Made it out of Zim alive!!!!

I’m back from Zimbabwe in one piece! Phew! Man… it was an exhilarating trip to say the least. Let me see, we started the trip at 12 am on Thursday, March 2, 2007. We (when I say we, I mean definitely NOT ME) drove for 16 hours straight to get to Victoria Falls. The nearest village was 2 hours away from the border of South Africa and Zim. We stopped at Bulawayo, Zim, a small rustic city that had many gas stations, but no gas except for ONE station. We had to exchange our South African Rands to Zim dollars and did it illegally with a guy who was selling them for 1000 zim dollars = R1. The official rate was 33 zim dollars = R1. This country is messed up.

So anyways, after the secretive trading of money in our respective cars due to the high security around the area, we were on our way to Vic Falls. The backpackers was a really cosy place run by South Africans. Guess what?! There were sooo many Canadians that stayed at the Victoria Falls Backpackers. I saw in their guestbook that there was a couple from Delta, BC just a few days before we arrived. By then the Canucks was winning 5 games in a row. I’m sure they’ve gone downhill by now.

They had a brown pet pig roaming around their camp area which woke us up in the mornings. If you stroked its neck area it would just fall down to the floor with ecstasy. It was really funny to see.

Vic Falls was magnificent! We took a helicopter ride above the Zambezi River and canoed in the croc and hippo infested waters. I was super scared for the first couple of hours in the canoe but my beefy, Tyson Beckford look-a-like guide told me to chill out. We saw a few hippos about 50 meters away and that was close enough for me, thank you very much. Our guide, his name is Blessed, got knocked out of his canoe twice by hippos in his life time and he cried like a pussy and wanted to quit his job… but didn’t end up doing it.

Rob got robbed (no pun intended) by some street crooks who traded him fake money for his R300. That’s like $50CDN . People felt bad for him. I just thought he was an idiot but I didn’t tell him that =). Who doesn’t check the money before you exchange with a street crook… come on now…Actually I think I did tell him that.

Zoltan got caught speeding and we paid off the two policeman 20 000 zim dollars (about $3 US) so then we didn’t end up in jail. We seriously got stopped by the police at least every hour on the highway.

We ran out of petrol in the middle of the highway, about 80 km away from the border on our way home. So Zoltan towed us with a super sketchy rope we bought off of some random guy on the road for the whole way back up to the border. The rope ripped at one point in the middle of the night and all of us were facing every direction to look for tsotsis or lions who wanted to hunt us down while Zoltan fixed the rope. The policeman at the border crossing gate told us that we will go to jail cuz we were towing with a rope rather than a tow bar. So we paid him off and we didn’t end up going to jail. We pushed the car across the Zim and South Africa border crossings and finally made it to a petrol station, which was only 200 meters away but on a friggin hill!!!! Luckily, I was steering while others pushed the car.

I think that pretty much covers all the highlights of my trip to Zimbabwe. I still loved it, even after all the excitement. I didn’t end up going white water rafting on the Zambezi River because the water level was too high and much too dangerous. That means, I gotta go back to Vic Falls again to do the most dangerous white water rafting in the world. There were tons more things that happened but they are much funnier to tell in person.

Anyways, hope to hear from you guys soon!
Miss you and love you lots!

The Great Victoria Falls. Just for those who care, it was traditionally called a name that meant "the smoke that thunders" because people back in the day thought it was a monster who made smoke and you can hear the waterfall, which people thought was a roar of some sort. They never got close enough to realize that it was a waterfall. Livingstone canoed up to it and discovered that it was a huge waterfall and named it after the Queen of England at the time, Queen Victoria.

Our Zimbabwe crew. Sebi, I've taken that hat everywhere now!

The amount of money spent on just a cheap dinner!!! All together, it was 665,000 Zim Dollars. The merchants carried their money in huge garbage bags.

My first snack. Our trip started at 12 am, my first snack was at 12:05 am. Germans boys, check out my hat!

We were totally drenched when visiting the Victoria Falls and had to rent these super hot raincoats.

At the waterfalls, imitating monkeys.This is a view from the helicopter. We picked numbers to figure out who gets to sit in the front with the pilot. I won! Zoltan and Zsolka in the back of the helicopter.

And here I am in the front seat!! I think I get pampered with this group of volunteers cuz technically I didn't win the front seat but they let me sit there anyways. Plus they didn't let me push the car... hehehe oh well. Damn straight I'm a princess!

This is us pushing the car across the bridge that divides South Africa and Zimbabwe. I mostly took pictures, and steered. But I pushed like crazy when I had the chance!! Below is a picture of our first rope.

This was a picture taken after the sketchy rope broke the first time when it was daylight. A South African gave us this new hot pink rope which broke AGAIN in the middle of the night.

Our canoe crew! Anne had a guide as well. He was the uncle to our super hot beefy guide, Blessed. The uncle's name was Witness.

My super hot, beefy guide was in my canoe cuz i refused to go with Rob or Zoltan.

Well, that's all folks. this blog took me forever to upload so you better appreciate it and comment on how much effort i put in for you people!