Getting around

I've been getting prickly lately at how hard it is to get anywhere without a car in this city. Not only is this a sprawling city with a lot of really good stuff in the suburbs (e.g. mountains, beaches, forests), but there are definitely places a person shouldn't be on foot after a certain time of day. Or before it. I'm conscious of being a small female more than I ever was in the States. As one friend put it, "You're at the abused end of the food chain." I get indignant and then call a cab. I think I know every cab driver in town, at this point.

I'm in the process of hunting down a used bike that I could purchase and then sell before I leave. This isn't the best city for biking, and I definitely yearn for ANYTHING like Madison's trails and bike lanes and pissed-off-but-used-to-it drivers, but a bike would widen my range for solitary wandering. Not to mention slow the inevitable hemorrhaging of my bank account.

Around Thanksgiving, I'm going to Victoria Falls via Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia with my roommate and whoever else we can find. 14 days overland, camping and driving in an enormous 4X4 with 20 fellow travelers. It'll be a real honest-to-goodness-and-terribly-colonialist budget safari. I'm in the process of researching things to do on the way to Swakopmund, since we're leaving a few days early to allow a slow jog up the coast. I'm pretty excited.