The Danish way to rock

So after Africa, we flew to Copenhagen which is a world away from Africa. Civilisation, what the hell is that. We quickly got used to all the creature comforts of living in a western society.

Upon arrival in the airport, we were picked up by Mardys cousins Camilla and Elisabeth and his cousin-in-law Annie. They were waiting for us when we arrived and waved Danish, Australian and an American flag upon our arrival. Why the American flag? Well somehow someone confused American Katie aka Cajun Katie from our Kilimanjaro climb as the Katie, Mardy was traveling with and thought she was American, none the less we laughed about it. Mardy was stoked to see his cousins again, they are cool people.

For 2 days they showed us around Copenhagen visiting Christiania, Vesterbro, Newhavn, and having dinner at Tivoli gardens. On the 3rd night we stayed at Camillas house about 40 minutes outside of the city and about in the middle of the island of Zealand. Both Annie and Camilla made us amazing food, it was a GREAT change from eating African food, soo delicious. And when they weren't feeding us, we were gorging ourselves on Danish hotdogs although we didn't get to eat as many as we had hoped, because every meal we ate was huge so we weren't often hungry.

As good as it was to see them again, we had to make tracks for the mainland, as our schedule here in Europe was tight, 28 days to see the family in Denmark, travel eastern Europe and make it back to Zurich in time for our plane to America. So after a couple of days in the "big city of Copenhagen", we caught the train to Holestrabro (probably spelling that wrong), to see Mardys godparents, Rita and Christian and there mutt Luffe. It was good to see them and there hospitality was also amazing we drank wine and ate open sandwichs (a Danish speciality) and sat around and shot the breeze.

After a night there we headed to Herrning, which wasn't far from where we were to go to one of Mardys uncles partys celebrating his employment with the Danish telecom company TDC for 25 years. It was a good party and good to see even more family. And Katie got to see the traditional way the Danes celebrate, with there songs and chants, none of which Mardy knew how to do and, not surprisingly which a huge feast in tow.

We then went back with another uncle of Mardys uncle Kim, aka Killer Kim, and stayed at his house in the country. Uncle Kim and Auntie AG live on Mardys grand dads old farm, and have built a new house there and restored the old house. They have really done an incredible job of making the place an amazing place to live, especially if you had have seen how tired the place was beforehand .

Inside the new house Kim has whats called the "room of death" or "the chapel", where he keeps taxidermied animals that he has killed - as he is a keen hunter. Mardy was very excited to show Katie and made her close her eyes before taking her into the room, putting her in the middle of all these stuffed animals and then letting her open them. It really is a site to see, and I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

We spent a couple of nights on the farm, and during that time Kim took us out on his ATV to show us the deer in the forest nearby, we saw several red deer and rhoe deer. Red deer and really big animals, we were surprised at there size, but alas no hunting took place as the season hadn't started yet, but we still got to go out and see them about. Kim also let us shoot guns. Coolest uncle ever. We did some practice shooting with a .22 rifle and a .308 rifle. It was heaps of fun, and who is the better shot you might ask? Well that probably depends on who you ask. We then shot his shotgun into the field, and were surprised at the kick of it, you wouldn't want to shoot that thing all day.

Mardys favourite gun - .308
Katies favourite gun - shotgun

After shooting some guns and shit, we ate venison in the new house and "had to eat ALL of the meat, we never leave meat left over", again our stomachs would be pushed until bursting point.

After this we went to visit Mardys cousin Anya in Kolding, she is a cool cat, and we spent a couple of days there, drinking, yahooing and shopping. Where Mardy bought a skateboard, which is either going to be the best or worst decision of his trip, time will tell.

After this, we jumped on another train to Mardys Aunty Toves house, near the Danish-German border, they showed us around southern Jutland and the famous windmill that I can't spell and where the Germans invaded in the 1800s. Damn Germans. We then ate hotdogs and retired to her place to, again, eat more food. Jeebus.

And that was Denmark, one week to visit Mardys family, under the pump, and now we get on a train to Berlin, and our savage journey into the Eastern Bloc begins.

A healthy racists billboard to kick off our visit to DK

While strolling the streets of Copenhagen, randomly came across the changing of the Queens guard

Us in New Harbour (Nyhavn)

Kev going on a canal cruise in Copenhagen, passing Nyhavn 

Mardy up the top of the round tower overlooking the city, whats up with the massively oversized tongue? Whatever Gene Simmons

Mardy having some trouble with the elephants at Carlsberg

Carlsberg have there own horse stables!

