A friend of mine is the adventure type if you know what I mean. He was a paratrooper in the military, he dives as often as he can, not the normal dives though, noo as deep as possible, and preferably around sharks, now lately he has started with adventure racing, you know the kind you see on Discovery channel...echo challenge or whatever the most famous one is called.
Anyway, I met this guy in lawschool, and a couple of years ago while we were still in school he started with various adventure travels. Two years ago he skied from Canada to the north pole (that is kinda cool in more ways than one), and his girlfriend flew out there to meet him (russian helicopter) and they got engaged there on the north pool (now that is
really cool).
ANYWAY, back in lawschool, one summer he and a friend of his decided to go backpacking in Africa. He decided to take a break from the studies, and he and his friend decided to walk from Cape Town up to Kenya (yeah, he isnt really right in the head my friend
)
So they get all the gear they need for the walk, they fly down to Cape Town and they get a room in a really first class hotel. Not some cheapo place in the slums, no, a really first class hotel in a really classy area. Anyway, my friend and his friend have been making the final preparations for the trip. The plan is to take the bus to the town limit and start walking from there. They have been checking the closest bus stop to see when the morning bus departs, and they are walking back to the hotel (the really nice one in the really classy neighbourhood) when from an alley 10-15 locals come running, and quicly surround my friend and his friend.
They dont say much, one of them gestures towards the watches and mobile phones etc. Now this is happening around 1800 local time, in the middle of the street in a "good" neighbourhood. When my friend and his friend has dropped their wallets and stuff, one of the bandits starts to look around, then he pulls out this machete, and a couple of other bandits pull out some knives. My friend and his friend panics, and decides to make a dash for it, so they both run for their lifes, and manages to get away from the bandits.
They make it to the hotel which is like 50 meters away. They call the cops, and some south african detective comes to the hotel. He tells them how lucky they are to be alive, that there had been something like 15 tourists killed in the last month etc etc. My friend tells him about their plans to walk across South Africa to Kenya and the detective looks at him as if he was mongolid. He said something like, "uh, you guys would be dead within a couple of hours." So my friend and his friend decided to skip walking across South Africa, and decided to start at the border to Botswana instead.
Anyway, he has lots of great stories from that trip.
