Boy Meets World

2010-09-30T16:02:00.001-07:00

For your patience, I have rewarded(?) you with 8200 words of pure drivel. I know what you’re thinking – God! 8200 words! Jesus must be spinning in his grave! But don’t you fret, I have indicated logical breaks to take so that you can go on living your life. And, as always, thank you for reading. You are the wind beneath my wings.

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"I hope that when I die, people say about me, 'Boy, that guy sure owed me a lot of money” – Jack Handey

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From Etosha we headed northeast in the direction of the Caprivi Strip, the skinny arm of Namibia that juts into Zambia and Botswana. We finally passed through civilization in the form of the town of Tsumeb where we learned from dozens of prominently displayed signs that we had unfortunately missed the local copper-fest by a mere eight months.

At this point in the trip, the brakes weren’t really “working”, per se. However, Mama Fin will be happy to hear that when gliding to a halt failed, I developed a full-proof method of stopping – I would simply take my foot off the gas, gear down, and then throwing the corpse/car into Park to its considerable objections. Turning usually involved negotiating corners at high speeds and skidding into the wrong lane, which wasn’t really a big problem because our ten days in Namibia to that point had featured approximately four other cars, seven people and zero policemen. So colour me surprised when a particularly skiddy turn into very much the wrong lane was witnessed and frowned upon by the entire Namibian police force of four officers, two squad cars and an animal that was either a dog or a cat or a curious mix of the two.

The officers and I experienced a roller coaster of emotions together: Elation! Confusion! Irritation! Sneezing! More confusion! Terror! At first, everyone was excited because the driver who had been given a ticket just 10 minutes before me was none other than my pal The Big Nasty. With two Canadian offenders, this was proving to be the most exciting day of Officer Lazarus’s life. I know this because he told me so. Sadly, the excitement ceased when Lazarus realized that I was attempting to give him my University of Cape Town student card as identification rather than my driver’s licence, which, uh, no longer existed. Officer Lazarus was very disappointed in me, especially since his first Canadian, The Big Nasty, had been overjoyed to receive his ticket, had enthusiastically shook the officers’ hands and had been only too happy to promise to return for his trial in November (he was, of course, fleeing to the border at that very moment).

I am stricken with 4 true fears in life. Three are admittedly irrational: Having a salesman in a store see me accidentally perusing a ladies’ shelf while I’m zoned out; of missing out (FOMO, of course); and, Shredder

The fourth, being placed in an African jail, is far too rational. So, given that I had to provide my passport as identification, and because a little part of me feared somehow returning to Namibia in ten years and being sent directly to an African EffyouintheA prison, rather than to my preferred white collar resort prison, I offered to forego my “trial”, plead guilty and pay the maximum fine for my “serious criminal act”. This amounted to the astronomical sum of approximately 30 dollars.

The girls and I drove to the police station in town, where I filled out a form, paid my debt to society and headed back outside. I was almost at the car when a police officer came racing after me, screaming “STOP! STOP MR. CANADA, STOP RIGHT NOW!!!” Not being able to deduce why I was being chased by the police and really not wanting to stop and find out the reason and really, really not wanting to go to African jail and really, really, really wanting my brown star to remain unpierced, I believe I calmly and collectedly uttered a guttural “HolyFuckStartTheCarGoGoGo” and dove into the car in an attempt to make my triumphant escape. “MR. CANADA! MR. CANADA! YOU HAVE MY PEN!!!” [15 seconds of silence] “I don’t want to tell you how to do your job sir, but I don’t think your response to the misplaced pen was entirely proportionate.” [10 seconds of checking pockets for pen] “And sir, I don’t even have your pen.” “Are you sure Mr. Canada? Are you very, really sure?” “I’m afraid so sir, have a nice day” [Drive down the road 30 minutes] “Oh shit, I have his pen.”

(In my opinion, a movie or story becomes exponentially better if it ends with a coda at the end – think ‘Band of Brothers’ or ‘The Sandlot’ - Squints grew up and he married Wendy Peffercorn and they had nine kids together. They bought Vincent’s Drug Store (I especially love it when they do this) and they still own it to this day. Hamilton Porter became a professional wrestler, you know him as The Great Hambino. Let’s try one here: Officer Lazarus eagerly awaits his reunion with The Big Nasty at his trial in November; The dogcat was really a goat – he was delicious; The Big Nasty escaped to Botswana, where he was accepted by the Bushmen of the Kalahari. He can never return to Namibia; The officer who lost his pen moved to America and has since become famous

The author still feels bad about inadvertently stealing the officer’s pen. He now resides in Vancouver and looks forward to another 70-80 years of immaturity.)

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As we drove north and east we left the dry landscapes behind and entered into a world more reminiscent of the Africa of my mind’s eye: open-air markets set up beside the road, complete with bright fabrics, cooking fires and women with a few pieces of fruit for sale spread out on blankets; hordes and hordes of children, with six-year-olds holding babies and four-year-olds leading two-year-olds by the hand, all while an eight-year-old provides the supervision; smoke from unseen bushfires rises from the jungle. Road signs warn us to slow down so that we don’t hit an elephant.

This is awesome.

Our destination was the widely renowned (the term ‘widely’ being loosely used here to refer to approximately thirteen people) Ngepi, an idyllic campsite far off the beaten path (as our corpse/car begrudgingly found out) on the banks of the Okavango River. Upon arriving, I immediately decided I never wanted to leave. If you have traveled, you know that there are places you stay where you immediately feel comfortable and happy, and there are places you stay where you are fairly certain you’re about to be raped, robbed and murdered. Ngepi was certainly the former – I can’t recommend it enough if you ever happen to be passing through on a long weekend trip to northeastern Namibia.

The campsites were carved into the dense woods just steps away from the river. At all times we were engulfed by the deafening drone of the jungle, a sound pierced only by the occasional honking cry of a (very) nearby hippo. Signs and hippies warned us of the very real dangers presented by stone-still crocodiles at the water’s edge, poisonous snakes, exiting your tent at night and happening upon a hippo (an animal that isn’t all fun and games, despite what you may have learned from the Hungry, Hungry version - were you aware that the wild animal that kills the most humans in Africa is the hippopotamus? Since they come out of the water to graze on land at night, unsuspecting people out for a midnight stroll or a bathroom jaunt often walk right into them or spook them, which leads to death-by-trampling. Were you also aware that hippos fart out of their mouths? Or that the unrelated but similar word “hippopotomonstrosequipedaiophobia” is an affliction from which one fears long words? I’m not even making that up) and never leaving.

We spent the day relaxing by the water,

listening to Otis Redding, ‘80s power ballads and Public Enemy, and considering the BIG questions in life (If you could delete one ____ off the face of the earth for the betterment of the human race, who/what would you choose? For example, I would delete: Actor - Nicolas Cage; Band - Nickelback; Word you hate to type - ‘inappropriate’; Food item - Cilantro; Writer - Rick Reilly. Why do we park in driveways and drive on parkways? Is the statistic from a national Harris poll that 24 percent of Republicans actually believe that Barack Obama is the antichrist a soft or hard number? Is pronouncing the word “retard” “ri-TARD”, like in The Hangover, less offensive? What is the best Will Ferrell SNL skit? Robert Goulet or Get Off the Shed? Gus Chiggins or More Cowbell? Neil Diamond in VH1 Storytellers– it has to be - www.dailymotion.com/video/x692ix_neil-diamond-storytellers_fun. How many times should you yell “What?” at someone before you smile and nod because you can’t hear them? What was your favourite Canadian heritage moment on TV? ‘I smell burnt toast!’ or the James Naismith one with the peach baskets with holes in them (‘But I need those’). Would you rather spend the rest of your life having to add “in my pants” to the end of every sentence you say or having to sing everything you say in an operatic voice?)

The good people at Ngepi built a cage/dock thingy in the river that allowed one to avoid being eaten by a crocodile while swimming, which was a bonus.

We blissfully lay on the cage/dock in the sun all day, interrupted only by an invitation to go on a boat ride with some of the staff.

As it turned out, the reason the staff members were going on a boat ride was to transport a puff adder they had caught to the other side of the river. This wasn’t really mentioned when the invitation to come on the boat was extended, but it became real quickly enough when I noticed that a dude (Snake Dude) was holding a freaking snake in his hands. He wildly and mindlessly gestured with the snake

as he told us about puff adders: they are vipers, common in Africa, very common at Ngepi. They are large, very willing to bite and have extremely potent venom. All of those things combine to make it the deadliest snake in Africa. When those fun facts had been relayed, Snake Dude started telling us about the time a Spitting Cobra had made its way into his pillowcase, so they similarly took it across the river on the boat. He unapologetically explained how he really didn’t want to lose his pillow case – so, when it came time to set the snake free, rather than throwing the whole pillow case onto the bank, he tried to throw the snake out while holding onto the pillow case. The long and short of this brilliant decision was that they now had an ill-tempered cobra loose in their vessel. He chose not to bore us with the details of their miraculous escape, although he did take time to mention that he did get to keep the pillowcase, which, presumably, was diamond-encrusted. Perhaps it was the wet spot that was forming in my crotch-type region, but this time he took no chances and successfully set the little scamp free, and we evaded death yet again.

Snake Dude wasn’t the only character camping in the Namibian bush with us. We also met two different groups that had driven to Namibia from London, by way of Turkey and the Middle East. I was, of course, insanely jealous, peppered them with questions and have many new and stupid ideas (somewhere Mama Fin just involuntarily shuddered). One of the groups was lead by a former member of the U.S. Women’s National team that won the World Cup in ’99 - she now runs an NGO called Kickabout. They had driven an incredible 25,000 kilometres to that point, were very sick of each other and seemed to be fairly close to snapping and lighting themselves on fire. We also met a couple driving a truck that was 600 000km young; they had financed their two-year trip by bussing tables and dealing drugs. Most importantly though, we reconnected with our senior citizen alcoholic friend Archie, last seen trapped on the roof of his truck in Etosha by a vicious hangover and advanced age. Archie, who may or may not have been sporting this tattoo of Centaur Patrick Swayze wearing a Chippendale’s shirt in front of a stormy sky and a rainbow

brought over a box of wine and we cooked dinner over an open fire while he told us stories. Most notably, he recounted his days as the manager of a pulp mill in Kumba, Cameroon, which was once the site of, and I quote, “a very, very, very heavy party. And then I went to jail.” Archie also gave us some travel tips – I’m not sure what about Archie suggested to us that it was a good idea to follow his advice, but follow it we did. Was it his impressive feat of scaling and sleeping on top of a truck despite the fact he was pushing seventy and the fact he had absolutely crushed two boxes of wine? Or the sense of awe that comes from meeting someone who has survived an African jail? We didn’t even balk when we found out his resort of choice was the evocatively named Swamp Stop Resort. Oh, well then.

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Buoyed by the knowledge that, worst comes to worst, with bad decisions come good stories, and with bad judgment comes experience comes good judgment, we departed the next morning bound for Botswana and the northwest corner of the famed Okavango Delta. I’ve dreamed about going to the Okavango Delta for a really, really long time. Thanks to the transcendent narration of the impossibly eloquent David Attenborough in BBC’s Planet Earth, you probably have too.

The Okavango Delta absolutely teems with life. The world’s largest inland delta is a refuge for animals – they flock there in infinite numbers (literally!) for easy access to the life-giving water so rare in much of the rest of the continent. This year, there was actually too much water; the roads were so washed out that we parked the corpse/car on the side of the road and were picked up by a tractor for the final portion of the drive to Swamp Stop.

The fine folks at Swamp Stop weren’t kiddin’ around when they named their spot; it really was a swamp. One of those wet swamps. One of those wet swamps that has recently suffered some flooding. The small on-site buildings had clearly spent some time underwater and the pool was actually full of river water and fish. The only high and dry ground to set up a tent on was in the middle of a road. T.I.A.

Fortunately, the attraction of Swamp Stop was not its reputation for being not underwater – if it was, I daresay I’d currently be writing a strongly-worded letter to whatever assisted-care facility has recaptured our deranged, transient friend – rather, from Swamp Stop one could organize overnight trips deep into the Delta. The next morning we met our guide, the irrepressible Lems, a local guy who looked like a cross-ethnic, cross-sex Shaved-Head-Britney Spears and who wore a pair of jean shorts meant for a smaller-than-average teenage girl.

The first leg of our journey was a three-hour motorboat ride; we weaved through channels 5 to 10 metres wide, flanked on all sides by tall stalks of papyrus, a reed-like plant.

Every few minutes we would lurch to a stop as Lems would spot a very camouflaged animal much to our amazement. The ability of wildlife guides in Africa – and this extends to land safari guides – to spot animals that are either completely hidden or miles away, while driving a jeep or boat at great speeds, is truly amazing. It would take us minutes to see the (ginormous) crocodiles or hippos or eagles that Lems could spot in a split second. Lems’ achievements were all the more amazing considering he was really, really high. Really.

At one point, Lems procured us some fish to attract one of the large fish eagles that presided over the Delta.

He stuck a stick through the fish, handed it to a very bewildered me, and then had me wave it at the eagle and throw it in the water right next to our boat. Worked like a charm, what a beauty:

We arrived on a small island and met a couple of bros awesomely named Gems and Water. We unloaded our possessions in small sleeping cabins, noting the non-small piles of elephant dung that loomed over them. A grammatically poor sign warned us not to stand within three metres of the water’s edge, lest we be eaten by crocodiles. Gems, Lems and Water then whisked us away to three mekoros, Botswanan boats that are glorified dugout canoes, carved out of tree trunks and used to travel to hard-to-reach places in the Delta. We sat on the bottom, noting that we were basically eye-level with the water, while the three wise men stood at the sterns of the respective boats propelling us forward with large poles

Mekoro-ing is simultaneously relaxing and dangerous, boring yet exciting. Just when you’re lulled into a false sense of security by the soft sounds of the boat brushing aside thick growth, you realize that you are using hippo channels, and that running into one could be wery, wery bad (see above for notes on hippo-induced death). But soon you forget about the probability of death, you lie back, begin to relax; it is then when Water (the person, not the necessity for life) starts to tap-tap-tap his pole on the side of the mekoro. Soon thereafter, a dull roar starts to build. We are perched at the edge of a small pond, 50 metres across from a small channel. The sound builds and builds, and none of us have any idea what it is. The Big Nasty is visibly nervous. The Swift wonders if anyone else can smell burning. The Salzberg hasn’t exercised in over 40 minutes and starts to do pushups in the mekoro. Caity loudly proclaims that she wishes Thursday D was with us. 30 more seconds pass and a mini-tsunami appears in the channel – suddenly, six sets of eyes are staring at us.

I have no idea why, but the tapping drew the attention of six hippos, who were anything but the fun Hungry, Hungry version. I tried to ask Water what he had done, but he just kept saying “it is hip-pot-a-pot-a-musses”. We sat there for 20 minutes, apprehensively eyeing each other down. I can, however, report that when I challenged them to a staring contest, they won, they always do.

Elated by our hippo staredown, we returned to the island to read, relax and play cards, and so Lems could smoke more drugs. At some point, he emerged from the bushes (he had somehow lost his shirt, so he was rocking the Matt Smith no shirt, jean shorts look) and decided that he would treat us to a walking safari. We followed him for about 20 metres before he decided he would climb a tree, ostensibly to see animals in the distance that we could intelligently chase. Instead, he saw no animals, got stuck, and didn’t get down until it was dark.

You haven’t seen a happy man until you’ve seen a stoned Botswanan escape from a tree – Lems started swinging his arms and chanting “I THINK! THAT! I! AM! THE! MAN! I THINK! THAT! I! AM! THE! MAN!” to the tune of the “Rocky! Loves! E-Mi-Lee” chant from the seminal classic, ‘The Three Ninjas’, incidentally a movie Mama Fin still refers to as “the worst 90 minutes of my life. Watching that movie was worse than giving birth to you”.

That night we sat around a fire drinking an ancient, dusty bottle of whiskey we found in the deserted kitchen while having the sort of broken conversations people have when they come from places as different as the Okavango Delta and Canada. Things escalated to the point that Lems, The Big Nasty and I closed out the evening with arms around each other belting out a rousing rendition of ‘New York, New York’ complete with Fabulously Rich leg kicks (ha!). Water was particularly impressed with the performance; upon saying goodbye the next morning he proudly told me he loved our singing and our dancing and our big leg kicking.

