Green. Cow. Hill.

 I made it to Africa. 

It is very hot here. Not really, it's not that hot; it's only in the 80s but it is very, very, very humid and there is no air conditioning in my camp. 

I am supposed to be doing the work right now but the water was too rough to go out :( and the other intern guy isn't here yet bc his flight was delayed and the other intern gets the day off because his mom is here visiting for her birthday so they said I was probably tired and could just go chill. I am very tired. I am exhausted. This blog post will probably suffer because of it but oh whale. 

Actually I will write this later when I am less tired and hot. I would go take a shower but there's only one knob to turn it on/off and it is very, very hot too. Hot is good when it comes to showers but like it's burning hot. Maybe I'll try it again anyway. 

Okay so it's been a week but the internet here is poop.

Okay so my original flight was on Emirates from Dulles (Washington DC) to Dubai to Durban (South Africa) but a week before I was supposed to leave my flight was cancelled because Emirates decided they no longer wanted to fly into South Africa because of the rona. So I rebooked on Qatar which was cheaper anyways. So we stopped at Applebee's on the way to the airport then I used my Clear and TSA precheck to skip security and then I had to take the tram to the B terminal. Internet on the fight was only $10 for the whole flight so I got it to watch Amazon Prime but the show I wanted wasn't available outside the states so I just watched it on Putlocker. 

Then I had a 9 hour layover in Doha and they have a pool there but it was closed for the Rona too. I had lounge pass so I went to the lounge but they only had 5 lay down chairs and I didn't know you needed to put your name on a list so I kept checking every like 30-40 minutes to see if one opened and of course it never did and they only had one shower but at least I did get to take a shower and then I just sat in a regular chair so like nothing special about it. I got some juice and water and a couple plates of chicken rice. It was only $50 tho and everything else except Duty Free was closed in the airport so it was fine. Oh I also didn't see any blonde people until I went to my boarding gate bc the flight next to me was headed to Germany. So everyone was staring bc I was blonde. I guess that's uncommon in Qatar? 

My flight from Doha was straight to Durban but we had to stop to pick up more people in Mozambique. Just like on the flight to Doha, I had a row on the way to Mozambique and I did get to sleep but only for a little bit because that was a pretty short flight, only 7 hours with 2 meal services. Then from Mozambique to Durban there was someone on my aisle. But anyway in Mozambique it sounded like people were speaking Spanish and after sitting in Qatar for 9 hours it felt so good to recognize words being said lol so I googled it and Mozambique was a Portuguese colony so they were speaking Portuguese. Nifty. 

Then I got to Durban and I couldn't find my pick up guy so some Uber driver called him for me. Then I was like I wonder if they tip here and then I realized I didn't do any research or prep or anything coming here and I know nothing about Africa lol so I googled and yes they tip like 10% but for good service and going to the restaurants and stuff they just charge like the price so if you want to tip you have to tell them before they do it not after but Nick says if you want to tip to just give them money because otherwise it takes too long on the cards and they don't really get it. 

So. If you remember, my New Zealand album is called Green. Cow. Mountain.. Well. Bruh. I would've thought I was back in New Zealand. I had absolutely no idea South Africa looked like this and we're back to the I clearly should have at least googled South Africa before coming here 😂 I did look up Sodwana Bay but it just showed me pictures of like the marine life so like yeah... anyways. These "mountains" are a lot smaller than the ones in New Zealand, hence Green. Cow. Hill. But it is so green and there are cows literally everywhere and they call them Sodwana Bay Robots (traffic lights) because they'll just stand in the middle of the road. I like cows. Cows are chill. 

Anyways so South Africa is quite green and quite hilly and full of cows. The drive from Durban airport to Sodwana Bay is like 4-5 hours. And the car needs a break in the middle because the tires get tired so otherwise it wouldn't make it. Sounds fake but okay. But it's a good thing Craig's flight was delayed because myself and my luggage barely fit in the car. I had bags sitting on my feet. We also passed a lot of gum trees planted in straight lines and Christmas trees and sugar cane plantations and pineapple plantations. Reminds me of Jamaica or Dominican Republic but with less trash on the streets. Also there's a lot of hitchhikers and people sitting on the side of the road to sell bananas and pineapples. 

