The last Africa post for a while

Just me, Hez, Dani, my mom and the Norwegian pilot. And the plane. 

This is the plane we took from Malawi to Zambia. 

As we were boarding, THE German pilot came running out to inform our African escorts there wouldn't be enough weight to safely fly the plane. After lecturing the African airport escorts for ten minutes about how they need to be more careful, they sent us on the plane without changing a thing. 

I kind of thought I was going to die. 

Luckily all went well. In the plane my dad went in, one of the passengers put the airplane "barf bags"to good use. (I never thought people actually used those things until that flight...) 

These were the huts we stayed in from the back side. In the pictured pond there are usually tons of hippos. *Fun fact:* hippos run up to 20 MPH and they actually walk around at night. This was one of the reasons guides (all of them are trained in karate of course) were required to escort us to our rooms every night. 

Our hippo neighbors

My sisters and I stayed together in one hut. Translation: a significant amount of screaming every night (giant spiders that are possibly the fastest moving creatures in this world). After the first night people staying two huts down from us asked us if we were the ones keeping them up because we were screaming so loud. Oopsies. We couldn't help it. 

Our little friends that would appear at night:

We would wake up in the middle of the night to mystery animal noises. Usually hippos, but sometimes other exotic animal cries. 

They told us not to leave our hut door open because mystery animals (usually monkeys) come right on in. 

Of course my family bought safari hats from Walmart before we left. 

When we saw an alligator at one point, I asked our guide if he knew anyone who had ever been eaten by an alligator. He laughed and replied that his cousin had in fact been eaten by an alligator. (He said it like it was no big deal). Basically his cousin and his friend were swimming in the lake one day and never came back. 

The village men went to go hunt the alligators in the lake, to no avail. A couple weeks later, the boy's mom was walking past the lake, and sees her son floating in the water. Only his head and shoulders were left. So they just buried the head and shoulders. Our guide just kind of laughed at the end like it's not that unique of a story. I can't even imagine. 

Here's some of the other creatures we saw on safari: 

Eating lunch in the wild:

I felt like Indiana Jones: 

I was giddy the entire time we were here. I loved every single minute of it (I even secretly loved the scuttling spiders).  

I love the serene beauty and natural complexity of the food chain in Africa. (that sounds way cheesy, but it's true.) I loved being cut off from the world for a few days and basking in the sounds, smells, and happiness of my family, the guides, and the untouched beauty of Africa. 

I gained an understanding that it is not all of our complex technology that makes the world beautiful, it's the relationships we cherish with each other and the gorgeous world that surrounds us every day, waiting to be discovered.