I have plenty of inside jokes that only those of us who took the trip, whether to Europe or to Africa, know what they mean. When I see phrases put together in a specific way, or if I hear that particular Christina Aguilera song, Come On Over, Baby, I cry a little.

I’m not normally a crybaby, but Africa was special. I went to play trivia at Guiseppes Tuesday night. We didn’t win anything, but afterwards, I decided to sit at the bar and write a little. I’d taken my small, brown moleskine journal and as I tried to find my first blank page, I stumbled across some of the catch phrases that became part of the journey.

Come On Over, Come On Over Baby – If we saw a baby anything, especially elephants for me, we would say, “Come over here, baby.” It very quickly, to our shame, evolved into the Christina Aguilera song. We sang it the whole trip. But how can you not sing the songs when the babies were this cute?

Every Tree is a Lava Tree – You have to understand that there was a strong British accent in southern Africa, so lava tree is lavatory or bathroom. Basically, when you go on safari with some groups, they get you all liqoured up well away from camp and going to the bathroom became a squat-behind-the-trees-and-hope-a-hippo-or-leopard-doesn’t-come-upon- you-unawares moment. Of course, I was the one that had to take advantage of the lava tree.

Our guide, Ian Johnson, was very knowledgeable. Very. But every now and then, he would say something and we didn’t know if he were kidding or telling us the truth. At those moments, we would say, “I don’t think that’s true.” We eventually stopped writing down the things we were supposed to look up on Wikipedia to double check what Ian was telling us.

Two nights before we left the first camp, Xakanaxa, Catherine had a dream that Ian was a criminal. Thus because of the preceding inside joke and Catherine’s dream, Ian became a liar and a criminal. That night, Ian ended up with a plate full of knives through various means. Here, he is trying to explain to the woman who simply wants to take that plate of knives from him why it is that he has a plate of knives (because he’s a criminal) and that, since it’s his stock and trade, that he can’t just give the knives up to her. She was not amused. We, however, were very amused and some of our dinner guests were wondering where their knives had gone. Several glasses of wine were also involved.

This fellow lived in the delta just past our tents. He was very territorial when it came to that delta. While he would spend the day staring at us and hating us, he would spend the night frolicking in the delta. On the first night at Xakanaxa, Allison went to sleep before the rest of us and she had a dream that someone was splashing around in the bathtub, only to discover that our tents only had showers, not anything we could splash around in. From that point on, any splashing by any animal became the hippo splashing in the bathtub.

There are more, like being sneaky like an elephant and the African hour being only 45 minutes long, and the sex organs of an elephant being on the bottom of their feet, or how you could hire a DVD, but those are anecdotes for another time.

Africa is like this picture. Unexpected.

It was not the shot I expected, nor was it the shot I was trying to take. I wanted to capture the pose, sure, but the lighting, when I saw this picture took me completely by surprise.

This isn’t the picture I took. Africa wasn’t a place I ever thought I wanted to visit. I want to travel, and if I eventually got to Africa, that would be nice, but it was on the low end of the totem pole. Maybe it was because people expected me to want to go there, it being the “motherland” and all, but before this trip, I had about as much connection to Africa as I did to France (which was the nationality of my paternal grandmother, I’ve been told). It wasn’t until I was offered the 4th spot when a friend won the safari that the idea of going to Africa became tangible. I was excited, don’t get me wrong, but I was excited about the travel and the food and meeting people and seeing wild animals.

Of any place I would want to travel, I know the least about Africa, especially southern Africa. I know that I want to go to Morocco, mainly to eat, and Cairo for the ruins. But I fell in love with Botswana in a way I haven’t loved any place I’ve been to.

We finally found the zebra, who these monkeys were hanging out with. Parked under the tree, we watched in amazement as the animals congregated on the plain before us. Then the monkeys began to climb the tree and play around the 4×4.

It was beautiful.

They played and posed for pictures and were not afraid of us. We get so used to seeing animals locked in cages and behind glass that when we see them playing in a habitat that is their own, there is a joy that we’ve never gotten from zoos or the Discovery Channel.