We had an uneventful but beautiful boat ride back to Swamp Stop and then headed back in the direction we came from to Namibia. Our next destination was the town of Katima Mulilo, found at the end of the Caprivi Strip on the border with Zambia.

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One of the great things about traveling around Southern Africa is the accommodation. For as long as pasty, unattractive Brits have been coming to Africa for hunting trophies and concubines, there have been incredibly opulent resorts catering to the rich and haughty. Despite the fact the upper crust of society pays hundreds of dollars per night to stay at these places, management still deems it appropriate to allow people like me to pitch a tent on their lawn for eight bucks per night and to use all of their hilariously nice facilities. Thanks to me, the Protea Hotels Zambezi River Lodge soon came to regret this business strategy.

After a quiet night in Katima Mulilo, we woke up excited to cross into Zambia to see the world-renowned Victoria Falls. The Big Nasty and Caity planned to take a different route, so we arranged to meet them later that day. Little did we know, we would never see them again…

…until a few weeks later. They didn’t die or anything.

We made stops for gas and money and were ready to head to the border when the corpse/car refused to start, setting in motion the course of events that almost lead to my death.

Because of rampant theft and car-jackings, even crappy South African cars, like ours, have intense security systems. More specifically, our overripe automobile had an immobilizer to hinder anyone trying to hot-wire the car. The designers of the immobilizer had ingeniously (sarcasm font needed) made it so that you simply had to press the electronic doodad-thingy on the key ring to turn it off and start the car. Anyone trying to hot-wire the car would be foiled because the immobilizer would prevent it from starting (this, of course, ignores the fact that a large percentage of car thefts in Africa are done violently, in the light of day, whenst the driver is physically removed from his already-turned-on car, but what the hell). Much like the designers of the Titanic with the iceberg thing, or like a transient crackwhore with ten dollars, the designers of this fail-prone system weren’t much for forward-thinking. For example immobilizer-designer-guys, what happens if the electronic doodad-thingy stops de-immobilizing the car in a town on the Namibia-Zambia border? Oh, I’m effed? Well then.

We located a mechanic and spent the next 6 miserable hours watching him dismantle the car in search of the immobilizer box under the hood. It is possible to remove this fun little security system, but because of what it is, it is typically cleverly hidden. On the plus side, I did learn how to hotwire a car, no biggie.

To combat boredom and the onset of severe frustration, I went to the small grocery store nearby and treated myself to yogurt and bread and cheese. I had now entered, The Danger Zone

The sickest I have ever been in my life, up until this fateful day in Katima Mulilo, was courtesy of a cheese omelet in Siem Reap, Cambodia. I spent approximately 24 hours on a bathroom floor fairly certain I was going to die, and then crawled into my room to discover that the roof of the hostel had collapsed onto my bed. I think the worst part of it was that the hostel then charged me to wash my clothes. They had roof debris embedded into them. Who would’ve thought poorly refrigerated Third World dairy products could cause so much damage?

Our corpse/car still grounded, we left her with the mechanic and went back to the aforementioned Protea Hotels Zambezi River Lodge to sulk for the evening. Sure, it was a nice place, but we were supposed to be drenched in waterfall spray by now. We had retreated to the restaurant/bar to drown our sorrows when I got that old feeling that I hadn’t felt since removing Cambodian roof from my ‘Same, Same But Different’ shirt. I tried to drink more whiskey to poison whatever was poisoning me, but surprisingly that didn’t work. So I thought maybe if I went and watched Arrested Development (I blue myself!) on my iPod and fell asleep, that perhaps it would all pass. This was a naïve plan.

The Swift and The Salzberg were soon fast asleep in their tent, dreaming of a better day, when they were woken up by what sounded to be a rabid hyena eating what sounded to be a dying unicorn just outside their tent. They clutched each other out of fear, completely terrified of the ungodly creature making the ungodliest of noises just feet away from them. Soon, however, they heard a whimper, something that sounded like ‘For the love of God heeeeeelllllppppp,’ and then the noise stopped and they fell back asleep. Of course, the noise was me scream-puking African dairy onto the well-manicured lawns of the Zambezi River Lodge, and the reason it stopped was because I went to spend the rest of my evening on the floor of the shower, which was fortunately for them, fairly far away. Unfortunately for the rich folks in the luxurious rooms overlooking the river, the bathroom was not that far away from them. They spent $400 to have themselves a sleepless night comprised of shockingly loud Velociraptor sounds.

Between shivering and vomiting and such, I had a lot of time for delirious thought while lying prone on the bottom of that shower stall. For awhile I decided upon things I would accomplish in my life: Get a midnight sunburn in northern Canada; put my coat over a puddle for a damsel in distress (instead of recommending that she walk a half-block to avoid the puddle altogether) and then saying something suave as hell; beat Graham Smith in a pushup contest; Say “Well I have to say that this seems arbitrary and capricious!” to a judge; go to at least one of the ‘stans (there are seven, by the by - education!); win a beerdie tournament; have Tim Bottomer admit I’m right in an argument, just once; never again eat African dairy – those sorts of things. At around 3AM I started playing that crappy game from Grade 9 French (this may explain why I can’t speak French) where you pick a word for each letter of your name to describe yourself or aspects of your personality. According to freeicebreakers.com, this game is known as ‘ABCs of Me’’. Here are the ABCs of Me one finds funny or interesting when on their death-bed/death-shower-floor

D – Stands for Dude, as in Uncle Dude. I have three nieces, Amelia:

Smiling Kaiser Soze:

and Claire

One time, Amelia accidentally, sort of called me something resembling “Dude”. I’ve been pushing it ever since. It’s impossibly adorable.

U – Stands for Understood, as opposed to those who would label themselves M for Misunderstood. My likes and dislikes, personality, and proclivities are pretty well known, I think. I like travel, hot-sauce and 4-Square. I like songs with clapping and snapping, and, under the right circumstances (Otis Redding), whistling. I like (love) hockey. I like (love) beerdie. I like wit, chortling and run-on sentences. I like the Ho Train/HotRain, resplendent in the sun, the apple of every pretty lady’s eye. I like Planet Earth, Band of Brothers and the West Wing. Broody Bob Dylan stories, leg-kick-inducing Sinatra ditties, and Gordon Lightfoot ballads, especially when he accidentally sings about gay porn: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VYC4eie2kU. I like British wit, Dutch looks and French accents. Tree-lined streets, Gordon Korman novels and interesting but unprovable theories. Terry Fox, Trevor Linden, Emil Zatopek, Madiba, Steve Nash and Richard Finley. When Linda tells Charlie that she loves Pantera in Mighty Ducks 3. If I was a rockstar, every song at a concert would involve the crowd clapping in unison or singing as one, and it flabbergasts me that these things don’t occur more often. I fully support choreographed dances by black dance troupes in Chicago during spontaneous performances of ‘Twist and Shout’ by a teenager wearing a leopard print vest: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgd46QiHz4I&feature=related - (that could probably never happen now. Thanks a lot, bin Laden). Montages. Adventurous Babes. Executive Summaries. I really like making lists. See? Understood.

N – Stands for Ninety-Seven, as in my 97 Litre backpack. In one of my more misguided attempts to follow the Richmond family motto of “Go Big or Go Home” (incidentally, a family motto that trails only “O’Doyle Rules” and “Serenity Now” in terms of the destruction it has caused), in 2006 for no identifiable reason I purchased a 97L backpack prior to leaving for Africa. Referred to with a mix of awe and fear as “The Ninety Seven” by terrified bystanders who have had the bad luck of coming into (sometimes life-altering) contact with it, The Ninety Seven can fit three medium-sized Asians in it (Fact). The Ninety Seven’s travels through the London subway system are particularly noteworthy. At one point, I was in a very crowded subway/tube car with my pal Leigh. She asked me a question, and I turned to answer her, forgetting that The Ninety Seven was on my back/looming over the cowering onlookers. The Ninety Seven evaporated one small woman and cartoonishly flattened another into the wall of the subway car. I made a massive awkward face and then decided to flee the scene, leading a confused Leigh away from the scene of the crime. Our getaway was triumphant until I became hopelessly stuck in a turnstile due to The Ninety Seven’s considerable girth. I struggled for several seconds before a British voice of God boomed out from the loudspeakers to the delight of the thousands of people in the station: “Would the young man with the largest bag I’ve ever seen please free himself from the turnstile and proceed around to the left side?”

C – Stands for Canadian. People the world over love Canadians. Not only are we goddamn attractive, we’re so polite. We’re so earnest. We’re so well-meaning. Like the slow younger brother of the handsome, brash, cocky superstar athlete in the family, people love us because of what we aren’t. American. I’ve only really met one person who was anti-Canadian. My friend Boner Dave and I were in Singapore at the famous Raffles Hotel having a drink when we were assaulted by a depraved credit card company businesswoman and plied with 16 dollar Singapore Slings all evening (I say depraved because nobody would have purchased us drinks in the state we were in. Boner had a month-old neckbeard and was wearing a T-shirt that said ‘I’m Big in Europe’. I spent half the night trying to speak in rhyming couplets and the other half playing an imaginary saxophone along with the live band. I think it was the malaria pills). After begging us to dance for several hours, she finally gave up and posted up at the bar. When asked why she was upset, she told the person that she was mad we wouldn’t dance with her. “Gay?” she was asked. “No. Fucking Canadian.”

(I started to respond to her anger with a rhyming couplet, but thought better of it)

My buddy Touch once suggested that people’s personalities are shaped both by their personal characteristics and by their home cultures. I think this makes a lot of sense – a person may be a real horse’s ass to people they know, but usually if they’re Canadian, at the very least they’ll be really polite and nice to those they don’t know. And after traveling, having met people from all over the world, I can honestly say that we are probably the best goddamn people in the world. We’re so great that we even make the Americans pretending to be Canadian while traveling better people; they are forced to use the metric system, to declare their love for hockey and to apologize constantly. Nary a proclamation of American supremacy is heard. You’re welcome, world.

A – Arrogant enough to believe that anyone cares what nonsense passes through my head while I irritatingly travel a lot. Thanks for pointing that out, Laura Reid’s Boyfriend.

N – Stands for Ninja Turtle. My once and future career choice was to join the boys in the sewers of NYC. Ferg and I would spend hours plotting the inevitable increase of the crew to six and spending the rest of our lives eating pizza and fighting crime (a.k.a. the good life). Here we can be seen, scheming

In a survey of Kindergarten students at Irwin Park Elementary school, we both declared our future profession as crime-fighting ninja turtles. Interestingly, amid all the grand, absurd claims of future careers as space cowboys, professional athletes or, for one future highschool dropout, a terminator, only one student was precociously realistic when it came to his likely career. I am of course referring to your local insurance agent, Michael Richmond, who proudly declared that he would one day be an “assurance agent” (close enough).

F. – Stands for FOMO, as in Fear of Missing Out. I suffer from this affliction far, far worse than anyone else I know. I once chose to fly across the country for a party rather than purchase a couch for my apartment. In my opinion, spending 365 days sitting on the floor is totally, totally worth it if it means not spending one day imagining how much fun your friends are having without you. As my pal, you should consider this affliction a result of your awesomeness. Pat yourself on the back.

…..

I exited the shower sometime around sunrise and promptly passed out on the grass beside my tent, which is a fairly ineffective anti-malaria strategy. That was an incredibly, incredibly painful 24 hours, but it wasn’t all for naught. I can’t help but smile a little when I think of rich European tourists, wearing monocles, cravats and corsets in my mind’s eye, out for an early morning stroll when they find the scantily clad, groaning Canadian culprit of their scream-puking-induced sleepless night sprawled on the grounds of their beautiful resort. It’s the little things.

Elsewhere, the mechanics finally located and removed the immobilizer box and the girls returned to collect my lifeless corpse around 3PM. (Aside: the removal of the immobilizer box had the side effect of rendering our car unlockable - not at all a problem in the lawful continent of Africa). I hadn’t had time to make a new hole in my gluttony pants to reflect my frail state

(I had gone from Boar to Sow to Piglet, skipped ‘Emaciated Crackhead’ and was now down at the ‘Gandhi on a Hunger Strike’ size), so I hoisted myself into the car in the clothes I found myself in. This was how I found my ghostly-white self bound for (I would like to emphasize the following) the Zambian border wearing no shirt, a puffy vest and boxer shorts.

After accidentally missing everything and making an unknowing getaway into Zambia, we were escorted back to the border post by the police (this was the first of many, many interactions with Zambia’s Finest). Once at the border post, we discovered two things: first, not only was I not the most naked person that had ever attempted to cross into Zambia, I wasn’t even the most naked person that hour. Second, we didn’t have enough money to pay for our visas or for all the absurd taxes levied by the Zambian government upon entry. So, on the condition that they could hold my corpse hostage, the border officials let the girls enter the country to find an ATM where they could take out hundreds of thousands of Zambian kwacha. I lay down in the corner of the concrete room and promptly started groaning in abject pain. The border officials asked me what I did for a living and I groaned something about law; they clearly didn’t believe me because I looked like a hobo and started mockingly calling me “The Professor”. They did not respect me.

After we had paid for our visas, we were guided to a series of offices, wooden huts and trailers to pay the myriad corrupt taxes required by the Zambian government. We were actually forced to pay Zambian car insurance, in addition to a Zambian parking tax and something called the ‘Zambian People’s Tax’. Two of the six taxes had to be paid in American dollars, for some reason, which really fired me up. As a result, we had to trade money with drug dealers outside the border crossing, but not before I debated the logic of requiring the taxes of a landlocked African nation to be paid in the currency of a country that sits halfway around the world with a semi-literate, suit-wearing Zambian while wearing boxers and a puffy vest. You will be happy to hear, however, that Zambia is serious about protecting the environment– we were also charged a “carbon emissions tax”. Somewhere, David Suzuki just burst into tears of joy. Literally!

-----------------------------------------LOGICAL BREAK-----------------------------------------------

The corridor connecting the Namibia-Botswana border and Victoria Falls is patrolled like it’s the Gaza freaking Strip. We were stopped at police checkpoint after police checkpoint, some of which were even supposed to be there. Others, manned by the likes of the very enterprising “Policeman Frank”, are clearly there to earn some supplemental income. All of our money spent on carbon emissions taxes, we informed Policeman Frank that we couldn’t pay the required “City Council tax” (“Policeman Frank, there are no cities within 100 kilometres of here” ”… Pay money now”). Eventually, he accepted 5 Euros, 5 Canadian dollars and 500 Zambian Kwacha (about 15 cents) and we were on our way. At another checkpoint, the officers checked our Zambian documentation and noted with jolly smiles that where we had written our corpse/car’s Registration Number where it said “Registration Number”, we were supposed to have written our licence plate number. The boisterously announced penalty would be the confiscation of our passports until we rectified this egregious error. Only my biting sarcasm (and perhaps The Swift’s reasoned level-headedness) saved us from passport-less purgatory in Zambia, and we were let go.

There are many, many reasons I love to travel, but one of the things I enjoy the most about it are the feelings that come from throwing myself into places that are completely foreign to me. To walk different streets, to see different people, to learn new things, to look for similarities, to simply get a sense of a place halfway around the world. And then, to return, and see how time has changed it. Actually, one of the big reasons I’ve traveled to the places I have is because of change; Africa and Southeast Asia and South America, for better or worse, are changing rapidly. Europe and Australia are not.

For years, travelers went to Zimbabwe to see Victoria Falls, which straddles the two countries. However, as Robert Mugabe scaled newer and higher peaks of insanity, more people chose to use Livingstone, Zambia as their home base. As a result, in the four years since I was last in Livingstone, grocery stores, upmarket hotels and restaurant chains have transformed it beyond recognition. And the main road is paved now!

After a much needed, uninterrupted, non-shower-floor-y sleep, I was almost back to normal as we drove out to see the Falls the following morning. Then we saw another police checkpoint, and that good feeling quickly disappeared.

