In Bruge…and shooting

by | Sep 8, 2026 | Air travel

I made it! All my connections worked. The SAS flight was a mixed bag. On the bright side, the food wasn’t bad, the seat was huge, and the flight seemed to go by quickly. The downsides included advertised WiFi that didn’t work at all (the pilot announced after takeoff that it would be out for the duration of the flight), the plane was old, things were breaking, and the food that was fine took forever to be served. Seriously. We boarded at 3:30, and we pulled back from the gate at 4:10. The seatbelt light was turned off around 4:30. They brought warm cashews and water at 4:45, and dinner wasn’t served until 8:30.

See what I mean about my seat being big! Widest Business class seat I have ever had.

I hadn’t been on a flight with outside cameras before. Takeoff and landing were very cool.

It was crazy and strange that it took four flight attendants that long to serve dinner. One of the weirdest things was a male FA who was in a regular FA uniform when we got on, then changed into chef whites to serve dinner. He brought a trolley up each aisle, offered a choice of appetizers, and then asked if you would like a salad, which he made while standing there. He did the same thing later with the entrée and dessert. It felt like they were pretending to make the food onboard. By the time they were finished and they shut off the lights so we could sleep, it was almost 10:00, and we were landing at the West Coast equivalent of 1:00 am.

I could stretch out completely and not even get my feet near the well they would go into when I was sleeping.

The other major disappointment was the entertainment. One fairly recent movie (the new Mandalorian film I’d already seen), and everything else was pretty much worthless. For an action film person like me, there were exactly two films in the “action” category. Good thing I had a couple of my favorites on my iPhone.

Basically, the plane (even though it’s an Airbus A350) was old. Just little things like shredded carpet, chipped tabletops, and an auxiliary engine that wouldn’t start, so they couldn’t turn on the AC until the big engines started up (that was kind of scary to hear). There was just other little stuff. None of this was enough to make me not fly SAS again, but it would be nice if they fixed the little things.

We did get off about half an hour late, and as I mentioned in my post on Sunday, what caused me the most anxiety was my plane change in Copenhagen. I had a close connection to start with, and since I had to go through EES for the first time (which meant being photographed and fingerprinted), I was really worried when we landed about half an hour late. Originally, I had one hour and forty-five minutes between flights, but by the time I got off the plane (I was literally the first person off), I was down to about an hour. So when I got to the line for EES, I asked the airport personnel monitoring the line what my time frame was. He told me, “About two hours.” He asked me when my next flight was, and when I said 55 minutes, he beckoned me to a different line, and I was through EES in less than 10 minutes. Talk about a happy guy!

I got on my Brussels flight in plenty of time, but I had to check my carry-on because they are very strict about allowing only one. They kept making the usual announcement that the flight was full and that extra bags needed to be checked. They even went so far as to say that if you didn’t check your bag and they had to force you, you would be charged for it, but not if you gave it to them willingly. What ticked me off was that the flight was half empty. The overhead bin above my row had my camera bag in it and NOTHING ELSE! So why did I have to check my bag?

Got into Brussels, and sure enough, it was beyond easy to stay in the airport and just take an elevator down three floors from baggage claim to the train station. I used the prepaid ticket I had purchased to jump on the train to Bruges.

I got to the hotel by 4:30, took a one-hour nap, had a quick shower and felt almost as good as new, then headed off to dinner with the entire group (including spouses of those who brought them). They’re a really nice group of people from all over. We have a married couple from the UK, one from Australia, quite a few from the Midwest, and four guys named Bob. I am the only one from anywhere west of Iowa or Indiana (whichever is further west), which really surprised me. Scott, our instructor, is from Tampa and Memo, his able assistant, lives in Canada. We even have a local guide who takes care of logistics, whose name is Andy. He is a Montreal Canadian married to a Bruges girl.

That about covers day two. After dinner, we met in a conference room to discuss the very long day I am experiencing today, but more about that in the next post. And some of my new photos.

“Tired, tired with nothing, tired with everything, tired with the world’s weight he had never chosen to bear.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald

Air to Get Me There

by | Sep 6, 2026 | Air travel

Today is the start of my solo trip. I am sitting in the dark in our living room at 5:15 am as I write this. I have been up since 3:15, and that’s been my plan all week: to slowly shift my internal time from Redmond to Brugge. My flight is at 3:55 this afternoon, so I won’t even be leaving the house until 10:30. Lots to do between now and then. Ride my bike, clean the kitchen, play Strands and Connections with Kathleen, walk the dog, and pack the last few things and a little more.