This is Africa, alive and free to frolick and not a bit afraid of us.

The trip to Southern Africa was won from Target and was sponsored by Nikon. As part of the gift package, we got our own personal Nikon guide, someone to help us take pictures. We got more than that, but here are the pictures to prove that Africa loves us. 

Being aware that we were not in a zoo, we knew we were not guaranteed animal sightings. We were excited about everything. The termite mounds, the iridescent blue bird flying around, the thistles, the trees, the light over the water. If it happened, it excited us. Then we saw even more exciting things, like elephantsand leopards on the first day.

We felt like we’d been set up, but in the end, we didn’t care. 

If you’d care to see more pictures of our safari, click here. Our guide, Ian Johnson, took these pictures and all I can say is boy am I glad he was on the trip. Of course, as you can see above, we didn’t do too shabby ourselves.

For me, it was about the views (well, the elephants too, but the views as well). This is a view from our porch:

What more can I say?  Up next: Tales of Drinking, BW Style.

Why is it, when you finally get back from a wonderful trip, all you want to talk about is how effed up the last 41 hours of travel was? 

I mean, I saw herds of elephants – HERDS – move silently through the wilderness and across that beautiful landscape. I saw two leopards, one eating its kill, one dragging a very recent kill to a hiding spot. I saw zebra and impala and sable and lions with their cubs – I saw so many beautiful things with so many beautiful people that I should be talking about that.

But no! I traveled for 41 hours and unlike you, my Sunday lasted 32 hours. I was surrounded by crying, screaming, walking down the aisles touching things, kicking the back of the seat children on a plane for 12 hours. There wasn’t enough alcohol in the sky to make it a pleasant trip, although, apparently, there was enough to keep me from killing them.

Actually, all the kids were cute and I mean, I had been traveling for so many hours that I wanted to scream and hit the back of the seat in front of me and wander the aisles touching things too, so I completely understand, but when your last days of travel had gone the way ours had, you would be a bit of a bastardly cynic as well.

It started out, strangely enough at the Royal Livingston Hotel. I say strangely because the Livingston is a very nice hotel, but after our lodge experience, we were supremely disappointed by our stay there. Basically, from the point of getting there until late Sunday night, we had been disappointed. The full lunch cruise that we were expecting turned out to be a heavy hors d’oeuvres river safari – our guide was an excellent bartender and I’m credited with introducing my party to the gin and tonic, but it was not the lunch on the Zambezi we were expecting. Then, half of our party went on a helicopter ride and the two of us went to the Maramba Market. It was definitely not what I was expecting, although I’m really glad I did that activity. 

If you stand on the grounds of the Royal Livingston Hotel, you would find some of the most beautiful grounds imaginable. The mist of Victoria Falls off to the left of the pool rising from the Mighty Zambezi, zebra walking casually around eating the vegetation, lush green grass… yet 10 minutes away is the reality that is the 70% unemployment rate for Zambia and just a river’s length away is Zimbabwe. We were wondering how true the information we got about that country was true and we were told, all true, but the atrocities are much worse than we’ve heard. One of our guides knew two people who were forced to swallow poison – all of his family have left – it is heartbreaking. The country is beautiful and wild and heartbreaking.

But the traveling just pissed me off. We leave the Livingston at 9am – the person picking us up was pissed that we didn’t get there until 9, but that was when we were told to be downstairs. Then we find out we are booked for another night at the hotel when we were only supposed to be there for one night. Now we’re worried that the plane we were supposed to catch won’t have room for us, so we are hurried to the airport where we wait in line for nearly an hour before they send us through security and to an airline representative. We are definitely booked to fly out, which is good. We wait for a few minutes, totally parched but refusing to pay $4 US for a canned sprite. We’ll get drinks on the plane. 

