Days 423 – 437: Benin is Not Representative of Africa

I have received a few emails and comments about the fact that I have not updated my blog in quite some time. I am sorry to all of you who follow my time here in Benin, but I haven’t been in country for the past few weeks. I had the opportunity to travel (on vacation) to Mozambique and Zambia. I don’t know what the best way of cataloguing the trip, so I’ll put more pictures than text. Here we go.

[TRAVEL]
I first had to pick a worthy travel buddy, or at least someone who would know someone else in Moazambique since I don’t speak Portuguese. I had to settle on Melissa, which I wasn’t too sure about since she is another Korean-American, meaning that people will think we were married and that we were Chinese. We got both, but it turned out alright since getting through customs was easier by giving them our passports at the same time (we figured this out kind of late). Our travel to Mozambique was the following:

- Taxi from Cotonou, Benin to the Togo/Ghana border
- On foot for 3km from drop-off point to border
- Taxi from Ghana border to Accra, Ghana
- Sitting around the airport for six hours
- Flight from Accra, Ghana to Johannesburg, South Africa
- 3 hour layover in South Africa
- Flight from Johannesburg, South Africa to Maputo, Mozambique

We got into Mozambique after approximately 30 hours of traveling. Even with this large amount of traveling, we didn’t run into any delays, problems, or breakdowns. Our trip was looking good. And now, since pictures are worth a thousand words, here are one hundred million words!

[PICTURES]

I made some new friends on this trip (Esther - David's girlfriend and David - PCV in Moz).

Tofo (pronounced Tofu) beach was our first destination. We went snorkeling with whale sharks and saw humpback whales!

This is the sail that was helping to propel the ghetto boat we took across the ocean to our next scenic location.

Walking to the backpackers called 'Funky Monkey' in Linga Linga. The guy who owned this place was actually half-Chinese and half-Mozambiquan (?). He was happy to house four asians! Lucio and his wife are running a pretty sweet set-up here.

Tunnel digging is one of my most favorite activities at the beach.

Melissa also likes tunnels, but she likes to act like a wombat and crawl through it. David actually fit in it too. It was a BIG tunnel. =D

These were two of Lucio's 25 children. We tried to get him to not put sand in his brother's mouth, but he didn't care. His little brother actually ate a lot of sand on purpose, while laughing. Weird.

David and I decided we'd try to catch some crabs like in Castaway. I like how you can see his shadow, holding back the coconut which was used to stun the little guy.

MMmmmm. Crabs in rum over an open flame.

Esther had a polaroid camera. We took advantage of it. First leg of the trip, done!

Here is my traveling buddy. This is Melissa and I in Livingstone, Zambia.
There is no way to take a bad picture of Victoria Falls.
See?
There were hardly any tourists due to the dry season that Southern Africa is currently in.
And a picture from the top of the falls.

And now. Some things that we probably shouldn't have done:

Like feed the baboons. In fairness, she stole this box from us when we weren't watching. We were both pretty sad. I'm just happy I got to eat like five before she took 'em.

Or, get an illegal tour guide ('Harold') to take us through the tops of the falls.

Or be convinced that taking a picture next to the cliff would be a good idea.

Or a picture in the actual water, a few feet away from the side of the cliff.

I suppose it is better than doing a gorge swing where you fall something like 50 meters or something.

Then again, jumping off of one of the highest bungy jumping points is probably not a good idea either.

But, you only live once right?

Yes, I agree. C'est la vie.

I leave you with Melissa and my favorite meal of the trip. Delivered stuff crust pizza. Half hawaiian and half 'The Works'. Johannesburg, you are like America.