I am both looking forward to and a little anxious about the trip. While I fully realize that when we travel, I do most of the planning, Kathleen keeps me on course. She’s the one I look to when I want to know if I have forgotten anything. She notices when I have dropped something. She takes care of me in many little ways. I won’t have that on this trip. And as I told her yesterday, I remember from my old days of traveling alone for business that the worst part of traveling alone is having to drag everything with you when you do anything, like using a restroom or going into an airport shop.

Change of venue. After finishing up and kissing Keeley goodbye, Kathleen took me into Redmond, where I caught the brand-new light rail train to SeaTac. I wasn’t going to make Kathleen drive me all the way to the airport (a 90-minute round trip) without the carpool lane on the way home. And it’s Labor Day weekend, and the traffic I saw from the train looked pretty bad.

To take the train, we drive about 10 miles from the house to downtown Redmond. From there, it costs me exactly $1 to cross Lake Washington, transfer in Seattle, and head south to the airport. What a deal. The ride was good, but I am glad I boarded at the end of the line, since there were both a Mariners game and a Huskies game in Seattle. By the time we reached the International District station, where I changed trains to head south, it was packed.

As I write this, I am at the airport. It’s fun to fly an airline with only one daily flight from SEA. No lines. I walked up to the desk, asked a question, and headed to the lounge near the gate. I am flying Scandinavian Airlines, also known as SAS. We have never flown with them before, but they were the best option I could find. I have also never flown from here to Copenhagen, but that’s SAS’s home, so that’s where we are going.

This air travel experience wasn’t my usual one. Because Scott announced the workshop in mid-June, I had to buy my ticket three and a half months before the flight. Normally, I buy refundable tickets 11 months out, check them constantly, and re-ticket if the price drops. I did a bunch of searches in June, and this was the best price and schedule I could find. There were just a couple of things I didn’t like. First, the workshop ends with a late lunch on Friday, and our hotel rooms are good until Saturday morning. So I planned to fly back to Copenhagen on one of the first morning flights and then fly home. But if I did that on Saturday, the price went up by $1,200 compared to flying on Sunday. So I booked a hotel room near Copenhagen Airport, and I will fly up from Brussels on Saturday, spend the night, and come home a week from today.

The other thing I was unhappy about was that SAS wanted $480 for me to pick my seat before the flight. I passed on that because I am in business class, and how bad can it be? There are no middle seats. When I checked in yesterday, I found that I had been assigned a single-side window seat in row nine. Since row nine is the last row in business class, I will get off first. I am thrilled with that because I have a one-hour and 45-minute connection in Copenhagen. That seems like a long time, but I haven’t been to Europe since the new EES (Entry/Exit System) was instituted, which means that when I land in Copenhagen, I have to go through that process, including having my fingerprints scanned and my picture taken. If you have not entered the EU since it started, you will need to do that next time you go.

I have read online that the Danish are better at this than most other countries because their airport is smaller and they are more efficient. We have a WhatsApp text thread, and the people who flew in today and yesterday flew nonstop into Brussels from the US East Coast. Their wait time for EES was more than two hours. I won’t have to do that at all because I will have cleared it all in Denmark.

I really don’t want to miss my Brussels flight because we have a class dinner tomorrow night at 6:30 to kick off the class, and I would hate to miss it. After I land in Brussels, I have to take a train for about 70 minutes to Bruges. (BTW: It has been determined that it can be spelled Bruges or Brugges. I will try to stick to Bruges because my Mac has a limited number of Gs.) I already have my train ticket, and the station is on the airport’s lower level, so I should be OK.

I will have a full report for you tomorrow on how the flights went, maybe with pictures, since I have never flown SAS before. Their business class looks very nice in all the videos I’ve seen on YouTube. It will also be my first time flying the Airbus A350 (the equivalent of the 787), and I love flying on a new plane and a new airline. Always something to report on.

