Watch what you eat

Happy May 2-4 to all of those back in Toronto enjoying your long weekend! Incidentally this is the very weekend that Tim and I got together 11 years ago!

We're in Tanzania right now on the island of Zanzibar and we're melting in the humidity. It's been dry and cool for so long now that we're just not used to this anymore! We are most of the way through our second 3 week tour which has been a blast. Our new group is mostly made up of Aussies in their 20's and they're teaching us a few things about partying.

Travelling on an overland tour is a big change after being on our own for so long. It's definitely nice to sit back and let someone else take care of all the planning and logistics, but on the other hand we feel like we're not fully experiencing the local culture. Looking out the windows of a nice big truck with 20 other tourists just isn't the same as squeezing into a van with 20 locals and their chickens, babies, parcels etc. But we probably needed a break after 6 months and we'll be back on our own pretty soon. Camping has actually been a blast (other than when it rains) and we have become experts at packing up the tent in the pitch black before 5am. (We have a lot of distance to cover so there have been some VERY early mornings. In fact, it's more like waking up really late at night!) I have NEVER seen stars like this in my life. And you just can't beat listening to hippos, hyenas and lions in the distance as you drift off to sleep. The only problem is the jackals, who will steal anything you leave outside your tent, especially stinky shoes. During our last tour we witnessed a Czech lady from our group (a senior citizen) madly chasing after a jackal into the darkness and returning later with a sandal. It was pretty amusing when she reenacted it for us in mime since she didn't speak English.

In his last post Tim neglected to mention that on the final night of our first tour we all went out for dinner at a restaurant in Vic Falls. We were seated outside under the stars, enjoying a specially arranged local dance performance while eating our appetizer of salad with ostrich meat. It was quite dark but I could make out some shapes arranged aesthetically around the salad. I didn't eat them because I thought they were some other kind of dried meat which is pretty typical in Africa. Further down the table Tim was happily wolfing it all down. Our friend Maaike, a Dutch girl who was born in Zimbabwe and has been volunteering there for 3 months, was laughing suspiciously and finally revealed that the dark shapes were in fact Mopani Worms, aka big fried grubs. I alerted Tim who had cleared his plate by then. He was horrified but admitted that he had enjoyed them. I'll try pretty much anything once, and since I had missed out on having fried crickets in Thailand I gave them a taste. I didn't find it too appetizing and happily donated the rest to our Zimbabwean guide, Noel, who considers them a treat.

Although it was previously one of the most developed and prosperous countries in Africa Zimbabwe is in a severe economic crisis and has the highest inflation rate in the world - almost 4000%. The currency is basically worthless and things are so bad that people can't afford to buy basic goods anymore. At the local market the vendors trade their crafts for t-shirts, shoes, hair elastics, pens and anything else you can imagine. We traded everything we didn't need out of our backpacks and stocked up on souveniers that would probably cost hundreds of dollars back home. On the last day someone asked for the time and Jim (from Calgary) answered "I don't know, I traded my watch for a statue!". There isn't much hope in sight as long as Mugabe is in power, and any of his opponents disappear into a tank of acid. Our Zimbabwean guide Noel dismissed this as "just politics" and explains that's a hazard of the trade. It's pretty hard to comprehend.

I would like to end on a cheerier note but I'm getting mosquito bites every minute in this internet cafe so I think it's time to finish this up. Next we're heading to the Ngorongoro Crater and the Serengeti, then in about two weeks we're meeting up with my parents in Kenya, hooray!