I’m sure that was the beginning of our dehydrated exhaustion, fueled even more by the lack of service, small 2 oz water packets that the flight attendants gave out, excessive amounts of alcohol, and high altitude. I drank a 16 ounce bottle of water in less than 10 seconds (which I would not recommend) when we finally landed in New York’s JFK. The flight attendants did not act as if dehydration would occur and would not stop at a knowing look. I had to physically touch or yell to get someone to stop and see me. They also did not like collecting trash. 

So we leave Livingston, Zambia at about 11am Saturday morning. We’d been there since 9:20am. We fly for a couple of hours to Johannesburg, wait at that airport until 7pm, leave to fly to Dubai (which is an 8 hour flight), get to Dubai and wait for 3 hours at the airport, sit on the plane for an hour before flying 13 hours to New York from Dubai, then another 3 hour layover before flying 3 hours back to Atlanta. I had a 1 hour 30 minute drive to home, but it was nice to be able to take a shower in my bathroom before getting into my own bed – a bed that was not a seat or being kicked by someone else’s demon spawn. 

No, I really like kids sometimes, I promise!

The travel to Southern Africa was not bad. The service on the planes were excellent, the food was good, the water and the drinks came with a gracious smile from the flight attendants, they even conversed with us. We met interesting people and even the people who had the child that cried throughout the night in the airport were surprisingly quiet on the plane. If the return flight had been anywhere near as accommodating as getting there, well, this would be a different post.

So, I was supposed to put together the videos from our Europe trip and put them on here, but I was a slacker and 3 months later, I still have not produced. I wasn’t a slacker so much as busy, but yeah, I was a slacker. I’ll get right on that.

In a few short weeks, I will be heading for a South African safari, stopping in Johannesburg (lovingly called Joburg) for a few days before going on to Botswana and Zambia. We thought about crossing into Zimbabwe to see Victoria Falls from the other side, but then we watched the news. Not so much.

I’m pretty excited about it. The tragedy and glory of the land, the animals I’ve never seen in person. I can’t wait to see an elephant. I want to go to the Apartheid Museum, I want to eat something that I would never find here. I may even bungee off of Victoria Falls. Who knows! Anything could happen.

It’s amazing what you have to do to get ready to go. The biggest warning in my safari guide is to remember that it gets cold in Africa. That really is something I never thought about. My idea of Africa is extremely hot, arid land. It’s not comforting. To have to bring boots, long sleeved shirts, sweaters – it just seems outside of everything I’ve seen on television. I’ll get over it. 

The hardest thing is that we have to use a bag that was provided for us. I wanted to just take my backpack, like I did to Europe. That would save a lot of trouble. Don’t get me wrong, the bag is beautiful and looks very sturdy, but it’s much easier when the bag is on both shoulders, not just one. We’ll see. I don’t want to have to check any bags, but I have to take my backpack because of my laptop. So we’ll see what happens. When we flew British Airways, going to Europe, it was okay to have two bags (although I only had one) but coming home, they protested, even though the other bag was a smallish messenger bag. Then, when we got on the plane, sooooo many people had two bags that were bigger than both my backpack and the smallish messenger bag. I think we just got there at the wrong time.

As I travel, I’m finding there are those odd little idiosyncrasies. I mean, on the one hand, everyone wants the TSA agents to be diligent in their jobs, but on the other hand, why in the world would you force me to throw away my second quart bag when it is obvious that all the items are things that a person would need and use during travel. I’ve been traveling with two quart bags full of 3 oz or less liquids and today, for the first time, someone tells me they are going to have to throw away one if I don’t put them all in one bag. 

Frakkin’ A! Gas is 50 dollars a gallon, food is getting even more expensive (especially if you want it to really be food) and I stood over the sink and diligently poured my already too expensive shampoos into those irritating 3 oz bottles. The fuck I’m throwing anything away. Of course, before I could say that, cooler heads prevailed and this absolutely fantastic TSA Agent patiently helped me fit all my crap in one of those little bags. He was a magician. And I love him. 

Not as much as my husband, but I digress.

So, 9 days and 8 nights in beautiful Africa, here I come. Soon.

Day 9 started out ok.

