Africa, 2003 - Jason Kester

Out of Africa

Jason Kester — Mon, 19 May 2003 00:00:00 GMT

Check me out, I'm walkin' around in an African capital city at night, and I haven't been robbed, beaten or killed even once. Nobody is following me around trying to sell me jewelry and wood carvings. No crime, no hassles. Civil war is your friend.

Not to worry, I'm sure that this place will turn into another Arusha inside of ten years. But for now, everybody's just too happy that the war is over to think about exploiting the few tourists that are coming in.

So yeah, Uganda gets the thumbs up. Too bad I've got to leave tomorrow. It's off to Dubai and Cairo next. Here's the final Africa tally:

8 countries
75 days
20 hot showers
140 hours in busses
12 hours swimming in bilharzia contaminated water
30 rhino sighted
4 class 5 rapids rafted
2 flights
15 varieties of local beer

Good value!

Z'beach

Jason Kester — Sat, 10 May 2003 00:00:00 GMT

I was mistaken. The beach up at Nungwi is awesome. You should see my tan...

Z'bar

Jason Kester — Sat, 10 May 2003 00:00:00 GMT

Now we're getting somewhere.

For two weeks, I was convinced that both Kenya and Tanzania were lost causes. Anywhere you want to go is overrun by the tourist industry, and any westerner is just a big sack of cash for the locals to harass.

Zanzibar town is a definite step forward. There's still the full-court press in the market and near the tourist shops, but you can get away from it and get lost in the back alleys of a pretty cool town. It's like 4000 years old and all funky winding alleyways between ancient stone buildings with intricately carved ebony doorways. Sun and nice beaches on the shore, shade and cool breezes blowing smells from the spice markets through the streets. Yeah, I can deal with this.

The rest of the island is supposed to be your standard-issue tropical Paradise, completely ravaged by tourism. I'm bracing for the worst.

Too much metal for one hand!

Jason Kester — Wed, 07 May 2003 00:00:00 GMT

I am officially safari'd out. Lemme off. I'm on the first bus to Dar es Salaam tomorrow, then on a boat to Zanzibar to get my tan back. In the meantime, I'm still sequestered away at the luxury lodge outside of town, with no Hope of interacting with the local populace. I hopped the fence and made it into town, but I'm sure I'll be missed. They've probably sent somebody to escort me back.

Anyway, Africa still rules. I'm just not convinced that Kenya and Tanzania qualify as Africa anymore. It feels more like disneyland.

Masai Mara

Jason Kester — Fri, 02 May 2003 00:00:00 GMT

Got charged by a Rhino a couple days ago. Yeah, I'm in full safari mode now. I spent the last week at a few parks in Kenya, and now I'm in Tanzania for the Serengetti and a few others.

The only problem, if you can call it that, is that you're pretty much forced to stay at all the luxury safari lodges at all the parks. There's camping outside the gate but it's not really any cheaper since it's the low season, the lodge rates are way down. So everywhere I go, there's somebody handing me another mango juice and watching to see if I set my fork down so they can polish it for me. It manages to nicely combine the two things I hate most in this world: Being waited on, and feeling like a tourist.

Anyway, it's only for another week so I think I can survive.

RE: Sad news from the 7th floor

Jason Kester — Thu, 24 Apr 2003 00:00:00 GMT

I'm in Nairobi now, trying to hook up with my Father, who is flying in tomorrow. I made the mistake of letting him pick the hotel, and he found one dead center in the sketchiest area of town. They were beating a guy in the street when we rolled up, and while we were waiting for that to clear, a couple prostitutes came over and tried to get into the cab. Needless to say, I slipped the driver another couple hundred shillings & we dusted off in search of better digs.

Now, I have to intercept the Pop at the airport, before he hails a cab towards certain death.

Lake Malawi

Jason Kester — Tue, 22 Apr 2003 00:00:00 GMT

Over the years, I have learned that if you throw enough money at any problem, it will go away. Last week was no exception.

With only 3 weeks to make it from Jo'burg to Nairobi, I knew that I would have to move fast at some point, and probably blow right past some of the things I had wanted to see. I made it into Malawi with just over a week to spare, and a quick look at the map verified that I'd be spending most of that week in busses unless I took some drastic measures. In the end, it was an easy decision: Malawi is cool. I wanted to see it. I booked a flight.

Good idea. First stop was Cape Mclear, and a few days in Paradise, with hardly any other travellers. The few of us there were would throw a couple bucks at the local boys, who would organize a bunch of fish and a duck to roast on the beach after the sun went down. After a couple hours, half the village would be around the fire, passing around cartons of the Chibuku (the local, pulpy, shake & serve brew.)

Next up was a long haul up the coast, with a night stranded in a $0.75 hotel room, finally arriving in Nkata Bay. Yet another beautiful place, but with more of a tourist feel. There were bungalows right on the lake, good meals, good times, and I actually managed to spend more than ten dollars a day. Quite a feat for Malawi.

Anyway, I'm stuck in Lilongwe today, trying to verify that I do indeed still have this flight tomorrow. Next stop is Kenya and Tanzania.

Monkey Bay, Baby!

Jason Kester — Fri, 18 Apr 2003 00:00:00 GMT

That's right, I'm in Freakin' Monkey Bay, and there's not a thing any of you lot can do about it. I hereby claim the place as part of the greater Kester empire!

