What I did on my summer vacation.

[Rain Man]

So for those of you who don't ever look at me, I wandered away for a while. A sample of vacation photos will follow.

[Rain Man]

The dude in the black shirt was my driver. The dude on the right was the instigator of my first third-world car wreck. He cut right in front of our car and took out the front headlight and bumper while we were on the way to the airport. We were witnesses for our driver, but no one knew since we didn't speak French or Malagasy. This picture is them negotiating a settlement.

[Boon]

The message in the sand is way cool!!
The pics are too.

[bogey]

very entertaining.
Thanks!

[Rain Man]

I don't think I posted this, but our car wreck was near this really cool lake and monument. You can see the hilly terrain and interesting housing, too. I didn't quite get the photo out the window of the car.

At night, they would light big, multicolored flourescent lights up the monument, kind of like the lights you see on ferris wheels.

[Rain Man]

Here's an interesting bit of trivia for you. Antananarivo has at least 1.3 million people, and as far as we could tell, they have no stop lights or stop signs. We were staying in the middle of the city and never saw one.

My guess is that infrastructure is expensive and labor is cheap, because on the busier streets they had traffic cops posted to direct traffic.

Also, we saw three types of police. There were guys like this, who were less common and seemed to be traffic directors. Then there were guys in cool French Legionnaire hats who were "gendarmes", though they also seemed to be traffic directors. Finally, there were guys with "police" vests, but otherwise they looked like soldiers with fatigues and automatic rifles. Those guys were all over the place.

[Rain Man]

Then it was back to South Africa to start the trip home. While flying over Mozambique, I kept seeing massive smoke from big fires. At first, I thought they were forest fires, but I thought there were too many of them. Then I thought it might be farms burning sugar cane to get ready for the next season, but they were definitely in the forests. Then I got a good look and saw that the fires were on the fringes of forests, and I figured out that it was slash and burn deforesting. It was kind of sad, because it was happening in forest areas that weren't very big to start with. Lots of animals going extinct down there, I bet.

[Rain Man]

We had one night in Durban on our way back. I saw this car parked on the street. Is it a Ford GT? Or some sort of kit car or homemade car? I couldn't tell.

[Rain Man]

It had a little plaque on the dash that I think was aftermarket.

[Rain Man]

There's a bit of a problem with theft at the Johannesburg airport, so for a few bucks you can get all of your suitcases wrapped in plastic wrap. The goal is to annoy the thieves enough that they'll go after an unwrapped suitcase instead. This is Rain Woman getting ready to check in at the Durban Airport on our way to Johannesburg.

[Rain Man]

And then...homeward bound. Unless of course we wanted to go to Ndola or Gaborone.

[Rain Man]

And that, my friends, is what I did on my summer vacation.

[Hydrae]

Did you find the Russkies secret hideout on the island?

[Rain Man]

I think this is the place where the French are plotting their world domination.

[Hydrae]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

I think this is the place where the French are plotting their world domination.

Ah, oui oui.

[Amnorix]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

Recharging the camera batteries was easy. South African to French adaptor, French to American adaptor, then add the two-prong receptacle, and since it was too heavy to stay in the wall, you then use a dairy creamer to balance the whole thing on a chair.

Let's face it, we throw LOL and pretty often around here when all we really do is smile a bit at whatever it was.

I literally laughed out loud at this one. The dairy creamer really seals the deal on funny.