Botswana: where we met Canadians, Brits, many, many locals, and - most impressive of all - elephants.
In Botswana the elephants are everywhere: in Moremi National Park, the Chobe Game Reserve...and even on the highway.
It was the most exciting traffic jam we'd ever encountered.
Wild horses, rust-red sand dunes, gorgeous sunsets, and 110 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade...Namibia is a brown-red desert that's home to zebras, flamingos (on the Atlantic coast), baboons, and - for one week - us.
After a seven-hour drive from Capte Town, we crossed into Namibia and headed straight for Fish River Canyon. Because it was Christmas, almost all lodging was booked. But we lucked out and found a gorgeous desert lodge with - yes - air conditioning. A treat for those three nights in the desert.
We also encountered members of the San tribe at the Living Museum outside Windhoek. They took us for a bush walk and taught us how to track impalas. Not that we were hoping to catch one.
Our Lonely Planet told us, regarding Cape Town, that we should "be prepared to fall in love."
We were cynical of such high expectations. But turns out the Lonely Planet folks are right.
From Table Mountain to a state of the art soccer stadium to a gorgeous oceanside boardwalk where the Atlantic and India Oceans meet, Cape Town has it all.
The city also boasts amazingly warm people - which is why our 3-day visit became a 5-day visit that was, in the end, wonderfully sweet.
As for a "best" experience?
That would have to be meeting the residents of Isilo Township. We'd connected with the founder of a school in the township. She invited us for a visit. We adored the kids and spent the day - and the next - helping them to prepare for their Christmas party - making sandwiches, buying and handing out gifts, and even a comedy show, performed by Joel, in which he used no words, entertaining the kids by tripping over chairs and crashing in to the walls in a display of old fashioned slapstick humor.
On the eastern coast of South Africa there lives a tiny community of Xosa - pronounced KO-sah (with a tongue-click on the "Ko").
We spent a week with them at the Bulungula Lodge, in the most beautiful countryside imaginable: conical pink and turquoise huts dotted green, unspoiled countryside along the ocean shore.
Living conditions were basic: electricity came and went; showers were hot, but only after we poured a liter of gasoline into a pipe-stove and set the puddle ablaze. And Internet? Forget a bout it.
But for all these reasons, our time on the Eastern Cape was magical. And to top it all off, we celebrated Joel's birthday with a canoe ride and hike along the river - making new friends along the way.
At first we weren't going to visit Sau Paulo. It's a huge city (18+ million people), with no beach...so why bother when it can't come close to the beach and fun of Rio?
But it turns out Dorit has a friend there - a woman who stayed at Dorit's house 30 years ago, during a high school Tapuz trip. And Stav and Noam have a friend there.
So we went...
And it's been fabulous. Parks, museums, great restaurants, fantastic street art, and really really nice people - it's now one of our favorite cities in South America.
Thank goodness we changed our minds!
On our last day in Rio, Yoni and Dad took a tour of Maracana Football Stadium - host to the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympic Games.
We walked stood on the field. We visited the press room. We toured the locker room and kicked a ball in the pre-game warmup area.
But perhaps the highlight of tour was Yoni taking a pee in the locker room - the same locker room where the likes of Pele and Neymar, Jr have emptied their own legendary bladders.
Are you in Rio and looking to stay in a safe neighborhood with a fantastic view?
Go to a favela.
In Rio alone, there are 811 favelas, or slums, where more than 4 million Rio residents live – nearly a quarter of the city’s population. (In the upscale neighborhood of Copacabana there are seven favelas alone)
In the favela we visited there are certain codes on conduct – for example, no crime allowed within a 2 km radius of the favela – so it's actually safer to be in a favela then on the beautiful beaches of Copacabana-or Ipanema.
A short history of Rio’s favelas:
After queen Isabella freed the slaves, they had nowhere to go, so they climbed the mountains in Rio and started to build their wood and mud houses. They needed to be close to their sources of income, so living in the Rio hills was ideal.
These days each favela has its own independent mayor who takes care of local issues in very different ways than we’re used to. If you owe alimony to your ex-wife, for example, the mayor’s office will invite you in for a short meeting. if you didn't pay after that, you’ll be called in a second time. There’s no such thing as a third meeting—if you haven’t paid by then, you’d best pack your stuff and run as far away as you can, because at that point you’re being hunted.
Likewise, all mail goes via the mayor office, and organized in ABC order, If you think you’ve received got mail, you’re allotted a few hours to come over and search through the pile; in a favela of 50,000 people it will take some time to find your name on the envelope.
We were fascinated by the life we encountered we saw on our favela tour. So we looked into it and found some interesting facts. According to a study released in 2013 by the Data Popular Institute, 85% of favela residents like the place where they live, 80% are proud of where they live, and 70% would continue to live in their communities even if their income doubled. It seems that not having to pay taxes or utilities and the extremely low rental rates are appealing.