No, I take that back.

We arrived at the Paris Airport bright and early in the morning (hear the fake cheeriness?) only to find out that our flight with British Airways wasn’t actually with British Airways. With whom, then? We didn’t know.

After some excellent sleuthing we determined that our flight was, in fact with easyJet.

Ok, Problem solved.

Arrived in England, changed money over, ended up with even less than anticipated (why does the pound have to be so freaking strong?) and ate a leisurely brunch at Costa, the Starbucks of England. Ready to face the day, we hop on easyBus, the cheapest mode of transportation into downtown London.

Angel fell asleep immediately. I fought it for a while, trying to be strong, but eventually failing. I pretended to have been awake the whole time, but I’m pretty sure that Angel saw through that ruse–bloodshot eyes, blurry vision, Krazy Hair. You know what I mean.

We got to Victoria Station after a nice drive through downtown London–saw the back gate to Buckingham Palace. And that was our sightseeing in London.

We meant to do more, but we were falling asleep over coffee at Victoria, thus we headed to our destination of the day: Gatwick Airport. Grabbed the train like a local to Gatwick, Angel blended in–reading the newspaper–and I stuck out–taking movies out of the train window. Eh, got some good footage.

We arrived. And soon found out that we had to check our backpacks.

Really?

Apparently a handbag counts as the one bag you can take on. So after some clever repacking we checked the backpacks and heard (for the umpteenth time–I like the word umpteenth–) “Is that all you have?” insert skeptical glance here.

After settling into our selected spots for the night at Gatwick and getting quite comfortable, a nice Official of the Airport approached us around 9pm and told us that the section that we were in was closing down and he would have to escort us through customs. Again.

Argh.

So we get escorted through customs like VIPs at a bar and end up in a deserted waiting area, where the only sign of life was a closed McDonald’s, sleeping people on airport seating, and the snow that was blowing in the open automatic doors. Great.

Customs opened again at 4am, so we only had to survive 7 hours in Cold Hell. Because that’s what it was–Cold Hell.

All we had to keep our bodies in a normal temperature range were the clothes that we had on–our bags, diminutive as they were, were gone. Probably somewhere warm, too.

Angel woke me up from my misery-induced sleep at 3:45am, and we were among the first at the customs line. Then it was back to the spots that we had vacated, 7 long hours ago.

The snow only got worse as the morning progressed, and we feared that our flight was going to be delayed. It wasn’t, we boarded, it left, we landed many movies later, and then we stood in more lines for another hour and a half. It’s hard work getting back into the country.

Dinner with my family after vacating our last airport–I think they were bored with Tales of the Journey, since Dad interrupted a story with, “So, who’s ready to go?”

Next we’re going to restrict ourselves to 1 country (maybe 2, if it’s close) and only a couple of cities within the 1 country. Avoiding airports at all cost.

And now that we’re in the comfort of our own homes, we’re ailing, peaked, poorly, infirm. Take your pick. A souvenir from traveling, I suppose. Or maybe from a night in Cold Hell?

We are in France now; where it is cold and rainy; but still wonderful I hope.

Not much time, but we are safe.

We are in Ariccia now, a small town about 18 miles outside of Rome. It’s very beautiful. We had the best 4 cheese pizza I’ve ever eaten in my life with a white wine made by the restaurant owner, but that’s skipping ahead to day 6.

Day 4 was the worst day of the trip. Not only were we tired from our 3 days of walking, but we also found out that our ferry trip had to be cancelled and every flight we thought we’d gotten a handle on was now about double what we’d wanted to pay. But we had to because otherwise, you wouldn’t be seeing us come Sunday.

Then, instead of going out to eat to celebrate finding the absolute best deals for the time we had, we stayed at the hostel to eat. Worst meals of our trip. Plus, I had to work – when writing is work, that’s awesome, but not in the middle of your European vacation. So everyone was planning things and I had to plan to stay at the hostel to work. No one’s plans went through through and we all ended up lazing around the hostel.

