Make new friends, but keep the old...

Howzit, Bru!

Yes, I've settled down in front of another internet terminal, so it's time for a fresh instalment of "What I Did This Time On My Holidays...", picking up again from Livingstone/Vic Falls, as I encountered some of my new travelling companions (and finally saw the Falls themselves).

The morning brought a wake-up at what seemed a comparatively civilised hour of 7:30am. Now if ever I were to worry that overlanding might be a bad influence on me, that would have to be it. 7:30am is NOT a civilised hour to awaken and face the day. 9:30 is just about acceptable. Just about. Anyways, enough belly-aching, those of us who had not chosen to cross over into Zim headed off down to the National Park entrance on the Zambian side, where we went for a delightful walk through the forests on the section of peninsula (and a small island) facing the Zambian section of the falls. Now, I've been to Niagara, and the falls there are pretty impressive (well, the horseshoe ones on the Canadian side anyway), but Vic Falls blows them away. These are the world's biggest, and I would bet most impressive, waterfalls. Something like 1.8km across, with often over 500,000 litres flowing over them per second!

Still, after an hour or two wandering along taking photos (for which I took the opportunity to hire a waterproof kagoul which might just as well have been one of our bell-tents with a hole in the top to make a poncho!) it was time to move on - we all trekked through the border point, and down to the bridge marking the actual border with Zimbabwe. At this point, I have to 'fess up that I did actually make it into Zimbabwean territory, but only on the bridge (and I didn't bloody pay for it!). And why did I do this? Well, in one of his more amusingly crazy moments, Heetan had decided he was going to do the bungee off the bridge.

Now, I am not a fan of the idea of bungee at any time, so I was quite content to let him take as much pleasure as possible from jumping off a 114m bridge with an elastic band around his legs - I just wanted to watch, along with the rest of the truck crew that morning. Given that Heetan's voice can stray into disturbingly high registers when he just gets moderately excited, I was intrigued what the reaction might be. The answer, surprisingly, was remarkably little. In fact, I've rarely seen someone looking quite so nervous - Jon took a brilliant photo capturing this, with Heetan having his head in his hands. When it came to the final jump, the jump masters had to pry his hands off the poles and near enough push him out! And when he came back up on the cable, he was almost totally silent, but his eyes were as wide as dinner-plates. Even after he walked to the end of the bridge and came back up, he was surprisingly quiet and still very wide-eyed.

After a brief scare at the border post on the way back, when we temporarily lost Valdy (he'd apparently legged it through because he'd actually forgotten to bring his passport that morning...!), it was back to the campsite, and cleaning up the tents etc ahead of our first consignment of new passengers joining on. It was quite amusing to sit through the pre-Departure meeting a second time, this time knowing what was going on (though, embarrassingly, I ended up correcting Paul on the route at one point, which brought back memories of my 6th-Form History classes), and to meet our new complement.

Having lost Barry and Jeff (en route back to Canada), Glenn (off back to Australia) and Mark, Laura, Ian and Emma (all heading down to Jo'burg), we were due for an infusion of new blood. This took the form that day of Brandon and Matt (2 American lads, celebrating their last burst of freedom before entering the hell that is the American world of work - how can anyone get by on 10 days' paid holiday a year??), Scott and Jen (Aussie couple on their way home from London) and Kath and Yohan (another Aussie couple on a few weeks' break from back home). We were told we would also be getting 10 more passengers who had come up from Jo'burg and were joining our little jaunt down to the Cape, but that they were off on their booze cruise that night and would have their meeting the next day.

Given the state of the previous two nights' booze cruises (including our own), it would have been amusing to have met the guys off there, but duty intervened, in the form of the cooking roster. Yes, I was up for chef duty and, joy of joys, it was Chilli Night. This was great fun all the way through to the point where I ended up scrubbing all the pans (I prefer my family's arrangement, where the cook doesn't have to clean!). Anyways, by the time we had finished clearing up it was half eight or so, and much of the festivities from the booze cruise had more or less collapsed. I adjourned to the bar and had a few drinks with our crew and Helen, the guide of the upcoming Livi-Jo'burg trip, who was rare in Acacia terms for being not African at all, but Welsh. She'd lived out in Aus and SA for a while, though, and you've rarely heard as weird a combo as what happens when the Welsh, Aussie and Saffir accents get mixed up.

The next day was one of the occasional quiet ones, at least to start with. Went into town, in an attempt to get some shopping done (okay, to hunt for Size 11 sandals...) and go to the post office. For it was getting on quite rapidly for my dear Mum's birthday, and half of her present, acquired in Kenya, was still travelling across Africa with me, as was assorted other junk of various grades. Sadly, I had reckoned without the joys of African bureaucracy. After a diversion to a stationery store to get a padded envelope (for Mum's pressie and a CD of photos), I had a frustrating exchange with a guy in the PO who informed me my other parcel could not simply be stuffed in a tube (as his colleague had told me earlier), but needed to be wrapped up by me. So I had to go and get wrapping material and prepare that other package. When I returned, shortly after midday, it was to be informed by his more helpful colleague that the irritating sod had gone on lunch-break and would not be back until at least 2. Oh, and he's the only guy in the Livi post office who can handle parcels. I was quite pleased that I didn't actually scream at anyone at this point. However, given that I wanted to head back to the campsite with Paul, Kath and Yohan in a cab, I had to abort my attempted postal errand. And I hadn't found any suitable sandals either. Still, my mood was pretty positive heading back towards the camp, as I had signed up to do the booze cruise again that evening, in the company of my new friends from the previous day, and I would then get the chance to meet the other new crew afterwards. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, that's going to have to be a story for another time, as my time has run out on this computer. (Gosh, my very first cliffhanger - how will my devoted readership cope...?)