The ceremony will be held outdoors on the front lawn at the Royal Canadian Yacht Club on Toronto Island at 11:00am. A seated brunch reception will be held immediately following the ceremony in the RCYC ballroom.
Getting there: A private ferry will be taking guests to the event from the Cherry St dock location. The dress code for the yacht club is located here. Parking is located at the dock and costs 10$ per day and the area is accessible by taxi. The location is a 1.8km walk south from the 504 King streetcar stop at Sumach St (aka Cherry St). More information on public transportation in Toronto is below.
Getting back: Guests can take any of the regularly scheduled ferries back to the mainland, on the 00s and 30s. If you are interested in exploring Toronto Island, a map of sites and cycling/walking paths on the island can be found here.
PARTY
Guests are welcome to attend a casual private party on the evening of May 28th at C'est What, a local brew pub. Come by anytime after 8:00 pm to join us for local beers, wines, dancing and snacks. One of our favourite bands, Mr Something Something, will be playing some awesomely danceable funk/afrobeat music over the course of the night.
Getting there: The pub is located downstairs at 67 Front St, at the corner of Church and Front. It's easy to get to by subway (King Station or Union Station) or streetcar (504 King stop at Church St). Parking is located just south of the bar at Church and Esplanade in a Green P parkade and taxis can easily be hailed on the street.
RSVP
Please RSVP to malandbryce@gmail.com indicating which events you plan to attend. We have attempted to include a variety of food options for those with dietary restrictions, however please send pertinent allergy/dietary information/inquiries along with your RSVP.
A WEEKEND IN TORONTO
Hotel: A block of rooms is being held at the Delta Chelsea in downtown Toronto for the nights of May 27th and May 28th. Rooms can be booked by calling 416-595-1975. The Delta Chelsea is located in the downtown core, within walking distance of the Eaton Center and the subway.
Transportation: Parking is available at most downtown hotels, however better rates are often available at the city's Green P locations or at private lots. Public transportation information can be found on the Toronto Transit Commission website. Taxis can be hailed on the streets anywhere in downtown Toronto. To arrange a taxi pick-up elsewhere, call Beck Taxi at 416-751-5555.
Events and site-seeing:
Timeout.com has prepared a handy list of fun things to do around Toronto. Most of these are year-round and all are either within walking distance of the Delta Chelsea, or are easily accessible on public transportation.
The weekend of May 28th just happens to be the weekend of one of our favourite city events: Doors Open Toronto! The city opens the doors of many of its famous buildings for free, including distilleries, ballrooms, churches, libraries, factories, bank towers and many more. Previous years' highlights include tours of the famous Don Jail and free beer at the Steamwhistle Brewery.
The Toronto Blue Jays have home games on the evening of May 27th and during the day on May 29th.
Several shows are playing in Toronto the weekend of May 28th, including Billy Elliot, Calendar Girls and The Lion King. More information can be found here.
Live music is easy to find downtown at many local bars and venues. Listings can be found at Rotate This, Now and on Toronto.com.
Well, after 177 days on the road, we’ve finally made it back to Canada (and in one piece, no less!). The trip was an unqualified success. We saw some incredible sights (and some not-so-incredible ones), ate some unbelievably delicious food (and some that is best left unmentioned), met some great people (and a few less savoury characters), hit a few snags, and got out of them all. Rather than ramble on for paragraphs of deep, personal reflections (boring), we decided to summarize the trip by handing out our own set of Bryce and Mallory Travel Adventurism Awards (exciting!). The categories, and winners, are as follows.
Best Hostel (Tie): Chalet Martin (Gryon, Switzerland) & Hostel Estoril (Buenos Aires, Argentina).
We stayed in a lot of different accommodations, covering pretty much the full spectrum of comfort, cleanliness and fun. These two were far and away the best places we stayed on the entire trip. Both of them have what we’d consider to be the mandatory prerequisites for high-quality hostels (clean, comfy beds, big well-appointed common spaces, good location, great staff), but they also throw a few extra things into the mix.
