Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe

Written by Charles January 3, 2013

We flew in from Johannesburg to Victoria Falls, and while we were on approach for landing, we saw that there were no man-made objects until the fence that surrounded the runway.  Victoria Falls is a town in Zimbabwe; it is also a massive set of waterfalls that dumps 2 times the amount of water than in Niagara Falls and is twice as high.  On the ride to the hotel, we saw baboons and warthogs wandering around the streets and in front of people’s houses.  We thought that it was strange to see all the African animals in front of us, and people weren’t giving them a second thought.  We got to the hotel, and the hotel staff told us not to leave our windows open, or else the baboons would take our stuff!

The rest of the afternoon we went on a water cruise of the Zambezi River, and we saw hippos, but they only looked like logs in the water.  We also kept our eyes out for other animals, but we only saw other humans.  In the morning we first took a helicopter ride over the falls.  The spray from the waterfalls came up so high it went past our helicopter, which was1,000 feet above the top of the canyon.  My brother and my dad saw elephants, but I only saw humans.  From up there I saw that the river flowed right into a huge cut in the ground and then flowed in a zigzag shape away into the distance.  It sort of looked like the Grand Canyon, only less orange. 

After the helicopter ride, we drove to a tribal village.  There were lots of families of tribes people that live in roughly the same area.  Most of the people were at church, but the tribe leader was there to greet us. There were 3 kids aged 3, 5, and 7 who also greeted us.  The tribe’s leader talked to us for 30 minutes before we started to walk around their homestead.  Everyone there was wearing modern clothes, but they were ripped and dirty.  They didn’t wear shoes, but they had the thatched roof- circular clay/mud houses that you think of when you think African Village.  We let the small kids play with our cameras, and they went photo crazy.  After that we gave them muffins, and we had to leave. 

We next went to an orphanage and saw more African kids.  They went crazy with us and went photo crazy again.  They sang and danced for us in their small house.  There were 70 kids in a house with a leaky roof and bad electricity.  The house had 3 bedrooms with 10 kids staying there full time, but the 60 others came only for the days.  After the orphanage, we did school for the afternoon. 

That evening we went to the boma.  The boma is a place where you have dinner, and then you play drums and dance.  While we were playing the drums, our hands felt like nothing and my dad’s had bruises on them.  After that everyone danced, except for William, who suddenly disappeared. 

In the next morning we walked along the path overlooking the falls.  It was very misty, and it was hard to take pictures.  We saw more monkeys who looked like they wanted our ponchos.  At one point there was so much mist from the waterfalls, it started to rain.  We also saw a road block tree.  It was a tree leaning sideways over the path. 

After getting misted to death at the waterfalls, we went diving with crocodiles.  It was in a swimming pool with a cage that goes up and down.  It was cold, but not as cold as shark diving.  The crocodiles would climb and swim all over the cage, and the guide in the cage would put food outside the cage for the crocs to munch on.  He even put his flip flop out and brought half of it back in.

After that we jumped off a cliff.  No, seriously we did jump off a cliff.  We did a canyon swing.  It basically was a bungee jump only, sideways.  You jump, and you free fall until you run out of rope and the tension catches.  Then you would swing for 30 seconds before they started to winch you back up.  I was the most excited and did it first by myself, then again with my mom.  Mom was terrified and said some words that she shouldn’t have.  William also did it twice.

After that we went for an elephant ride.  We saw lots of animals that looked like antelope, and we even saw a cheetah.  The cheetah was trained, but it did run off and chase an antelope looking thing.   We also saw an alligator next to a dead baboon.  The elephants were tall, and I was afraid to fall off.  They also found some snacks along the way and took most of the leaves on the trees for themselves!  William’s elephant (the tallest one, of course) took most of the trees.  There were also some baby elephants that came along, and they had trainers on their backs.  The next morning we left for the safari in Botswana.

South Africa: Bottom of a Country, Bottom of a Continent

Written by Charles December 11, 2013

When we arrived in Cape Town, everyone was a zombie except for me because I got 6 hours of sleep.  Everyone else got about an hour sleep on the 9-hour flight that took off at 3:00 am.  We got to Cape Town, and we had dinner with our cousins.  Cape town is a little city near the ocean.  There are mountains around the town, and there are small suburbs around the city in the different bays.  There is this one mountain, and it would make Mount Everest look small if it hadn’t been driven over by a gigantic steamroller.  About where a quarter way up the mountain should be, it got flattened, so people call it Table Mountain.