You can’t buy happiness, but you can buy plane tickets, which is kind of the same thing.”  —Rick Steves

We Make It To Broadway

by | May 2, 2026 | Uncategorized

Editor's Note: This will not be my best post ever due to some really ugly tech support problems that took more than an hour to fix. I want to get it online before we head out to breakfast. I promise to do better.

Micheal directing us to our "luxury motor coach"

This is going to be tough. Or as I told Kathleen last night, “I need a sea day.” We’ve had only one full day, and I’m exhausted. I don’t have a lot of time to write and process photos to get this out to all of you. I would give you the entire schedule for yesterday, but that’s for the next post. This one is just to tell you the story of getting there: our bus pickup, our flight, our “luxury motor coach” into Manhattan, and an amazing dinner at Tony’s DiNapoli with some great friends.

Thursday morning at 4:30 am, we gave Keeley her final kisses and pets (she is staying at home with Kathleen’s daughter Michelle), and we set off for Trilogy’s clubhouse, where we would be met by two 14-passenger Sprinter vans I had arranged. They would whisk 21 of us off to SeaTac International Airport. (A quick note for regular readers: I know I promised Kathleen that after arranging all those buses in Scotland pre-pandemic, I would never do that again… but these were vans, not buses ??).

To get this all to work out, we had to find a way to get to the Clubhouse (about half a mile away for us, but 3-4 miles for others—Trilogy is a big place) and not leave our car in Trilogy’s woefully inadequate parking lot for an entire week. Some people actually had friends who liked them enough to get up out of bed and drive them there at that ungodly hour. Others were going to leave our car in the lot, and friends would pick it up later in the day. We had planned to do this, but our friends who were going to do our pick up got called away, and we got really lucky when a friend who is on the trip with us and lives just five houses away from the clubhouse let us park our car in her garage. Her son had her car, so there was room in her immaculate and well-organized garage for our car. We can’t thank her enough.

I had told everyone the vans would be there at 4:30 and that we would leave without them at 4:50. So I dropped Kathleen off at the clubhouse, where we found a BUNCH of people already there before 4:30, loading the vans. We got our luggage into the van, and I drove the short distance to where we would leave the car, then walked back to check off everyone on my van list and make sure we had everyone who had signed up to go with us. The only problem was that when I got back, one of the vans I had left for the airport was gone, and I had no idea who was in it. At this point, it’s only 4:40, and our driver wanted to leave, but I didn’t want to leave anyone behind since I had said we would wait until 4:50. But he told me that the other van had 10 people and we had 11, so I told him to go ahead, hoping and praying that we were not leaving anyone. Thankfully, everyone had been right on time (or early), and we all got there, WHEW!

The airport was far better than we expected. Kathleen and I hadn’t flown since we went to Africa last July (we drove to our October cruise), and SeaTac had made outstanding improvements to its security lines. We were through and on our way to the Alaska Air FC lounge in no time, where we hung out until we were called (right on time) to board. The flight was smooth, and since we had left early, we arrived at JFK in NYC half an hour early. Of course, that meant there was still a plane at our gate, so we sat on the tarmac for 30 minutes. I wish they would figure this out. Why get us there early just to sit on the plane and wait? Eventually, we got off the plane and headed to baggage claim. Alaska Air had done a great job with all our luggage, and I am pretty sure not a single person in our group lost a suitcase.

JFK is a BIG airport, but when we had our bags, Mike (one of our superb guides from Break-Away tours) was waiting to meet us. He got us out and onto our “luxury motor coach,” and we were off into the city. With the traffic, it took us a little more than an hour to get to our Manhattan hotel, but another one of our excellent guides, Hardy, kept us entertained with outstanding information about our drive and NYC in general. Even though Kathleen and I have been here numerous times before, I learned a lot. He would be our main guide for the week, and we are still (after two days) thrilled to have him.

We are staying at the Westin Times Square. It’s a very nice hotel, just about a block from Times Square. But Break-Away uses it because we can walk just about anywhere. Once we arrived and got settled in, we all met in the lobby to walk to a wonderful Italian restaurant, We walked right through Times Square to get there and Tony’s Di Napoli. This place is an institution and has been around since the fifties (just like us ?). They serve you a LOT OF ITALIAN FOOD, and they serve it family style. They bring it to your table on huge platters, and you pass it around. It was just like grandma used to make. Not gourmet, but delicious. Top that off with a nice Chianti and cannoli for dessert, and it was a perfect way to start the trip.