Chalet Martin is located in the archetypal perfect Swiss mountain village, run by the friendliest staff we met on the trip. The building has absurdly comfortable common spaces with huge picture windows overlooking the Alps, leather couches, and a kitchen big enough to run laps around. They also have a movie room with stadium seating, ski equipment rental, and fondue supplies on sale at the reception desk. What more could you ask for? If you said “regular wine tastings”, they’ve got that too.
Hostel Estoril is right in the heart of Buenos Aires, and what it may lack in kitchen space (of which it has about 7 square feet), it makes up for in sociability. It’s got a 7th storey rooftop patio bar, lounge chairs, views over downtown, and a weekly all-you-can-eat barbeque meat-stravaganza. The rooms are big, well-lit, and really well appointed. One of our rooms had a balcony, and the other was IN the cupola on the roof. We had a ton of fun here, mostly due to how easy it was to meet other travelers on the roof. Bonus points: it’s next door to La Continental, a restaurant with empanadas of unparalleled deliciousness.
Best Wall: The Great Wall (Beijing, China). A very good wall, indeed. I think it might have been the longest wall we saw on our trip.
Best Bus Travel: Argentina. The buses there have seats that recline to almost completely horizontal, meal service (of dubious quality, but the ham and cheese sandwiches were reliable), movies and complimentary beverages. And that’s in coach! First class has full beds, free wine, and I think they hand you a big lump of gold on your way out.
Worst Bus Travel (Tie): India & Tanzania. In India, most buses are run-down and dirty, and there is also a policy of selling as many tickets as they can, and then just cramming people into the bus until limbs start poking out the windows. On the upside, the tickets are cheap. Tanzanian buses are relatively expensive, and start their life being pretty nice and comfortable. However, most bus companies just drive them and drive them until they disintegrate, and then go out of business. Finding a new one, or a company with a maintenance budget, can improve things quite a bit, but it’s a roll of the dice.
Coolest Buildings (in no particular order): The Taj Mahal (Agra, India), The Tiger’s Nest Monastery (near Paro, Bhutan), St. Basil’s Cathedral (Moscow, Russia). Pretty much self-explanatory, these buildings are awe-inspiring.
Best/Worst Street Food: India. There is an insane array of food on offer on just about every street in India. Most of it smells delicious. Much of it tastes really, really delicious. Some of it will tear through your gastrointestinal system like a raging bull, leaving a path of misery and destruction. Caveat emptor, I guess. Best Camping: Mongolia. Gers (aka yurts) are really comfortable, and surprisingly well insulated. More than once, we found ourselves in t-shirts and shorts in our tents, with -20°C gales blowing outside. Combine that with almost total isolation from the civilized world, and you get some pretty cool camping experiences. The night skies were just about the starriest I’ve ever seen.
Best Kilimanjaro Trekking Company: Team Kilimanjaro. Can’t say enough good things about ‘em. If you have the time to spend a few extra days on the mountain, their proprietary “TK Rongai” route is way, way more manageable than the standard Marangu route. We saw a lot of other trekking companies on the mountain, and TK has better equipment and better guides.
Best food overall: Way too many possibilities for this one, but the highlights were as follows: Argentinian steak (especially the Kobe beef at La Cabrera in Buenos Aires – Kobe beef for $25!), sushi at the Tsukiji Fish Market in Tokyo, leg of lamb at Bukhara in Delhi, and a few of the dishes at La Vineria de Gualterio Bolivar in Buenos Aires, including this one crazy egg dish called “Huevo 62°/50” that was one of the most delicious things I think either of us have ever tasted. Honourable mention goes to Russian food, which Mal couldn’t get enough of. I should probably mention that Mal loves potatoes and mayonnaise, but then, who doesn’t?
Best Free Breakfast: We seem to be on a bit of a food theme here, but the free breakfast at the Hotel Lasserhof in Salzburg, Austria deserves a specific shout-out. Your typical hostel breakfast consists of bread, butter, maybe some jam, and occasionally juice. The Lasserhof had half a dozen kinds of cereal, a cornucopia of jams and preserves, toast, eggs, porridge, coffee, orange juice, and the king of all breakfast foods: bacon. Free bacon!