The police weren’t happy with my “terrible, terrible breakings of the law” nor my excuses, namely driving without a licence (I got mugged in Capetown and my driver’s licence was stolen!, which was a lie), driving without a back licence plate (it fell off in Namibia because… it’s windy in Namibia? I’m Ron Burgundy?) and driving without proper Zambian documentation (well, we filled out our registration number where it said ‘registration number’, eff you guys). So, one of the officers escorted me to the nearby station to assess me with three fines. At this point, I was really fired up and started to rant uncontrollably: “Sir! These fines are arbitrary and capricious! I am just a simple Canadian who wants to see your beautiful waterfalls (I had already seen them)! But your food has made me ill (this was a little white lie) and it’s my birthday today (this was a lie) and today after paying these fines I won’t have enough money to see your beautiful waterfall (this was close to being true, but it was a lie) and my friends in the car are both suffering from subdural hematomas (this was not only a lie, but if it were true I think they’d be dead) and these pretzels are making me thirsty (I didn’t say that one but I wish I did)! Sir, I am just not enjoying my stay in your country (this was true)!” The officer looked at me with a blank expression for several seconds, probably considered having me killed, and then picked up his phone. He rattled off a few sentences I didn’t really catch and then said, “he will not enjoy his stay in Zambia.” He nodded several times, grunted, and then put down the phone. “Pay one of the fines?” “Deal!”

The mist from the awe-inspiring Victoria Falls can be seen from kilometres away. For this reason, its name was Mosi-Oa-Tunya, beautifully meaning “The Smoke That Thunders”, until a white man named David Livingstone showed up and very justifiably informed the indigenous peoples that it was now called Victoria Falls after a pasty white woman who lived thousands of miles away and who would never see the Falls nor care that they existed. Progress!

The amazing part of seeing Victoria Falls from the Zambian side is the proximity to the water. In November, the time of year I came to see the Falls in 2006, this doesn’t matter because it’s low-water season. In June, it really, really matters - you get absolutely, totally drenched. To illustrate just how different the experiences were, here are two pictures taken at the exact same location:

I especially enjoyed two things about this visit to the Falls. First, a raving mad African guy ran back and forth in front of the Falls with his arms extended, screaming “MOOOSSSSIIIIII OAAAAA TUNYAAAAAAA”. This entertained me to the point that I took a picture of him while in the equivalent of a shower, risking the immediate death of my camera

Second, it’s possible to walk around the Falls and to relax just metres away from the edge; so we sat quietly and happily watched the sunset light up the spray.

And my buddy Rinny happened to be standing nearby

Victoria Falls is also known as the adrenaline capital of Africa, with huge numbers of crazy things to do. Four years ago I went whitewater rafting down Batoka Gorge, below the Falls, which was one of the most fun, most insane things I’ve ever done. We also went gorge-swinging (youtube it, it's madness), which I still have nightmares about.

This time, I had many more activities in mind. Unfortunately, swimming in the Devil’s Pool

was impossible because at this time of year it would lead to swimming at the bottom of the Falls. So I settled for bungee jumping, walking with lions, flying in a lawnmower over the Falls, and taking a year off my mother’s life.

Victoria Falls is one of the most stunning places in the world to bungee jump. The jumps take place from an arch bridge that is close enough to the Falls to feel the spray on your face.

The bridge, which connects Zambia and Zimbabwe, was built in… 1905? What the eff?

I learned this little detail after I had already paid, and seriously considered pulling the plug so I wouldn’t appear on the Darwin Awards. However, two factors swayed me back. First, I was informed confidently that the finest engineers and builders of their day had built the Victoria Falls Bridge (Reassurance!) Second, I noticed that the bungee jump brochure featured a picture of a smiling, post-jump Frodo Baggins

and my decision was made for me. A guy can’t look at himself in the mirror if he’s been out-toughed by Frodo.

As the jovial bungee dudes strapped me in, I tried to distract myself with thoughts of hilarious stories and Caesar Salad and Levin dressed as a street sign for Halloween

All of a sudden, I found myself standing with my toes at the edge of the platform and what sounded like a countdown. Before I had time to realize just how stupid this was, I spread my arms wide and hurled myself off a centenarian African bridge.

For approximately four seconds, I hurtled 111 metres through a gorgeous rainbow of mist toward the Zambezi River, fairly certain that my eyes were going to burst out of my head. I rebounded and found myself suspended in air, close enough to the underside of the bridge to note that its existence was as tenuous as my control over my bladder, and then down and up, down and up. Soon thereafter I found myself face to face with a teenaged Zambian who repeatedly yelled “I LOVE MY JOB!!!” from two inches away while he clipped me in to be hoisted back up to the bridge. Actually more terrifying than the jump itself was the aftermath, as I was left alone to walk along the rickety catwalk under the bridge. But wow, what an incredible (very likely one-time) experience.

That afternoon, with my adventure quota not yet fulfilled for the day, The Swift and I went walking in the wild with lions. I had heard of this possibility and was intrigued, but was also confused as to why you could pay to walk with lions in the wild. I was concerned that I would be paying to participate in a glorified petting zoo with miserable (and possibly hungry) animals. As it turns out, the lion population in Africa has decreased by 70 to 90 percent in recent decades, predominantly due to poaching and habitat loss. So, this and other organizations take in orphaned lion cubs and prepare them for life in the wild, where presumably they will thrive like Christian the Lion

The lions are raised to believe that humans are the mother lions so they won’t maul people like me. If they do start to attack or, more likely, jump up and try to play with you and accidentally rip your arm off, you are supposed to point a tiny stick at them and yell “No!!!” Surprisingly, this actually works. In another surprise, I learned that when lions go hunting, they roll around in the feces of other animals to mask their scents. I don’t care that they are another species, that’s weird.

We were with two lion cubs, and one of them picked up some feces and shoved it in the other’s face. When I started to laugh, one of them snarled at me, and I apologized.

On our final morning in Zambia, I finally got to ride in a flying lawnmower (and/or a microlight, if we’re being technical about it). It was in-freaking-credible.

See?

For 15 soaring minutes, I flew thousands of feet above Victoria Falls. Far below us, we could make out elephants and hippos bathing on the banks of the Zambezi.

My pilot was a poetic German national named Klaus. We could speak to each other through microphones in our helmets (I really love that we had to wear helmets while suspended thousands of feet in the air by a lawnmower engine, because those babies would really be helpful in the case of lawnmower engine failure - safety first in Africa), but mostly I just sat in awed silence. After ten minutes though, as we made a precarious banking turn, Klaus felt it important to say something:

“Mr. Duncan”

“What’s crackin, Klaus?!?”

“Mr. Duncan, are you aware that Dr. Livingstone was the first European to see these Falls?”

“Yes I am, Klaus”

“And are you aware of what Dr. Livingstone said when he first glimpsed them?!?”

“Remind me Klaus!”

“He said that this is a sight SO lovely, it must have been gazed upon by angels in their flights!”

“Yer not kiddin’ Klaus!”

“…What?”

“You are not kidding around, are ya Klaus?”

“I assure you that I am not making any jokes Mr. Duncan!”

This is D$$$, signing off with your thought of the day - "With $10,000 we would be millionaires! We could buy all kinds of useful things, like... love!"

2010-08-22T21:00:00.000-07:00

On the day that I should have been walking across a stage in Vancouver to get handed a really expensive piece of paper, I was instead driving a car few would trust to get them to Bed, Bathroom and Beyond (or Home Depot) into one of the world’s most inhospitable environments, Namibia’s Skeleton Coast. Originally named for the innumerable whale and seal bones that dotted its beaches, the Skeleton Coast is now known as the resting place for literally hundreds of ships and thousands of sailors who perished after crashing in its trademark dense fog. Those who did survive the shipwrecks quickly noticed that they were stranded in one of the most barren, desolate places on earth, and didn’t survive much longer. Sounds like the perfect vacation destination, no?

We left Swakopmund and headed north, stopping first at the Cape Cross Reserve, home to one of the most shockingly vast colonies of seals one could ever hope to see (if, for some reason, you have always hoped to see a surprisingly large number of seals all at once).

Seals are as impressively graceful in the water as they are painfully awkward out of it. Hundreds of playful seals jumping through massive waves are a sight to behold.

Some days, it just isn’t worth getting out of bed

I like to tell myself that this one was just resting

From Cape Cross, we ventured further north and suddenly happened upon a fairly ominous gate

I was looking for the part where they had displayed ‘Abandon all hope ye who enter here’, but I guess that there wasn’t room, what with two giant skull and cross bones already on there.

After passing a gate like that, one sort of expects to immediately explode into a ball of fire, but it was actually quite anti-climactic. Whereas other places are hilariously dangerous because they host man-eating lions or roaming gangs of marauders, the Skeleton Coast is dangerous because it hosts absolutely nothing. To the west is the hellaciously foggy ocean coastline and the skeletal remains of destroyed ships

To the north, east and south is sand, sand and sand. The only sign of enduring civilization is the slightly sub-satisfactory dirt road that follows the coastline.

We pressed along the coast and I remember loving the sense of utter desolation stretching out in every direction. I remember thinking that it was so unique and so starkly beautiful. I remember grandly exclaiming that there was nowhere else I would have rather been than driving through this beautiful desert with my pals. Six hours later, when it was pitch black and we were terrified, covered in dust, dangerously dehydrated, surrounded by the menacing eyes of wild animals, and lying on the ground trying to fix our utter failure of a car, I remember thinking that deserts suck.

After we had driven about halfway up the Skellie Coast, we decided not to push our luck any further and turned towards neighbouring Damaraland. To that point we had done relatively well, only driving through/over a few boulders and excruciatingly scraping the bottom of the car on the dirt, oh, a half-dozen times or so. Unfortunately, the Skeleton Coast had battered our car so harshly that it was in Damaraland where that old adage wrang true: What doesn't kill you makes you incredibly weak and leaves your battered corpse vulnerable to bursting into flames the next time you get sick, hurt or gassy.

I suppose at this point it would be best to break into a running diary format, complete with commentary, observation and the inner workings of my admittedly addled mind

4:42 - 'What the fuck is that?!?'

4:43 - 'Is that a giant green penguin?'

4:44 - Of course it's not Dunc, the heat is making you hallucinate again, just drive the car

4:45 - Oh nevermind you were right, it actually is a giant green penguin

4:58 - Real animals begin to appear to the side of the road as we enter more lush territory: gazelles, (delicious) kudu, the retreating tale of a warthog visible above the long, yellow grass like a perescope. Annoyingly, they are all behind a tall fence, the purpose of which is likely to keep the animals within a game reserve. This is done to attract and appease the tourists who expect to see wild animals on their vacations. This is a problem all over Africa, as the fences inevitably disrupt natural migrations, and, in a sick twist of fate, actually harm the health and decrease the populations of the very animals everyone wants to see. That being said, without the game reserves and the fences the situation would likely be even worse, as poaching and habitat loss often conspire to wipe out wild animals otherwise.

5:07 - 'What the fuck was that?!?'

'I have a sneaking suspicion that we just drove over a boulder.'

'Oh'

5:08 - 'Do you guys smell burning?'

'No, Swifty'

5:10 - Who is the most entertaining insane dictator in history? Should I even be asking myself that question? Probably not... but some of them do such hilarious things! Mussolini had a lot of things going on, but he's too mainstream. 'Team America' tells me that Kim Jong Il is in the running, but that portrayal was maybe, possibly, slightly exaggerated (Haaans Brix! Aaaaah no! Ahhh herro, great to see you again Hans). Would it be the Hoxhas in Albania, who once changed the name of every single street in the capital city of Tirana to 'November 8 Street' to commemorate the creation of their political party? Think of the practical difficulties of delivering a pizza in that circumstances. Or would it be Baby Doc Duvalier, who used to post signs around Haiti reading 'I should like to stand before the tribunal of history as the person who irreversibly founded democracy in Haiti, Signed, Jean-Claude Duvalier, President-For-Life'? Idi Amin would have to be the frontrunner. He used to spend all his time writing telegrams to other heads of state. Most hilariously, he once sent one to the Israeli government during the Yom Kippur War with the simple but effective: 'I command you to surrender.' In another telegram, he informed Queen Elizabeth that 'I intend to arrive in London for an official visit on August 4th this year, but I am writing now to give you time to make all the necessary preparations for my stay so that nothing is omitted. I am particularly concerned about food because I know you are in the middle of a fearsome economic crisis. I would also like you to arrange for me to visit Scotland, Ireland and Wales to meet the heads of revolutionary movements fighting against your imperial oppression.' Yup, Idi, definitely the favourite for the title.

5:13 - Somehow, the road in Damaraland is even worse than it was along the Skeleton Coast. Our car, riding approximately two inches off the ground, is under constant attack. I try to zigzag and swerve to the best patches of road, but despite my best efforts the undercarriage is receiving a savage beating.

5:16 - I see a banana peel on the road and instinctively swerve to avoid it, knowing that to run over it would mean spinning out of control and either dying or being passed by Bowser.

5:19 - 'Do you guys smell burning?'

5:22 - 'Oooooohhhhh' accompanied by one of those crunched-up face cringes, as the car's undercarriage drags through the dirt for a solid 15 seconds.

5:23 - It sounds like we are dragging something rather substantial under our car. Hoping it's Sideshow Bob and not something substantial, I get out of the car to check. Oh, well, there's your problem - a very, very large piece of the undercarriage hanging down and dragging on the ground is fairly substantial, no?

5:24 - We take turns reaching under the car and trying to pull the large slab of metal loose from the car, but it's stuck on the ground.

5:25 - I pull the car forward a bit to loosen up the delinquent piece of undercarriage, then turn off the ignition as the car comes to rest on top of a fairly significant hill.

5:26 to 5:32 - We trade off shaking our heads in disbelief and pulling at the piece of metal. Finally, it comes free, and it's even more gargantuan than originally believed. It looks like a medieval shield. (We were to learn later, when the car needed to be fixed, again, that it was truly miraculous that the medieval shield somehow manoeuvred around and didn't break the exhaust pipe in half. Of course, the exhaust pipe did later break in half, but at least it waited for a slightly better moment. It's the small victories that matter).

5:33 - Still 100km away from any kind of civilization, the ladies discuss our increased probability of death given that a pebble is likely to hop into our now wide open drivetrain and kill us all. I hop into the driver's seat, turn the key and.... oh, what's that? Now the car won't start. Things are escalating quickly.

5:35 - As the girls look on, I throw it in neutral and start pumping the gas pedal. The engine chokes and sputters, but miraculously starts. German engineering! I was so overjoyed that I failed to notice the car had started rolling down the hill, and did I mention the brakes weren't really working?

5:36 - 'Get in! Get in! For the love of God get in!' In our own fun 'Little Miss Sunshine' moment, the girls start chasing the car down the hill, with The Swift holding the medieval shield above her head. The Salzberg jumps in the front, while The Swift is eventually able to dive in, shield-first.

5:38 - Quiet descends on the car, as we contemplate the current pickle we find ourselves in.

5:39 - 'Do you guys smell burning?'

5:44 - 'Do you guys smell burning?'

5:47 - 'Do you guys smell burning?'

'Swifty, isn't smelling burning a sign that you are having a stroke? If we were within 500 kilometres of a hospital, I would be rushing you to it.'

5:50 - We are driving painfully slow, but I was told that that was the responsible thing to do.

5:52 - We are passed by the first car we have seen in hours

5:54 - We are passed by a donkey-drawn cart. Its 6-year-old driver points and laughs.

6:06 - Why won't Rinfret just change his profile picture? It's been 4 years. And it looks ridiculous.

6:10 - I am stressed, but, in a way, this is kind of awesome.

6:22 - In rural Africa, darkness falls suddenly, as if a black blanket has been draped over the landscape. It is bright, and then within minutes it is darker than Pat Maloney’s moral standards (zing!). This is great, because the degree of difficulty wasn't high enough before

6:51 - The car starts fish-tailing uncontrollably, which is bad.

6:52 – I am stressed and this is not at all awesome.

6:53 - 'Do you guys smell burning?'

'Actually... yes'

6:54 - The back left tire is absolutely, utterly destroyed. We are basically driving on the rim. This is what the tire looked like when we saw it the next day

6:55 - The Salzberg: 'I CAN FIX THIS!!!!'

“Lady, you’re scarin’ us!”

6:56 - We emptied the trunk, pulled out our spare tire, and got to work.

6:58 - I wish Adam Ross was here - by now he would've set himself up on his tripod, killed one of the numerous glinty-eyed animals in the bushes around us, butchered, dried and cured the meat, and changed the tire, all while whistling his grandfather's hit song, 'I've Been Everywhere'.

7:07 - I am a man, for I have changed a flat tire. Eat your heart out Adam Ross.

7:09 – The car barely starts. I whimper, but it’s a manly whimper, because I can change a tire.

