Africa

Apparently most people don’t randomly go on trips to Africa from Oregon. Something about the 23 hours of travel (each way), money, danger, etc etc. But fuck it, I do what I want and when my Internet friend (now real friend!) invited me to visit him in South Africa, I said, see ya Thursday. Now you may have caught some photos on Yobeat, but that was only one day of my trip! For the rest of my adventures, read on.

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We took one of those obnoxious red tourist busses around Johannessburg, and wouldn’t ya know? I actually learned a bunch of stuff. It also probably prevented us from being robbed, as we stuck out just a little and poverty is rampant in the city. Those pink drips are part of an Urban Art project to beautify some of the bricked-up buldings that are all over downtown Joburg.

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Every time I saw a “To Let” sign, I thought it said Toilet. But in reality, public bathrooms are not plentiful, or really something you probably wanna use.

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There were a bunch of nice buildings in the middle of the comdemned ones.

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I’ve never felt so white in my life. And I am pretty fucking white.

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Laundry day.

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African kids are the cutest.

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Why yes, I did feel like an overprivledged asshole taking this photo.

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The Carlton Hotel (now closed) and the tallest building in Johannesburg, which we didn’t go in.

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The locals were hyped on getting their pictures taken.

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Urban decay.

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Well, this building had all its windows, so that was something.

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More friendly locals.

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This is like the South African version of the Corn Palace, I think.

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My hosts, John and Shaun who kept me entertained and from getting car jacked/raped/murdered while I was there.

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Inspirational graffti.

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I assume this used to have a roof.

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Day two we went to check out the cradle of humankind, where they believe all human life on earth originatied. So yes, we are all African, technically.  We were pretty stoked to get these stylish helmets for our journey into the Sterkfontein caves. As it turns out, they would actually come in handy.

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Taking photos in a cave is pretty much impossible, so you’ll have to take my word that it was cool.

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Art.

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Obvious next mission in Africa: a safari. While our guide told us his name (twice) I imediately forgot it and referred to him as Ndugu for the rest of the day. Close enough. Anyway, he has pretty much the coolest job in the world.

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Shaun was oppoosed to selfies, but really I just wanted to take a nochalant photo of our tour compatriots. They were awesome and would randomly break into song whenever we went for awhile without seeing animals.

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I basically missed my calling and was pointing out animals all day. Here we see two Kudu, an african Antelope.

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This is a bird.

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Impala. These things are like the razor scooters of Kruger National park. They are everywhere.

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Wet back antelope.

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There are only 200 cheetahs in all of Kruger, and we saw two of them!

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You guys get that?

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Monkeys are awesome.

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Despite my best efforts to catch one and bring it home, I failed.

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Baboons may look like monkeys, but there were signifcantly less appealing to try and catch.

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This dude is starting a fight.

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More monkeys!

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Of all the enourmous creatures, the rhino was by far the least photogenic. Pretty much just looks like a rock.

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This bird is apparently really ugly up close, but it looked cool from the road.

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Speaking of ugly, even being a baby didn’t make warthogs cute.

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You are not allowed to get out of your car within the park, cause you know, man-eating animals, but we did get to walk around on a giant rock at this overlook.

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Though we stayed at a hotel called hippo hollow, we saw none of the fabled hippos there. Luckily, Kruger came through.

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An elephant was actually the first animal we saw, and holy shit, it didn’t even seem real.

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But then by like elephant number 5 it was just kinda like, meh, another elephant.

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These two giraffes were pretty tight.

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They are tall.

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Very tall.

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Bufallo, animal number 3 of the big five (elephant, lion, leopard, buffalo and rhino). Though we missed out on Lions and Leopards, I’d say we did alright.

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And another monkey for good measure.

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Some Lion King shit right here.

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