tendekai the tracker, originally uploaded by suddenly.I just got word that Tendekai, our safari tracker in Zimbabwe, was killed yesterday by an elephant while on a walking safari in Victoria Falls. He led us through our first walking safari when we visited in 2009 and helped us track a wild buffalo on foot which I described in the following post: Our First Walking Safari.
Thank you for the memories, my friend. You will be missed.
Lia’s Watermelon Ice, originally uploaded by suddenly.
I’ve left Toronto and returned to Brooklyn, home to Woody Allen, Spike Lee, and that hottie from Prison Break. It’s been seven years since I’ve lived in NYC and I’m so excited to rediscover all the things I’ve missed about my hometown because no place else in the world do you have the same:
1. Pizza
2. Bagels
3. Jews
4. Stoops
5. Italian ices
6. Water (so tasty and softens my hair and skin)
7. Cat calls
8. Crazies
9. Dynamic neighborhoods
10. Sassy residents
So, yeah, I’m back. For good. And for the better.
A lot has happened over the past year: My two-year-long trip around the world came to an end, I moved to Toronto, and I began capitalizing the start of my sentences.
I’m contemplating an emergence from my blog-free cocoon. I don’t know how much I’ll be posting again but I’ve added some new features to the sidebar so readers will know if I’m still breathing. Check out my my Twitter feed, Yelp reviews, and the crappy photos I took on my digital point-and-shoot posted on Flickr. (Apparently, I’m the only person in Toronto without an SLR camera).
See you around. Maybe.
Posted in all about me
in uganda, a rolex is fried eggs wrapped in the indian flatbread called chapati. I don’t know how it got it’s name rolex. all i know is that it’s delicious, like a greasy breakfast burrito.
you can see rolex vendors on the street. this lady got her eggs fresh from the hens in a nearby ditch, cracked them on a cast iron griddle, and rolled them up in a chapati.
eggs on the griddle, originally uploaded by suddenly.
we found this street vendor tucked into a little alleyway in entebbe (uganda) serving up grilled cow tongue. he sprinkles it with salt, cuts it up into bite-size pieces, then presents the meaty morsels in a newspaper cone.
the meat was pleasantly chewy and extremely flavorful. and super cheap!
Posted in Uncategorized
267 points for "luckiest"
i’ve been on a roll lately with lexulous, playing 2-minute games with 0-second increments. the rounds are high speed and filled with intense pressure thus giving me my daily adrenalin rush. i recently beat my previous record for most points with one word (230 for THERAPIES) when my opponent played HOOD and left open the triple word spot. i had LUCKIEST in my rack, so with the K on the double letter, and the 8 tiles spanning two triple-word-scores, i got a grand total of 267 points.
the sheer luck of having those tiles in my rack was not lost on me.
gorilla tracking, bwindi impenetrable forest, originally uploaded by suddenly.
the distance from kampala to bwindi isn’t far but when you’re traveling on a two-lane “highway” riddled with satellite-dish-sized potholes then driving over dirt paths, what should’ve been a 5-hour journey spins itself into an 11-hour bumpy ride.
our entire reason for the trip was to see the endangered mountain gorillas in bwindi. you might know them from the movie gorillas in the mist starring sigourney weaver as diane fossey.
there’s a reason why they call it the “impenetrable forest.” the entire mountain is covered in dense thickets of trees, vines, and stinging nettles. we had no path to walk on; the trackers chop down the vegetation with machetes as they go and try to point out the big drops underfoot so we don’t sprain an ankle. and even with a hired porter to carry my backpack and drag me up the 70-degree inclines, the trek was kicking my citified urbanista butt. oh, and did mention that the air is like a warm vat of mayonnaise? my newly-purchased safari shirt was drenched from collar to tail.
our group of 8 trekkers endured nearly two hours of this before we spotted the gorillas. (we were the “lucky” ones because the other group took 10 hours.) there was the big papa silverback, the mama and her bebe, along with the crazy uncles swinging in the trees and lounging beneath the ferns. they were relaxed, having a family moment while we barely contained our excitement. the gorillas were oblivious to us except for the baby who was curious. she (i think it was a she) turned and turned her head to look at each of us snapping pictures wildly.
we got to have an hour viewing the gorillas but it was the quickest hour i’d ever spent. then we had to make the trek back down the mountain.
after a couple of days we got out of kampala. we were on our way to bwindi which is in the west towards the D.R. congo and rwanda borders. our driver picked us up at 6:30 in the morning and i slept most of the way but when i was awake i managed to take a few photos. here’s one of the many trucks carrying green bananas or “matoke,” the staple food of uganda. they eat them boiled, mashed, served with peanut sauce, roasted, etc.
next, we moved on to kampala; a city more congested and more polluted than nairobi but at least you don’t have to worry (too much) about getting mugged.
usually when we arrive in a new city we like to explore the area on foot, you know, get the lay of the land. big mistake in kampala. it’s right on the equator which means searing heat all year round. i spent the first part of our walk lathering myself in sweat; the second part coating myself in black exhaust from old cars manufactured in the 1970s; and the third part crumbing myself in the dust kicked up from the dirt roads. yup, it was like an unintentional recipe for chicken-fried suddenly susan.
getting around in a taxi is also out of the question because the traffic simply does not move. instead, we opted to take the motorbike cabs they call “boda boda.” they zip you around town at breakneck speeds weaving in between vehicles. they’re supposedly not safe but they do get you where you want to go and you can feel the wind on your face.
view some scenes from kampala here.