7:26 – We turn on our GPS to see how far away we are from civilization; it appears it is 50km to Khorixas, the nearest town. Oh, what’s that GPS? The road we are on ceases to exist in 10km? And you are telling us to happily continue driving through the dark, roadless desert without a care in the world? Great!

7:34 – Let's review for a moment - we are in the middle of nowhere; it is dark; we now have no spare tire so another flat would effectively cripple us; the brakes don't really seem to be "working"; we can't turn off the car for fear it will never start again; we are about to enter a road that apparently doesn't exist; Swifty is having a stroke, or something; and much like you wouldn't want to go for a jog (soft 'j') after a doctor cracks open your chest to perform open-heart surgery, we weren't too excited about driving on a death-road with the undercarriage of our car riding in the backseat. The urge to not drink and drive is becoming too overwhelming to ignore.

7:41 – We are now driving in the GPS Dead Zone.

7:47 – It is indicative of our collective state of mind that we are certain the ball of ethereal light that has just appeared on the horizon is either The Rapture or aliens that look like this

coming to take us away.

7:48 - Oh ya, it’s the moon

7:58 – 9:32 - All right Dunc, the best way to deal with this situation is to think some happy thoughts and before you know it you will be in the booming metropolis of Khorixas, Namibia (population 735) where you can have a hot shower, maybe catch a movie in the air-conditioned theatre and then watch the incorrigible antics of that delightful Don Cherry on satellite TV. Hey remember earlier when you learned that the inventor of the flush toilet was named Thomas Crapper! Wasn’t that great!?! And are you or are you not buoyed by the fact that under ‘Minority Status’ on his application to law school, your friend Rob wrote ‘Redhead’ and was still somehow admitted? What about the myriad legends of Fraser ‘Fingers’ Mandela, who once set a Toronto garbage collection record by causing $60 000 in damage when he drove a tractor into an overpass? Or the fact that two-term American President Ronald Reagan once grandly stated that trees cause more pollution than cars? Or that time you learned how to play the sax?

Or when you saw that penguin that ate another penguin?

Or the story from your friend Graham about the time he regained consciousness in just his underwear outside the Korean Embassy after accidentally enjoying a Vodka Rohypnol at a bar 20km away? With stories, fact and friends like that, how could one ever be unhappy?

9:33 – We made it! Thank… (I’ve been told that the worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has nobody to thank)… you?

9:35 – Rather than building the movie theatres, bars, satellite TVs or even the hot showers of which I had been dreaming, the infinitely wise urban planners that designed Khorixas instead built a gas station.

9:37 – It appears that the gas station is the fortress for a battalion of prostitutes, who appear to be the only inhabitants of Khorixas. It’s hard to believe it, but we were likely better off in the desert.

9:42 – The girls (The Swift and The Salzberg, not The Prostitutes) and I miraculously find a campsite.

9:55 – Within minutes we have set up our tents, eaten sandwiches, and fallen into a deep, PTSD-infused sleep

7:12 (AM) – Nine hours later I am a little confused when I’m awoken by the hungry advances of a feral pig, which is attempting to gain access to my tent so she can feed her septuplet piglets. It was unclear whether she was hoping to feed them me or my cookies

7:24 – I open my tent flap, thinking that my swift kick has sent her away, but she sneak attacks and it’s on again.

7:26 – Eventually she becomes scared of the tire-changing badass she has had the misfortune of encountering and runs away

7:27 – I lie back down and drift off to sleep.

7:36 – I am awoken by something brushing against my tent. I look outside. It’s a peacock.

7:42 – Resigned to the fact that the world is conspiring against me, I decide to get up and set about the task of trying to locate a mechanic who can reattach a medieval shield to a car.

8:40 – Surprisingly, within the hour we have a local fellow named Armando jacking up the car with our tirejack and… climbing under the car?!? Ohmyfuck is that dangerous. A 17 year old tirejack! And a very, very heavy car! And a car uniquely susceptible to destruction! Poor Armando is about to become the Wicked Witch of the East

8:56 – Armando emerges from under the car, alive! He is truly shocked when he is engulfed in a boisterous group hug.

8:58 – When we ask him how much we owe him, he actually suggests the equivalent of 5 dollars. I hug him again and give him 20, which is still a shockingly low amount given that he just risked his life, albeit probably unknowingly.

9:06 – We head to the gas/hooker station to try and buy a new tire

9:18 – They locate one that should sort of work as a spare, so long as we don’t have to drive on it very far.

10:02 – We are finally on our way away from Khorixas, away from Damaraland, away from the Skeleton Coast, away from inquisitive peacocks and from famished pigs. If we are lucky, we will be within the confines of the majestic Etosha Park in just a few hours!

10:06 (This isn’t even an exaggeration) – Our back right tire blows up. FML.

10:09 – As I lamented the fact that Murphy’s Law was violently violating us in unmentionable places in unspeakable ways, we once again cleared the trunk and set about putting our (very) recently purchased spare tire onto the car.

10:24 – We are on our way. My psyche is having difficulty dealing with the fact that the steering wheel is pulling heavily to the left and the godforsaken dashboard is once again lighting up.

12:13 – We pull into the next town in search of yet another gas station to purchase yet another tire. Unfortunately, it is Sunday, and nowhere is open for business, except for the crack dealer operating on the corner. And business is good.

1:35 – We finally get a gas station owner to drive down and open up his shop to sell us a tire. The number of Namibians I have hugged today is escalating quickly.

1:45 – I am offered crack.

2:07 – I am asked for crack.

2:08 – I try to explain to the crackhead how he can find the crackdealer - “Oh I can’t help you there, but actually there was a guy just a block that way hanging out in front of the grocery store who may be able to… about yay high, looked kind of like Bubbles... you know, from ‘The Wire’… it's a great show... you should, um…” - but upon receiving a blank stare decide to abandon this act of good Samaritanism.

3:14 – We are finally set up with our new tire and set off towards Etosha

….

Our car troubles very temporarily behind us, we arrived in the amazing Etosha Park a few hours later.

The largest game park in Namibia, and one of the most famous in all of Africa, Etosha is a large salt pan with scores of animals that tend to cluster around its few tiny watering holes. It is relatively unique in that people can drive their own cars around most of the park without a guide – a rule many other drivers came to rue when the ungodly screech produced by our braking car scared away all animals within 50km. Except for these guys, who were too busy enjoying each other’s company to run away

We spent our first two nights in Etosha at Okaukuejo Camp, which features an amazing watering hole that allows one to see animals at any time, day or night,

It is most famous for the consistent appearance of white rhinos every night

By day we either lay by the surprisingly present swimming pool or drove the plains in search of the amazing and the hilarious. By night we were plied with liquor by Archie, Quivers and Kenny, a perpetually wasted trio of gregarious elderly travelers who were camping at the adjacent site. While Kenny pontificated about the meaning of life and Archie explained why his flashlight was the world’s best, Quivers would shakily stand up every few minutes to grandly state that “God is First, Family is Second and… FRIENDS ARE THIRD!!!” at which point he would grab Kenny in a bear hug and pour whiskey down his throat or, more frequently, onto his head. Archie, easily pushing 65, woke up the next morning to find himself sleeping on the roof of his truck.

Needless to say, they ruled.

I wish everyone could go on safari in Africa at least once. There is really nothing quite like it. The huge African skies, the endless plains (the word “Serengeti” actually means “endless plains”) and, of course, the beautiful wild animals that tend to do absolutely ridiculous things to one another.

In my opinion, you go through two phases on safari. While in phase one, absolutely everything you see is absolutely the most amazing thing on earth. Gazelles! Zebras!!! ELEPHANTS!!! Your awe is so profound that you will utter noises and sentences that will truly embarrass you later on. Once, upon seeing a beautiful creature in the wild, my friend CP was heard whispering to herself “That bird is so free… like a bird.” And while that was an extreme case in terms of hilarity, it happens to everyone. However, before long, people reach phase two, in which just seeing animals isn’t enough anymore. While still happy, you are no longer ecstatic, and to reach that level of joy again you need to see something crazy, something unthinkable, something only the ciiiircle of liiiiife could produce. For example, I once looked up to see a dead gazelle staring at me from a tree branch 2 metres above my head, placed there by a leopard as a meal for later.

You simply just don’t see something like that very often. Another time we saw an amorous endangered black rhino use its horn to violently explore the nether regions of a non-amorous female endangered black rhino, lifting it clear in the air. Our guide sat in confused silence for 5 minutes before quietly noting that he had never seen such a thing nor heard it was even possible.

And of course, your heart will never beat like it does when you get charged by a herd of elephants.

On this particular jaunt, nothing too incredibly bizarre happened. In an instance that was simultaneously heart-breaking and fascinating, we did see two jackals share the organs of a dead zebra like they were Lady and Tramp

And it will always be entertaining to watch a male animal (an oryx, in this case) attempt to initiate the No Pants Dance with an unsuspecting female as she tries to get herself a drink of water

We saw plenty of gazelles

And whatever this incredibly suspicious character is

And some rambunctious zebras

And a lion

And we broke all the rules

On our last night in Etosha, we sat on the roof of our car and drank beers as the sun went down over the vast salt pan. As the orange light washed over the landscape, dozens and dozens of giraffes emerged out of the bushes to strike their awkward stance by the watering hole

Just 72 hours before I was fairly certain we were going to die in a ball of German-engineered fire. A few days pass and life is perfect again. I guess that's the thing about traveling: the lows are so low that the highs, already high, seem even higher... What?

Good talk, see ya out there.

2010-07-22T14:37:00.000-07:00

Have you ever bought something that you ended up totally regretting? Something you didn’t really need? Something you bought despite your good judgment, despite the astronomical price and despite its many, many shocking and glaring deficiencies? Maybe you were the person that bought GOB’s segway, for example (http://gizmodo.com/208595/own-gobs-segway)?

Or maybe your desire to own a framed photo of Emilio Estevez clouded your better judgment (Margot) (For a great piece on Emilio’s next project, check out this link: http://www.theonion.com/articles/when-life-gets-you-down-sometimes-you-just-have-to,11426/ - Joyho, Emilio!). Or maybe you bought something that was incredibly, shockingly old because it had so much charm, so much character. Let me tell you something: When someone suggests something has charm or character, they are really just saying that it's old. Really fucking old. That's it, don't try and dress it up as something it isn't. It's just old.

In February, three Canadian idiots purchased a charming Mercedes that was downright bursting with character. They were blinded by a need for a car, any car (how else were they supposed to get to school for their one class a week? Walk? Pssh, walking is for hippies and salesmen) (Note to reader: the buyers were also concerned that one member of their party was close to snapping and killing them all if daytrips weren’t taken to the many wonders of the Cape. We’ll call the homicidal member… Alexa S…. No, that’s too obvious…. A. Swift then). Additionally, one member had recently found 10 Rand on the street, meaning the price was now considerably lower at just 28990 Rand! Did they care that the car had metaphorically circumnavigated the earth 7 times? Of course not, that gave it character. Did they care that the paint contained substances no longer considered safe for humans to touch (arsenic-coated lead)? Not at all, their immune systems could use the workout. Did they care that the windows operated at a speed similar to, and made noises one would expect of, a 91 year old entering and exiting a bathtub? They were open-window drivers anyways. Did they care that a significant leak appeared to have contributed to the creation of a bustling coral reef in the trunk? Are you kidding? Who doesn’t love marine life?

And you know what? In the city, their cantankerous cadaver of a car did all right. It navigated its 10 minute drive to campus and guzzled its gas and everyone was relatively happy. They weren't even all that mad when the sunroof flat-lined and refused to be resuscitated back to life for the month of April, including during a bout of weather that the author only half-jokingly referred to as ‘The Perfect Storm’ (Educational tip to reader: Cardboard cereal boxes are ineffective proxies for metal sunroofs during The Perfect Storm).

But then, but then! with school over and a month until the masses descended upon the fair nation of South Africa for the World Cup, the idiots decided to take their ill-tempered automobile on a road trip. What's the worst that could happen to a shockingly low-riding car on the slightly sub-par roads of Namibia, Zambia and Botswana? It may surprise you to learn... many, many things. Many, many things can go wrong. Many, many things can go wrong when you take a normal, hearty, new-age car through Southern Africa. When you take Morris the Baby Blue Benz? Well, read on my friend.

Note to readers 1: Yes, I was one of those idiots. But you know what? I don’t regret for one minute going on this road trip, or taking our weathered skeleton car. For one, as expected, it was an absolutely amazing trip. Incredible. We saw and did so many things in a month that I still haven’t processed it all. And you know what else? You know what taking a terrible car on a road trip through Southern Africa builds? Character, that's fucking what. And we all know that that's all that really matters anyways.

Note to readers 2: All of the following stories are subject to extreme hyperbole, as the author is a graduate of The Blake Anderson School of Storytelling: Where Breathless Exaggeration Isn’t Only Tolerated, It’s Encouraged

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It was an inauspicious* start to a definitely ambitious, certainly ill-planned, oft-discouraged, possibly incredibly stupid trip. Although I was buoyed by one final loving message from Mama Fin (Please be careful, your car sucks, Love Mom), we were just 10 minutes and 16 kilometres into a 30-day, 10 000km trip and already the dashboard lights were sparkling like beacons of death. You know the ones I'm talking about. They are the lights that suggest something is horribly, horribly wrong with your lightbulbs or your oil or your brakes or your seatbelts - or in our case, all 4 - but they may as well just be flashing "Hey You! Ya, You! YOU'RE FUCKED". I had just decided to ignore the dashboard lights for the duration of the trip when The Swift uttered 5 words for the first time, but certainly not the last: “Do you guys smell burning?”

*(Ainslie, ‘inauspicious’ means 'an event or happening that suggests one will not be successful in the future'; a bad omen; boding ill - you're welcome my dear!)

I guess at that point I probably should have realized that we were going to have significant car troubles along the way. Call it blind optimism. I wasn’t even all that bothered a few hours later when we exited the car and noticed that our back licence plate had abandoned ship. Of course, this may have been because we had stopped for lunch at a place called The Titbits Diner and I was using all my brain power to try and determine whether we were walking into a brothel (I’m still not sure). Later, I barely batted an eye at the relentless persistence of the ‘ABS’ dashboard light that was suggesting we would soon be careening to our deaths when the brakes failed – in retrospect, my rationalization that we didn’t really need brakes because Namibia is the second least densely populated country in the world (you win Mongolia, you always do) and there is soft sand everywhere to crash into was probably irresponsible.

Picture unrelated to content

African borders are very, very odd. Sometimes they are extremely porous and shockingly easy to cross. Other times they are extremely difficult and the overzealous officials are either valiantly trying to combat perceptions of African corruption or are looking for a bribe. The problem, of course, is that I can never tell which border falls into which category. This leads to incredibly awkward conversations with lots of loud, fake Finley laughs, and other times leads me to try to force money on bewildered border agents who weren't actually looking for a bribe. More than once in my life I've tried to surreptitiously slip money to an authority only to have it awkwardly fall to the ground. The South Africa-Namibia border was definitely of the porous variety. We were all stamped within 30 seconds and vaguely motioned to leave. We hesitantly got into the cars (our pals Caity and Alex aka The Big Nasty were with us in their own car at that point. Sadly for everyone, they were not driving The Ho Train) and drove away. We didn’t register the cars and paid no fees, and the cars weren’t searched or even glanced at. I believe that was the second weirdest border experience of my life, a distant second to the time an American border official flipped through my passport and felt it was his duty to confirm with me that “Uganda’s not in the Middle East, is it?” “[Shocked silence] [Shrug] [Smirk] No sir, it’s in Mexico.” “Good.”

After spending the night on a patch of grass by a gas station, we were on our way early and soon left the paved highway for the corrugated dirt track leading to Ai Ais Hot Springs and Fish River Canyon.

Fish River Canyon is the largest canyon you’ve never heard of. (Winston Churchill: Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put). Fish River Canyon is the largest canyon of which you’ve never heard. That’s better. In fact, it is apparently the world’s second largest canyon, who knew? Incredibly vast, beautifully red rock, I wouldn’t even think of kicking it out of bed for eating crackers

Unfortunately, a number of troublesome things happened on the deathtrap roads in and around Fish River Canyon. First, Caity and The Big Nasty’s tire exploded and had to be replaced. Second, we collectively killed approximately 17 birds, including one that will be embedded on the grill of The Big Nasty’s car for the remainder of time. Third, Morris the Mercedes chose to stop playing all but TWO of the CDs I had made, meaning we had 34 songs for the next 9400 kilometres. I didn’t take that well. Finally, and probably most importantly, on a truly amazingly terrible stretch of road, something went truly amazingly terribly wrong with Morris’s front left portion, or quadrant if you will, creating an ungodly metal-on-metal screech second only in my nightmares to the noise I once heard emanating from a pig as it was slaughtered approximately 9 feet away from a basketball court I was playing on in the Philippines.