I only had two tiny quibbles about Tony’s. We were seated in a basement dining room, and the lighting for taking photos was terrible, as you will see in my photos. Thankfully, there are only a few of them. I know I could have taken them with my phone and gotten slightly better results, but I wanted the actual feel of the room. The other thing that was a pain was the noise. This may have been the nosiest restaurant I have ever been in. It was a legacy building, and all the walls, ceilings, and floors were hard materials, which meant that with our party and about 50 other people down there, it was LOUD! You pretty much had to yell to be heard by the person sitting next to you, which only made the room EVEN LOUDER! But it was a delicious dinner, and no one left hungry for want of great food. It is almost sad how much we left on the serving platters. After dinner was over (around 10:30 NYC time), we took a short three-block walk back to the Westin and fell fast asleep.

Here are my photos of our the dinner at Tony's. As you can see, it was kinda dark down there. Don't forget, you can click them to enlarge them.

For our first time traveling with 41 people (we only had 21 in the vans—the rest had flown in early or arranged their own transportation to the airport), things were going very smoothly. More tomorrow about our first full day, which about killed us (in a good way). I should also mention that even though we regularly travel with two or four other people, traveling with 41 is really interesting in one big way. We know these folks from living in the same community, and we are all members of the Travel Club. But that doesn’t mean I know every name (because I am president and have a big mouth, they all know me ?). When we first moved into Trilogy, a neighbor who had known us before told us she had been on a Travel Club trip, and no one remembered her name to say good morning or good evening, or anything to her. I kind of vowed that this trip would not be that way for anyone. So I put together a PDF of photos of the entire group with names so I could remember who was who. Two days in, I am doing pretty well, and thankfully, Break-Away had some really great name tags for us, which really helps as well.

That's it for day 1. Yesterday was our first full day, and I hope I get a chance to write it up tomorrow. I certainly took lots more photos as we visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lincoln Center, had dinner at Sardi's and saw an amazing Broadway show—Operation Mincemeat. See you then.

There's nothing that can match Broadway for stature and dignity.   —Sammy Davis, Jr.

 

“Let Me Sum Up”

by | Jul 27, 2025 | Uncategorized

If you, (like my good buddy Jayesh and I) are Princess Bride fans, you know that my headline is a quote from the amazing Inigo Montoya. But that’s how I usually begin my final post about a trip.

This trip was a good one. Before we went, everyone told us it was “the trip of a lifetime,” or “the best trip we ever took.” To be totally honest, it is one of the best trips, but not THE best. It does make the top five, but it’s not number one. For me, that spot is still held by our voyage to the Galapagos on Celebrity’s Flora. Let me explain. But not before I give you my favorite African Sunset photo to break up all the text.

The things we loved

The lodging was amazing in its own way. We have never stayed in such wonderful accommodations. Starting with the only one we booked ourselves (The Radisson Red on our first night in Cape Town) to the incredible game lodges at Tintswalo. All of them were great. Two of them had rooms larger than my first apartment (The Cape Grace in Cape Town and the Fairlawn Boutique Hotel and Spa in Johannesburg). The Victoria Falls hotel was just too colonial for me. Too much of a reminder of the way the European/Western world has exploited much of Africa and continues to do so monetarily today. And eating cold food because they have no indoor restaurant is just wrong.

The lodges at Tintswalo Safari Lodge may have been bigger than my first house. But I found them dark and way too isolated. Our room onboard the Zambezi Queen was fine. A little small, but just fine. And they need either doors that lock from the outside or larger safes, along with new and higher furniture in the common areas. When you have to struggle to get out of a couch, that couch needs to go ?.

One more thing about the lodging. It is drop-dead the finest in South Africa. If you visit the websites for the Cape Grace, Victoria Falls Hotel, Fairlawn, or Tintswalo, you will find that all charge around $1200 per night for a room similar to the one we had. To be honest, the best bed I slept on the entire trip was at the Radisson Red in Cape Town. Certainly, the service at the other hotels was amazing, but we also loved the service at the Red and would have been just fine staying there at $165 per night. However, if you want the best lodging in Southern Africa, this is the trip for you.