The next morning we went shark cage diving!  We took a 15-minute helicopter ride over some low mountains, which made the helicopter bounce up and down like a rubber ball.  We landed in the bay outside of Cape Town and took a van to the boat.   We sat on the top deck of the two-story boat and got whipped by the wind.  We got out to the swimming site, and I saw the cage that we were going to swim in.  I was nervous because they said that the sharks are about ten feet long.  I asked William “What if I get eaten?”  He said “Too bad.”  “What!?! I can’t do anything about it!”  He said defensively, but I still thought that he wanted me to get eaten.

The first group that went in looked cold as they got in.  About five minutes later the first shark came.  The crew attracted it with a wooden seal cutout that I named Snuffy, which was attached to a piece of string.  They also had a fish head tied to a rope in their shark-attracting arsenal.  Each time the shark would go for one of the decoys, the crew would pull the decoy back onto the boat.  Then the sharks would swim right to the boat looking for it, and it would turn away and swim in the depths until one of the decoys would go back into the water.

Then it was my family’s turn to go in. The cage was about four feet wide by about 10 feet long, and it stayed on the surface.  

When I got in after Ms. Jenn, I realized just how warm snorkeling with the manta rays was.  The water was about 50 Fahrenheit, and we are used to 85-degree water.  I was shaking like a blender by the time my neck hit the water.  I stayed in the water for 5 minutes because there were no sharks.  When I got out the sharks came again.  I liked watching from the boat, because there was better visibility.  One of the crew was nice enough to give me HOTchocolate, but I was shivering so hard that half the hot chocolate spilled onto the deck or my legs.  After thirty minutes, the adults got out of the cage, and we watched the sharks.  It was really cool.  The sharks would circle the decoys, then turn into a missile with teeth and try to eat the wood or meat.  A few times the shark would grab one of the decoys and try to swim off with it, but they eventually spit it out because it thought that it didn’t taste good. One time a shark bit Snuffy’s rope and broke the rope, then it bit Snuffy’s head.  Thankfully Snuffy made it back to the boat and got re-attached to the rope.  Sometimes the shark would come to the surface and show us all his teeth.  I liked when I was above the water in the boat, not in the ice water.  In the last 30 minutes there were no sharks though.  The crew said that we saw 6 different sharks, and the longest one was about 11.5 feet long!

The next day we went to the top of Table Mountain with our cousins, Will and Juliet.   We took a cable car to the top of the mountain.  On the cable car there was a rotating floor, so we got the full 365-degree view.  The top part of the mountain was so steep I don’t think even a Billy goat could get up.  When we got on the top, we walked to the trail that brought us around the mountain.  On the way to the trail, we saw an animal that looked like a groundhog.  Chris, the guide, said that the animal was related to an elephant, even though it looked identical to a groundhog.  We hiked to the highest point on the mountain.  I couldn’t see anyone else, except for our little group. 

All the kids played a game where we would find all the yellow footprints on the trail and call out “Footprint!,” so we could all step on it.   It also started to rain on us, and the rain cloud went out of its way to follow us down the trail like in the cartoons.  Halfway through the entire hike, and at the end of that trail, we got to a mound of rocks.  It was about 10 feet tall with a metal pole at the top.  We climbed to the top of the rock pile, and I asked what the pole at the top was.  It turned out that it was a lightning rod.  I immediately got down because there were dark gray clouds overhead. When we started to go down the second path, I had a funny idea.  Since there were two Williams, I called out “William!” and they both spun around at the same time, and everyone started to laugh. At noon Chris said that people fire a cannon off to signal noon.  They have been doing it every day for 350 years.  We also walked right next to a big cliff, and everyone had to walk far away from the edge.  Later that day we went bike riding around the different vineyards.  There were lots of hills, and all the adults tried the wine.  Will and William both got hurt at least once.  I thought that riding in the vineyards was awesome, although it was very hot out. 