That night, we battled our PTSD by lounging in the natural hotsprings of Ai Ais with Namibian beers and the coolest elderly couple on the face of the planet. They were from Australia, were doing basically the same trip as us around Southern Africa, and were seventy seven years old.

The next morning, after being ensured by a "mechanic" (read: a dust-encrusted nomad) that the noise Morris was making was just a lack of fluid in the shocks (he was so, so incredibly wrong), we embarked on a massive 10 hour drive to the incomparable sand dunes of Sossusvlei. The driving that day was much like the driving would be for the rest of our time in Namibia: stark and desolate, dusty, hot, beautiful.

The main roads were relatively good - the problem is that there aren't many main roads. This may be because there is absolutely nobody in the country. Literally!!!! We drove for 500km without seeing a single settlement; we did, however, see a golden-hued cow that I was absolutely certain was a lion. It probably wasn't.

We arrived at a camp known as Sesriem, the gateway to the sand dunes of Sossusvlei, at dusk. Completely unfenced, Sesriem's campsites were each marked by a gorgeous, giant climbing tree.

We picked one on the outskirts, cracked open a few Windhoek lagers and set up our tents as the sky exploded with colour

Sensing that it was a Disney moment, I pumped 'Circle of Life' (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vX07j9SDFcc - you're welcome! Is it weird that this actually gives me chills? Ya? OK, good talk, see you out there) on full blast on the iPod dock. With beers in hand, sitting high up a tree in the Namibian desert, the 5 of us belted that grand tune out as loud as we could. Then, and surprisingly I'm not even exaggerating, we were joined in song by a chorus of wild animals from just beyond the campsite. Naaaaaaannnn Seeevvvveeennnnnyaaaaaaaa, Bagithi Baba! [Annnniiiiimmmmaaaaallllllll Sooooooouuuuuuunnnnnddddssss, Animal Soooooouuuuunnnndddddsssss]! Siiithiiii Ooooommmm Sevenyaaaaa!!! [Animaaaaaallllll Soooooooooooounds]. It was very easily one of the best moments of my life, top 5 I would say, which sadly bumps out Dave and Chad's unsuccessful candidacy for Recycling Facilitators of Queen's University

Till we find our plaaaaaace

On the path unwiiiiinnnnddddiiiiiinnnnngggg

In! The! Ciiiiiirrrcccccllllleeeeee

The Circle of Liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiffffffffeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Boom!

[ANIMAAAAAAAALLLLLLLL SOOOOOOOUUUUUUNNNNNDDDDSSSSS IN A SONG-ENDING CRESCEEENNNDDOOO]

Amazing.

The next morning we woke up at 5AM so we could catch the sunrise from the top of a dune. Dune 45, so named because it is both 45 dunes and 45km away from Sesriem, is the place to be at 5:30AM in Namibia. Seriously, there were more people on top of that dune than we had seen the entire time in Namibia to that point. And who can blame them? It was one of the most breath-taking vistas I've ever seen.

Have you ever been somewhere that is so vast and so painfully beautiful that it makes you realize how incredibly small and insignificant you are? And from that realization comes complete and utter silence, as it feels like even breathing could somehow ruin that perfect place? Me neither, but I would guess that Sossusvlei at sunrise is about as close as a time and place could come to shutting me up.

Combine an amazing place with some of the most underrated fun in the entire world, Sand Supermans:

and dune-rolling

And like many before me - Big Babe eating a freezee, Rosser with a sausage-stuffed steak wrapped in bacon, McLovin' viewing a painfully beautiful sunset, Sam teeing off for a 4AM Shoe-golf match or Darren Milliam bathing in Nutella - we've found my happy place. If only we could've gotten a beerdie table up there.

In a different part of Sossusvlei sits the world-famous 'Dead Vlei'. Why is it world-famous, you ask? Why because J-Lo's psychological thriller 'The Cell' was partially filmed here of course

The Dead Vlei, meaning 'Dead Marsh', is a dry clay pan that features a number of dead acacia trees. It is stark and beautiful and encircled by some of the world's largest sand dunes, some measuring 300 and 400 metres high.

In one of my reoccurring bouts with stupidity, I suggested that we try to climb the biggest one, the one behind 'Dead Vlei' that you can see in the pictures above. In retrospect, I think I was blinded by my insatiable desire for more dune-rolling. A half-kilometre of dune-rolling! The Big Nasty, in his infinite wisdom, reacted to my suggestion by making a bed in the sand and having a nap.

Although there were moments I was pretty sure I was going to die of heat exhaustion, dehydration, suicide or some combination of the three, the climb was so incredibly worth it. The view from the top was both rad AND awe-inspiring.

And rolling back down that dune was about as incredibly fucking exhilarating as anything I've ever experienced (I would like to apologize to those who don't like the number of swears used on this nerdblog. However, in my defence, sometimes by far the best descriptive word one can use is 'fuck'. For example, how better to describe how much fun rolling down a giant sand dune is than to describe it as 'incredibly fucking exhilarating'. Boom. Give that beautifully visceral word 'fuck' some emphasis and you have done the best you possibly could to convey just how amazing it was to roll down that sand dune. Again, I apologize, but when used in that way is 'fuck' really offensive? Yes? It still is? Oh... well then, I apologize).

Unfortunately, to see Dead Vlei we had had to park our car and walk through the sand for 5km. This was considerably more difficult after scaling the Mt. Everest of sand dunes with next to no water. However, on the bright side, I had my first experiences with dehydration-induced hallucination, which was pretty fun. Try everything once I always say

After what seemed like an eternity we made it back to the car and I stopped seeing large cartoon beasts in the distance, which was bittersweet.

I absolutely cannot recommend going to Sossusvlei enough, it is transcendent. Easily among the most amazing, unique places I've ever been.

From Sossusvlei we headed to the coast to the very oddly placed German colonial town of Swakopmund. Described as more German than Germany (except for, you know, all the sand), this town actually has a street named after Kaiser Wilhelm (Not to be outdone, Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, has streets named after such bastions of human rights as Ho Chi Minh, Mao Tse-tung, Kim Il Sung, and Vladimir Lenin - I especially enjoyed it when I was told not to go near Robert Mugabe Street because it was too dangerous). Aside from issues with how they name streets, Swakopmund also has a spelling problem

Swakopmund is famous for three reasons. First, Brangelina birthed a child here. Second, it's got all sorts of adrenaline-y type activities, like skydiving, ATVing over the sand dunes, and sandboarding. Third, Craig "Craig" Heintzman won the 2007 Namibian Sandboarding Championships here, which is commemorated by the statue of his likeness that now looms over Kaiser Wilhelm.

ATVing through the sand dunes is exactly as much fun as you think it is. Wow.

While in Swakopmund we happened upon a mechanic specializing in Mercedes and decided that the car should probably be fixed so that my ears would stop bleeding.

Mechanic: [With incredulous look on face] You guys were [shakes head] very, very lucky

D: Go on...

Mechanic: [Shakes head, feels pity for me] The wheel was very, very close to falling off your car

D: Falling off? Just... falling right off?

Mechanic: Ya

D: [What do you say when a mechanic has just told you the wheel almost came off your car? T.I.A. Bru? Well thank goodness the good lord Big Baby Jesus was looking after us!!! I opted for the very erudite...] Huh... you don't say?

[Silence...]

D: But a nomad told us it was just shock fluid

Mechanic: I'm afraid that doesn't exist

D: Hmmm, touche mechanic. So... Did you fix it?

Mechanic: Yes

D: So... you think we can drive it up the Skeleton Coast?

Mechanic: You want to drive... this car up the Skeleton Coast?

D: Ya

Mechanic: Surely you can't be serious?

D: I am most serious, and don't call me Shirley

Mechanic: [Shakes head in disgust, turns around and walks away]

In retrospect, we probably should have listened to him.

2010-05-22T16:49:00.000-07:00

Things in South Africa rarely make sense. Like when the driver of your van-cab gets out of the car at a red light at a major intersection to have a fistfight with the driver of the van-cab behind you, and then when the light turns green they separate and return to the cars and drive away; Or when the 75-year-old sociopathic day doorman of your apartment building stops you every day to either tell you how faithful he’s been to his wife during their 56 year marriage (the answer: mostly) or to tell you how he wants to slit the throats of all South Africa’s racists “like I [he] used to in all of Africa’s jungle camps”…. Pardon moi, sir? Or when the night doorman busts out “My Humps” on repeat at all hours of the night; Or that the fire hydrants here are yellow! And there’s a lemon behind that lemon-shaped rock! Or that The Salzberg has a crew of transvestite admirers that accosts her in excitement every time they see us; Or that a shocking number of things around this multiracial city are named after Cecil Rhodes, one of the world’s most notorious racists; Or that the local juvenile prison is named after Old School: "Welcome to Harequa Detention Centre: A To New Beginnings"; Or that the most popular flavour of potato chips here is an epic battle between either "Chicken" or "Smoke Beef"; Or that The Swift and The Salzberg were forced to take a 4-hour standardized test upon arriving at the University of Capetown for the purposes of scoring the proficiency of South Africa’s high schools, despite the fact they graduated from high school 8 years ago, in Canada.

So, with all that providing the context, I can’t really say I’m surprised that one of our professors disappeared 9 weeks ago, supposedly to go on paternity leave, and that we haven’t heard from him since. Nobody knows where he is - the university, his secretary, Nelson Mandela, Dog The Bounty Hunter (I just wanted to get those two into a sentence together) – he may have burst into flames for all we know. But, pending his survival, and depending on whether my status as one of 5 native English speakers in the class carried me to a pass, law school is all done.

It’s been a long road since Kindergarten grad

with many misadventures and lessons learned along the way. Ferg and I learned in Kindergarten to avoid friendship with the kid who pulls down his pants for show ‘n’ tell. I learned in grade 4 to only say things about people if I had something nice to say, or to at least look behind me before I said the bad stuff – this lesson was learned when I (very correctly) referred to my monstrosity of a teacher, the perfectly named Ms. Horsley, as a “complete and total bitch” while she happened to be standing right behind me. This led to, among other things, the first failing grade a student ever received in the downright subjective, short-lived grading category of “Attitude” on Irwin Park Elementary School report cards. In grade 7, I learned the importance of temper control when I decided to kick a wall and break my foot after my towering blast to centre field in California Kickball was accidentally caught by a classmate named Michael Moore, despite the fact he could barely see out of his glasses and the fact that the ball had knocked him unconscious. In University I learned it is always better to be safe than sorry (and thus to consult a dictionary) after learning the word "disseminate" from the sentence "Information from Jewish internment camps was disseminated around Europe by a vast network of intermediaries" and assuming that it meant "to de-Jew" something. My Holocaust History professor was only to happy to correct me. Education!

Anyways, here we are a needlessly excessive period of time since that epic Grade K grad. It’s a pretty terrifying thought, almost being a real live adult living in the real adult world. The end of the 5/6/7-day weekend is drawing nigh. It sure is a good thing I have another 4 months to reflect on that.

Myself and 4 pals are off on a month-long roadie around Namibia, Botswana and South Africa, with possible side adventures to Zambia/Zimbabwe and/or Lesotho.

Picture Unrelated to Content - Sunrise from Lion's Head, Capetown with insane, cloudy weather

The Finley family is (probably justifiably) slightly apprehensive that a 2-Wheel-Drive Mercedes that can almost legally drink in Quebec and Alberta and has driven enough kilometres to circumnavigate the earth via the Equator not once, not twice, but seven times won’t be able to survive the admittedly less-than-good African roads, but what the hell, we may as well see. The Mix CDs are made (featuring such instant classics as ‘Don’t Carjack Us We Listen To Rugged Hip To The Hop That You Don’t Dare Stop; ‘Trees Cause More Pollution Than Cars’, a Ronald Reagan Joint; Great Movie Songs: The CD That Has No Earthly Business In A Maine Hayfield; The But My Real Passion Is Working With Ritards CD; and, Bulimic D Presents: Hardcore Rap) and the preparations have sort of been made. I may not have a driver's licence, but I have moxie. I dare say it is going to be amazing

After we get back, it’s the World Cup of Futbol for 3 weeks. I am unreasonably excited about this for 5 reasons:

1) “The Jet” Jewell will be here

2) M. Alexander Richmond will be here

3) Monsieur Rinfret will be here, topless by popular request

4) We have tickets to a Round of 16 game that will probably feature Spain, possibly the world's best team against either Portugal (which would be rad for geographical rivalry reasons, in addition to the fact that that fine country features metrosexual soccer star and also arguable best-player-in-the-world Cristiano Ronaldo), Brazil (which would be awesome because they are awesome, and also feature another arguable best-player-in-the-world, hilariously named Kaka) or Ivory Coast (which play some sort of an exciting Afro-style). We also have a Quarter Final game which may just feature probable best-player-in-world, Leo Messi. Do I know anything about soccer? Absolutely not. But being in a sports crowd in Africa is ridiculous – everyone goes absolutely insane and sings and dances together, and there are few things I love more than semi-coordinated, semi-spontaneous sing 'n' dance-alongs. See "Twist and Shout", Ferris Bueller for evidence. I can’t wait. (It should also be noted that this dream may of course be thwarted by the fact that no African people can actually afford the tickets, but it will still be fun - See pictures of Ritard Jewell, M.A. Richmond and M. Rinfret above)

5) According to newspapers here, not one, not two, but three! of Cristiano Ronaldo’s girlfriends may be coming to watch the World Cup in person. As great as it would be to run into Paris Hilton or Kim Kardashian in person, it’s Canadian songstress Jann Arden that everyone here is most excited about seeing. Evidence:

She may have rejected me as a friend on facebook not once, not twice, but thrice (that is actually the only part of this section that is true), but one day Jann!

From there, it will be a trip to Egypt and Jordan with some great pals, then to London to see in person that Levin now wears scarves, and then Ontario and then B.C. I am as annoyed with me as you are, don’t feel that you are alone in that.

Anyhoo, if anything bad happens on this roadtrip remember:

OK.

2010-05-09T16:27:00.000-07:00

My pals Alex and Caity made the excellent decision to rent a VW Bug from Best Beetle Car Rental Co. (which is an anagram for Reputable! if you add in ‘p’ ‘u’ and ‘!’ and leave out a bunch of other letters) for their stay in CPT. They were a little surprised when they received their contraption (it’s not really fair to call it a car) to find that it was covered in flowers and ladybugs, that it was old enough to have passed a spry, freedom-fighting Nelson Mandela on the street before he was ever put in prison, and that it had a penchant for just randomly turning off on highways, leaving its unfortunate seatbeltless passengers without the luxury of braking or steering.

Ol’ Volga had all sorts of adventures in CPT. Her key broke off inside her and her licence plates spontaneously abandoned ship. When she wouldn’t start, which was approximately 50 percent of the time, the entire back seat had to be removed from the car so that she could be hot-wired (Reputable!/Best Beetle actually provided a copper wire for this purpose. Service!). We were once stuck in a traffic jam on a very slight incline leaving a rugby game and Volg, who wasn't big on hills, protested by just turning off numerous times and rolling backwards while the owner of the brand new Benz behind us would scream “Sweet Merciful Crap!!!! My Car!!!!” I would say we were most surprised when the gas pedal actually fell off, or I guess through, the car, leaving a substantial hole in the floor – how is that even possible you ask? I have no idea.

Towards the end of her tenure in our life, we decided to give ol’ Volgy a facelift. Reputable!/Best Beetle had made the grave mistake of telling Alex and Caity they could do whatever they wanted with the car except blow it up. Clearly, they underestimated our moxie, not to mention the disgusting amount of time we had on our hands.

I was inspired. Finally, my little-known, half-demented, longstanding dream to deface a crappy car with hilarity could come to fruition. Throw in no financial or other consequences, and one has the perfect recipe for creative genius. Volga the Beetle our canvas and immaturity our Muse, we invaded a paint store. And, well, I’ll tell you - if painting a car you don’t own shining, shimmering, splendid gold is wrong, then I don’t want to be right

Throw in a little national pride

A sweet new name

It’s “The Ho Train”, not “The Hot Rain”... Shut up.

