Trekking across 2 more countries and Rach and I are now in Victoria Falls, on the Zimbabwe side and at the end of our offical Overland Tour. It has been a pretty magnificant month so far, and we've still got another week left in Africa and are planning on making the most of it.

Today, I spend the morning white water rafting down the Zambezi River - the fourth largest river in the world. I've been rafting down the Tully near Cairns before, and was holding out high hopes that this would be even more out-of-this-world, having heard many a people claim "I seriously almost died" after rafting here, be to be honest - the scariest bit was the walk down into the gorge. It was a really steep decline down slippery, rubbly rocks. It was still pretty awesome though, and had loads of fun jumping out of the boat and going down rapids on our own. Was kind of funny when the guide would point out a crocodile sunning himself on the rocks, then say "okay, in you get" and into the water we'd jump. But hey - when if Africa...!

Tomorrow Rach and I are doing an Adrenaline Pack which involves jumping off the gorge for a gorge swing, and flying across from one side of the gorge to the other on a flying fox and then a zip line. Am pretty excited about it!

We're staying in the town of Victoria Falls, and love the fact that it's recommended that you catch a cab around town at night time - not because people might mug you, but because we're in the national part and wild animals, such as Elephants, have a tendancy to walk down the streets after dusk.

So in my last post I didn't get to finish describing our Malawi experience. At the hostel we met a Welsh guy sho has set up an orphanage community centre in a nearby village. It sounded pretty amazing what he's doing and he invited us to come along and check it out. First we had to get a local bus there which involves a mini-van, and many many people and animals crammed in. Think we counted 26 people in the van, plus a bucket of fish and a live chicken on a ladies lap.

The orphanage itself has 72 registered children, who sleep with families in the village, but are fed and educated by the orphanage. They've set it up so that it is fairly self-reliant, having built a chicken farm to sell chickens, and are soon to add a grocery stall so they make their own money and aren't reliant on donations. The children are all so incredibly well behaved - Shaun had brought new toys with him and they all just stood there looking at the toys until they were told they were allowed to play with them - that's when chaos ensued! It was gorgeous to see! Rach and I also handed out pens we'd brought with us and nearly started stampede. It's lovely to see how excited they all get over pens here.

Back at our campsite, there was a wood carving stall just outside. Malawi is know for it's wood carvings so we went to take a look, having been told by Shaun to chat with Goodhope as he's a good guy. On our was to the stall we were unable to dodge the gang of guys who hang around outside trying to make you buy from them. THey don't actually do the carvings themselves, they just bring you to the shop and sell you the stuff so guess they get a cut of the profit. So unable to find Goodhope, we fell prey to these guys. We each bought one thing off them and got a pretty good deal so were happy with it. Then after we'd finished buying they showed us the traditional Malawi marble type game. By this stage Goodhope had turned up and we wanted to buy the game off him instead. But seeing as these guys were the ones who had showed us how to play it they got really aggressive with Goodhope and they all started arguing. Rach and I turned and made a bee-line back behind the safety of our camp gates. We went running to Shaun like little girls and got him to calm the situation down for us as he knows the guys. Out of respect for the fact that the guys were the ones who'd spent the time with us we decided o purchase the games off them and they were to carve them that night, and deliver them to us before we left on our bus at 7am the next morning. They needed a deposit but as i didn't have any change I just game them the full amount. Low and behold - the next morning they're nowhere to be seen. Typical! Our tour guide Peter has promised to "hunt them down" next time he's back there.

Well, didn't really expect to have a trip to Africa without some kind of scam of some sort.

Off to Cape Town on Sunday, and by my count it will be the 39th country I travel to. Hmmm where to next...