The next day we did school in the morning, and at noon the cannon went off, but it sounded like it was right in my ear.  We ate lunch at a restaurant that did not understand gluten free at all.  Then we went to our cousin’s house.  We played a game that I named Ninja in a next-door field that had long grass.  Ninja is when one person goes somewhere, and the other people run halfway out to the field to the start point.  The person counts to seven, while everyone runs up towards the counter and hides in the long grass.  Then the counter looks around the field for ten seconds, and then counts to seven with their eyes closed again.  The first one to touch the counter wins.  If the counter spots you, you have to go back to the starting line.  We played that and rolled down a hill for about an hour and a half until we went swimming in their pool.

After swimming we had a braii with our family and their family.  A braii is their word for a barbeque.  I thought that the different word was confusing, but then they told me that they call stoplights robots.  Their beef jerky is billtong, the trunk is the boot, and the hood is called the bonnet.  After that I played soccer with their dogs.  I would kick a ball, and one of the dogs would go crazy and chase after it. 

On our last day we got up at 6:00 am to catch the blue train to Pretoria.  The train is an overnight luxury train that goes a thousand miles in 27 hours.  On the first morning on the blue train, we tried to do school, but the Wi-Fi made a snail look like Turbo in the new movie.  That didn’t let me do school, but William, who’s work is all on paper, (so I have to lug it around) got to do school.  I typed this on the train, and I also read while William did school. 

About halfway through our first day on the train, we already had seen a giraffe in a pen and a wild zebra!  At 2:00 we stopped at a very little town and took a ten-minute tour around the colonial style town in a double decker bus made in the 1950’s.  (It was clearly visible that it hadn’t been restored since.)  While we were in Dubai, Nelson Mandela died. Even though that happened, Chris said that life was carrying on as normal for most people.  I noticed that all the flags in sight were at half-mast though.

During dinner we had to stop at a station for 30 min because the air conditioning in Ms. Jenn’s room broke.  They could not fix it, so she had to move rooms.  When we left dinner and went to our rooms, we saw that the beds that William and I were going to sleep on folded out from the wall.  In the morning we relaxed in the room until we arrived at the Pretoria station 30 min late. We got to Pretoria and went to the hotel and did school.  The president of Mexico and Jimmy Carter stayed at our hotel a few nights before!  The next morning we left to catch our flight to Zimbabwe.

Written by William December 13, 2013

Cape Town, South Africa, was the third to last stop on the trip of our life.  We swooped into Cape Town on our Emirates flight and sailed through customs where we met Chris, our guide.  After collecting our truckload of bags and wheeling them through the airport, we followed our guide to his big silver Ford van that had a huge luggage compartment. 

The drive from the airport to our hotel, The Cape Grace (which was ranked number 2 in the world by Trip Advisor), was uneventful and we all were hungry and exhausted.  Upon arriving at our hotel, we blew up!  (No, not really!) Out of all the hotels I’ve been to, I thought it was very nice, but I would rank it around number 15 (which is still really nice!).  After settling into our rooms, we went out to the waterfront mall area and found a place that served gluten free pizza!  The pizza was yummy in my tummy!  For the rest of the day, Dad banished us from our phones, ipads, computers, and ipods, with the threat of them being sacrificed to the concrete 3 floors below, off the balcony of our hotel rooms.   So instead, Charles and I worked on developing a secret hand language to communicate (now the not so secret, secret hand language).  Finally 6 pm arrived, and we could at last play on our ipads, iphones, computers and ipods.  (Then we blew up again!  No, not really, just me being silly with my dad!)  At 7:30 pm we went out to meet our second cousins that also live in Cape Town.  We met them at a restaurant called Fork, and it was small.  It had been six months since we last saw Will and Juliet at Rockywold Deephaven Camp in New Hampshire, where we had a blast together.  The most fun part of dinner was hanging out with Will and Juliet and discovering that I liked a meat called Kudu.  Kudu is a type of impala.  It was so yummy!