And, my personal favourite, The Swift’s Phone Number

And there you have it, the most badass-est car in all of Southern Africa. The ladies of Capetown didn’t even know what to do with themselves– it was like fishing with dynamite. In a related matter, this is what Google feels is a Ho Train

As beautiful as Princess Jasmine (don’t you dare close your eyes), we took The Ho Train strutting proudly through the streets. To the Waterfront, to the mountains – she was the most beautiful belle at the ball. However, it was in the predominantly black township of Gugulethu on the outskirts of the city that she shined brightest. Not surprisingly, The Ho Train was met with hysterical, Beatles-like screams as children chased her in glee (this became awkward when the kids would invariably catch up to the Ho Train, given that it limped from 0 to 60 in approximately 4 minutes). We were clearly distracted by the adulation, as the Ho Train became hopelessly lost in Gugulethu for between 1 and 7 hours. Luckily, however, nobody effed with us (can’t say I blame them) and luckily, the destination was well worth the Odyssey we had traveled.

Every weekend in Gugulethu a huge party goes off surrounding Mzoli’s butcher shop, which can be found just around the corner from the small concrete hut that sports a wooden sign with big red letters reading “SURGERY”. Complete with DJs, huge crowds and truly shocking amounts of meat

it is probably the best party I’ve ever been to at a butcher shop in Africa.

Upon arriving, you purchase beers for the long wait to purchase your truly shocking amount of meat. You then leave this meat with the BBQ dudes in the back, preferably with a bribe to bump your food to the front of the queue. Depending on the bribe (did you know that up until a few decades ago, many countries made bribes paid in third world countries for business purposes tax deductible? Knowledge!) you will then wait between 45 and 450 minutes for your food. Of course, if you went bribeless, that is approximately seven and a half hours of binge-drinking before lunch. Needless to say, it was lucky that the car was shimmering beautifully in the sunlight, or else I would have never found her afterwards.

We left Mzoli’s, and our fans

behind and went to drive back to the city. Not long after leaving, we hit a police checkpoint. Now, I want you to imagine you are the police officer on duty. You see a bright gold Canada-mobile approaching, billowing smoke as the (fortunately sober) driver has forgot to release the E-Brake. It appears to have no working seatbelts, no licence plates and, if you look closely, no gas pedal. In turning your attention to the occupants, the driver does not have a valid international driver’s licence and there appear to be two girls passed out on each other in the back in meat comas. The front passenger has two open beers, doesn’t understand the question “where are you from?” (it was the accent!) and spends two solid minutes not understanding that the seatbelt he is pulling on is there for show, not for functionality. At this point, what would you do? Call for backup? Order that the car be immediately incinerated as an insult to public safety and cultural sensibilities? Compliment the occupants on their sweet ride and allow them to proceed? Door Number 3? You guessed it. T.I.A. Bru.

The Ho Train has now gone on to greener pastures – literally. Alex told me they made sure she lives on a farm in the country now, and that she runs free wherever she wants, and that she’s happy. It's just tough though, when two great friends are separated

I have tried to press on, and there have been a few fun things, I guess. Allow me to disjointedly explain and describe.

…...

Cape Town is known for having some of the best kitesurfing beaches in the world, which also happen to provide some unbelievable sights

The Salzberg and myself, joined by my buddy Matt who traveled to South Africa to see if he could out-homeless the homeless on two continents with his formidable wardrobe, arranged lessons to set in motion the day that I will kite myself to work.

As it turns out, however, that day may be much farther into the future than I had anticipated - kites have minds of their own. This was all too clear to a 15 year old South African kid who, in addition to taking lessons with us, is now likely being treated for post-traumatic stress disorder. The look on his face clearly betrayed his belief that I was waging some sort of unprovoked warfare on him with my kite. It was uncanny – I would be practicing the kite moves and everything would be going fine, when all of a sudden my kite would disobey me and soaring, tumbling, freewheeling through an endless diamond sky follow a path directly to his face. It’s hard enough to learn how to kitesurf without having to throw yourself to the ground every other minute to (unsuccessfully) avoid a Devil Kite’s wrath. In the meantime, The Salzberg’s lifeless 85 pound body was being hurled through the air despite the fact her kite quite literally sported the surface area of a dinner plate. I thought the instructor was going to pass out.

By the second day of lessons, I came pretty far, I was like a shooting star out there. I was able to get myself up on my board, fully kitesurfing for almost an entire second before a wave would cut me down at the knees. What an incredible sport. On a different day we came out to watch a competition and saw one guy ripping along while a pod of dolphins swam and jumped alongside him. I will be genuinely upset if that never happens to me.

…………

In an instance of blissful awesomeness, we came across a pirate ship at the waterfront that takes sunset cruises around the harbour.

With recommended ages of 4 to Adult and fun for the whole family, the website suggests that you book your child’s next birthday party on the Jolly Roger to really shiver his or her timbers. It wasn’t my birthday and I’m not 5 years old, but I wasn't about to turn down a chance to be a pirate

I can’t say I remember a whole lot of what was a glorious time spent on the Jolly Roger, but I do remember that the ship was manned with real pirates

that we scaled the rigging to great heights

that there was a stock

and that The Swift was dressed like a pirate wench

We were having so much fun that we didn’t even notice that the Jolly Roger never actually left the dock. I’m told that rather than making a 7-year-old’s birthday party, we were interrupting a band’s album release party (what kind of band releases its album on a sunset cruising pirate ship? A band named The Morning Boners, that’s who) and that we were kindly asked to leave the premises.

After taking a detour to be photographed by tourists who were excited to see “real, authentic African pirates”

and to wage war against the Japanese

we exceeded our own lofty expectations by actually boarding/attacking a different ship. As it turned out, this ship was a romantic sunset catamaran that featured unlimited champagne and a number of couples who weren’t dressed like pirates

I remember even less of what was a glorious time on The Sea Princess, but I do know that High Seas D unleashed WHO WANTS TO SEX DARIUS

whenever he wasn’t asking people whether now was an appropriate time to take off his shirt “for everybody”. I also think my pirate sword almost hit a dolphin when it accidentally walked the plank

Sadly, we aren’t welcome back on The Sea Princess

……..

When I went GREAT WHITE SHARK diving, I talked to a dude who was literally covered in shark tattoos. He was both terrifying and of the opinion that the only thing anywhere nearly as “bodacious” as swimming with sharks was swimming with their food. Trusting him immensely, I added seal diving to the list.

A short distance away from Hout Bay, an eccentric community 15 minutes away from Cape Town that reportedly once declared itself a nation and issued its own passports, there is a small island that hosts a colony of Cape Fur Seals. We suited up in rad gear

hopped in an inflatable boat without really any idea what was in store for us and made our way out to them. Adding some zest to the experience was the ridiculous 13 degree water (FYI, the water around the Cape is incredibly, ridiculously, incredibly cold) and the ever-so-slight chance that a GREAT WHITE SHARK would show up for a bite to eat.

As it turned out, shark-tattoo-bodacious guy couldn’t have been more correct, it was amazing. The water was teeming with seals

especially inquisitive pups just a few months old. They had the most incredible googly eyes, with which they would lock onto you, initiating epic staring contests of Robert Goulet-Bighorn proportions from a few centimeters away (Naaaaaature). Other times they would swim around all willy-nilly, over, sideways and under, through our legs and back around, with a bite or two to see what we were. Unreal.

……..

Aside from the whole family and friends thing (boop), a top five reason I could never actually permanently live in Africa would be the inability to play and watch hockey. I would also miss Hank and Danny Sedin

I’ve been watching playoff games that start at 2 and 3 and 4AM, it’s a killer, especially when the games go into overtime and/or the Canucks disappoint me so. Thankfully, being in Africa hasn’t stopped messages from Mama Fin in which she innocently says endearing things such as “Did you see that abortion of a hockey game last night?” or “I would gladly run over Dustin Byfuglien in the street if I had the chance.” Finleys rule.

……

Speaking of Mama Fin, her and Papa Fin popped by for a visit that they greatly enjoyed except for the moments they were terrified for their lives. Here are some nice pictures.

Camps Bay, Lion's Head in the background

In front of "The Sentinel", the pointy mountain on the left, which was named after the Secret Service thriller starring that delightful Michael Douglas

How Cool Are Mama and Papa Fin? They Stayed in the Sugar Daddy Suite, So Pretty Goddamn Cool

We took a tour around "The Heart of Cape Town" Museum, which commemorates the world's first heart transplant. The recipient lived for an entire... 18 days. Oh.

Mama and Papa Fin posing with a statue of Morgan Freeman

And here are some other nice pictures

Answer: Misty Cliffs. Question: A beautiful place in South Africa or The Swift's stage name

It's good drivin' country

Morris the Mercedes - Not Gold, Still Beautiful

Crystal Pools

Jumping into Crystal Pools

The epic climb out of Crystal Pools

Moisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty
The look on this face suggests that I should never be a barefoot rock-climber

The view from Lion's Head into Camps Bay

Table Mountain

Matty visits, rocks deep green vee, loses street cred

I'm told that one of these cyclists that I saw for 0.2 seconds was Lance Armstrong - watching cycling, probably one of the most underwhelming things I've ever done

........

Despite all the great things to do here, sometimes it makes me sad, though… Ho Train being gone. I have to remind myself that some birds aren’t meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright. And when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up does rejoice. But still, the place you live in is that much more drab and empty now that they’re gone…. I guess I just miss my friend.

If we're lucky, maybe one day we can reunite: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YInN9mc9vXA&feature=related

Luckily though, when all else fails, I know I can take solace in the words of Bulimic D, the most entertaining of all male models:

-“Sometimes, man, I eat like a whole pizza, and I’m like ‘Damn! Why did I put that trash in my body?!? So, I like, puke it up, and it’s all good. It’s no biggie, man, I can puke real good.”

-“Darius, that’s a disease, I think you’re bulimic.”

-“Fuck that shit man, I can’t read minds”

2010-04-28T08:00:00.000-07:00

MOZAMBIQUE

Just as we were about to be crushed (literally!) by the intolerable weight of two (pass/fail) classes and seven hours (!) at school per week, the beautiful respite that is reading week hazily appeared on the horizon. Joyho! With 12 days of freedom to play with, we decided that the flawless beaches, the azure waters, the suicidal drivers (what?) and the abundant seafood/life of Mozambique would host us.

[To Come: South Africa Is A Country; In My Country There Is Problem, And That Problem Is Transport, We Must Make Travel Easy, Then We Have A Big Party; Life Is A Highway, I Wanna Ride It All Night Long; Long Bus Ride Masochism; Retired Hockey Superstar Al MacInnis; When It Comes To Babies, What Balconies Are To Michael Jackson, Bus Windows Are To Me; The Swift Is Courted On A Bus, Hilarity Ensues; Why Scuba Diving Rules; And, Most Importantly, WHALE SHARKS]

When you cross the border out of South Africa (Yes, Matthew Smith, I feel its my duty to inform you that South Africa is indeed a country, not a region) into Botswana or Zimbabwe or Mozambique, it is quickly apparent that you are in a very different world. This was clear a few years ago when I traveled into S.A. from the countries in East Africa, and it’s even more obvious now having spent a few months in Cape Town. In terms of basic infrastructure - reasonably non-ridiculous roads, the existence of tap water, whether that water is potable, indoor plumbing, etc. - South Africa is light years ahead of basically every country on the continent. In fact, there is such a disparity that the rest of the continent seriously gets its hate on when discussing South Africa. It’s the sort of venom typically spewed by the rest of the world in deriding the profligate consumption of fat Americans, whabam!

Picture Unrelated To Content

But when you cross that border, the thing that immediately strikes you – actually, it repeatedly strikes you until you are unconscious - is the insanity of the roads, the driving and the drivers. Now, this is not at all an African phenomenon – the same things have shocked, appalled and terrified me all over Southeast Asia and South America. However, whereas Asians and South Americans usually require large cliffs/precipitous drops to really get the blood flowing, Africans manage to up the ridiculousness by doing this

or by just doing ridiculous shit on your typical, flat two-track road.

Take passing, for example. My first exposure to the African method of passing was in Uganda in 2006 at the hands of a suicidal driver of a white matatu (big white van cab) with shockingly bald tires. It kind of looked like this, but I don't recall a permutation of "Xenophobia" being imprinted on the windshield:

First, the driver will aggressively pull into the wrong lane without really looking to see what’s going on ahead. Then, because the car/van you are in is almost surely 75 years old, it will take a solid 4 minutes to pick up enough speed to actually pass the car (may Jebus help you if this is going on during an uphill stretch). Meanwhile, up ahead come approximately 12 consecutive games of chicken, with neither side apparently willing to give an inch. Then, at the last possible minute, as the white devils in the car busily open windows in order to hurl themselves onto the asphalt (or dirt, as the case may be), the two prospective crashers move ever so slightly to their respective sides, utilizing every iota of road and shoulder, and pass safely. A few minutes pass, then the process starts again. The white devil suffers silently in the back – often because he has blacked out.

Picture Unrelated To Content - But Check Out That Mutant Fish

Transport in developing countries is inefficient, uncomfortable and often terrifying, but it’s also hilarious. Didn’t Shawshank Red say something about human beings being able to become used to almost anything? Although it took about 700 of those passes, I guess traveling in foreign countries has beaten me into submission. In fact, I would even say I now have a slightly bizarre love of long bus rides in foreign countries; and, in my opinion, there is no better place to practice this masochism than in rural Africa.

The outskirts of cities go by first, featuring women doing this (which I will never stop finding incredible)

and seemingly infinite numbers of shanties comprised of any and all materials. As endless as the shanties are, there seem to be even more children. No matter where you go, every place seems to feature crowds and crowds of children (half of the people in Africa are under the age of fifteen, I'm told). Then, just as quickly as these settlements of unknown populations come, they are replaced by huge expanses of nothingness. Savannah and scrub brush extend as far as the eye can see, and for hours on end you are lulled into a dream-like state. Often, the only thing to see is an African trademarked lone tree in the distance

But then, once again, you are lulled into your thoughts as more nothingness passes by. Finally, just when you believe there actually is nothing to see, a town pops up and the hilarity begins: a young boy on the side of the road wearing a 1980s-era Calgary Flames jersey with Al MacInnis’s Number 2 on the back

your bus stops and someone on it yells to the roadside butcher, who lops off the hind quarter of a cow, including the leg, and then hands it to your neighbour, who nonchalantly places it on her lap; Or, what’s that? An irrationally and inexplicably large soccer stadium that appears to have been funded by China in the middle of nowhere? Why the hell not.

As for Mozambique itself, due to an email from my buddy Rich, even I was slightly worried that we were upping the ante a bit:

The only shitty part about Moz (which turned into a great story) was that the bus we bought tickets for (to get there from Maputo) never showed up – I guess that happens frequently. So we ended up waiting for hours in the middle of nowhere in Maputo (from 3am to 8am). At 8:00, we decided we would just travel as locals do, so we went to the “bus stop” (read: large dusty field), got severely harassed, and finally found our way onto a bus whose driver guaranteed he would take us there “right away” (read: we had to wait for four hours in the blazing sun for the bus to fill-up (read: be packed so tightly with goats and chickens and smelly people and onions and everything you can imagine you wouldn’t want to spend eight hours with on a bus with no ventilation). The saying really is true – buses never leave until they are full in Africa – and they are never full. From there, the ride was terrifying – an overloaded bus, with bald tires, driving well over 160 on roads that were more accurately characterized as holes, with the occasional piece of concrete in them. We blew a tire and almost died, it was so hot that people were passing out and needed to be revived, it turned into a ten hour trip (estimated to be an easy eight), I had no room at all and was being crushed by a fat lady on one side and a smelly man on the other, I had to hold a chicken (live) whose body was wrapped in a plastic bag for several hours, and I was puked on (in the face). We only stopped once – and I didn’t have enough water to waste much of it on cleaning my face. Gross.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, our travels certainly didn’t measure up to that journey, although they weren’t without incident. We rocked the typical, ridiculous 8-hour bus rides on which every iota of space was taken up with people, personal belongings and poultry.

