabs to get to the border because they have special cabs that zip back and forth over the bridge, a rather annoying feature. The view of the falls from the bridge though is really amazing and is almost better than within the park. We got to immigration in Zimbabwe and had to get a visa just to go to the airport to fly out of there. We were told all along that it would be $30 but upon arrival we were told that is was a ridiculous $75. Basically we were paying $75 to travel 15 minutes to the airport and fly out. We argued for awhile but felt that if we (and by “we” I mean “I”) continued to fight there would be a good chance we’d end up in a Zimbabwe prison, which is not exactly on my bucket list. Anyways we paid, the flight was delayed an hour and we eventually made it to Jo’burg.

Jo’Burg was really just a stopover but it was the night of Canada’s gold medal win over the US with Crosby scoring in OT which lead me to be really happy and angry at the same time…happy of course because they won, but upset because I missed it.

The following midday we left for Dar Es Salaam. Upon arrival to the airport in Dar we apparently walked into an attack of locusts filling out our entry forms as did everyone else on the plane. It was quite the scene people filling out their forms and flailing around getting rid of these flies. We went to our hotel for the night and woke up early to get to the airport for 720am to leave at 920am. Upon arrival the lady behind the desk said your plane has been cancelled until 530pm. She says and I quote “We told the locals about the time delay, are you a local?” To which I had to restrain myself maybe more than I ever have in my whole life from saying to her “Do I look like a local to you being that I am white and EVERYONE else is black.” We went back to the hotel where they let us stay til the flight at 530pm which we got on and I kid you not the flight was 15 minutes gate to gate!!

We got to Zanzibar and had our hotel in Stone Town which is a really interesting part of Zanzibar with really narrow roads and buildings that have that Middle East feel to them. Our first full day we took a spice tour which is when they take you to a forested area and you walk around smelling and tasting all the different spices that come from trees and leaves and roots. At the end there is a full tasting of all the edible spices and fruits. After we headed to what Zanzibar is known for…the beaches!! They are the typical white sand beaches with tons of bungalows all along for accommodation all with restaurants and bars. Pretty nice! Our GAP trip provided nice rooms though the electricity in Zanzibar has been gone for 3 months so they are all running on expensive generators so at 2am they shut off the fans and I have never sweated like that in my life….seriously.

The next day we went on a snorkeling trip where a rickety boat takes you to the reef which is 2 hours away. The trip their sucked, but the snorkeling was unreal, really unbelievable fish. On that trip I was wearing my Habs hat and this guy started asking me if I was from Montreal. Turned out he was from Vancouver and was travelling Africa. But he also told me that he had been travelling in Guyana for 4 months the year before. He’s probably the first white person I’ve ever met who simply travelled to Guyana not working. We had a fish cookout on one of the beaches before heading back to our lodge.

At night we went to a restaurant called Cinnamon in which as one of their meals you could get a Cinnamon Club Sandwich. I made a bet with one of the girls on the tour that the club would have a hint of cinnamon which to me made perfect sense. Unfortunately I was wrong and lost $10 but the meal was good none the less. We went to another bar afterwards and paid the local Massai people to perform one of their crazy jump dances. Kinda cool and also kinda terrifying. Went for a little slightly inebriated late night dip in the pool at one of the fancy lodges and promptly got kicked out which pretty much ended that night.

The next day we relaxed on the beach and headed back to Stone Town to sleep for the night before heading on the overland part of the journey. We went to a market for dinner which is just hundreds of little stands selling all different types of food. It’s all lit up and is pretty cool to see.

The next morning we took the two hour ferry ride to Dar. They showed movies which was sweet except they started off with the second Fantastic Four movie from the halfway point finished that one and put in Spiderman from the beginning so basically we watched two halves of two separate movies. And there were subtitles in really terrible English from movies that were playing in English. Couldn’t quite figure that one out. After the ferry we embarked on a 10.5 hour overland journey to Moshi in the GAP truck which I’m pretty sure has no shock absorbers so needless to say you are bumping up and down pretty hard. It’s actually kinda funny. We made it to the campsite around 830 and pretty much passed out immediately after dinner.

The next day we made it to Arusha around midday which is where they signed the “Peace Accords” for Rwanda in 1993 prior to the genocide. The campsite was pretty cool as there was a Massai museum which is the local culture there and there is a snake and amphibian/reptile park within and I got to hold a snake for a little while. So did Nadine but I don’t think she thought it was as cool as I did.

The following morning we were picked up in 4x4s and we made our way to the Serengeti. We passed by the Ngorogoro Crater Rim which we would return to the following evening. The Serengeti may have been my favourite part of the travelling portion of our time away. We were able to see all of the Big 5 which includes Elephants, Lions, Leopards, Buffaloes, and Rhinos (every time I see a Rhino I think of Bebop from the Ninja Turtles…anyone?!?). We saw Simba’s Rock from the Lion King though I think they made that up after the movie, but regardless. The end of the first day our leader, who was in the truck with us, decided he wanted to start having a few drinks. So we “uncorked” his box wine, fashioned a glass out of the bottom of a water bottle, and Nadine made a straw out of an old pen because it was very bumpy and you would cut your lip of you tried to drink from the glass directly (as I can attest to). Needless to say that night got a little out of hand.

The crater rim was actually as cool as Serengeti because it’s just this massive land mass that is literally a crater from an exploded volcano millions of years ago. It has tons of the animals as well and it’s the only place you can find the rhinos.

We headed back to Arusha for our last evening before departing for Kenya the following day. After spending a whopping 2 hours at the border with our group as they handwrote each and every visa (ridiculous!) we made our way to Nairobi. That drive was 7 hours, followed by an 8 hour wait for the overnight flight to London, then an hour drive across town to a different London airport, than a five hour wait for our three hour flight to Marrakech, Morocco (36 hours in total from Arusha to Morocco!).

Marrakech is an interesting city as there is a massive market in the Medina part of the town which is really quite something. Hundreds upon hundreds of shops, restaurants, etc. line this biblical looking city. We had dinner there our first night and then fell asleep due to complete exhaustion.

Saturday we went to the Saadien Tombs which were pretty neat. However we found this shop that sold hop on hop off bus tours tickets. We bought a 48 hour pass from this woman and went to the stop after the tomb. We waited for 35 minutes for the bus to come before we returned to find out what was going on. After some arguing (obviously coming mostly from me) she told me that the bus didn’t run on Saturdays to which I replied why the hell didn’t you tell me that in the first place and why would you sell me this ticket!! Needless to say we got our money back. (oh and by the way turns out the tour company has been out of business since last week, I think they may have forgotten to tell that woman). We checked out the Royal Palace afterwards before heading back for some rest and then dinner.

Today we checked out the Marrakech Museum (lots of art), the large Koranic School followed by one of the baths. Then after a ludicrous search for another old palace we checked that out as well (nothing is labeled in Marrakech making it extremely frustrating to find anything and we all know how well I deal with frustration ). We then had lunch and walked for an hour to these gardens which have trees from the 7th century. Not overly pleasing on the eyes but a large local hangout.

Anyways that’s it for now and I’ll probably write one more blog entry from Casablanca before we return on Friday!!