The food was fine with some amazing standouts. The Spiced Eggs I had for breakfast three days in a row at the Cape Grace in Cape Town were easily one of my favorite dishes ever. Our dinner at Marble in Johannesburg was delicious and a great dining experience. We are glad Beverleigh talked us into keeping our reservation. A few of the dishes at Tintswalo were so good I begged for the recipes, and happily, I have all four that I loved.

This trip included some once-in-a-lifetime experiences. My favorite things we did included our helicopter ride over Victoria Falls (I was too busy being amazed to worry about being in a helicopter). Our morning game drives at Tintswalo (all but one of the evening drives were a bust) and the excellent lectures we heard. The one on the boat in the Zambezi River about Dr. Livingston was especially enjoyable. The ongoing discussion of the historical significance of the mining industry in Johannesburg remains thought-provoking. Our day in the wine country with Gen was incredibly informative in many ways, not just about wine but also about South Africa.

But my drop-dead favorite experience of the entire trip was my solo (with only Gibson driving the boat) “birdwatching” trip on the Chobe River at the crack of dawn. As a photographer, that one was special. Here’s my favorite photo from that day.

I got some great photos. A significant part of why I travel is for the photography. It always makes me happy on a trip when I get great photos that I can come back and be proud of, but Southern Africa does have its photographic challenges.

I would guess that if you asked our wonderful fellow travelers who finished the trip with us at Tintswalo what their favorite segment of the trip was, they would say it was our three days at Tintswalo. For me, that was maybe my third favorite place.

It took me a few days at home working on photos to figure out why. As I compiled my 100 favorite photos from the entire trip (for the record, I took more than 8,000 pictures), I noticed something. The area around Kruger Park and Tintswalo that we visited for those three days was monotone. Everything was brown. Everything blended together.

It didn’t help that throughout our entire stay at Tintswalo, I felt rushed. Part of that feeling is due to my expectations. I thought there would be more free time. Knowing what I know now, I would have skipped all the evening game drives except the first one. Perhaps this is related to how jaded I became about the animals by the end of the trip. I am not sure how many elephants and hippos we saw, but it must have been in the thousands, especially if you include Cape buffalo. And don’t even think about counting the impalas ?.

The one major thing we didn’t like

There is a reason we probably would not do this trip again. And this is just me. I am sure that the others were fine with it, but for us, this trip is not something we would do over. Airports and airplanes are our least favorite part of travel. It would not be an exaggeration for me to say that they are the one part of traveling that I despise. And on this trip, to see everything, you have to spend a lot of time in airports and on airplanes. When I was out for my walk with Keeley (our dog) yesterday, I suddenly realized that was the problem (for us) with this trip. So when I got home, I added up our time in airports and on planes to make this trip happen. Not counting the time it took to travel to and from the airports, we spent 75.5 hours either waiting in an airport for a flight, on the flight, getting through passport control and customs after a flight or clearing it before one. That’s hell. If I had added it up before we booked the trip, we might not have gone. You don’t realize that you can easily lose entire days at airports and on flights.

Please don’t misunderstand me, we had a great time, but when I realized how much time we spent centered on flying, it blew me away. Just under one-fourth of the entire trip was spent getting to and flying on airplanes. Sadly, I don’t know how else we could have seen everything we did in that short amount of time, but until they invent the Star Trek transporter, I don’t plan on doing another trip like that ?.

As many of you know, Kathleen and I have cruised extensively. We have always said that one of the best parts of cruising is the fact that you only have to unpack once, and your hotel moves you around for a week. While that may have been true on the Chobe River, we never really unpacked anywhere. Which also tells you that we are not the type of travelers who like living out of a suitcase. And dragging two medium-sized suitcases, one carry-on, my backpack with camera and laptop, as well as Kathleen’s backpack, was not fun. I am always envious of people like our new friends, AJ and Diane, who can pack everything they need for an 18-day vacation into two large carry-ons. One pair of my shoes would fill that backpack. And this vacation was all about layering. We needed clothes for hot weather and clothes for cold weather. And there was no real laundry service or opportunity until we got to Tintswalo. Plus, in a few places (like Johannesburg), we couldn’t send any out because we weren’t there long enough for it to come back before we left.

This vacation was just too much moving from point A to point B. We loved all points A, B, C, D and E, but getting there was no fun.

