This is Africa

Today I had to say good-bye to the lovely white beaches of Zanzibar and we started our drive to Malawi which will take at least 2 days. Rose at 5am this morning, but considering I had been on the toilet for most of the night it was more just getting out of bed to go out the door instead of into the bathroom. Needless to say it was a long night for both Laura and me as the poor thing got woken every time I had to get out of bed as my bed was rather squeaky and her bed was only about a metre from my bed. Thankfully when I got back to the truck I had access to my drugstore again and was able to pop an antibiotic to hopefully stop the liquidizer in my bowel from being quite so effective and overactive. Hiliarious thing about our self medicating practices is that I discovered this morning that last time I took antibiotics for my upset tummy (about 3 weeks ago) I actually took antibiotics for skin infections... really should read the boxes a little closer! No wonder it took a little while for my stomach to recify itself. This lot of drugs seems to working much faster.

Laura's and my conversation this morning (just cause it was funny):

Laura: you are definitely hot

Me: Mmmm, well thanks, but you saw this whole outfit yesterday and I feel rather rubbish…

Laura: haha, I mean, you are definitely a hot sleeper

Me: why do you say that?

Laura: well whenever I looked over last night you had your night dress rolled right up with a wet flannel either on your stomach, head or neck and you just looked uncomfortably hot

Me: well it was about a million degrees in here last night… were you not hot

Laura: no, I was quite comfortable, afterall we have the fan. I even had my sheet over me for most of the night.

Me: the fan that just circulated more hot air!

Laura: you are such a funny Australian.

Me: I can only go home to Australia as air-con is much more readily available and acceptable to use than when I was growing up. It is not my fault that my core body temperature seems a little higher than most.

Mike and Julie booked a half-day scuba trip which illustrated why sometimes you just have to laugh and say TIA (this is Africa). Over the course of the half-day they got chatting to the other couple on the boat and discovered that the couple believed that they had booked a private boat - which now included Mike and Julie. Julie's snorkel stopped working due to a hole and it was suggested that she continued to snorkel with just her mask, it had to be pointed out that this defeated the point of snorkeling! The other couple were also promised fruit on their trip. The fruit portion of the story was the funniest because as this story was being told we were watching the couple walk along the beach from the restaurant balcony of our hotel with a whole pineapple tucked under their arm. We are quite sure that they thought that they might be enjoying some cut fruit on the actual trip itself and not getting take-away after the 5 hour trip.

Today we drove through Mikumi National Park so we jumped up on the beach area of the truck and waited to see what game we would see. The main highway goes through the middle of the park, so it was effectively a free game drive! We saw at least 50 elephants, about 20 giraffe, some zebra, baboons and Impala's. Nick and Ruth even slowed down and at times stopped the truck so that we could admire and take photos. The elephants and giraffes were in the largest groups that we have seen to date which also added an air of excitement. Continuing with our lucky game drives everything was also relatively close to the road, so all in all we were all happy as we neared the end of a long drive day.