Our African Adventure Begins

[Written by Mike]

Last summer we had to cancel a trip to Africa so that we could fully close down our California life and commit to our life in Amsterdam (for the next 4 years). We would not miss this trip again! With less than a week to go, we had all the safari gear we would need, SIM cards for South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Botswana, malaria medication and everything else we thought we might need. Since traveling to Southern Africa takes half as long (actually quite a bit less) from Amsterdam than from California, and all the countries we would be visiting are in the same CET timezone… this trip is almost ‘easy’. Imagine getting a late flight, sleeping through the night and waking up in Africa… with no jet-lag! Not sure it could get much better for adventure travel.

And then we hit a speed bump.

Four days before the trip my leg developed an abscess that quickly became infected. Of course, this happened over a weekend. In the Netherlands, there is no such thing as Urgent Care… you call your doctor who has a pre-recorded message that translates to, “This is my weekend. If you interrupt me, you had better have a broken bone protruding from some part of your body, or I’m gonna be angry. Do you really want this call to go through?” With that, I hung up the phone and decided to wait until Monday… the day before we would be flying to Victoria Falls.

Monday morning at 8am I was on the phone to my doctor. I explained what was going on. I’d even drawn a ring around the infection with a black marker the night before to show how much it grew in less than 12 hours. Fearing that the doctor would give me the typical Dutch answer to any medical issue, “Wait 2 weeks and then call me if it’s still an issue…”, I quickly threw in that I was flying to Zimbabwe the next day. She was still mostly non-plused but asked, “Is the skin hot around the abscess?” I hadn’t noticed, but felt there and, “Why yes! Yes it is!” With that, they agreed to see me immediately that morning.

Unfortunately for me, the infection had spread quite a bit from the night before, and the pressure in my leg was now making it painful to walk. I figured this would be another sign for the doc that I needed immediate medical attention. Well… that sort of happened - upon seeing my leg (with the black marker ring now well inside the expanding infection, the doctor simply said, "I’ll give you antibiotics for 7 days. Have a nice trip.”  I did ask whether there was an option to drain it, but she just smiled and gave me an expression I read as, “Oh! Did you go to medical school???”

Because our first flight was not until the late afternoon on Tuesday, I was able to get 7 doses of Flucloxacillin in my system before taking off. This took the pressure down so that walking was simply annoying and no longer painful… which is especially helpful when you’re about to spend time running through 3 different airports over the next 24 hours. Feeling like things were improving, I boarded the plane with confidence and figured I’d simply be extra vigilant about remembering when to take my antibiotics (four times per day).  [To save you from being grossed out, we will NOT be posting a picture of my leg here. We'll stick to pictures of the scenery for this blog.]

Africa here we come!

Africa is like no other place you will ever travel. You can take nearly anything we’re familiar with and reduce it down to its most primitive level. You quickly realize that most of Africa is unspoiled from modernization. It’s as if the heavens opened and a fleet of safari trucks dropped from the sky the day you arrived. Other than this, you can see things as they were 1000 years ago in nearly every direction you look if you’re willing to peer behind all of the safari vehicles. Your first instinct is to say it’s beautiful, but that leaves out so much more of what makes Africa special. There’s beauty, but there’s also an unforgiving violence and unpredictability that permeates nearly all aspects of survival for those fortunate / unfortunate enough to call this place home. I feel incredibly blessed to be here but am also well aware that without the ever-present trucks and guides, my odds of surviving Africa would be greatly reduced. A good example of this is that in the Okavango Delta, every single household has lost at least one person to wild animal attacks (mostly hippos). Even tourists armed with their legion of trucks can meet a gruesome end when the unpredictability of wild animals finds them in the wrong place at the wrong time.

But even with this awareness of Africa, it’s still a majestic location you feel privileged to explore. And we wanted to explore!

Our first stop was Victoria Falls. The falls are amazing. At their highest, they spill over 108 meters (~355 feet) across a section of the river that is about 1 mile wide. We donned ponchos and walked the entire length of the falls on the Zimbabwe side (Zambia’s on the other side).

At Victoria Falls

And because this was not enough to take it all in, we then jumped in a helicopter and toured the whole thing again from the air. Vic Falls is a natural wonder, but it's also a perfect example of the space between beauty and violence.

Vic Falls from the air

We also took a river cruise on the Zambezi River above the falls which was equally spectacular at sunset. Almost immediately you see why predators hang out near water. Nearly every animal for hundreds of miles seems to know this is the place for a drink. Giraffes, elephants, hippos, crocodiles… All of these are spectacular to see up close. Like other areas in nature, mornings and evenings are the best times to see animals out and about. For the cruise part, it was especially peaceful to be out on the water experiencing the stillness, even if you swapped a terra-truck for an aquarian one.

Crocodile with elephants from the river cruise

 One thing that was "interesting" about the town of Victoria Falls: almost all of the tourist stuff is run by one company (Wild Horizons). Wild Horizons picked us up from the airport. Wild Horizons took us on our sunset cruise. Wild Horizons took us to and led our tour of Victoria Falls. Wild Horizons drove us to Botswana. What this means is that everywhere you go, you see people in the Wild Horizons uniform (a green plaid shirt) and vehicles with their logo. Everything ran really smoothly, but in a strange way, it made it feel a little like Disneyland - a bit homogenous. Even the restaurant in town was "Wild Horizons Lookout" (where Alex's lunch was stolen by a vervet monkey - see picture below). Through the rest of the trip we heard that a lot of tour operators hire people out of Zimbabwe and I wondered if this was because Wild Horizons is such a big operation that they have figured out how to train their staff really well.

This is the type of monkey that stole Alex's sandwich. Guess how we knew it was this kind. Hint - it wasn't the color of his ears.

And now off to Chobe, Botswana!