I'm Baaaaack!

After a ridiculously long journey (about 34 hours door to door) I made it back to the good old USofA. It was a good trip - nothing really spectacular, but consistently good. Over the next few days I'll post some pictures and videos, but here's a breakdown of the group that I was with (written on the plane home):

I spent the majority of my trip traveling with 4 travel agents - here's a breakdown of my companions for most of my time away:

One woman is in her early forties and we were the last two people at the bar every single stop along the way, another woman is a little older and also cool; not exactly a big drinker but real fun and a good sense of humor. These were the cool people on the trip...

One Asian woman, who is the top salesperson at her company, is ridicurous (you heard me right Donna Chang). I don't know if she pretends to be dumb and is just having fun with the rest of humanity or if she's really slow... By far her best line of the trip was at one of the elephant sightings. We're in the safari vehicle, within 10 feet of about a dozen elephants. She taps our guide on the shoulder and points to one of the larger males of the group and asks, "is the elephant big?". Bitch, there's a two ton animal less then 5 yards from you and you need to ask if the elephant is big!

The real winner of the trip was the only male traveling with me for the last 10 days - a 22 year old Chinese guy from Toronto. There's no way to explain him so I'll just give 4  quick examples of this dweeb:

1) We're sitting at camp in Zimbabwe drinking and looking out at the water hole. He jumps up and goes "Oh my god!" - this 'oh my god' was on the level of my oh my god following the Tyree catch in the super bowl, I thought he just saw a lion kill an impala or something. The other 4 of us go what? what do you see? His reply (in the gayest high pitched voice): do you see that baboon? I've never seen a baboon drinking before. Awww.

2) while on a game drive with everyone he says 'how cute are you' while taking a picture of a baby elephant. I must admit it was cute but you don't talk to a picture of an animal. Ever. Especially like that.

3) during dinner at The Boma a face painter comes around - puts an elephant on one of the ladies, a giraffe on another then starts to work on this guy. He stops her after one stroke and says "can I please have a honey badger?". A honey badger? Really? The face painter just looked at him like 'are you fucking kidding me you toolbox?'. She put a zebra on his face...

4) we were up pretty late at the bar on the train and I throw out the favorite movie of all time question. His response (in this order): District 9, Toy Story 3, Lion King. This is a 22 year old male!!! I actually laughed because I thought he was kidding, but after a moment it was clear that he wasn't. Cue awkward silence...