So they obviously speak English in South Africa but they also speak Zulu and Afrikaans which is a mix of Dutch and Zulu. The Afrikaans is actually not that hard to understand if they speak slow enough sometimes because it just sounds like I'd guess German? to English (not quite Portuguese to Spanish easy) so like just be smart and you can kinda get it sometimes. But sometimes it sounds like I'm in Jamaica and they're speaking Pigeon being like "awe why can't you understand when we know we're speaking Pigeon and you speak English" ugh, Jamaicans. I don't know why they hate so hard on Bahamians when in my mind/experiences the Jamaican stereotypes of the two (Jamaicans and Bahamians) should be flipped. But anyways back to Africa lol 

So then we finally got to the camp and there's a few things that I'm like "wow they must've watched my interviews" then there's somethings I'm like wow ok who dis. So. They put me in the whale shark room woo hoo I love whale sharks. If ya'll read my whale shark post from June 2016 you would know that whale sharks' spots are like unique finger prints so if you see a whale shark with the same spot pattern, it's the same shark. I swam with them in Coral Bay in Australia in 2016 and I saw them from the boat in La Paz, Mexico in 2018. Love whale sharks. They're the biggest fish in the ocean and they are a shark not a whale. 

Moving onto food. In Tahiti I ate oodles of noodles and peanut butter sandwiches every single day; that's literally all I ate and I loved it. French Polynesians make the best oodles of noodles and I am coming to realize that like coconuts, oodles of noodles are different in each country too. For example, the ones in Africa are no bueno. No mal either but no bueno. But anyways so they got food for me and they got me oodles of noodles and peanut butter! Like broooooooooooo. How did you know! But then they filled the whole fridge with vegetables and no meat and like I eat meat not vegetables so it's like 😒 but Nick makes me his chicken nuggets and gives me some biltong which is meat so it's fine. Plus honestly normally we go out to eat bc they didn't give me any good food and the store here doesn't have anything in it either. Remember those starving kids in Africa you had to eat all your food for because they were starving? Still actually not me but if I had to just eat what they got me then it would be. Also people waste a lot of food here so like where's the starving kids? 

Until next time,

xoxo,

Tasha

PS I know the starving kids are in "typical" African countries like Tanzania, Ghana, Kenya, etc so don't come at me that was just a cute line to end my blog post on, k thnx. 

Viva Las Vegas

 

Normally I would make a separate post for each day, but, as I'm finding out, boys only like to do one thing per day so those would be really short posts. Additionally, the pandemic has made me lazy and so therefore I'm just gonna make one post for my entire week in Las Vegas. Again, commenting is off bc I don't need the hate for traveling during a virus. 

Day Uno 

So my only friend from college (sad face, what happened to Casey?) joined the Airforce and now lives in Las Vegas. (Peep the cute then and now pic below of Jan 2017 to Jan 2021) So after months of begging (probably not but we gonna pretend there was begging lol) I finally decided I can come visit despite me not doing well in mountains. 

We get up at the buttcrack of dawn, jk it was still black out, to go to the airport but my mother loves me so I didn't even have to pay for parking because she just dropped me off. How lovely. Of course I got some Dunkin on the way because Tasha, much like America, runs on Dunkin even tho I don't even drink coffee! Anyways, the sign at the gate said the flight was only 65% full and I was like heck yeah ain't nobody gonna sit with me! But then I boarded and I was like there's a lot of people on here and the pilot was all like "this is a completely full flight!" and I was like 😑😠. But there were a lot of families with kids so there were a lot of like babies on laps so there were still a few empty seats and at first I had the middle open and someone on the aisle but then the flight attendant told the row in front of mine that the front row was empty but those fools were like "we don't care" so then the guy on my aisle moved up there with his girl that was sitting like 2 rows back bc full flight so then I had the row to myself and I was like yessss go me but then about 45 mins-1 hour in the guy from the row in front of me came back and sat on my aisle and of course I was spread out it's a 5.5 hour flight so he almost sat on my foot! RUDE! 

But we flew over Lake Mead and I was very happy to see there actually IS water near/around/in Las Vegas. So that's a plus. Then I witnessed some girl going OFF while I was waiting for Zach to come get me because my flight was an hour early. Then we got some Cane's chicken because he "knows me and didn't want to deal with a hungry me" okay ya'll my b, sorry. Then we watched the Mandalorian and ate salmon and rice and that was it. 

Dia Dos 

On the second day, we went to the Wynn. I think I offended Zach by comparing it to Atlantic City but like I thought it was common knowledge that AC was like a smaller, East-Coast, knockoff of Vegas? Whatever. Anyways they had a cute little flower path walkway thing and a carousel and hot air balloon made up of flowers. It was cool. We had drinks at the Parasol bar where the ceiling had these like parasol lamps that spun and moved up and down, which was entertaining. They charged $3.50 for "rocks" (ice) in Zach's first drink and I got the Lychee martini and it was so good so then next round we both got lychee martinis. Then we went down to the SW Steakhouse. We got there just in time for the first show; every half hour they have a 3 minute show on their lake and waterfall with special effects. First one was a floating snowflake that talked to us, then there was a mermaid one that I'm pretty sure was Veronica or Venessa or one of the LA mers (it was recorded not live), and there was eye balls and a shark fin to the big song in 10 Things I Hate About You, and singing parrots with lyrics on the waterfall, and it was fancy. I liked it. It was nice having entertainment again in a world where everything is closed. Oh they also had standing heaters all over the place because we sat outside because waterfall and lake, duh, so that was nice. It was supposed to be the best steak I've ever had so let's just go with that because idk if Zach reads these or not so yeah, steak was banging lol 

(Idk why these are posting vertical and not next to each other but here's a photodump for you) 

Okay, Day Three! Halfway there. 