The absolute best thing about the entire trip

Hands down, it was the proud people of Southern Africa. I don’t think we met a single person who lived there who wasn’t trying to be the best they could be, even though they may have been living through horrible circumstances. The service was hands down the best we have ever received in all our travels, and all were supplied with smiles and cheerful voices.

And the openness was amazing. The willingness to discuss their countries, how they felt about what was going on in their country and the world. They had opinions both good and bad, but they expressed them with calmness and thought. They answered my tough questions and made me want to know more about the region and their country. To see the faces of our Namibian crew on the Zambezi Queen singing their national anthem for us brought a tear to my eye. But hearing from a South African that their government still has some ugly remnants of apartheid made me mad as hell. And seeing the poverty of Soweto and the wealth of natural resources, leaving the country to make a profit for those outside of it, left me seething. But as my new friend AJ told me (a very wise man), this is a generational thing that won’t change overnight. But it does need to change.

People that stood out and were amazing included the incredible Delia (this trip could not happen without her), the wine expert Gen, who gave me a five-hour education and contributed to my knowledge of her country, my birdwatching buddy Gibson, who amazed me with his knowledge of the birds, animals and fauna of the Chobe river. And he speaks 11 languages and loves his work—you can tell. Bernard, who runs the Zambezi Queen, is a great leader and so proud of his country, Namibia. Our driver (it pains me that I did not find out his name) at the Fairlawns, who had frank discussions with us on our drives. Beverleigh, who shared her perspective on her country and its foibles during one of the best dinner discussions I have had during our travels. Every single person we met at the Kliptown Youth Program in Soweto, but especially Thando Bezana. Their spirit is indomitable. They are succeeding where others have failed. They truly make a difference. Perhaps they are the beginning of that generational change that AJ discussed.

And speaking of AJ, we met and traveled with some really great folks. We missed our new friends Lorraine, Betty and Dennis at Tintswalo when they took the train as their end-of-trip excursion. Our final 12 at Tintswalo were the heart and soul of our group. AJ and Diane (who we hope to see again in the Bay Area). They did a great job of tempering my enthusiasm with their well-thought-out views. I always gravitate to people like that because they are what I need to slow me down and get me to think. The two Marinas were a total hoot. M-1 was always fun and M-2 just totally cracked us up. Riding in the back of the safari truck with her made the afternoon game drive a bunch more fun. Vicky, David, Sonnet and Fred were great people to be around, and just listening to Nancy‘s tales and Rich’s stories of cooking for her still brings a smile to my face. Look in the dictionary under “picky eater” if you want to see what Nancy looks like ?.

That about does it. We had a great time, we wish we had flown less and been able to spend more time seeing things, but Delia made it possible for us to get through airports without wanting to jump off a cliff. Thanks for coming along. Watch this space in October when the October Bunch does Portland and a Columbia River cruise.

I want to leave you with a photo that kind of sums up the end of things. I saved it for just this spot. It’s the end. Enjoy.

The only man I envy is the man who has not yet been to Africa – for he has so much to look forward to. – Richard Mullin

On to Tintswalo

by | Jul 23, 2025 | Uncategorized

Our final stop on our African odyssey was Tintswalo Game Lodge, situated in the Manyeleti Nature Reserve, directly adjacent to the world-renowned Kruger National Park. That means LOTS MORE ANIMALS!

After our night of discussion in Johannesburg, we were off to the airport early in the morning for our shortest flight of the trip to Hoedspruit, South Africa, which is the home of Eastgate airport—the gateway to Kruger National Park. It was a very short flight on Airlink (which seems to be the go-to airline for getting around within Africa). They are a very nice airline that primarily flies smaller jets (four seats to a row—we flew all our flights with them in Embraer E-90s, which we liked.) This flight was the shortest flight we have ever taken. We were in the air for less than an hour. If you don’t count the time spent taxing on runways, it’s around 35 minutes. It’s a short flight.

One funny thing did happen on the flight. They actually serve food on these very short flights—to everyone, even those in the cheap seats. On the way to Hoedspruit, the flight attendant comes on and says, “We will shortly be coming around with drink service…and your choice of a cheese bagel or (are you ready for this?) a Krispy Kreme donut. Seriously. When he said it, the plane erupted in a combination of cheers and laughter. Sure enough, they came down the aisle and handed you a tiny box with a single Krispy Kreme donut inside. Just cracked me up.