Best Country to Meet People: Argentina. Not sure why, but the hostel scene in Argentina was by far the most social we found on our trip. It was also (in our experience) a slightly older demographic than European hostels (think roughly 21-28, rather than 18-22), which was good. Not that partying with recent high school graduates isn’t fun, we just enjoyed the slight bump in maturity a little more. Then again, these are hostel-going world travelers we’re talking about, so the bump in maturity wasn’t TOO big.
Most Expensive Place: Zurich. Holy cow. Every time we bought something I felt like someone was punching me in the wallet.
Least Expensive Place: Anywhere in India. For the price of a Whopper in Zurich, you could get 3 days’ worth of meals in India.
Best Coffee: Europe. They do their espresso right.
Worst Coffee: Chile. What the heck, Chile? You are a hop, skip and a jump from some of the world’s biggest coffee producers, yet for some reason everyone drinks Nescafe. What’s up with that?
Best Wine: Argentina (Malbec from Mendoza, specifically). You can get a really delicious bottle of Malbec in Argentina for like $3 Canadian. We tried really hard to find a bottle we didn’t like, but we couldn’t do it.
Worst Wine: India. Yikes. I love the fact that India is getting into the wine game, as some high value agriculture would probably be a huge boon to the otherwise crushingly poor rural Indian economy, but it tastes like they’ve still got a bit of a way to go before you can go down to the liquor store and pick up a nice bottle of Sangali red.
Best Sunrise: Tiger Hill, Darjeeling. Not only was it an incredible experience to see the sun rise over the Himalaya, but the crowd of around 200 people burst into exuberant cheering and applause when the sun finally appeared. I guess maybe they weren’t sure if it was coming back this time?
Best Sunset: Udaipur. We spent most of our nights in Udaipur eating dinner and drinking beers on rooftops, and the views were pretty hard to beat. The skies were always clear, and the sun set just behind a big lake and some rolling desert hills. Oh, also the lake had two giant palaces in the middle.
Well, that’s just about it, I think. It’s been a great 6 months, and thanks to everyone who’s been following along for the encouraging/entertaining emails, comments, etc. It was great to have a connection to home while we were far away in (let’s be honest) some pretty ridiculous places. As a final note, we’ve put together a quick 7 minute video summarizing some of the highlights of the trip. Feel free to check it out.
Until next time, thanks for reading! Bryce and Mal
After our Puerto Williams trip, we spent a few more days lounging around Ushuaia, mostly just relaxing and being really far south. We got a picture of this big wrecked boat in the Beagle Channel that I think might belong to The Smoggies.
We also used the last of our time in Argentina to try some Chandon champagne. It's made by the same company that makes Moet & Chandon, a fancy, expensive champagne that we have never tried due to it being in the over-$10 price bracket. Argentine-made Chandon is much more affordable. It was good, and I made a pretty sweet cork knight (with trusty wire steed!).
In retrospect, that may have been the moment we knew we had run out of stuff to do in Ushuaia.
We headed west to Chile, en route to the Torres del Paine national park. It's home to what just about every guidebook claims is "the best hiking in South America", and we had heard nothing but great things about it from Trevor and Kim (our Kilimanjaro trekking partners) and many other people we've met along the way. Most people trek across the park in 5 days, but our travel time is running out pretty quickly, and my knee is still protesting that whole Kilimanjaro thing, so we decided to just do a quick 2-day hike to see the Torres del Paine themselves.
Getting there made for a couple of long days of hiking, including a brutal 45 minute scramble to the top, but the scenery was worth it. They're three giant granite pillars that jut straight up into the sky behind a big green glacial lake. They were up there with the Perito Moreno glacier for some of the coolest natural scenery we've seen in the last 6 months.
Unfortunately, we hit some cloudy days on our hike, which means we didn't get a perfectly unobstructed view of the Torres. On the upside, the clouds make them look like the perfect place for an evil lair (plus, they're practically called the TOWERS OF PAIN).
The rest of the park was pretty great too. We'll probably come back again at some point to check it out properly. On our way out of the park, we saw a bunch of Guanacos, which are awesome Patagonian llama-type animals that seemed to have a habit of walking in front of our bus, then getting super freaked out and running all over the place. Here is one, pre-freak-out.