The third day was supposed to be the coldest day, so I picked then to go to the aquarium! I love aquariums, if you wanna come at me, just don't. You're fine to not like aquariums but that's a whole other post that you can find on my mermaid YouTube eventually because I'm sick of getting hate for also going to aquariums when they're "so bad for the animals" (actually they're not but again, another time another place for that). 

So this was at Mandalay Bay, the Shark Reef aquarium. First we went to the House of Blues for lunch because apparently Zach is like legit scared of hungry me LOL I don't think I'm that bad but okay.
House of Blues is also inside Mandalay Bay. The casino was legit empty, like not a soul. (Check the pic at the top of this blog post.) Every restaurant/store/Starbucks we passed walking to House of Blues from the parking garage was closed so we were like "omg it better be open" and thankfully it was. They had a tree growing in the middle of the restaurant! Our waiter sucked but I got the brisket and it was good but Wawa's is better. 

On the walk to the aquarium from the House of Blues because Mandalay Bay is huge, we could see what was supposed to be the pools but they were totally drained and there were guys working on the big pool. The lazy river still had water in it but it was closed off because of the work. So with all the restaurants and stores closed, nobody in the casino, and the pools drained of water it felt like a ghost town. 

So we finally made it to the aquarium. When you go in there's a picture taker guy to take your pictures so you can buy them when you leave if you want but we looked at ours and honestly we got the same picture taken on our phone for free thanks to a nice couple, and yes, I took their picture for them too; I got manners. And yes, we wore our masks in the aquarium the whole time but we pulled them down/off for pictures and even the official picture taker guy at the beginning told us to take our masks off for pictures so don't come at me for that either. Oh I was also wearing this turtle sweatshirt my mom got me for Christmas and I felt like I belonged in the exhibit but aquariums are my thing so I dig it lol

It's a much smaller aquarium than the one in Baltimore, but that is to be expected I think. After all, it is called Shark Reef Aquarium unlike the National Aquarium or even just any full aquarium. But we got Nevada locals discount so at least there's that lol but it was still a nice aquarium. 

Did you know Komodo Dragons binge eat (but that's not what they called it they called it something else but I forget) because they're unsure of when their next meal will come so that way they gorge out some days and eat nothing other days? I was like, me too, dragon, me too, but I always know when my next food is coming because I am fortunate in that area but I still eat literally everything some days and literally nothing other days. So that's a fun fact you now know.

I also learned that when fish open and close their mouth (check out my mermaid insta for a vid), they're pushing the water back to their gills so they can breathe. When the fish are swimming, the swimming motion is automatically pushing that water back, so they just keep their mouths open, but when they are floating in place, such as when they are looking at humans through the aquarium tank, they need to manually push the water themselves by opening and closing their mouth. Isn't that interesting? 

Then of course they had the shark tunnel as seen in the picture above! Normally they have dive encounters you could do but not currently due to Corona. Oh before the shark tunnel they had this floor to ceiling tank and the fish were coming straight at us; I felt like Aquaman. After the tunnel was a big ray tank, a jellyfish tank, and a tank with an octopus and tons of huge starfish - bigger than Zach's head! Next there was another shark area but they made the human part like a giant wooden ship which was very cool. There were saw tooth sharks and even a sand tiger, which I was excited to see because I will be spending lots of time with the sand tigers aka raggie tooths in Africa. 

After the aquarium, we went over to the Luxor hotel, which is the big pyramid one. Honestly, I think we were looking for a Starbucks but they were all closed. Lame. But the pyramid hotel looks like a pyramid on the inside as well and even has a sphinx inside near the food court. Mandalay Bay also had a sweet smell, like Australian Gold sunscreen, and I was like oh that's probably the gambling air, like in Percy Jackson but there was nobody gambling so I was like maybe I'm imagining it but the Luxor didn't have that smell and going back over to Mandalay Bay it was very strong so yeah. Personally I think the Hard Rock cookies have a better lotus affect than the Mandalay Bay smell but I know nothing, so. 

On the way back we finally got our Starbucks and I tried a iced peach green tea (venti with light ice) with vanilla and heavy cream instead of water. It was like a more liquid smoothie! Would order again. Thanks, Pinterest. 