Posted in Uncategorized
zebras are cool. i love their stripes and sweet faces. do you see how bloated the zebra is? a ranger told me that zebras eat so much they’re full of gas and they fart when they run.
something pink in the water, originally uploaded by suddenly.we finally get to lake nakuru national park and pay the exorbitant entrance fee: $60 per non-resident. compare this to the $15 entrance fee for international visitors to kruger park. (remember what i said about nairobbery?) anyway, our first stop is the actual lake. this is what it looks like from the distance. as we get closer, we can make out what all that pink stuff is. FLAMINGOS! like a gazillion of them. they’re attracted to the algae in the water.
pink flamingos, originally uploaded by suddenly.as you can see, these birds are pink from head to toe. even their eyes are pink.
more flamingos!, originally uploaded by suddenly.
i don’t know if it’s the fish they eat or their poop (or the fish in their poop) but these flamingos are pretty darn smelly.
more flamingo fotos here.
in cape town and nairobi, the cabbies are always angling for a bigger fare. shuttling you from your hotel to a restaurant then back to your hotel is just chump change for them. instead, they’ll ask, “so…ms. susan, what ELSE do you plan to do in nairobi?.” hoping that you’ll hire them to drive you someplace far and unload some of the shillings in your fat tourist pockets.
the driver who picked us up at jomo kenyatta airport in nairobi who’d been pretty sullen and taciturn the whole trip, all of a sudden became mr. chattypants when we mentioned we’d like to go to lake nakuru, a national park that’s a 2-hour drive from nairobi. his initial quote was 150,000 khs for the roundtrip. that’s almost $US 200. holy cannoli! (did i mention that they usually expect a tip on top of the fee?) is this why they call the city nairobbery??
we eventually talked him down to 110,000 khs and set off at 7 a.m. the next day, leaving behind the thick black clouds of exhaust in exchange for thick gray clouds of rain. along the highway, we saw swarms of kenyans walking into the nairobi city center. apparently, most people in nairobi start their workday at 8 a.m. to avoid the intensifying heat as they walk to work. according to the travel agent at our hotel, the locals must make a choice: (a) either walk to work so they can eat lunch or (b) take the bus and skip lunch; they don’t have enough money for both meals and transportation. hearing things like this makes me feel like an a$$hole. i begin to examine all the dough i’ve spent on non-essential items over the last year: shoes, nice bottles of wine, 100 euros a kilo for jamon serrano. all wasteful, indulgent purchases. when you’re here, every mother’s proclamation, “but there are people starving in africa!” becomes all the more poignant. it’s true. unfortunately, mom was right.
soon the swarms dissipated and things got rural real quick. the air is not so black any more, there are cows on the side of the road, and people living in wooden or tin shacks. our driver turns to us and says, “put on your seatbelts. the police look for something small. do you know this, ‘something small?’” something small = bribes. we saw road blocks every half hour with cops looking for “something small.” one officer stopped our driver but let him go when he peered into the back seat and saw two smiling tourists strapped into their seatbelts. nothing small for him today.
our driver continues the drive to lake nakuru.
see more photos along the way.
Posted in Uncategorized
giraffe centre, nairobi, originally uploaded by suddenly.
the next stop on the freakishly big-and-tall animal petting trail was the giraffe centre in nairobi. the giraffe centre was established for the endangered rothschild giraffe, yet another example of white people setting up a sanctuary to save animals in africa.
as soon as you walk in, the friendly staff will force some green pellets into your hand and instruct you to feed the giraffe one pellet at a time. the best way to feed them is to lay the pellet flat in your palm so that the giraffe laps it up with the tongue or drop a pellet onto the giraffe’s outstretched tongue — otherwise they may accidentally bite your fingers. being herbivores, their teeth aren’t sharp but still, those are some monster chompers.
giraffes are fairly gentle creatures but if you don’t continually give ‘em some grub, they may headbutt you on the feeding platform. and seeing as how a giraffe’s head is as big as a grown man’s torso, you’d best keep the food coming or get out of the way.
the staff will also encourage you to kiss the giraffe, i.e., put a pellet between your lips and let the giraffe lick it out of your mouth but that just seemed gross to me.
unless you’re a resident of kenya, you’ll have to pay the inflated foreigner rate of 700 kenyan shillings (=US$9) for the admission fee.
baby rhino, originally uploaded by suddenly.
this is a baby rhino named maalim at david sheldrick’s. he was named after the ranger who found him when he was just one or two days old. apparently, he had become separated from his mama who may have been injured, killed, or poached for her horn. (trying to hold back the tears as i write this.) he was just 25 kilos and only about 8 inches tall when he arrived at the sanctuary. at 5 months old and after careful feeding, he looked a lot more robust when we met him.
we had seen a full-grown rhino during our safari at kruger; it was H U G E, and quite frankly, lacking in personality. maalim on the other hand had personality up the wazoo. he bounded out to greet us, practically wagging his tiny rat-tail as he ran around soaking up the spotlight. it’s clear that this little attention monger loves when people pet him and all of us were happy to lavish him with affection. we got our hands all over him — and he got all over our hands.
i’m not sure what kind of rhino maalim is but he could one day grow up to be 3000 kilos (that’s 6600 pounds!).
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