I should mention here that when we left Johannesburg, we also left behind the amazing Delia, our guide through the entire trip. It was a sad parting, marked by lots of hugs. She is a gem among travel guides and humans. I would not have wanted to do this trip without her. She would not need to accompany us to Tintswalo, as we would be completely under the lodge’s care while there.

We were met at the airport by Welsent, our driver. (Isn’t that a great name for a driver that was sent to pick you up??)  After about an hour’s drive, we arrived at Tintswalo. If you have been following this entire trip, you know we have had some amazing lodging experiences, and this would pretty much be the topper. Tintswalo is not a hotel but a beautiful main lodge connected by raised boardwalks to six individual lodges, each housing one or two people. Walking in is an experience you’ll never forget.

Not because the front door looks like this, but because you walk through to the deck that sits behind the door, and you see this. (Full disclosure, I stole the photo above from the lodge because I was not happy with any of mine.)

Just outside the back door of the lodge were (at that time) probably 8-10 elephants. The lodge leaves a hose hanging from a tree and turns it on in the afternoons. If you would like to see these elephants in person, Tintswalo has a webcam pointed directly at this spot 24/7. You have to figure out what time noon is in South Africa because they are pretty much just there in the afternoons. You can check it out by clicking here.

Elephants come and wiggle their way (in one case, a young male bullied his way) to get a drink from the hose and just generally frolic around under the running water. If you want a site to greet you when you arrive at a lodge; this one tops them all. At this point in the trip, I thought I had seen all the elephants I could ever want to see when we were in Chobe, but I guess that wasn’t true. This small herd would return almost every day we were there, along with other animals that walked through, including Cape buffalo, impalas, wildebeests, and others.

During our stay, we would eat out on this deck numerous times. I would sit and work on photos and write posts while the elephants drank, and other animals walked by. It could be very distracting.

I’d like to show you around, so here are some photos I took upon arrival with both my Nikon and my iPhone. Enjoy.

Here we are on the deck with the elephants taking an ussie.
Friends meeting the Tintswalo elephants.
Lunch was set for us on arrival.
The menu. I am going to learn how to make bobotie. It was delicious.
Still looking at the elephants
And still more.
We meet Michaela, the general manager. She has to be younger than our kids.
And more of the elephants posing with an old prospector. Dagnabit!
Here’s the hose coming down. They would catch water in their trunks.
More shots outdoors.
The living room of the main lodge.
Looking the other way in the living room.
The dining room in the main lodge is beautiful.
We can’t stop watching the elephants.
I mean if you had elephants at lunch…
You would look at them too…
Wouldn’t you.
They are constant companions in the afternoons.

We sat down to lunch and when we were done, it was time to see our private lodges. Each was named after a famous African explorer. We were staying in Speke named after John Hanning Speke. I love a good, stupid joke, so if someone called on the phone, I would just say, “Speak,” because that’s how his name is pronounced. ?

Here are a few pics I took of the path leading to our lodge and the inside as well. One thing to know about the path. You were not allowed to use it at night without calling the Night Porter. He would sit up all night in the main lodge, and when you called, he would come down and get you to bring you to the main lodge. The main reason for this was that elephants could walk right up to the walkway. When we arrived on the first day, they were fixing an electric fence that a rogue elephant had knocked down the night before. On our last morning there, the staff informed us that the same elephant had returned the night before, and they had to rouse the staff who scared it off by beating pots and pans. However, it still managed to damage more of the fence and a couple of trees. The night porter became our friend when he removed what we thought was a HUGE spider from our bathroom.

It was quite aways to the main lodge
Leaving the main lodge on the walkway.
There were three small lodges in each direction. You often saw wildlife just off the walkway.
Inside our lodge, this was our view from the bed. Animals would walk by all the time.
Our own plunge poll.
The bathroom. You can see the toilet closet that had an open window to the animals. The shower was the same way.
This guy came to visit us in the bathroom. He was about the size of my fist. We called the Night Porter and he dealt with it.

I was going to delve deeper into the rest of the first day, but this post is already quite lengthy. Our first major activity was going on a game drive. More about that in my next post. Keep a sharp eye open for it coming soon.

In Africa, you have space…there is a profound sense of space here, space and sky.  – Thabo Mbeki