And they still use them to pull beer around to some pubs. Here we are freaking out a bit  (Katie especially), because the horses were all sweating from working hard and making weird grunting horse sounds. Funny how Katie can pat a lion and a cheetah, but be afraid of a horse.

Annie and Camilla

Tivoli!

The family

Cousin Ivan, being specially while eating tea

Tivoli at night

Annie showing us around the streets of Copenhagen

Katie with a big lego man at a lego store

Dinner at Camillas house, she is a really good cook, the food was delicious.

From the right, Mardys uncle Carl, his wife Annie, Mardy, Annie, Ivan, Katie, and Camillas boyfriend Michael
Centre from right, Kevin, and Elisabeths Kangeroo

Mardy and his godparents Rita and Christian, and there cool dog Luffe

Dear god they gave her a gun, and look how happy she is

Sharpshooter

Focus Katie, we know how competitive you are.

Sniper

Core

Mardy and his uncle Kim

Shooting a shotgun, look how big that smile is

Boom, headshot

Mardy being surprised at the kick of a shotgun

TID - This is Denmark; what the countryside looks like

Anya, and her skateboard. Skate or Die.

Katie and Anya drinking Dansk Pilsner, fun times

After leaving Zanibar, we drove for 2 days to get to Malawi. Malawi is truely a beautifal place, with Lake Malawi taking up 20% of the countries land mass, it provided us with some awesome photos. It really like was being on the sea, you can't see the shore on the other side, and the beach just stretches off forever north and forever south. It is apparently the 9th largest lake in Africa, with Lake Victoria being the biggest, and even though we camped on the shores of that as well, we didn't have the opportunity to take in the size and scale of it like we did in Malawi. Malawi is also one of the poorest countries in the world, but the people there are incredibly friendly; probably the friendliest in Africa. However we were there amongst a little bit of political turmoil though, with riots in the weeks before, demanding the President step down,
he was refusing and they were going to riot again on the Wednesday, luckly we were crossing into Zambia on the Tuesday. Mardy always seems to be in countries when they are rioting, add it to the list with Thailand and Greece.

The first camp we stayed at we camped on the beach, and we woke up on the sand with a spectacular sunrise. This day we were to go on a 36k "walk" to Livingstonia, a town named after the famous exlorer David Livingstone. It was a big day, and we got to see the mountainous area around the lake which provided us with awesome views and then the town at the top. It was good to get a bit of exercise as well, as we seem to drink beers every afternoon. Its a hard life being a traveller.

The Livingstonia walk was the only real thing we did at that camp, we then headed off to Kande Beach, which was further south on the lake were there were a bunch of different activities we could do. But we spent it mainly catching up on sleep and relaxing on the beach. The one thing we did do there was have a fancy dress party. Were we drew names out of a hat, and you got the name of someone else on the bus and had to buy the most outrageous thing possible. Katie ended up in a hideous old pink full length dress, which she modified, and Mardy definately got the short straw, and could have been easily mistaken for a girl. It was one of the most fun nights of the trip, cause shit got a bit crazy, there was crowd surfing off the bar by an Irish guy in a miniskirt and all sorts of craziness.

After our relaxing 3 days in Kande beach, it was time to start our savage burn towards Victoria Falls. While in Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi, some friends on our trip went to the post office while the rest of us went shopping and mingling abouts and while they were there apparently some dude tried to steal something, and the police ran over with the AK47s and shit, and there must have been a lot of tension in the air in preparation for the riots the next day, because as soon as the police ran over with there guns people started to go crazy, rolling up with big building blocks ready to the throw them and stuff, shit was getting out of hand. Luckily it calmed down, and we left not long after. We still don't know what happened the next day, we are pretty cut off from any news or communication. It then took 3 solid driving days in the truck to cross Zambia, it was fucking shit. We are both well and truly over the truck. We then had trouble crossing the border from Zambia into Zimbabwe and nearly had to leave the truck behind with our bags on it, eventually they released it after 3hrs of being arseholes the truck. Two of our Bulgarian friends were not allowed into the country and we had to leave them at the border. Which was crap, considering they came all this way to see Victoria Falls, they would now only be able to see it from the Zambian side.

The Falls are amazing, and are split into 2 sections; the Zambian side and the Zimbabwe side. The Zambieze river is what divides the two countries, and it sits more to the Zambian side of the falls meaning when you walk the falls you see more on the Zim side.

We went and saw the Zambian side first, before we crossed the border (which is the bridge crossing the Zambezi). And it was really cool, you get so close to the falls, and the spray coming off it was just incredible. The falls drop 100m, and your at the top of it getting soaked from the spray that rises up from the bottom. And this was the dry season and it was low water!

