On the 29th on December my friends and I (the Canadians an Jodi) decided to take a taxi for 20minutes to the Botswana fairy. There we crossed the Zambezi and took a very crowded bus for another 20 minutes into Kasane which is in Chobe Game Park in Botswana for three days. Botswana is great! I would have loved to spend more time there. The landscape is more flat and open and the people were really nice and didn't stare at us Mazungus as much as in Zambia.

Chobe National Park was awesome, we rented a car for two days and did our own driving safari. Chobe is know for the amount of elephants in the park. They say it has actually become a problem of overpopulation, but it was great for me! They were everywhere, in the distance and almost touching our truck, they're so beautiful and big! I wanted to kiss one but everytime we got so close to almost touch they started flapping their ears! We also saw giraffes, wild dogs which are very rare, lots of hippos, baboons, crocodiles, birds, water buffalo, impala, kudu, a jackel chasing a baby impala and more. Sadly no lions which were around and others saw but not us...next time. Saving that one I guess for when Alex comes.

Christmas for me was awesome, minus the missing friends part. I went to the biggest waterfall in the world: Victoria Falls! It was amazing the water falls into the knarly Zambezi river, which i rafted. My Canadian friends, Jodi(whose from Hawaii) and i decided to take on the class fives rapids of the Zambezi. These class fives were more like class sixes. HUGE!!!!!!!! we went through 10 rapids and only three of them were below class 4 and still huge!. The crocodiles add a bit more adventure to the river as well, and oh yes I flew out many times taking on the storm waves with my bobbing head and open mouth trying to not get sucked down by the swirling eddies which were unavoidable. But hey i survived!!! And would do it a lots more if I had more money, it was expensive but well worth it. And the gorge was stunning!

The man with the baby in the basket was in the town of livingstone where i have been staying for about a week now and thought it was too great to not photo.

Love you all much and miss you, I will be heading back to Lusaka tomorrow and then back to Mkushi to start work on the 6th. My break has been a wonderful unexpected adventure but feel ready to have clean clothes again and stay in one place for awhile. I hope everyone had a great new year, welcome 2010!

much love, r