Cautious Adventurers

Erin and I may be the most cautious adventure travelers to traverse Africa. Neither of us is particularly daring when it comes to risk-taking adventure sports. If you've ever swum in the ocean with Erin or me you probably know that we both have an aversion to swimming with ocean critters. We've probably watched too many Discovery Channel Shark Weeks.

On our first snorkeling trip in Lamu Erin didn't even get off the boat (though she did assume the role of the great provider by catching a fish for lunch). And I made it into the water for about 15 minutes before I started getting visions of being eaten by a shark and swam back to the boat.

So this morning when we embarked on a dolphin tour off the coast of Zanzibar I don't think either of us actually thought we would make it into the water. We were the only ones on our boat to spend $2 extra for the life preservers (and no, they don't come standard with boating in Kenya or Tanzania). When our boat pulled up next to the dolphins everyone else aboard hopped off and started chasing after the dolphins... Erin and I stayed put on the boat. But by the third jump into the dolphin colony Erin and I finally got up the nerve to dive in with the dolphins.

It was AMAZING. You only see a few dolphins on the surface, but if you look down you can see huge bunches of them swimming along just beneath the surface. I think I lasted less than a minute in the water -- enough to see it, check it off of my life list of experiences and scuttle back to the safety of the boat. Erin lasted about 10 seconds longer than I did before hopping back into the boat. But the important part is that we both SWAM WITH DOLPHINS!

Erin keeps telling me that we're going to go shark-cage diving in Cape Town ... we'll see if either of us makes it into the cage...

driving in egypt

I think it would be inaccurate to say that drivers in Egypt are maliciously aggressive. I am a very aggressive driver. I drive too fast, I tailgate, I cut people off, on occasion I roll the window down and do some shouting. I'm the first to admit that when behind the wheel, I'm a raging bitchmachine.

Drivers in Egypt exude a kind of benevolent aggression. There's yelling, and fist shaking on occassion, but no one really seems to take it to heart. No one gets real red in the face.

HOWEVER, their manner of driving is one of the most insanely terrifying spectacles I've yet to encounter in my lifetime. And it's not just one asshole who's driving like a maniac, it's a COUNTRY of assholes driving like maniacs. In fact, I think I should put "driving" in quotes to really convey how loosely this style of "driving" resembles what we call driving in the US.

There is no concept of lanes, anywhere. It's just a swarming mass of cars constantly weaseling in front of each other, sometimes 3 across sometimes 5 across... it's nuts. NUTS. In addition, when a small space opens up in front of the "car pack" (kind of like a wolf pack, only way more scary), EVERY car floors it to fill the hole, and stops just short of total destruction.

If you think that's bad, try CROSSING the street. There are really no crosswalks (ok maybe a few, but those are located in places where you don't even really need them), and there are defintely none bisecting the biggest, most crowded roads. It's like a live action game of Frogger with no extra lives. You basically just have to take a deep breath and step into swiftly moving traffic, hoping that you won't get flattened by the public buses that are packed like sardines, or the men (and babies, BABIES) on motorbikes with no helmets (ever, even on the BABIES).

It's therefore very suprising to me that I have not been involved in any accidents, I haven't even seen anyone else get into an accident. This leads me to believe that Islam must be the one true path to God, because someone must be protecting Egyptians from killing each other regularly with their automobiles.

Inshahallah.

I don't really have any good pictures to illustrate this phenomenon... this is the only real "driving" picture I have, of a bunch of camels in front of our taxi driver's cab. He got really super excited and ordered me to take a picture, and then started imitating camel noises. EVERY time he saw a camel he would get excited, pull the cab over and make me take a picture. It was pretty funny.