While being at the hostel all day did not get us a really good day in Barcelona proper, it did give us an opportunity to meet people from every parts of the world.

*Kids from Iowa here to bring the gospel to Barcelona – They didn’t really understand Catalan, Spanish, or how to translate eternity. 1 tried to witness to me. It was a long conversation, but I realized that my thoughts of God are more formed than I’d imagined.

*A Doctor from Argentina who spoke Spanish, Italian and Germany – but not English or French, which are the only languages I could come close to understanding anyone in – and I communicated very well with each other using LOTS of hand motions, the only words we knew in spanish, Italian and English, and Babelfish Translator. It was awesome.

*A guy from England who was trying to stay on the property illegally.

*The guy who worked there who knew my name even though I was sure we hadn’t been introduced.

*A guy who kept laughing at me because of my coffee nerdery. Then he met Anna Ruth and laughed at us both.

Day 5 went better. We had to check out of the hostel and the prospect of spending the entire day in the city with 10 lbs of stuff on our back was not promising. We saw a woman we talked to the night before, Lani, who was also leaving. She offered to put our bags up at the hostel she was moving to that night. We ended up hanging out with her that whole day and I think it was probably our best day in Barcelona. We went back to the Sagrada to take more pictures, we had lunch on the avenue, the Sagrada as our backdrop and we had one of those long, leisurely lunches that you rarely get to have anymore. Hours of enjoying delicious foods and great conversation.

We met Barbara and Frederico with Lani at Cafe Zurich – nice espresso at that place – at 7pm and ended up hanging out with them until 1am. That was a lot of fun.

We slept in the airport, again, because our flight left at 7am and we couldn’t stay at a hostel and get to the airport on time.

We got to Italy and did that whole walking too much thing again, trying to find a place to buy the ticket, trying to figure out if Albano and was near enough to Ariccia to risk a train, etc. We fell asleep on the tour bus, we were so tired. We saw the outsides, now today, we see the insides.

We will definitely be doing the sites today that everyone must do when in Rome…

Ha! When in Rome!

Day 1 – The most romantic parts of day one, which was spent mainly in airports, was an old couple that thought I was cute because I was carrying Bear in Atlanta (they were British) and that this guy asked us for the salt at Gatwick. P.S. airport food is nasty

We spent 19 hours either in an airport or in an airplane.

We got into Barcelona easy enough, but apparently, asking the guy where to catch the bus to The Center is a much harder question to answer than it appears. Instead of saying over there, he told us about all the places we could go when we catch the bus.

When we got to Placa de Catalunya, we thought it would be easy to find a hostel. It was not.

We wandered around for a couple of hours, found a really great food place (Tapas Tapas), called a hostel that had room (YAY!), then spent 3 hours trying to find a metro to take us there. 30 minutes after the last train left, someone finally understood both spanish and english and let us know that what we were looking for had only been 10 feet away.

Went to sleep at 4am on what was technically Day 2.

Day 2 – We got up, got ready, ate breakfast at the hostel, which consisted of bread and meat (no condiments), coffee (quite good actually) and hot water (what is cold in Spanish?).

Decided to go to see La Sagrada Familia, La Pedrera, the Museu Picasso, the Mies Van der Rohe Pavilion (Less really is more), Catalunya Square, Placa Universitat, Las Ramblas and other Gaudi works.

We started the day at the Taco Bell of Barcelona (we think), La Baguetina. It had really cheap sandwiches, pastries and bottled water. We spent 13 euros for the both of us. (In these next few posts, you will have to ignore that the euro = 1.5594 dollars, but take it as a dollar to dollar ratio – I can spend $13 at taco bell by myself!)

We had to check out a Farmicia for personal reasons.

We saw La Sagrada Familia after spending the first 30 minutes going the wrong direction on the train, then going back those 30 minutes, then traveling 20 more minutes to our stop. When we got off the train, in front of us were really beautiful buildings, offices, and apartments, and then you turn around and it was like, OH. MY. GOD! This thing is huge and beautiful and definitely worth seeing. Construction began in 1882 and still continues today, which makes it the most inefficient architectural design in history. I wonder if they’re still collecting indulgences for that.

