This is hilarious! I am dancing with the Phantom of the Paradise!

This is so awesome!

Do they look alike?

Blowing off Zambia for Tanzania!

President Levy Patrick Mwanawasa is taking good care of us here. The above photo hangs everywhere, including bars!

We are in the crazy city of Lusaka tonight, and hopefully heading out to go "disco bowling"!

Tomorrow we hop on the Tazara train from Kapiri Mposhi to Dar Es Salaam.



Russell's birthday is on Tuesday, and we will spend it at this place:



It is the Moivaru Coffee Plantation, at the base of Mt. Kilimajaro. Please send birthday telegrams, flowers and vegan chocolates to him there!

We'll know by then whether we can leave Tanzania and re-enter or if we should just head east to Zanzibar. I really want to laugh with some chimpanzees.

On the road and train tracks!

My internship is over, and we are spending the next month going to East Africa by bus, train, car and boat. Our journey's route is hilighted in green on this map.

Tomorrow I sell my car and mail clothes back to Canada. On the morning of May 1st we hop on a bus to Windhoek for a few days in Namibia, where we will hunt the dissipated aerosolized feces of shiloh jolie-pitt. If we get one cell of turd, it will be on ebay!

Not much internest action from us over the next while. Our pan-African adventure will be capped with a visit to Amsterdam. Wahoo!

In keeping with our tradition, we left an Inukshuk for other Canadians to enjoy.

We climbed Table Mountain!

Hey, everyone. On Easter Monday we climbed Table Mountain, elevation 1,060m. Compared to our climbs of Lions Head, this was way more difficult.

The climb started at the cable car station.


By the time this picture was taken, we had been climbing for over two hours. I was exhausted. Meghan is a machine -- she is in incredibly good shape as she runs every day at work and has taken to running the stairs in our apartment building.

"Salutations from the Other Side!"

We rented the Phantom of the Paradise DVD recently and laughed our asses off. I actually spent time the next day photographing the screen and taking little movies of my favourite parts.





This clip is for Russ - it cracks him up every time:

Signal Hill caught fire again, but this time even worse than the other time. If you look closely, you can see a helicopter dumping water on the fire just above and to the left of it. It was fun but sad to watch from the balcony.


This is not chronological. Sorry.
About a week before Lena left, she took us to the Rhodes Memorial on the side of Devil's Peak. Russell really enjoyed the structure while I found it to be a bit too much.

At the last fullmoon, we attempted the Signal Hill hike in the evening, as locals here use the moonlight to guide them. Unfortunately, the mountain ended up surrounded by clouds soon after we started our ascent. Here is a photo looking over the Cape Town CBD ("central business district") with the full moon visible above the horizon.



Bregja's newish doggie Quinty came with us! Here he is being carried up the ladder by his mama.

A few weeks ago was the total lunar eclipse. Here is a collection of three photos I took from the balcony here. Unfortunately, the sky was covered by clouds before the eclipse made the mood appear to have a red glow.

ARGH!

Sorry. Blogger has been acting odd and so we have a big collection of photos that we have uploaded and not been able to publish over the past two weeks.

Braai, Bruno and Smoke wish Lena Safe Travels!

Bregja and Damien had a "goodbye braai" for Lena, who was a few days away from flying home to Vancouver to see her man and doggie. This is a tray of meat (inclusive of ostich kebabs) that Russ almost knocked onto the floor!
Bruno was celebrating with us. He wished that Russ had succeeded in knocking the boerwors onto the ground.

The night before Lena left, a bunch of her friends came out for thai food and drinks in Observatory. Some of us are above: Damien, Bregja, Russell, Meghan, Lena in her new gorgeous dress and Andrea.

Meghan's Cederberg Experience Changes Her Forever

On Friday night, Meghan and I drove two hours north of Cape Town to stay at The Baths, a mineral hot spings near the town of Citrusdel. The main purpose of our trip - besides bathing outdoors in our own private mineral-water tub - was to witness some millenias old rock paintings done by the San peoples (the Bushmen from The Gods Must Be Crazy).


The rock painting we saw on Saturday is estimated to be only 1000 years old. Anthropologists are confused by the subject matter, for it was unusual to see men depicted parading along with elephants. Have a look.


The painting was near some amazing sandstone rock formations in the Cederberg Wilderness Park. We had to drive the last 60 km on a bumpy, dusty gravel road to reach the site of the painting and the caves, but it was definitely worth the trip.


Something must have happened to Meghan (perhaps when she crawled into this hole atop one of the caves) for ever since our return, she has become obsessed with photoshop modifying pictures of bald men she knows.



It started innocently enough with a remark that Vanessa's boyfriend reminds her of Lena's boyfriend, who kinda looks like our friend Dave. So she thought they belonged together in a picture, even though they've never met.



But now it has just gotten out of hand. I'm starting to worry.... She promised to cut down, but today I caught her making some edits to Grant.



Not to turn this into some X-Files conspiracy, but it appears that I have not escaped whatever curse has befallen Meghan. I found myself buying a stone carving of a bald man from a Zimbabwean refugee named McFortune Langa that I met on the street yesterday. We have nicknamed the statue "Langa" and he sits next to our laptop. When we find ourselves experiencing some Internet lagginess, we often turn to Langa, stroke his baldness lovingly, and find the bits immediate start to flow faster.