There's too much happiness to relate from my perch here at the bar, so I'll give you the disaster story instead.

So after 12 hours crammed in the back of VW minibusses with 25 locals and their stuff, I pulled into this town for the first time. But I wasn't staying, so I jumped in the back of the last pickup headed out to Cape Mclear. Only maybe 15 of us, but no cage so it was plenty tight. And it was 4wd territory the whole way out.

Anyway, about 10k in, we're halfway up a long hill and the radiator finally gives out. No worries, right. We start rolling back to see what can be done, and that's when the brakes go. We pick up speed. People start hollering. People start jumping out. One guy goes over the hood is riding on it. I'm up on the rail, jettisoning my bag, when the driver cuts the wheel to the side. We slam into the hillside doing about 20, and I do my best flying leap over the side.

I land in a forward roll, and am up and scurrying downhill, expecting to see the truck cartwheeling towards me, but it has dug itself into the side of the hill and dispensed about half of its passengers off the back. Amazingly, nobody was seriously hurt.

But yeah, Cape Mclear made up for it all. Best place I've found yet in Africa. $1.50 for a room, $0.30 for a beer. Great beach and flat, clear, warm fresh water.

No worries.

Watched the sun rise over the Kalahari today...

Jason Kester — Thu, 10 Apr 2003 00:00:00 GMT

I finally made it out of South Africa, one week after my visa expired. I spent those extra couple days out at Kruger park, checking out the wildlife. The place is cool. Animals everywhere. It got so that you wouldn't bother stopping the car because there were only 50 impala on one side and a dozen zebra, some wildebeeste and a few giraffes on the other side.

Yesterday was a travel day, so 8 hours in packed minibus-taxis, and a 14 hour night bus saw me across Botswana and up into Zambia this morning. Went and checked out Victoria Falls today, and was suitably impressed. The thing is so wide that you can never really see it all, and it drops along this series of gorges so you can walk out the side of one and have this giant waterfall spanning from as wide as you can see, but only 50 yards in front of you, with the spray dropping on you like a torrential rainstorm. Cool.

I've only got a couple weeks before I need to be in Nairobi, so I'll probably pull out of here tomorrow and start making my way towards Malawi.

Sorted

Jason Kester — Wed, 02 Apr 2003 00:00:00 GMT

Things go well. I spent yesterday on foot, tracking a pack of babboons across Zulu country. In fact, I've been on foot quite a bit in the last week, hiking around in the Drakensberg. The place is truly spectacular, with 1000 meter cliffs to stumble off if you miss a step, deep sandstone gorges to explore, and views that are just a bit too scenic for my tastes.

Before that was Durban, and a few days of surfing in the warm water and sunshine.

Now I'm in Pretoria, sequestered in a compound surrounded by razor-wire and an electric fence. They take their security seriously down here. This is a good neighborhood, which means that I get to walk around in the daylight. In Jo'burg, you are strongly discouraged from leaving the hostel for any reason.

Stuck at the beach

Jason Kester — Fri, 21 Mar 2003 00:00:00 GMT

J-Bay lived up to all expectations. Really cool looking waves that I have no business getting in the way of, and plenty of less deadly but equally perfect spots as well.

I finally got on my first bus today. Everybody has rental cars here, so I've been pretty lucky at finding people who were going in the right direction. Now I'm in Cintsa, at the backpacker's equivilant of a black hole. Everywhere you look, there's a nice hammock in the shade overlooking the beach or the pool, and a friendly barmaid to hand you another 75 cent beer. Laziness beckons at every turn. I don't see how I can possibly escape.

Straight off the streets of CPT

Jason Kester — Tue, 11 Mar 2003 00:00:00 GMT

I headed up to the rocklands for a couple days to check out some world-class bouldering, and possibly get eaten by a leopard. The place is pretty cool, loads of rock for miles in any direction, with Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom living in between. I got on some fun problems, but I kept getting more and more tentative to slap blindly for holds after seeing all the spiders, snakes, and assorded angry critters living in them.

Next stop was Montagu, the western cape's premier sport climbing destination area, and home to absolutely no climbers at the moment. Nobody to climb with, hence no real reason for me to be at the western cape's premier sport climbing destination area. In fact, in the short time I've been down here, I have become convinced that I am the only travelling rock climber in all of South Africa. Looks like I'll stick to bouldering.

Anyway, I'll probably tourist up the joint in Cape Town for a couple days more before heading east. If I'm feeling lucky, next stop will be Outdoorshoorn and the awesome limestone with likely zero partners to be had. Otherwise, it's off to J-Bay to find some waves.

It remains All Good.

No worries

Jason Kester — Fri, 07 Mar 2003 00:00:00 GMT

The luggage made it. Everything is back to being too easy.

Made it out bouldering today up at Table mountain. It was cool. I'm starting
to run out of Cape Town things to do though. I think I may rent a car and head
up to the rocklands for a while.

baggage.lufthansa.com

Jason Kester — Wed, 05 Mar 2003 00:00:00 GMT

So I made it to South Africa in one piece. Too bad my bag didn't. No worries, the airline says they'll let me know as soon as it turns up somewhere.

So yeah, I've already written it off, but I'll humor them for a couple days before I replace all my stuff. And by all my stuff, I mean ALL my stuff. I've got the clothes I'm wearing, the book that I finished reading on the flight, and an ATM card that expires sometime in the next few weeks. And a Mars bar.

It's all good!