Now we're pretty much just killing time in Punta Arenas (where we have yet to take a picture... we'll get on that shortly), waiting for our flight to Santiago tomorrow evening. Then, we've got a day and a half in Santiago before THE END OF THE TRIP. Right now, we're pretty excited to get back to the comforts of home. Mal is super pumped about the prospect of high-quality sandwiches and cupcakes (both of which seem to have been mastered by North American eateries). I, on the other hand, have been looking forward to putting on a pair of jeans for like three weeks now. We might get one more quick post up before we leave. If not, we'll put up our Best/Worst summary of the last 6 months sometime this weekend!
Being in the world's southernmost city is cool and all, but on Wednesday we pressed on and made our way down to Puerto Williams, the world's southernmost town, and probably the southernmost settlement that's not a research station. It really must be a thorn in Ushuaia's side, because it throws the whole "end of the world" claim into doubt, and all over a difference in latitude that amounts to maybe one kilometre. Seriously, if the water weren't so cold, you could swim there from Ushuaia. If I were Ushuaia, I'd be pretty bitter.
That being said, Ushuaia is a proper city, and Puerto Williams is... well, small. It has about 2,200 permanent residents, most of whom are navy officers. Everyone else is the husband, wife or child of a navy officer. The small size and total lack of economic importance means it's a little tricky to get there, with your options basically being: a) charter a plane. b) charter a zodiac. c) go down to the yacht club and try to bribe sailors with beer to take you along if they're heading that way.
Naturally, we started with option c. We headed down to the yacht club (fancy southernmost microbrews in hand, as shown below) in the hopes of obtaining passage, but didn't wind up finding a boat.
Next, we looked into the plane/zodiac scene. Turns out it's actually cheaper to charter a tiny 4-seater plane from the local flight club than it is to take a zodiac across the channel. Expensive, windy, wet boat ride vs. slightly cheaper, substantially awesomer, private flight? Tough choice.
Mal's got tons of experience with tiny aircraft (the perks of being a geologist), but it was my first time on anything smaller than an Airbus. Man, is it different. Commercial airliners basically feel like big buses, with occasional turbulence. By contrast, my first few minutes in a small plane felt like a profoundly stupid decision. They are very small, wind is very strong, and the ground is very hard and unforgiving. Not to mention the fact that our pilot looked like he was about 15, and showed up for our flight wearing skate shoes. After a few minutes in the air though, and after realizing that the plane could indeed survive gusts of Patagonian-strength wind, it was an amazing experience. Flying in a small plane gives you the full knowledge that you are actually flying.
Puerto Williams itself isn't going to win any architectural awards (except maybe "Most Consistent Use of Corrugated Aluminum Siding"), but what it lacks in architecture, it makes up for in small-town charm.
We stayed at the "Hostal Paso McKinlay", which was a spare bedroom in a house belonging to an extremely friendly local family. Despite our very limited Spanish, and their very limited English, we had a great time there. They made us breakfast, afternoon tea, drove us around, and recommended the best restaurant in town. Mind you, that last one wasn't too tough, given the fact that there was really only one restaurant in town: the Dientes de Navarino. We heard rumours of another, but no one was able to confirm the existence of this mysterious "second restaurant". Luckily, the food at the Dientes was delicious, even if your ordering options are limited to "whatever the chef is making right now".
We spent our one full day in the area hiking up a nearby hill to get a view of the Dientes de Navarino mountain range (it's not just a fancy restaurant!). The views from the top were incredible, and the only thing that mitigates the experience of trekking around Puerto Williams is the incessant pounding your skin takes from all the UV rays pouring in through the big, gaping hole in the ozone layer overhead. Thanks, CFCs!
Puerto Williams also has a handsome children's park, rendered only slightly less usable by the wild horses that inhabit it.
The other big sight in town is the Club de Yates Micalvi, a strong contender (in our experience) for "coolest bar in the world". It started as a German munitions ship that ran aground about 10 feet offshore from town, and has since been converted into a bar/harbour for yachts passing through on their way to Cape Horn and Antarctica. It's got 6 foot ceilings, cushily upholstered couches, an ample supply of pisco, a thick haze of smoke, and a slight tilt towards port. Because it's not exactly an easily accessible bar, the clientele tends to be pretty eccentric - yacht captains of questionable sanity en route to Antarctica, their crew (of equally questionable sanity), and the occasional pair of Canadian backpackers.
