Jambo! Hello from Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania. We were so excited to find an internet cafe. It's been over 6 weeks and we were dying to get our messages from all of you at home. Half the messages were about the infamous and earth-shaking McGwire/Sosa records. Since this is Paige writing, I'll mention that while we were checking these messages, Chris was jumping up and down, salivating, whooping, etc. while my eyes were rolling back in my head as each person had to give a full play-by-play of each new homerun. Don't get me wrong because I know it's the best thing in American sports to happen in the last 50 years.... Anyway, we have loved every message with news about home and funny tales in California and elsewhere!

Budget traveling through Africa has been a real test to our endurance, patience and humour. Through it all, Chris and I are growing closer and closer. Sometimes literally when we are crammed to the gills in a chicken bus going from A to B. More about that later. We are happy and healthy and have had some really fun times. The sunsets across the African bush have been amazing and people very friendly. I can't say that I'm the witty writer like Chris so he'll add the more descriptive details about our digestive problems in a later email.

We enjoyed getting our bearings in Zimbabwe and going to see the spectular Vic Falls. It was fantastic weather and the water level was at it's lowest; therefore, we could see the entire width of the Falls (in the wet season, the rainy mist prevents viewing). We even had time to see it from Zambian side and squeeze in a half-day safari game drive in a park next to the Zambezi river. It was just the two of us in the open air LandRover truck with our guide. Absolutely thrilling: white rhinos, impala, zebra, wildebeasts, giraffes, hippos, elephants, crocodile, monkeys and baboons of course, lots of birds. To see them in their natural habitat was incredible.

This is Chris now - Paige just passed off to me - we'll probably do a tag team thing here while the other one walks around Dar in this stifling humidity. I'm going to back up a little bit, because I want to make sure you are getting the full gist of our land travel experiences. Our first leg - Harare to Bulawayo, Zimbabwe - was by train. It didn't leave until 9pm or so, so we had to kill time the whole afternoon and were resorted to actually going to the only movie theatre around - showing, you guessed it, "Titanic." We'd already seen it, but to be able to sit and relax in air conditioned darkness was revitalizing. Plus, the Zimbabwe people reacted very differently to Americans - laughing in really weird places (like when people get impaled or violently killed while the ship was going down), and loudly reacting during the love scenes. The audience was far more entertaining than the movie. Anyway, that first train ride was easy - too easy, because it has been the only easy leg of our entire African experience to date.

Then we decided to take the chicken bus from Bulawayo to Victoria Falls. At the time, the Zimbabwe labor unions were threatening to strike on September 1st, and a lot of locals were telling us that we'd better like where we were at that time because we might get stuck indefinitely. Paranoid, we decided to be out of Zimbabwe and in to Zambia by 9/1, and our only choice was the local bus. "Chicken bus" is aptly named, because people bring their chickens - stuffing them on top of the bus, in the aisles, and even holding them in their lap. A full length novel could be written about African chicken buses. Imagine an American school bus from the 1950's - no comforts AT ALL - the wear and tear of at least 40 years. Now, there are maybe 60 seats, but since this is the driver's lifeline, he wants to sell to as many people that will buy. As a result, he jams easily over 120 people on each bus - cramming you from every side and even above. People park themselves happily in the aisles alongside their huge rice sacks and bags, chickens and huge stinking fly-ridden fish. Personal space is not an African concept. Mamas (what all Africans call all women) keep their babies strapped on their backs or pass them off to any unsuspecting passenger, who always holds it with no problems. Elbows, legs, heads, butts and other unfortunate sweating body parts are always jammed and rubbing against five other people around you. Are you getting the idea yet? This is why an 8 hour ride is around $1.50. Still, even with all this working in seeming opposition to what we're used to as Americans, it is all highly entertaining.

At one point, the bus drive suddenly slammed on the brakes nearly sending the bus into an uncontrollable roll, and everyone startinggasping. Paige and I strained our heads to see an elephant crossing the road in front of the bus joining its pack on the other side.

Anyway, we had wanted to get off in Dete to go to Hwange National Park, but the chicken bus stops every 5-10 minutes and they aren't exactly "bus stops," they're random middle-of-nowhere stops alongside a dirt road with wilderness as far as the eye can see, not a building or sign in sight. How we were suppossed to know one of these "stops" was ours is still beyond understanding, and we ended up having to go all the way to Vic Falls.

A Week in Zimbabwe was a nice way to start off our African experience. We're going to break up these emails into the different countries we visit so that you don't have a book in front of you each time you hear from us.

If you're accessing this message from our website, please feel free to correspond with us via our email address listed on the page. We love to hear from family and friends, but it gives us a special thrill to hear from fellow travellers who want advice, information or recommendations, or who can give US any of the above.

Cheers!

Chris & Paige
chrisandpaige@hotmail.com
www.tarantism.com