My leg-room usually taken up by massive bags of coconuts, I spent much of the rides dodging the discharges of the advancing babies that had me surrounded on all sides (it is totally uncool to be babyless in Mozambique). At one point, a couple of grandparents in the back row tried to disembark, during which the grandmother mindlessly handed me her exceptionally dirty grandson. She kept motioning towards the window and yelling and laughing at me. I kept saying “Lady, you’re scarin’ us!!!” but nobody laughed, I guess they haven't seen Billy Madison. Then, the grandparents got off the bus without taking the kid. Terrified that this was a Mozambiquan ritual that had left me the unsuspecting guardian, I Michael-Jackson-Over-The-Hotel-Balcony-In-Berlin held the kid out the bus for a solid 30 seconds while news stories making me out to be a Madonna-like African kidnapper flashed through my mind. I got really scared as the bus actually started to move and the crazy, crazy couple was nowhere to be seen. But finally, the grandmother appeared out of nowhere, grabbed the kid and left me with a nightmare-inducing “Blaaaahhhh!!!!!” in my face.

In the meantime, The Swift was avoiding the advances of a young man on the other side of the bus. In the throes of a blind fever, she accidentally gave him her real phone number, leading to a series of text messages over the next few days. After she politely asked him to leave her alone, he sent one final text: “But I just want to make love to you sweat lady” hahaha, ohhhh that is great. While admitting she was quite warm that day, she believes he was going for “sweet”. Me, I’m not so sure.

Anyways, it was all worth it to make it here:

Welcome to Tofo, renowned for its unspoiled stretch of beach, its seafood, its surfing and its marine life. We stayed at a place called Bamboozi’s

which had fairly hilarious accommodations

and a pretty amazing view from the restaurant

Our days sometimes started with catching the sunrise

While our nights were spent on that ridiculously amazing restaurant deck

During the days there was a whole lot of relaxin'

Being pensive

or scouring the local market. I've got to talk about African markets a bit... Walking around markets in the parts of Africa I have seen is both fun and frustrating, amazing and irritating. But, no matter what, it is always an experience.

The first thing you will notice are the smells, which hit you in oppressive waves – it is always the same mix of drying fish, B.O. (this suggestion may bring up issues of culture, of poverty and of Western insensitivity, but someone really needs to start an NGO that brings deodorant to Africa. There, I said it. Every person who hasn't been to Africa may be shaking their heads in disappointed disgust right now, but everyone who has been here is nodding vigorously), spoiling meat, roasting something (cassava? I’m told), burning garbage-like items and thousands of other unrecognizable scents. Each vendor is either your best friend or your worst enemy, and you know which they are immediately from the look you receive. The former makes you immediately suspicious; the latter makes you feel incredibly guilty about everything you’ve ever been given in life, ever (of course, this is pretty much a constant emotion for me when I travel). Hands are always on your arm, your lower back, leading you to where, apparently, you need to be. Introductions fly around, with unforgettable names uttered at every stall – this leads to frequent cursing of Mama and Papa Fin (and don’t think you get off scot-free in this, Uncle Dunc) for my semi-normal name (although try telling me that during the dark ‘Duncan Donuts’ years of 1990-1994). Nice to meet you, Mel Gibson. No thank you, Karl Marx. Oh, hello there… Banjo Patterson? Sorry, did you just say your name is McDonald’s? It’s unfortunate that I will never be able to let one Mozambiquan artisan know that I’ve named my first-born Big Tomato Finley after him.

Inevitably, three things will come up while navigating the frenzy of an African market. First, assuming me to be American: “Barack… he is good, yes?” (There’s nothing quite as awesome as discussing politics with a self-named Mozambiquan named Big Tomato). Second, once they find out I am Canadian: “Bryan Adams… he is good! Yes!” (Despite B.A.’s demi-god status, few Africans have been impressed to hear that my favourite song for most of the early ‘90s was ‘Everything I Do I Do It For You’ – they prefer ‘Summer of ‘69’, like the mainstream suckas that they are). Finally, assuming me to be rich, “Sir!, My [Insert Whatever Semi-Useless Item They Are Selling – Salad tongs, candle holders, or, increasingly, mini-helicopters made of beer cans] is VERY good! YES! I make good price for you! Yes! YOU CAN LOOK FOR FREE!!!”

The best part about Tofo, however, was waiting in the ocean.

Scuba diving is truly amazing - swimming 100 feet below the surface with life you could never even dream up... it's incredible. But don’t take my word for it, listen to Georgie, a recovering drug addict (nineteen months clean, bra!) that I met in Thailand a few years ago: “Diving, man! Diving! You’re, like, sitting at the bottom of the ocean, looking up as your beautiful bubbles float towards the sunlight. Then, you turn your head, and Mambo Number Five! That’s a shark OR a turtle OR some beautiful goddamn fish you’ve never even heard of man! I tell you, it’s like the closest you can come to an acid trip without dropping acid, you know?” With glimmering reviews like that, how can you not get into diving?

I went on a few dives throughout the week in Tofo and saw all sorts of crazy crap. The greatest was when we were sitting at about 6 metres below the surface on a safety stop at the end of a dive, and three stingrays came swimming towards us from the depth of blue. Amazing.

But the greatest experience of the trip – and probably one of the greatest experiences of my life – occurred while swimming, not diving, when we went out on a boat in search of whale sharks one day. Whale sharks are filter feeding sharks that happen to be the largest living fish species in the world. They are the gentle giants of the sea, not at all dangerous, and reach sizes of over 12 metres long (although there are rumours of some that have reached 18 to 20 metres(!)).

I have desperately wanted to swim with a whale shark ever since I heard it was possible, and Tofo was supposed to be the place to do it in southern Africa. Unfortunately, nobody had seen any of the big guys around Tofo for the week before we went out on our trip. And for the first hour of our excursion, we had no luck. I was just resigning myself to disappointment, when the boat driver started squeaking in Portuguese and pointing into the water. I yelled my only Portuguese words back at him “Bom Dia! Bom Dia!” (Good morning! Good morning!) and then hurled myself in the water. After a minute of swimming, we came upon him/her: 6.5 - 7 metres long, white spots, slowly waving its massive tail back and forth (which I narrowly avoided getting destroyed by a number of times). It was pretty incredible, and although after a few minutes he swam down into the depths, I was very happy. But not overjoyed. That was for later.

We began to drive back towards shore, when again the driver started squeaking. This time I didn’t even wait to say good morning, and I was in the water and swimming as fast as I could. Out of nowhere, the biggest mouth I’ve ever seen was suddenly coming right at me

But before I could even spit an “Ohmyfuck” into the water, he/she ever so slightly changed course, and we avoided a collision I might have lost. I took off after it – this one about 8 or 9 metres. It was tiring work just keeping up with it, even though it looked like it was barely moving its tail. There were 15 of us on the boat, and for the first 5 to 7 minutes, everyone stayed in sight. But before long, I turned around, and realized I was all alone, just me and the big guy, swimming in the big blue. It was one of the most peaceful moments of my entire life – swimming silently an arm’s length away from a schoolbus-sized shark for 5 whole minutes. It's hard to describe how amazing it was...It’s moments like that that you travel for, that you live for

These aren’t my pictures, but you get the idea:

Whale Sharks Rule, Stay Cool.

2010-04-05T15:30:00.001-07:00

Cape Town and Vancouver, sitting almost 17 000 kilometres apart, are similar in so many ways. Like Vancouver, CPT sits on the ocean and is framed by towering mountains. The variety and quality of food is amazing. Like Vancouver, the incredible and nearby outdoor activities – hiking, running, surfing, kiteboarding, biking, etc. – are a huge part of the culture of the city. Cape Town and Vancouver both like to proclaim loudly to anyone who will listen that they are the best goddamn city in the world. And of course, like Vancouver, the awe-inspiring, incredulous-smile-inducing natural splendour found in Cape Town frequently has me babbling in a French accent. On warm, sunny days (everyday?), I am convinced that there is no better place to live (other than Vancouver, of course, Mama Fin).

Having pointed out the similarities, however, it is the differences between the two that are most interesting. Whereas Vancouver is safe, polite and no fun (at least in terms of non-outdoor-activity, juvenile, binge-drinking fun), Cape Town is (comparably) dangerous, (relatively) racially tense and (very) fun (in both the outdoor fun activity adrenaline sense and the immature binge-drinking sense).

Allow me to elaborate.

1. Welcome to the danger zone

South Africa is dangerous, or so I’m told.

Luckily for me, as far as I know (Oh, hello there… Oh, look at you you have a switchblade, that’s nice… Wait, are you trying to sell me that retractable sword you’re holding or is this a mugging?…. Is that a weird question to ask?…. What’s wrong?… Hey, look it’s the police!… Where are you going…?) I’ve been able to avoid this well-known dangerousness thus far.

Now, at the risk of sounding naïve and overconfident, let me suggest something radical here: maybe, just maybe, the reason we’ve been safe thus far is that it’s not as dangerous here as most people back home believe (unless, of course, we are speaking about Johannesburg. It is just as terrifying and dreary as you may have heard). Is it more dangerous than Vancouver and Toronto and other places in Canada? Absolutely. One always has to be on edge a bit when walking down the street and common sense is more important on a day-to-day basis in terms of staying safe. And is it dangerous for people in less fortunate circumstances than I? Although I can’t really say, I would guess it is. But, generally, I really do feel confident and safe walking around, and it’s not like one sees crazy violence every day (Right after I wrote this, our waitress at a restaurant near our apartment chased away a hobo with a broken beer bottle while shrieking death threats, but she appeared to be having a rough day. We’ll label that one an anomaly.) On top of that, even when overt acts of violence do occur around me, such as that time we happened upon a gun-toting, marauding gang of hoodlums chasing other gangsters down the middle of the street, I’ve proven very adept at scrambling behind the hotdog vendor lady.

People love to play the danger game. Everybody one-ups each other with stories of the absurdly dangerous things that have happened to them or their friends. It starts out with something relatively harmless, something about how a group of three Europeans has been relieved of twelvephones over the past three months (in fairness, they gave up one of those phones voluntarily in exchange for three hotdogs). Then you find out that you have to be scared of the animals too; some German students returned home once to find that baboons had broken in, smashed all the furniture, and then shit everywhere, including, somehow, in the microwave. And of course, there was the house of students in Capetown that was robbed eight times in one semester. The eighth and final robbery, and by far the greatest, involved the thieves literally boring a hole in thewall of the house, piping in sleeping gas and then making away with absolutely everything, including the iPod and passport from under one guy’s pillow (a pillow he happened to be resting his head on). Honestly, that doesn’t anger me at all, I’m just impressed.

But there may be other reasons we’ve been safe so far. It’s possible that no self-respecting carjacker would allow themselves to be seen in a baby blue 1993 Mercedes.

Most likely, however, it’s that our street cred is at an all-time high. It’s amazing what one act of badassery will do for you. One night The Salzberg and I were walking down the street to grab a quick drink. I was prattling on about the time in 1987 when I told a guy reaching for Little Womenat the video store to “Please Fuck Off” when I heard a roar typically not possessed by 100-pound Asian girls: “WHERE’S MY PHONE MOTHAF****!?!?” Colour me surprised when I turned around to find her holding a tall and skinny local fellow by the scruff of the neck. The other hand, of course, was raised up and ready to inflict damage. At this point, as the clearly physically inferior member of the duo, I had to decide how to help. You’d probably be surprised to hear that the best way to do so was to start feeling the African guy’s ass to see if the phone was in his pants, but this is the route I took. Colour the would-be thief surprised to find himself being emasculated by a small Asian girl and sexually assaulted by a slightly perplexed white guy. Oh, he didn’t have the phone, by the by.

The good news for those breathlessly waiting for my safe return to the Motherland (Mama Fin, Papa Fin, … Levin?) is that I have concocted the perfect recipe of ruggedness to ensure that nobody will eff with me. First, I make sure to rarely shave, thus sporting a shockingly impressive beard at most times. Second, I show I mean business by never leaving the house without the white and gold sunglasses/pimpshades I accidentally bought off the internet (although this decreases mugging, I get offered drugs every few steps down the street).

Third, I make sure that my admittedly rippled, muscular chest is puffed out at all times. Fourth, I walk with purpose, never making eye contact with anyone. This signals to would-be muggers that I have places to be and that an attempt to mug would just be a waste of everyone’s time. Finally, I never stumble. Stumbling is bad. Stumbling is weak. Just ask any wildebeest (did you know that a wildebeest can fully run within 45 minutes of being birthed??), stumbling costs lives.

So sleep well, rest easy - my safety on the streets of CPT is ensured.

2. It seems to matter if you're black or white

I am well aware that I’m not really the person who should be educating anyone on race relations in South Africa. I am a privileged white Canadian from a relatively homogenous neighbourhood in the least black city in North America. I took a class in Black Canadian History at Queen’s once (incidentally, probably the least racially diverse university in North America) and learned that the Underground Railroad wasn’t as awesome as we think it was (nor was it literally a railway). I’ve watchedRemember the Titans and absorbed its message (racism is bad). I have 1.5 black friends (hi Rach!!) and people usually find it funny when I listen to rap.

So with my credentials clear and your expectations of the insight I may provide as low as possible, allow me to proceed.

As we all know, South Africa’s government policy for more than 40 years was that ofapartheid(literally, apartness) between whites and all other ethnicities. Enabled by a well-trained racist police force and justified by the euphemism of “separate development” of blacks and whites in different delineated areas, whites retained the power and the best land in South Africa despite comprising less than 10% of the population. Meanwhile, blacks were left uneducated, undernourished and powerless in townships and “homelands”, despite making up approximately 80% of the population.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, this all supposedly changed. Crippled economically by international economic sanctions and spurred by public opinion, the ruling National Party released Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners from jail. After considerable political jockeying and negotiation, majority rule became a reality in 1994 when the African National Congress, led by Mandela, was voted into power. The ANC preached reconciliation and equality, and South Africa was to become the great Rainbow Nation in which people of all colours live in harmony.

So where do blacks and whites in South Africa stand now? From my point of view, still very much apart.

I realize that it takes time for things to change and that, in the grand scheme of things, 16 years is not a whole lot to undo decades of systematic racism. But at the same time, on a day to day basis, I’ve been very surprised at what I have seen and haven’t seen. I have almost never seen blacks and whites walking down the street together or talking like they are friends. There are still “black” neighbourhoods and “white” neighbourhoods, the former often found on the side of the highway

and the latter often found by the ocean with incredible views (at least in Cape Town).

There are “black” sports (soccer) and “white” sports (cricket and rugby, despite what Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon may tell you). The vast, vast majority of service industry jobs and/or menial jobs (for example, as a sort of make work project, there are men everywhere waiting to help you park your cars and to watch over them while you are gone) are possessed by black people. You get the picture.

The tough thing is, what is the typical South African, black or white, supposed to do?

If you are a white farmer who possesses land probably as a direct result of policies from the apartheid era, are you just going to hand over your livelihood? If you are black and have noticed that your quality of life is still the same as it was in 1993, do you do nothing or do you get violent? I certainly don’t have the answers and it’s impossible for someone like me to empathize. Like I said above, I’m the last person who should be pontificating beyond his firsthand experiences. (Goo, how topical: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/white-supremacist-leader-eugene-terreblanche-killed-in-south-africa/article1522118/)

But, joyho! There is some positive news. The one place where I frequently see black people and white people regarding each other as friends and as equals is at school. Schools and universities are also apparently the only places where HIV/AIDS rates are relatively low in South Africa, despite countrywide rates currently sitting at approximatley 25%. I guess this is the operation of that sublime axiom: education frees people. From prejudice and hate. From inequality and poverty. It certainly isn’t perfect, but it’s pretty exciting stuff eh? Good talk, I’ll see ya out there.

3. "And it’s a sin, to live this well" – Harvey Danger’s ‘Flagpole Sitta’ from the seminal album, Where Have All The Merrymakers Gone?