On our first trip there, the wild horses from the park were all hanging out in front of the entrance, but we weaved our way through them anyways, partly so we could say "wild horses couldn't keep us away from this bar!". Mal gets full credit/blame for that line.
We heard some interesting stories there, including one from a couple of German guys about their journey from New Zealand to the Club de Yates, which involved a storm so bad it blew out their windows, and the subsequent 30 centimetres of water they had to deal with in the bottom of their boat. We also learned that to sail a private yacht to Antarctica, you need to bring 6 months' worth of food supplies due to the apparently very real danger of getting stuck in the ice and not being able to return until the next summer. Here's a dark picture of Mal and a few of our fellow non-yachtgoing travelers in the Micalvi.
We're back in the bustling metropolis of Ushuaia now, where we'll be spending the next few days relaxing and maybe even doing laundry. After that, we're headed to the Torres del Paine National Park in Chile, followed by Santiago, followed by... Toronto?! Holy cow, we are almost home!
We've been almost criminally negligent of the blog lately. We're really sorry, we can change! We can be good bloggers! For real this time!
Since the last time we posted, we left Buenos Aires (reluctantly, it is an awesome city) and took a 20 hour bus ride to Bariloche. It's kind of the Banff of Argentina. Mountains, lakes, great views, tons of tourists, and (for some reason) like eighty chocolate shops. There were some great hiking trails around town, and we spent one day hiking up an insanely gruelling trail to get a view of the surrounding lakes and hills.
On our way down, we realized we had missed the actual, perfectly reasonable trail, and just scrambled up a cliff instead. Oops.
While in Bariloche, we met up with Alexis and Garett, who we'd met in Buenos Aires a few days earlier. They both had vague travel plans, so we were able, through the use of cunning, sophisticated arguments, to convince them to come to Puerto Madryn with us to see a million penguins. Our argument was something along the lines of "One million penguins!!!". Here are Alexis and Garett on the bus to Puerto Madryn, eating salami and cheese sandwiches.
Salami and cheese sandwiches have made up a worryingly large percentage of our diet lately. Most of the sandwich meat here in Argentina is that hyper-processed ham loaf stuff that comes in a big shrink-wrapped cube, but the salami is pretty tasty, and bread is really cheap. That, combined with the fact that we've spent like 80 hours in various buses over the last week, and the fact that sandwiches are very portable, has resulted in our all salami-cheese-bread diet. It's been working out well so far, except for yesterday when our salami got confiscated at the Chilean border.
We got to Puerto Madryn, rented a car, and drove to Punto Tombo, the biggest penguin colony in the world (outside of Antarctica). It was awesome. Penguins are hilarious animals. The waddle, the black and white colour scheme, the flippers, it all adds up to comedy gold. We walked around the colony for like 2 hours. You'd think penguins would get kind of old after that long, but I'll tell you when penguins get boring: never. They are always awesome. Evidence:
After Puerto Madryn, we parted ways with Garett and Alexis and headed south to El Calafate, which was like a smaller, even touristier version of Bariloche, which meant restaurants were kind of expensive (by Argentine standards), but also that most of the buildings were really cool log-cabin-style places. There was also some inexplicable graffiti.
El Calafate exists mostly because of the Perito Moreno Glacier, a huge, blue hunk of ice an hour away that is one of the last advancing glaciers in the world. We only had one day in El Calafate, so we made a beeline for the glacier, and it did not disappoint. It's a 60 metre tall jagged, savage wall of ice that juts into a lake and fractures explosively when the sun hits it in the afternoon. While we were watching it, we saw at least a dozen huge chunks of ice break off and crash into the water. It was by far the most impressive natural phenomenon we've seen on the trip.