We got on the metro (this time, the trip was pretty simple and straightforward) to find the Mies Van der Rohe Pavilion. Apparently, we didn’t feel like we needed to write down addresses or anything… so 2 hours later, we finally walk into a hotel and ask someone, “Habla espanol?” Yes, we were that tired. He did, but he also spoke English and he pointed us in the right direction – which was the only spot out of the entire two hours of walking that we were sure didn’t house the Pavilion. I was looking for a tent. Anna Ruth was actually looking for a Pavilion. We were both looking in all the wrong places. We decided that should be it for our day of tourism, especially since it was 8pm.

Normally, people would go home, change and then go find something to eat, enjoy a leisurely dinner, have a couple of drinks, a couple of glasses of wine and then head home.

Not us, we decided we were going to go to a dance club with 5 floors of different music. We were going to eat somewhere real quick and then dance. But then, we dragged around, took a shower, got into conversation with our Dutch roommates (2 of 10 of us total in room 2) and before we knew it, it was 10:30pm and we hadn’t picked out a restaurant, didn’t know where the club was and wasn’t sure we would be able to sit and eat anywhere. We decided on the train, as our stomachs rumbled, that maybe getting something to eat and just slowing it down might be the best course of action.

Had the best hummus, sour cream, guacamole, mojito, and chocolate dessert we’d ever tasted – ever – and it was at Rita Lounge in a back alley where we were more worried about walking fast and not being accosted than about getting food. We’re glad we stopped.

Actually caught the right train and got home in a timely fashion.

Was followed by two guys who turned out to be staying in the hostel (I was ready to take on all comers with my new Mies Van der Rohe keychain, which is heavy as hell, I tell you). They were going to take a back way to the hostel, which would have avoided about 1 mile of all uphill walking (did I mention how much we walked or that our itinerary ended up being “Event time + 5 Hours” to compensate for all the unnecessary walking we did?), but we decided against doing anything that might bring to mind Jason or Freddy Kruger.

Stayed up, unnecessarily, until 6am.

Day 3 – Found out that our inexpensive ferry ride to Rome was suddenly quadrupled because, apparently, next Sunday is Easter. Hurriedly found plane tickets. Still have not eaten a proper lunch or breakfast, but will hopefully eat a proper dinner. And by proper, I mean free. We are bartering salsa lessons for food (and by we, I mean Anna Ruth). We’ll see how it goes.

There are a lot of things we could say about our trip – things that will be said at a later date when more time is had. We have done this all unorthodox but for some reason, we don’t feel like any of it has been a waste, not even the extra 5 hours we add to any outing we do.

PS – we were going to do the “now with pictures!” part, but it was difficult to upload from Spain. Don’t know why, we’ll work on it. Maybe. If we have time. Which we don’t.

In a nutshell, the money just didn’t come in.

So rather than sleep in bus stations and wash dishes for food while we hitch-hike from town to town we decided to surrender all vanity and ask my father for a loan. Well, I did, anyway.

I scheduled a brunch with Dad for this morning since our weekly breakfast had to be cancelled. Like any intelligent, shrewd, and sensible kid would the night before hitting up Dad for a loan, I went out the night before and was mysteriously hung over the next morning. The Morning. The Morning that would determine whether we slept in a hostel or on a park bench in the cold. And if we would truly not do the touristy thing (our goal) and rifle through European garbage for scraps to feed our starving bellies.

Well, either Dad hasn’t seen someone with a hangover in a long time or else–well, I really don’t know, because I was classic. I was clean and I smelled good, but my eyes were bloodshot, I had a pounding headache, was terribly nauseous, and because the band was really loud at the club the ringing in my ears had just stopped and now I just couldn’t hear. You know what I’m talking about.

But my swell father came through and that little bit of worry in the back of my stomach is gone and now there is room for the butterflies to rock, groove, shake it and gyrate!

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