To the Fun

More good news it that the amazingly awesome things to do and places to see in and around Cape Town far, far outweigh the negatives mentioned above. Cape Town is fun. Like really, really fun. In fact, it’s a little too fun, as the prospect of leaving has me genuinely sad and wrought with Anticipatory FOMO at times (and I’m not even leaving for good for another 3.5 months). I mean, I’ve been here 2 months and I’m not even ridiculously good at kiteboarding yet, FML.
Anyways, let’s start with a simple proposition and proceed from there: It’s Always Fun When It’s International Model Season
In Cape Town, You Can Hang Out With Dimwitted Models
Through some mutual friends, we have found ourselves acquainted with a male model from Ottawa. While he is decidedly non-male-modelly in terms of his ability to occasionally string together a sentence longer than 4 words, emphasis on “occasionally”, the rest of his brethren, both male and female, are walking, talking caricatures of themselves. This obviously makes for near-constant hilarity. Certain days at the beach or nights at the bar are basically real-life Zoolander sequels, complete with non-accidental use of “Blue Steel” and gasoline-fight incidents. Before you ask, obviously I spend most of my time trying to organize walk-offs, but none have really gained momentum, presumably because Billy Zane has not been around to watch nor has David Bowie been available to judge (yet). I should also note that, from what I’ve been able to deduce, only about 60% of the female models around Cape Town are ambi-turners (My sincere apologies if you understood none of that because you are pathetically unversed in Zoolander).
My personal favourite of the models goes by the name of Darius, a super-inflated American who has been known to label himself with monikers such as Dizzy D, Thursday D, Saint D and/or Half Taye Diggs, Half Tyson Beckford. If he’s not telling me that his greatest fear is African Killer Bees or that he models himself after Ochocinco, or spending 45 minutes explaining the essence of true beauty to my friend Alex, then he’s providing incredible entertainment with his 85 IQ and freestyling “abilities”. Upon hearing that Dikembe Mutumbo, a 7 foot 2 former NBA Centre from the D.R. Congo, once walked into a bar, spread his arms wide and yelled “WHO WANTS TO SEX MUTUMBO” at all the terrified Georgetown students, Saint D thought it would be a good idea to start yelling “WHO WANTS TO SEX DARIUS!?!” at passersby in any and all locations (I’m not even exaggerating). Evidence:
Not surprisingly, Dizzy D is a hit with the ladies. His skillz were especially apparent when he used his considerable knowledge of the Far East to try and pick up The Salzberg. He told her he studied computer science in college (presumably because we all know that computer smarts + Asians = Sex) and that he likes girls like her because he, and I quote, “loves those slanty eyes”. When she mentioned that her heritage was Taiwanese, the response was, of course, “Ya, I knew that girl! I love Thais!” When she good-naturedly told him that Thai girls don’t come from Taiwan, he smiled, disagreed, and then asked her if she wanted to touch his pecs. We also got him to freestyle the other night: “I love your eyes cuz they are slant-eee; Jackie Chan UHHHHH (Kanye grunt) Jet Li; I love you China Girl UHHHHH China China Girl” I love international modeling season in Cape Town. Needless to say, she’s smitten.
In Cape Town, You Can Go To World Class Beaches (Pretty Much Every Day When You Have Such An Embarrassing Amount of Free Time)
For example, this one
Or this one
Or this one
This one
Aaaand this one
And my personal favourite, Dias Beach at Cape Point i.e. the most Southwesterly point of Africa (or something):
Why is it my favourite? Well, I have never seen more than 5 people on it at any one time
And it features a rad flipping, Superman-ing hill

You Eat Very, Very Well Here
There are many examples, but the most amazing is the South African phenomenon that is Chicken Bunny Chow. This involves gutting a loaf of bread and filling it with chicken curry. Cost? 3 dollars. Rumour has it that the impending visit of one Michael A. Richmond has both fathers locking up their daughters and food peddlers stocking up on loaves of bread. This is a File Photo of Mr. Richmond from “The Chunky Years”:

And You Can Watch Penguins Awkwardly Waddle Around
Or Even Occasionally Watch Them Awkwardly Have The Sex
In addition to tender moments afterwards...
(Note: I am terrified that the list of animals I have seen in the act is getting entirely too long. I swear this is just something that happens when you travel a lot, get your mind out of the gutter Sioned. And it’s not like I seek it out, I mean, it’s not like I’m never going to improve on this picture anyways):

You Can Drive Your Baby Blue Benz Through The Mountains Like You’re Jimmy Bond, While Repeating Your Mantra: “Left Side Not Right Side Left Side Not Right Side”

And Sometimes Miscellaneous Rad Things Come Up, Like Thoughtful/Kind of Hilarious Graffiti
Or Counting Out Tens Of Thousand Of Rand To Purchase A Baby Blue Mercedes While Dressed Like What I Think A Drug Dealer Might Dress Like

You Can Scale Great Peaks
Such as Table Mountain
Or my personal favourite, Lion’s Head

Or Watch Concerts and Festivals From Your Deck
Pretend You Can Surf in Muizenberg
(Many popular South African beaches feature flags to signal to surfers if any sharks have been spotted. There is one that means "all clear" and one that means "Ohmyfuck we just saw a shark get the eff out of the water". That black one, incidentally the only one that is ever up, stands for "The water is ridiculously murky and we can't see a thing, but good luck and godspeed".)
Or There Is Always The Ridiculously Awesome Rooftop Pool

Of Course, I Especially Enjoyed Belting Out ‘Oh Canada’ at 4AM After Canada Reigned Supreme At The Olympics
(Note: Attracting the attention of the armed guards of the neighbourhood when your excited screams sound like home invasion)

If You Are Lucky, You Get Visited by Mike Touch
File Photo:
And J. Kronick (plus his lovely better half)
And Sister Fin
And Brother-In-Law Fin
And the Cupboard Nazi
And Leighdawg (Who was clearly very much influenced by Who Wants To Sex Darius while she was here, as you can see)
You Also Spend Time Getting Ridiculously Excited For the World Cup
And, Of Course, Drunkenly Gallivanting With Pals
I can't believe you made it this far. You rule, stay cool.

2010-03-11T06:03:00.000-08:00

SHARK CAGE DIVING

Heeeey Big Fella!

Just off the coast of Gaansbai, South Africa sits an island that hosts approximately 35000 beleaguered cape seals.

And surrounding this island, in the ridiculously cold waters of the Atlantic Ocean – or the Indian Ocean, depending on who you ask – are an unknown number of the world’s greatest predators. Dauntingly known as SHARK ALLEY (I’VE YET TO COME ACROSS TWO WORDS THAT DESERVE CAPSLOCK MORE THAN THOSE), this area consequently hosts an increasingly popular tourist activity in which idiots like you or I can pay good money to be removed from a perfectly good boat and into the house of this subject of many a nightmare, the GREAT WHITE SHARK (ALSO A DESERVED CAPS LOCK) (and that shudder you just felt was Mama Fin… shuddering)..

People more erudite (I learned this word, meaning, “educated” or “learned”, from Dilton Doiley in an Archie comic – time well spent) than I validly suggest that diving with GREAT WHITE SHARKS disrupts the natural order and potentially contributes to an increased number of shark attacks on humans. This bothersome little concern is based on the hypothesis that the practices used to attract GREAT WHITE SHARKS to boats may teach them to associate humans with food.

Not wanting to contribute to the evisceration of innocent swimmers by GREAT WHITE SHARKS, I consulted the interweb for opinions, including that of a potentially legendary ship captain who refers to himself as “The Sharkman”, a name that obviously provides him with equal credibility to “scientists”. Several valid points were made. First, it is relatively unknown that sharks of all kinds are currently being wiped off the face of the earth. Why? Mostly to meet the demand out of China for shark fins, which are then boiled into a reportedly terrible soup so that the consumers of said soup can show others how rich, powerful and virile they are. (I’m not even making that up). This has mostly gone ignored in the West due to our innate fear of sharks and well-founded confusion over why the hell Chinese people eat soup that tastes like garbage because they are rich, not because they are poor. As a result, it could easily be argued that the more people who go shark cage diving, the more people there are that realize that these are among the world’s most incredible creatures, that they are (mostly) not dangerous to humans and that they must be conserved.

Second, I was comforted to learn that the sharks are never actually fed by the diving boats, only drawn closer by the scent of the chum (a.k.a. disgusting fish heads mashed up in a garbage bin at the back of the boat by a champ who smiles for 5 hours straight despite having one of the world's worst jobs)

, fake seals put near the boat, and a big fish attached to a rope that is always pulled away from them at the last moment. If anything, in my admittedly confused calculus, wouldn’t this teach the shark to associate humans with not being fed?

After all this careful research, just before I came to South Africa there was a breathless news report of a man who was plucked out of waist-deep water by what was described as “a dinosaur-sized shark” on an eyewitness’s Twitter account. Ignoring the fact that describing the shark as “dinosaur-sized” could simply mean it was a normal-sized or even under-sized shark, upon hearing about this story I was much more concerned about human obsession with ridiculous social media such as Twitter than I was about being eaten whole by a shark, leaving behind only my bathing suit (which was, incidentally, the case in the above incident). The day I watch a shark consume a human-being, leaving behind only board shorts and a cloud of blood, and believe that the best course of action is to run home to my computer and twat on my Twitter account about it, is the day I should be euthanized.

Anyhoo, there is no clear indication that either of the camps are correct in denouncing or embracing shark cage diving. It is possible that shark attacks have increased or that the practice of shark cage diving affects them in some other way, but nobody really knows. More importantly, what is clear is that shark attacks on humans are blown WAY out of proportion. It is incredibly, incredibly rare for a GREAT WHITE SHARK to attack a human. Statistics show that an average of five people worldwide are killed in shark attacks each year, and that an average of approximately sixty to seventy are injured (or maimed…I don’t like that word). You are more likely to be killed or maimed by the following:

-Vending machines

-Toasters (Approximately 750 ppl die worldwide from freak toaster incidents each year)

-Lost airplane parts that fall out of the sky

-Tripping over your cat

You get the picture. I am of course aware of the shortcomings of relying on the above statistics. First and foremost, pointing out that a person is incredibly unlikely to be devoured by a shark doesn’t assuage fears, as people are still terrified that they may happen to look like a seal for all they know and thus will perish in unfamiliar surroundings at the teeth of a really goddamn big fish. And second, despite the stats, people aren’t scared of housecats (although maybe they should be) – cats are just (incredibly useless) hunks of matter that sometimes cause people to trip and die. They (probably) don’t trip you on purpose and then eat you. And death by vending machine, well that’s just natural selection. BUT, give the GREAT WHITE SHARKS a break; we don’t taste good to them, so they almost always spit us out (except for the delicious man referred to above) and it’s not their fault we sometimes look like seals when we ride surfboards.

ANYWAYS, with all of that in mind, when you have the chance to swim with big fucking sharks, you swim with big fucking sharks

So, along with visiting Brother-in-law Alex and friend-from-school Alex, we set off at 6AM with expectations of Planet Earth-style demolitions of jumping seals or a few lost limbs. I had also heard that sharks sometimes devour seagulls as they jump out of the water, only to spit them out because they taste so terrible. If presented with that alternative, I would have been pretty happy.

The sea was angry that day my friends, like an old man trying to send back soup at a deli. But we persevered, and despite not seeing any crazy jumping sharks or partially eaten seagulls, we were lucky enough to get up close and personal views of six GREAT WHITE SHARKS, ranging in size from a wimpy 2ish metres and 1500 pounds to Rita McNeil scales of 4 metres and 3200 pounds.

What do I mean by up close and personal? Something along the lines of a GREAT WHITE SHARK opening wide and chomping on the cage bars approximately an inanimate carbon rod’s length away from me. Oh. My. Fuck. I was in shock for most of the rest of the day, before suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder up until about right now.

Needless to say, you should definitely, definitely do this.

Evidence (I’m waiting to see if pictures from my underwater disposable camera turned out. We thought we also had an underwater digital camera to use, as this is what one thinks when a male model acquaintance loans one a camera saying “here, use my underwater digital camera”. However, this kindly-loaned camera turned out to be the exact opposite of underwater-capable, and basically dissipated into a fine dust after taking these first two pictures, which are admittedly rad):

Duh nuh duh nuh duh nuh duh nuh

Lookin' good, feelin' good

The beasts in the water weren't the only beasts on-site

Fake Seal-chasin'

2010-03-08T13:19:00.000-08:00

In 2006 I was fortunate enough to travel from Nairobi to Cape Town with the indomitable P. Olmsted. Traveling through Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Bostwana and South Africa, it was far and away the greatest trip I’ve ever taken. Because you know what? Any trip that involves an amorous endangered black rhinoceros getting creative in using his horn on the unmentionable region of his would-be female mate just has to be.

When we finished that trip, I was immediately in love with the awe-inspiring views, the energy, the everything of Cape Town. It just seemed to have it all and I always hoped I would get to return.

(Sidenote: I could really just describe how happy I am here with the fact that, as I write this, there is a blind band comprised of keyboards and saxophones repeatedly playing the introduction to “St. Elmo’s Fire” in the town square below me. Ah-mazing. I guess I’ll go on anyways.)

One of the fringe benefits of law school was that it provided a few extra years to spend money I don’t have on traveling. Also, it presented the opportunity to go on exchange for my last semester, and when the time came to make a choice, there wasn’t really a choice to be made at all. A chance to study law in a country with such amazing recent history? At Africa’s best law school (Think of all that competition!! This is the continent with the Ouagadougou School of Law!!!) To see the World Cup of Soccer in person? To live in a city that has great weather, a great icon (Table Mountain), great beaches, great accents, great mountains to play on, great surfing, great kiteboarding, great food, great prices and GREAT WHITE SHARK DIVING?

Welcome to Cape Town.

[I realize you may at this point already be irritated with what you’re reading. You get it, you say, you’re having a great time asshole, we don’t need to be beaten over the head with it. I would first note that I completely understand, second that this is why you’re reading this in a blog and not in a rage-inducing mass email, third that you are welcome, indeed encouraged, to visit, fourth that you should hate the game that is played not the player playing it (or something) and fifth that I probably love you very dearly and desperately wish you were here alongside me. Boop.]

So, how is African law school? Fantastic, thanks for asking STCleery.

Presumably because the fine people at UBC felt living in Africa was a tough enough thing to do (it’s not), we were told, indeed forced (earmuffs Papa Fin) to take just two classes while we are here. And since those two classes were still too much to bear, they do comprise an entire 7.0 hours at school per week after all, the powers that be decided it would be best to grade us on a pass/fail basis. Thanks! Oh, and fifty percent of our classes are ending 6 weeks early because the professor is a father-of-twins-to-be (isn’t that great!?!) and needs to go on paternity leave. Lawyers get 6-day weekends too, right?

The University of Cape Town inhabits an incredible plot of land on the slopes of the Devil’s Peak and of Table Mountain. It’s a pretty amazing place to go to school. This is the law school:

This is a view of the rest of campus from the patio at the law school:

And this is the main drag on campus:

I also like the University of Cape Town because it houses some of the world's last remaining hair bands. Evidence:

The school’s original benefactor, Cecil Rhodes, aside from being a notorious racist, was also known for his love of ivy. He mandated that every building had to be able to host ivy, and thus it is so. Hurrah!

I live with two fantastic young ladies from UBC. Her:

And that jolly young lass in the middle (that's me on the right!!!!!!!!):

The former is a half-Jewish, half-Asian super-overachiever who goes by the name of The Salzberg. She has odd penchants for hardcore rap, taking notes in pass/fail classes, and running fifty-six kilometer marathons. It does little for one’s self-esteem to come home from the bar to find a roommate putting on shoes to go for a 30 kilometre training run. That’s a picture of her and her boyfriend Matt. He’s great.

The latter, going by the name of The Swift, attracts large Congolese men seemingly daily (most notably, our boisterous apartment building doorman) and has a heart even bigger than the smile she sports in the above picture, which biologically means that she has a really goddamn big heart. While The Salzberg and I felt that “volunteering in Africa” was a liiiiittle too much of a cliché, The Swift is all over it like a fat kid on Smarties and will be heading up a project in some nearby refugee camps.

We live in an awesome apartment:

in the city centre, just off the main street of restaurants, clubs and bars. This is the view from our balcony, which overlooks Greenmarket Square and Table Mountain, no biggie

Taken at about 7AM after watching the Canada-Slovakia Semi-Final game:

and this is the view from the roof-top pool (I would like to refer you to the previous statement about hating the game, not the player. And calm down, it’s not even a full-sized pool):

I have an infinite number of witty anecdotes centring around international modeling season in Capetown, chicken curry served in a loaf of bread, Olympic celebrations and the wrath of armed guards, powder blue Mercedess(?) and accidentally ass-grabbing would-be pickpocketers, but the morning is drawing nigh and I must conserve my energy to wrestle these guys tomorrow.

With much love, Dunc