And, of course, all Rio de Jeneirians agree that residents of favelas have the best views of the city.
Perhaps most importantly of all, favela leaders look out for their own.
We toured just one of the 811 favelas in the city, led by a current resident of the favela who, for reasons that may (or may not) be obvious, wishes to remain nameless and image-less in our blog.
No visit to Rio is complete without a visit to the giant statue of Jesus, who apparently just caught a fish that was this bigI
We finished the day with a walk along Copacabana beach, where we saw an incredible game of volleyball soccer (basically, volleyball without the use of hands) and a pretty dope sand castle.
We arrived in Rio via plane - our first trip via air after three months of cross-continent buses. And what better way to acclimate to Rio de Jeneiro than a midnight visit to Samba School, where musicians and dancers practice for the upcoming Carnival?
Time stops in Florianopolis - at least for us.
It's a tiny Brazilian island off the Atlantic coast. And after months of three-nights-here, three-nights-there travel through South America, it felt darn good to plant roots and live in a single place for an entire week.
Upon arriving we were greeted by a local man who may or may not have been drinking (it was around 1PM at this point). He showed us a few apartments. We chose one, made a trip to the grocery store, and then surfed. Built sand castles. Visited a turtle museum.
We even took a class in Capoeira, which can best be described as karate to the beat of music. (Always more fun to kick someone's ass to a beat.)
One of the New 7 Wonders of the World, Foz Iguazu is a range of enormous water falls on the Argentine-Brazilian border.
Stand close to the Falls and you have to shout in order to be heard by someone next to you.
And stand really close to the Falls and you'll soon find yourself soaking wet.
In the town of Foz Iguazu we also visited a shelter for injured and abandoned animals; a house, built by a recycling enthusiast, made entirely of plastic bottles; and crossed the border by taxi into Brazil...at one point standing in both countries (and different time zones) at once.
In late October, Joel returned to the US to perform comedy. During that time, we received two very special visitors who kept us company and toured with us in Buenos Aires: Joel's father, Ira (AKA, Zadie), and Dorit's brother, Uncle Elon.
Our overnight bus from Cordoba arrived at 7 AM sharp - three hours before we'd thought. (A father who will go nameless misread the ticket.)
Left with four hours until our apartment was available, we grabbed a table in a bus station cafe and just hung out: art, geometry homework, Snapchat and Instagram time for the older kids, and even played some ukulele.
"Traveling the world" sounds like a romantic endeavor - and it is. But world travel is just as much about the down time in far-out places along the way, and filling that down time in the best ways we know how.
We saw a one-time monastery as well as a replica of the motorcycle - but not the diaries - during our visit to Che Guevara's Argentinian hometown.
We got our first taste of Argentine life in the northwestern city of Salta.
After a 9-hour bus ride through the mountains, and an hour layover in Jujuy, and then a 2-hour ride complete with multiple stops in near-deserted bus stations, we finally arrived in Salta, Argentina.
Whew!
Our first lesson on life in Argentina: the exchange rate. One American dollar at a bank or ATM will net you 9 Argentinian Pesos. Take that same dollar to a guy in a trench coat on the street, and you're looking at 15 Pesos.
"Legal?" I asked the trench-coat guy in the best Spanish I could. "No policio?"
He shook his head violently, then ushered me into a doorway so we'd be out of sight for our supposedly legal transaction.
A few weeks ago we wrote about those unexpected surprises along the way, and how they can sweeten a trip.
This time, we got a different kind of surprise: our 9 AM bus from San Pedro, Chile to Salta, Argentina was canceled due to snow in the mountains. Turns out it wasn't the snow that was the problem, but the Argentinian snow plow that broke down and couldn't clear the road - hence the Chilean bus company's refusal to offer a refund...
But it all turned out okay. On our way to the bus station we'd noticed a rodeo just starting up. So we spent the day meeting genuine South American cowboys (some literally boys - a few riders were a mere 14 years old) and watching cow-roping in a wooden stadium just outside town. And as it turned out, it was one of our best days of our visit to Chile.
In the heart of the Chilean Desert Atama lies Valle De La Luna - "The Valley of the Moon" - so called because the surface of the earth resembles that of the moon.
We began with a 40-minute walk through tunnels and caves. Then continued with an hour-long trek up and down sand dunes, many of them as smooth and silky looking as liquid chocolate.
And for the conclusion? Sitting on a cliff, overlooking the valley and a marvelous sunset while fellow travelers oohed and ahhed around us.
The Atamaca Desert, in northern Chile, is the driest desert in the world. Hence the amazing stargazing at night, and the disproportionately high number of meteorites that fall in the area (the lack of moisture prevents them from burning up).
During our five-day stay in San Pedro, we enjoyed horseback riding, a few family soccer games, an up-close look at Saturn during a nighttime astronomy tour, sand-boarding down desert dunes, and vegetarian empanadas at Cafe Esquina.