Our next destination was Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world. To get there, however, we had to take a bus into Chile (losing our salami in the process), across the Straits of Magellan, and then back into Argentina. It was supposed to take 12 hours, but we wound up being delayed by an additional 10 hours when the ferry across the straits had to shut down due to insane wind. I don't know exactly how hard it was blowing, but we had to lean into it not to fall down, our bus was rocking back and forth, and I think I saw a couple of cows go sailing by in the fields. Here is Mal braving the gales for a picture.
We did finally get to Ushuaia, and it has been pretty great so far. It's surrounded by mountains, faces the Beagle Channel, and really does feel like the end of the world.
The only downside is dealing with the constant jealousy of meeting people who are headed off for Antarctic cruises. We really, really wanted to include one in our trip, but we couldn't justify the $8000-or-so price tag. It turns out you can get great last minute deals here for as little as $4000 for a ten day trip. I keep trying to convince Mal that we wouldn't be spending $4000, we'd be saving $4000, but I think we're going to have to leave Antarctica for next time. On the other hand, there is a casino right down the street...
In the meantime while we wait to stumble upon $8000 in the street, we've been keeping ourselves entertained by trying to do as many southernmost things in the world as we can. One we were looking forward to was Beagle Beer, the world's southernmost microbrew. Unfortunately, once we got here, we found several other Ushuaia microbrews claiming to be the beer from the end of the world too. We tried them all, you know, just to be sure. Here we are with a pint of Beagle Dark, the last on our list (which is somewhat apparent from the picture).
We're off now to go book a plane ticket to Puerto Williams, a small village on the south shore of the Beagle Channel. There's not much there other than some nice scenery, but seeing as how we are competitive people and also trivia nerds, we couldn't leave the area without making it to the village that challenges Ushuaia's claim to be the southernmost city in the world (whether or not it's legitimate depends on who you're talking to). Pictures to follow later this week!
We're about a week into our almost-two-week stay in Buenos Aires, and we've had a pretty awesome time here so far. We hadn't thought much about B.A. before getting here, but it is an excellent city. It's got great weather (maybe a little on the warm and humid side, but I realize that's not something I can complain about to a mostly Canadian readership in late January), delicious food, interesting history, cool architecture, and the relatively uncorrupted rule of law. Alright, that last one should kind of be expected, but after our time in Dar es Salaam, it is a welcome change. We don't feel like we're constantly 30 seconds from being mugged here. It's nice.
The first place we went when we got here was the Hostel Estoril, our home for the first few days here. We booked it online based on nothing more than its score on Hostelworld, but man, was it a good decision. It definitely ranks in the top 3 best hostels of the trip.
Why? First off, the free breakfast includes fresh squeezed orange juice. Amazing! I love fresh squeezed orange juice, but I usually have a hard time justifying the purchase of the 17 oranges it takes to make a full glass of juice. Here, they're free! Secondly, our room is in a cupola/dome/thing on the roof of a 7-storey building, which itself means two things. First: I get to say things like "home sweet dome". Second: awesome views.
On Monday, we went to go check out this giant drum show thing called "La Bomba de Tiempe" which translates to time bomb, or the more literal (and way cooler sounding) "The Bomb of Time". It's a huge weekly show that draws thousands of people to a big open air concert put on by a group of about 15 insanely talented percussionists. Kind of like a huge club dance party, with drummers instead of DJs. If you're familiar with Montreal, it's kind of like the Tam Tam if the drum circle was on stage, and if you replaced the hippies with hyper-disciplined professionals. The whole show is improvised every week and all the communication in the band is accomplished via the conductor. He's the band leader, and he's devised this whole mind-bogglingly intricate system of gestures and hand signals to tell which sections of the band what beats to play, and when. They played for two hours without a single off-tempo note. It was crazy! Also, this picture is kind of dark, but there was one guy standing on his friends' shoulders and flapping his arms like a bird for like a third of the show. It was awesome.
Here's Mal with Rich and Garett, two of the very cool people we met at the hostel. They are enjoying some of La Bomba's comically oversized beers. I think Mal's about to topple over.
