(get me) Out of Africa

Andrew has been gung ho to check out Africa since we got here. After all, there's no ocean separating us, so it's just a question of nipping down... Sort of like going to the corner store for milk, only with one 7 hour stopover at Heathrow and then a 9 hour flight...

Anyhoots, he succeeded in convincing me to go on safari to Kenya, which is what we're doing over Christmas.

It's our first trip, and so we decided to go on an organized safari , just to kind of get our bearings and see how things work. Since some of us (Andrew) have nothing but DISDAIN for organized trips, however, we had to go with a very bare bones kind of tour. So, we've opted for a low-budget, low-fuss, low-pampering 9 day camping expedition. We're required to bring our own sleeping bags, DDT-impregnated mosquito nets, water purifiers, and eco-friendly clothes-washing soap, they provide us with tents and, um, hopefully food.

I'm not an enthusiastic camper. I have car camped, grudgingly, on occasion. The one time I canoe camped I managed to avoid ever having to actually manipulate a paddle, which I am quite proud of. On that trip I also forgot my glasses, which meant that I wore my contact lenses for three days straight and looked like a red-rimmed, blear-eyed drunk after a week-long bender by the time we finally returned to the car.

When we were in Australia we camped in the outback (or the "Red Centah" as the Aussies called it). There we didn't even have tents -- just sleeping sacks we were meant to crawl into so that we didn't have to lie on the ground. I have to say, that trip was okay. We were again with a group, although we were the oldest people there, the others all being 19 year old Brits on their "Gap year." We spent a lot of time avoiding the inevitable messes brought about by British binge drinking and watching the various romances spark, take flame, sputter out and then die... Hey, a lot can happen in three days.

Anyway, after the Australian experience, I figured I was ready for Kenya. After all, this time I would have a tent. That was an improvement, right?

Then I read about this: http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2007/12/07/africa/OUKWD-UK-KENYA-COBRA.php

That's right, it's a record-sized, venom spitting cobra that has recently been found in the Kenyan jungles. This sucker measures nearly nine feet and contains enough venom to kill 15 people.

My lovely and supportive friend Dara pointed out that her favourite part of the article was this quote: "A new species of giant spitting cobra is exciting and reinforces the obvious -- that there have to be many other unreported species".

Not comforting.

Frankly, I got the chills reading this line about James Ashe, whom the species is named after: "Ashe, now deceased, was the first to catch a larger-than-normal spitting cobra in the 1960s and suggest it belonged to a different species."

"Now deceased"? I can guess what killed him...

Things can't be that grim, though, right? After all, we're going with a well-respected, long-established company that will make sure to keep the giant, venom-spitting cobras, not to mention the easily-enraged rhinos and speedy cheetahs, well away from us.

Um, except for this:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/americas/11/23/antarctica.ship/

That's right, the company we're going with, G.A.P. Adventures, was responsible for the cruise ship that sank off of Antarctica a few weeks ago. Not exactly a testament to their competence.

Dum dee dum.

Still, we're not getting into any actual boats with the G.A.P people, we're staying on Terra Firma and unless they rub meat inside of our tents to attract the lions, we should be okay.



...right?