The next day we awoke to a day of adventure and more of my dad’s craziness!  First we took a helicopter ride for over an hour to go great white shark diving!  My parents are seriously nuts!  During our helicopter trip we saw 5 blue whales and 1 beluga whale.  The pilot landed at what he called a runway, but looked more like a dirt road.  After boarding the small boat to go out into the dangerous, choppy ocean we finally arrived at the dive site and saw the great whites circling!  We were all more than a little nervous and the water looked so cold!  After getting two oversized wet suits on and seeing the sharks jump and try and catch the bait, I wasn’t too sure about this adventure.  Thirty minutes later, it was our turn to get into the freezing cold water (<50 degrees Fahrenheit).  When we got in, it was so cold all I wanted to do was see a shark, but after a couple of minutes, it was so cold I got out and tried to warm up.  It only took another 30 minutes for me to start to warm up!  Mom, Dad and Ms. Jenn stayed in, and we watched the sharks come at the cage full speed from above; it was crazy, nuts and cool.  Once everyone on the boat had a turn in the cage, we went back to shore and took our helicopter back to Cape Town.

The next day, Will and Juliet met us in the hotel lobby so that we could go to a mountain called Table Mountain.  Our guide Chris took us in his truck to the bottom of the mountain.  Then we took the cable car/gondola to the top.  It was cool because the floor of the gondola spun around in a circle, which would let you see all the views.  On the top of the mountain, we walked around a lot.  The first thing we saw was a little tiny animal called a hyrax.  It is the size of small cat, looks like an over-grown guinea pig, but its closet living relative is an ELEPHANT!  Really, it’s true, look it up.  Next, it was time for a hike.  As we walked, we saw yellow painted footprints marking the trail, which quickly became a game for us.  As we walked, we shouted “yellow footprint” every time we saw a footprint on the way.  This was a fun game.

It was both sunny and rainy.  We got a little wet but dried up quickly.  We walked for an hour or two, climbed a big pile of rocks, and there was a metal pole in the middle of the rocks.  It was raining, so we asked the guide what the metal pole was, and he said it was a lightning rod. There was a storm close by… we were on top of the rocks, touching the metal pole…  Not good!  We all got struck by lightning and died, that is why my mom is writing this today– just kidding!  We all jumped down off the rocks quickly when we figured out the lightning rod thingy-majigy. On the walk back, we had to be very careful because we were walking around 2 feet away from the edge of a cliff.  We heard the noon cannon at this time, and I jumped and fell off!  Just kidding!

For lunch we ate at a vineyard called Groot Constantia.  It took a little enthusiasm to get our food made gluten free; the guide Chris told the waiter, “If they get gluten, they will DIE immediately!”  Guess what, nobody got gluten in their food, not even cross-contamination. After lunch we all rode bikes from vineyard to vineyard.  The adults drank wine at 3 different vineyards.  Will and I both fell and got hurt, but we lived.  We even got to learn how to play rugby at the last vineyard.  We played a fake scrimmage; it was Will, Charles, and me against the man who was teaching us.  You couldn’t pass the ball forward, only backwards, which made it a lot harder, but fun.  That was a busy day.

The next day started off with schoolwork, but we were all looking forward to having lunch at a restaurant called the Roundhouse and meeting up with our cousins.  We thought lunch would be indoors, but the indoor restaurant was closed, and only their outside seating was open. That had a very different menu than the gluten free menu the hotel indicated to us,  so lunch was difficult to make gluten free.  There were upsides and downsides to lunch.  The downsides were the gluten free issues, and it was boring.  The upsides were that we could run around, and it was a sunny day.  At the end of lunch our cousins picked Charles and me up to go to their house and hang out and play.  We played ninja and rolled down their hill that was right next to a stream as fast as we could, and it was crazy.  SPLASH!!! (The dogs did the splash!) After an awesome afternoon and evening of hanging out with our cousins, we went back to our hotel for our final night in Cape Town. 

The next day, we packed once again to take an overnight train ride on a train called the Blue Train. The Blue Train took us from Cape Town to Pretoria, South Africa.  While traveling on the train, we had the chance to see ostriches, giraffes, and a zebra.  There wasn’t much to do on the train, so Charles and I played computer games and looked out the window and attempted to do school work.  Overall the Blue Train was boring but cool.

In Johannesburg we stayed in a really cool hotel called the Fairlawn Hotel.  Our hotel suite seemed to be its own house; the night before we were there, former US President Jimmy Carter stayed in it, and the night before him, the President of Mexico stayed.  They were all there because of Nelson Mandela’s funeral.  When I walked into the house, I turned to my dad and said “I can get used to this!”  My dad wanted to give me a knuckle sandwich!