hey there everyone,

things are great. only about a week now before this part of the trip ends and we go backpacking in south africa for 2 weeks before i head home for christmas. we are either taking the bus or renting a car with 2 people we are travelling with right now: a guy tentatively named timmy the legend and his girlfriend kim, who i nicknamed killer after she started bawling when we watching a cheetah chase down and kill a baby wildebeest.

so things are great. we left malawi after an amazing 5 days there, and headed south to zambia. it really is a beautiful country, although i find myself constantly sorting through the subtle differences and obvious similarities between the many very arbitrary borders everywhere. every place we go to seems just as friendly and beautiful as the last, despite the fact that most of them have more than 100 different tribes making up the citizenry.

we arrive in zambia and after a night at a campsite drove directly to the southern border to stay in livingstone, the nearest town to victoria falls. the falls are just unbelievable, i was blown away. altho at the same time, i have actually never been too niagara falls, so maybe for canadians unlike myself they are actually not all that special

vic falls has apparently become the adrenaline capital of the world. if you aren't going on sunset cruises beyond the falls, then you are swimming on top of the falls, or rafting below the falls or just watching the falls, which is intense in itself. the past few days have been among the most ridiculous of my life though...

first of all, we went on a booze cruise the other night, which involved unlimited booze, surprisingly....it was really painful, that is all. then yesterday we went rafting on the zambezi. if you recall the names of the rapids in uganda, apparently the same people are in charge in zambia. names such as oblivion, boiling point, commercial suicide and gnashing jaws of death were everywhere. it was actually amazing, even better than uganda, i was so happy. except for the few times i almost died. in fact, the boiling point will always be with me. it was the first rapid, a few minutes in and we got taken down. i was under for what seemed like an hour and was probably 10 seconds. this was almost topped by midnight diner, rapid number 8, where we chose to go the "steak" route rather than chicken or fish, and paid for it dearly with a ridiculous near drown incident. sorry mom

today tho, was even more ridiculous. we had a full day of abseiling, feet first and head first, down a cliff next to the falls, doing a flying fox across the gorge, and the most ridiculous of all, the gorge swing. unbelievably, it is actually a longer free fall than a bungee jump, 53 metres in 3.5 seconds. it was easily the most terrifying thing ive ever done, but absolutely the most amazing feeling. the flying fox may have been more terrifying, since as you jumped off it the half drunk instructors often yelled, "oh shit" or "waaaait". haha, the one guy who jumped off tho and got thrown back because the cord was tangled probably got it the worst though.

heading to botwana tomorrow, have a good one.

muchlovedunc