One of the other big highlights of our time here in B.A. so far was a meal we had at a restaurant called La Vineria de Gualterio Bolivar. The chef, Alejandro Digilio, trained under Ferran Adria, who's a big celebrity in the (admittedly, very very small) world of people who enjoy both fine dining and crazy food science. Being both foodies and big science geeks, we struck out for La Vineria in the hopes of eating some weird, delicious dishes. We wound up getting a 9 course tasting menu that left us so full we were barely able to move, all for about the price of an entree at a medium-to-upscale restaurant in Kingston or Toronto. Pretty sweet. On top of that, just about everything we had was crazy delicious. As for the scientific weirdness of the food, here's a three word summary: "liquid french fries". Here's a picture we took of our appetizer plate.
That's all we have time for today, we're off to go take some spanish lessons. Mallory es un estudiante muy buena.
This is post #2 for the day, so be sure to scroll down and check out our Kilimanjaro summary if you're still looking for ways to procrastinate at work after reading this post.
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After our climb, we headed back to Arusha for a (much needed) rest day, which we spent trying to climb the fewest hills/stairs possible. The day after that, we were picked up by Marco (our safari guide) for the long, dusty drive to the Serengeti. It took about 6 or 7 hours to get there, but it would've taken much less if we hadn't freaked out and insisted that Marco stop the car every time we saw a zebra.
Which brings me to my next point: the zebra is far too common. Look at a zebra, and tell me how common you think it should be. I would expect any rational person to say "Pretty rare, Bryce. Just look at those crazy stripes!". Exactly. Nothing that insanely patterned should be easy to find. Really, after living with the relatively boring wildlife colours in Canada, I expected there to be a total of like 10 zebras in Africa. And yet, when we got to the Serengeti, we were surrounded by (and for once, this isn't flagrant exaggeration) hundreds of thousands of zebras. It was almost too much for the mind to handle.
By the same token, there are a ridiculous number of wildebeest and gazelles in the Serengeti. You can't swing a stick in the Serengeti without hitting a gazelle (but I think that counts as poaching, so you probably wouldn't want to try it), and we found a few herds of the wildebeest migration moving across the plains that were so big we couldn't see the end of them. The wildebeest is a goofy looking animal. Evidence:
By far the most intense thing we saw came near the end of our first safari day. We found a pack of 3 lionesses hanging out in the bush, basically just minding their business, walking along pretty calmly. Eventually, though, their walk started getting slinkier and much more dangerous looking, and our guide spotted a pack of clueless baboons about 50 metres up the road. We drove up and parked beside the baboons, and waited for a very long, very quiet 10 seconds before the lions pounced out of the grass and the baboons took off screaming. They all made it into trees, but it turns out lions are very good climbers when they're hungry. Note to self: don't ever bother trying to hide from lions in a tree.
Terrifying:
Lunch:
Watching lions hunt is really interesting in a "Planet Earth with David Attenborough" kind of way, but there's also an intense primal response that comes with being that close (about 10 metres) to a lion that is dead set on having primate for lunch. Your conscious brain says "wow, this is neat", while your subconscious says "run run run run run run".
The second and third days of our safari were also awesome, but we didn't see any savage theatrics to rival the lion hunt. We did see just about every awesome African animal you can think of, though. Giraffes, elephants (one of whom got a little upset and almost charged our car), impalas, warthogs, hyenas, ostriches, a cheetah, and even two rhinos. Well, we think they were rhinos. They were rhino-shaped blobs on the horizon, in any case. Here's that irate elephant:
On our last night, we were camping on the rim of the Ngorongoro crater, when we learned that our campsite had a minor infestation problem - elephants. First, a big elephant came into camp and ripped apart the plumbing system to get a drink. Then, three more elephants came by in the night to have a drink, and generally stand around and be terrifying. Elephants are beautiful, majestic creatures from a land rover. From the ground, with no fences, they are monsters. Mal had a close encounter with one as she came out of the washroom and found herself face to face with an eye the size of a softball. Luckily, neither of us came to the same end as the plumbing system.
That's about it for the safari, though as a word of warning I will suggest not doing safaris with Marco. He was pretty apathetic for the most part, and on the last day he ditched us for hours while he went to go bail his brother in law out of the local jail. Classy guy.
P.S. The ostrich is a completely ridiculous animal.