Then after crossing into Zimbabwe, we had to wait for the next day to do anything else, because we had wasted so much time at the border with wanker officials. We were told not to discuss any politics in Zim, and especially say nothing derogatory about Robert Mugabe to any of the locals. As apparently the secret police roll about and if your slag him off at the pub you can end up in jail, which has happened before apparently. So Robert Mugabe became "Voldemort" or "He who must not be spoken about" any time he was alluded to.

Day 1 in Vic Falls.

Mardy did the Bungee off the bridge 111m, awesome. It was on his bucket list. Katie went to the elephant safari, where they fed and patted there elephants. Katie tried to push in to get the biggest elephant but the elephant guy was onto her and made sure she got a regular sized elephant. However, this would not cause the day to be a disspointment for her, because afterwoods they randomly had a tame cheetah there which they got to pet! Mardy was incredibly jealous as cheetahs are his favorite animal, and Katie made sure he was aware of how awesome it was.,

Day 2

Half day adrenaline - it involved going down river from the falls where the river had cut our a massive gorge /canyon thing into the earth (which is the same one you bungee into) which is roughly 100m deep. And we both did 3 activities. The first was called a zip line which was just like a flying fox except the rope was tight , this was ok not to exciting. The next one I can't remember what it was called, but it was like a flying fox which slack in the rope. This two weren't that intresting, the really good one was the gorge swing. We should have just done this one and saved ourselves the money of the other two. Mardy thinks that it shits all over the bungee jump. It basically works like this, they have this plank that extends over the edge of the gorge and its a sheer 100m down, and you basically jump off and instead of bouncing back up, you are caught by a rope halfway across the canyon that grabs you after 90 or so metres of free fall and swings you very quickly across the entire gorge. Like a giant swing set, if you can imagine. It was intense, we both admitted to being scared when standing on the plank, which we weren't really one the other ones. On top of this the method we both chose to go off the plank was via handstands. Shit was intense. Highly highly recommend if you like this sort of thing.

In the afternoon we then went on the lion walk, were we went for (as the name suggests) a walk with some lions! They were around 1 year old, and not tame, these were wild lions, but they had been taken care of by  there carers as part of a breeding program. 1 year old lions sure aren't cubs I'll tell you that straight up. And it was a really cool experience, being able to walk with them and then pat them at one point, shit was cool.

Day 3

Mardy did the white water rafting, which wasn't as cool as rafting on the Nile, the rapids were a lot smaller. But it was cool rafting amongst crocodiles and shit, and afterwoods we also got free beers.

In between our different activities we walked the length of the falls on the Zim side. Which was amazing, you get to see a lot more of the falls than you do on the Zambian side, but you don't get as close.

And this is it. Africa is over for us. Its been incredible and I think we both definitely want to come back, in amongst all the poverty and pollution this is really a spectacular continent that you could spend a long time exploring. We are sad to leave. We jumped on our South African Airlines flight to Joburg, and from there it was off to Copenhagen via Zurich for the next leg of our round the world adventure.

We wont miss everything about Africa but, its going to be nice having warm showers again, decent internet, and decent food, and being able to drink the water from the tap without worrying that your going to shit yourself to death.

See you in DK

Cool waterfalls we saw on our 36k walk. It would be nothing in comparison to Victoria Falls however.

Lake Malawi, its huge, pretty much like being on the ocean

On our 36k walk with our guide "Wisdom"

Looking over the top of the falls

Not the falls we were over, but some other ones we could see, was pretty picturesque 

The group navigating a big rock thing

What Mardy woke up to when camping on the beach at the first camp site in Malawi.

The crazy Malawi party in full flight. Best night ever.

Taken from the second place we camped in Malawi "Kande Beach", this was the moon at night shimmering red onto the lake. They don't call Malawi the 'warm heart of africa' for nothing.

Victoria Falls, Zambia side

The bridge that crosses the Zambezi river, the falls are not even 50m upriver from this bridge, and this bridge is the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe. Also from where Mardy did his bungee 

Katie on Victoria Falls Zambia side, getting soaked from the spray

Zambia side again. Amazing.

Again on the Zambian side, this is the top of the falls, you can actually walk across some of it to the little islands, the current isn't overly strong.

Mardy doing the bungee

This was taken on the Zim side, it gives you an idea of how the earth just gives way to the falls.

Mardy on the Zim side, you can't get as close, but you see more of the falls. And you don't get as much spray on this side.

Katie doing the flying fox, I don't have pictures of the gorge swing unfortunately cause we took videos of that

Katie having fun with the lions

Goodbye Africa. We'll miss you.