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Who would have thought Bulgaristan would have had one of the most interesting McDonald’s menus we’ve encountered so far?  Not me!

We only had two days in Sofia, the capital, so we made sure to hit McDonald’s for dinner the night we arrived.  We saw so many things on the menu we wanted to try that we went back again the next day.  Because this is a double-shot of food sampling, it’s a slightly longer-than-normal video.

Also, this is where we learn that Oksana has been lying to us!  After I turned off the camera, she made a face and said she really didn’t like the Zorba.

“What?!” I asked.  “Why  didn’t you say that on camera?”

“I don’t know…” she replied.

We ended up swapping burgers, so I didn’t even get to eat my McMenu Shrimp Lemon Burger!  I have to admit, too, that the Zorba does whatever the opposite of “grows on you” is.  By the end, I had to force myself to eat the last bite.  Oksana was right on one point: That cheese was really salty!

And don’t worry.  Oksana has since vowed to be more honest on camera.  Let’s hope she doesn’t start doing spit-takes!

Toward the end of our stay in Egypt, we began looking for a way to reach Eastern Europe.  Our plan had always been to start somewhere around Turkey and work our way north.  There were many routes we could take, some of which were easily discarded due to visa costs.  Even so, we looked forward to visiting Bulgaria, Moldova, Romania, Ukraine, Poland, and the Baltic States of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia before entering Russia.

But before all of that, we had to find our way to Turkey.  Overland from Jordan was simply not an option, not with the unrest in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon.  We thought for sure we could find a cruise ship or ferry or something out of Israel, but that turned out to be next to impossible.  When all was said and done, we simply purchased a flight from Tel Aviv to Istanbul.  Simple, but spendy.

Because we lingered in Africa, we were in a rush by the time we got to Israel.  I would have enjoyed having a week or more to visit historical sites like Bethlehem, Jerusalem, and the Jordan River, but by the time we crossed the border, we had barely 24 hours before our flight out.

Fortunately, our friend, Michal, was living in Tel Aviv and offered to show us around.  We packed quite a bit into that day and a half and, with her there to answer my questions, we learned a lot about the country, too.

We spoke a lot about geopolitics – I was very curious about how Israelis see themselves, how they fit in in the Middle East, and how religion plays a role in their country’s politics.  I’m not going to get into that here.  I know I wouldn’t be able to do our conversations justice, but furthermore, I didn’t get a chance to talk with anyone else.  While very informative, hers was only one Israeli’s opinion.

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Tanzania started off bad for us and then went downhill from there.

It all began with what was supposed to be a 27-hour bus ride from Lusaka, in the middle of Zambia, to Dar es Salaam, on the Tanzanian coast.  We knew it would be a nightmare, but convinced ourselves that doing it all at once would be better than trying to find a place to spend the night somewhere along the way.  That was probably a mistake.  Due to a couple breakdowns and a few of those who-knows-why bus stops in the middle of nowhere, our 27-hour bus ride turned into a 34-hour one.  That may not seem like much of a difference, but just try to imagine spending an extra work-day on a hot, sweaty bus after you’ve already spent a day and a night in the same seat.

When we finally reached Dar es Salaam, we missed our stop at the main bus terminal.  Fortunately, the next stop wasn’t too far along and even though it was after 1am, we managed to find a taxi driver who was willing to take us to a hotel… for just three times the normal price.  Of course, the hotel we’d picked from our guidebook was full.  Our second choice was also full, but the night manager said we could have one room as long as we vacated it before 8am.  After showers, that left us with barely five hours for sleep, but we took it.

The next day, we looked around Dar es Salaam and decided that there wasn’t much for us there.  Our plan, as it so often does, changed.  We opted to spend our time in on the island of Zanzibar, instead.  If you’ve been reading along, you’ll remember that’s where we were mugged at machete-point.

If you haven’t read our story about getting mugged at machete-point on the beach in Zanzibar, you totally should.  It has a few more details about life in Tanzania and Zanzibar, plus I promise that it’s a much more interesting and entertaining than this blog post!

The whole reason for going to Tanzania was to climb Kilimanjaro and we had to back out of that plan because it was just too expensive.  Thinking back, I wish we had at least left the coast to see the mountain.  We could have gone on another safari, this time in the Serengeti, and seen some of the big herds migrating.  We could have checked out the Ngorongoro Crater, or even climbed one of the lesser peaks in the area.  Lots of regrets, lots of reasons to go back.

In all, our time in Tanzania amounted to just 18 days.  We left with some disappointing memories, but also some great stories.

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The great thing about traveling around the world for a year without a plan is that you can make it us as you go.  On our first night in South Africa, I found myself flipping through a National Geographic that was left on a coffee table at our backpackers.  There was a feature on the Okavango Delta, with beautiful photos of elephants pushing through marshy waters at sunset.  That’s something I’d like to see, I thought.

The Okavango Delta is in Botswana, huh?  Oh, and hey, look at the map!  Botswana is right next door to South Africa!  That’s pretty much exactly how we decided to go.

For a country right next door to South Africa, Botswana is very much a different place.  Parts of it matched up exactly with my preconceptions of what an African country would be like (the bus system, the sounds of the spoken languages) and some of it surprised me (3G cellular service, safety.)

A few days before we were set to leave South Africa, we met a couple Canadian girls in Pretoria that were volunteering in Gaborone, the capital of Botswana, for a few months (Hi, Brandy! Hi, Angela!)  They offered to let us stay with them at their volunteer house for a couple nights, which was awesome for a number of reasons, not least of which being that we had a couple unofficial guides that had already figured out many of the ins and outs of Botswana society.  Their initial help with things like the bus rank were invaluable.

The Bus Rank

When we saw the bus rank for the first time, I thought, now we’re in Africa!

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