Day Four

On this day we went hiking to Red Rocks. It was cold and cloudy and turns out I do not like hiking, which I already knew but then I really knew. I thought I was dying. It felt like I had covid again! (Last year I went to the doctor 3 times because I couldn't breathe and I couldn't even keep up with my mom shopping and she's a super slow shopper and the doctor just kept being like "it's been two weeks it must be almost done" and two weeks later I'd come back and he'd be like "well it's been another two weeks so you must really be almost done" and whole time I was straight up dyingggggggg and then like a couple weeks later 'rona was a thing.) 

So we went on this scenic drive and there's all these trails that branch off of the drive. It's a one-way road. So I picked the trail that said that it had wildlife sightings, donkey and bighorn sheep and tortoises. There were only like 2 trails that said they have wildlife on it and that's where we went but did I see any animals? Nope, just a couple people walking their dogs. I did however see two very distinct poops, so I'm thinking one was a sheep poop and one was a donkey poop. I took a picture of the donkey poop to be honest lol. 

We walked for like 2 miles on this trail to "La Madre Spring" and there was no spring. No water. We eventually did make it to a concrete slab tho, and then we turned around. The way back was a lot better. Going up I couldn't see; I couldn't breathe; I was dying. But going down I was fine! We made it down probably like 4 times, if not more, faster than we made it up. Then instead of going back to the car we went down this other trail that Zach and his roommates had gone on before because there was a big rock I could climb so I could get that classic hanging in a canyon picture. 

This second walk/part was also a lot better than that initial one so maybe I just needed to get acclimated to mountains because I am no good in any elevation. Did you know the Delmarva Peninsula is the flattest part of the entire continental United States? Even flatter and lower elevation on average than New Orleans. The highest point is only about 107 feet above sea level and that's all the way up at the top of Delaware in the Newark/Wilmington area. 

Dia Cinco 

Leave it to the mermaid to find the water! On this day we went to Arizona Hot Springs! About 30-40 minutes from downtown, about an hour from where I was staying, right near the Nevada/Arizona border but actually in Arizona, is a hike to the hot springs. Alternatively, you can take a boat from the Colorado River and then it's only like a 5 minute hike but I didn't have a boat so hiking it was. 

So it was supposed to be 5-6 miles roundtrip depending on which path you took. It ended up being 8 miles, up and down actual mountains. The return trip was rough, and afterward I couldn't walk for 2 days. But overall I think it was easier/better than Red Rock because the ground was more sandy whereas Red Rocks was, you probably guessed it, rocky. Apparently the sandy material is harder like physically, but I live at the beach so I'm all about the sand and definitely much preferred it to Red Rock. 

The path was like crazy at the beginning like there seemed to be tons of possible paths because of course nothing was labeled and if it was, we missed it. So we ended up going on a path that wasn't a path and left us at the dead end of the bottom of a mountain. But thankfully even tho I am blind I would be a marvelous hunter because I can spot movement so I'm not sure which one of us actually spotted them first, but we saw humans in the distance so I kept track of them and we were able to track humans back to the actual path. Which, I was not expecting so many people to be hiking on a weekday but I am very glad that this seems to be such a popular spot because otherwise we would have never found the springs. We had to ask for help a lot on the way there, but on the way back the path had arrows and green stickers and was a lot more clear and I have no idea how we didn't see literally any of it on the way there but I get why everyone was treating us like idiots for continuously getting lost on the way to the springs. 

We finally made it to the springs. There are 4 springs - the first one is the hottest, and the most shallow. The third is the largest and deepest. The fourth was coldest and also small but right next to the waterfall that would lead to the longer trail by foot or short path by boat that's right on the river. I kinda wanted to go back via this path even though it was longer because one of the people that make this journey often said that it was flatter and more of the sand rather than up and down the mountains. However, there was no way I was going down that waterfall ladder. So we went back the same way we came (kinda, we didn't get lost nearly as much).  

We got back as the sun was setting but made it back just as it was getting dark, perfect timing. 

Final Day Six

On the last day I could not walk due to the previous two days of hiking. I could barely stand and was so wobbly it looked like I was drunk. So I took a boatload of medicine in hopes that I wouldn't look too drunk for them to let me board the plane home. It worked! I could walk again and got wobbly after it wore off, which thankfully seemed to be when I was in my dad's truck on the way home. 

On our way to the airport, we stopped for Habit Burger and my cheeseburger was nothing to write home about but the milkshake was good. It still wows me that there are slot machines all over the airport in Las Vegas. How interesting. 

Anyway this flight was truly empty. I'd say less than a dozen on the entire flight and I'm very surprised they didn't cancel it for too few passengers, but my grandmother said they must've needed the plane in Baltimore for the next flight. Additionally, this flight also landed an hour earlier than expected so that was lovely! 

Until next time,

xoxo,

Tasha