The rest of southern Africa











I've been regretting not being able to write about, and show the pictures of the places I experienced in Africa before I started this blog.I didn't start the blog until about a month into my trip, so there are definitely places worth mentioning. We started out in Johanessburg South Africa. We didn't do a whole lot of exciting things there besides visit museums. I quickly get museumed out and bored, so wasn't real impressed with our time there. The museums we visited were the Apartheid museum,

 Nelson Mandelas old neighborhood and house, and another one in Soweto that I don't remember the name of. After that we took a 31 hour train ride to Cape Town. I loved Cape Town. We stayed at Blue Mountain Backpackers, right on Long street; the biggest party street in town. From there we went on an awesome cage diving excursion. We ended up seeing 6 different great whites, which is apparently a rare thing.







  







The next day I took the tram up Table Mountain. For those who don't know, Table Mountain is a World Heritage sight, and is a candidate for one of the new wonders of the world. you can see why from the pictures. From the top you could see all of Cape Town, then Camps Bay and other beaches on the other side. You can also see Robben Island where Mandela was imprisoned all those years.



The day after that we rented scooters and drove all the way to Cape Point, Africa's southern most point. the ride was awesome. We also went to check out the penguins in Simons Town, considering there would be very few chances to see them in their natural habitat.





From Cape Town, we flew to Livingstone Zambia. We were forced to divert from our backpacker ways due to time constraints, and had to fly. The first thing we did when we got there was to go check out Victoria Falls. We ended up going to the top and hiking to a place called Devil's Pool. It is definitely the most scary thing I've done. It is a pool on top of the 350 ft falls where you can swim to within a few feet of the edge because of a small rock barrier stopping you from going over. There was still a current trying to push me over the whole time, and the guide just kept yelling to hold on with my feet. I was over it by the time I got out. It is definitely something that they would never let you do in the states. Even just to get to the pool, you had to swim across the river about 20 meters from the edge of the falls, with nothing to stop you from going over but a little rope. The guide would just say to swim very hard up stream and across and by the time you are to the island with the pool you are back down stream. Not very comforting, the lack of control that we Americans become accustomed to. 

From Livingstone we went to a remote village in Mwandi to do a volunteer project, building mud houses for people. we were only able to stay for 3 days, but almost completely finished the house. From there, still because of the time restraints my friends had, we flew to Maputo Mozambique, and started heading north to hit the beaches and diving.