After completing my last trip entry (except for my review), I came across some videos that may interest you. Random videos that I took along the way, which I didn’t post on the day after I took them due to restrictions on uploading. The first bunch is from the Chobe River part of our trip. Make sure to watch this one until the end. The little guy is really cute.
Here’s an elephant taking a mud bath. It was hilarious, even though some of the time we wondered if he would be able to pick himself up out of the muck.
Later the same afternoon, we saw a long line of elephants heading our way.
They just kept coming and coming.
This one was taken the next day when we visited Chobe National Park. The elephant at the start had come up to our vehicle and then veered off at the last minute. I filmed him walking away, and then someone whispered, “You should turn around.” YIKES!
While in Chobe National Park, we saw this pride of lions. Very quick video.
That covers our time on the Zambezi Queen. Here are a few from after that. The first is from the Kliptown Youth Program we visited in Johannesburg. These boys were such excellent dancers, I had to share their performance with you.
Now it’s off to Tintswalo Safari Lodge with the last few animal videos I got. Up first is an example of what it’s like to ride in the back of one of these vehicles. I was trying to film the mom and baby rhino we had found. This shows how hard it is to hold anything, let alone a camera, when your driver is going flat out to keep up with animals.
Finally, we caught up, and our driver was able to slow down and get me a better shot of the actual rhinos.
I thought I would give you one last video showing you what a nighttime safari looks like. I’m not sure about you, but I have no idea how our tracker/spotter can see anything while going that fast. This might be the reason we never found anything after dark.
That’s it! I will be back tomorrow with the final summary and review of the trip. Would we do it again? Did we like the AmaWaterways experience? How was the food? What did we really dislike about the entire trip? What did we love? Come back tomorrow and find out.
Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up, it knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn’t matter whether you’re the lion or a gazelle – when the sun comes up, you’d better be running. – African Proverb
The next morning, we woke up in the Cape Grace hotel, grabbed a very early breakfast and headed to the airport for our flight to Victoria Falls airport in Zimbabwe. The flights went pretty well, except that Kathleen and I couldn’t sit together. Our wonderful tour organizer, Delia, had seen how tall I was and got me an exit row. That was fine, but when the gate agents saw Kathleen roll up in a wheelchair, they moved her back in the plane instead and didn’t move me as well.
Our flight in an Embraer 190 (one of our favorite planes) was a good one. It takes about 2.5 hours to get from Cape Town to Victoria Falls Airport. We had to go through passport control to check out of South Africa. Then, when we arrived in Zimbabwe (where the Victoria Falls airport is), we had to clear customs there. We then boarded a bus and drove for about 90 minutes to the Botswana border, where we had to check out of Zimbabwe and then drive a short distance to check into Botswana (by a short distance, I mean about 100 feet). Then we drove another 45 minutes and arrived at the dock where we would catch the smaller boat that would take us to the Zambezi Queen. But first, we had to pass the Queen (on the river) and go to the Namibian border. We had to then get off the small boats and walk inland about half a mile in order to check into Namibia (because legally, the Zambezi Queen is in Namibia). After walking about a mile in the very hot sun, we got back on the boat and went back to the Zambezi Queen. Whew! From the time we landed in Zimbabwe, this whole process took us about 3 hours. Just crazy.
And the really crazy thing is that we had to do it all over again anytime we left the ship. I have now done that hike from the shoreline to the Namibian border station at least six times. Might be eight. Luckily, they did not make Kathleen do the walk. I could sign in for both of us. It is also expensive, and there are a LOT of forms to fill out. We had done our Namibian e-visas before we left, so that helped a little. Thank goodness we had Delia to tell us what to do to satisfy all the legal requirements.
Now the good stuff. Once we got on the small boat to head for the Namibian border, we realized that we were definitely in Africa. Our driver, a wonderful man named Gibson, would stop if it looked like there was something to see. Usually, there was A LOT to see. So, here are some pics. Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping. And PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…
The Chobe River was jammed with boats.
We saw nice game lodges…
…as we were going towards Namibia.
And some interesting excursion boats.
This guy got his own boat. Something I would experience later in the week.
Look! Elephants!
Up close elephants.
There are more elephants in Chobe National Park than in most of the rest of Africa.
I would say they are very friendly but I am just not sure.
This kid has lens that costs more than my camera and lens combined.
This was a swallow’s nest inside the small boat we were on.
We can see the Zambezi Queen
She sure looked good.
And then we went past her to go the Namibian Border…but we finally made it back.
I took this from the lounge on the top deck of the Zambezi Queen. African sunsets (and sunrises) are amazing.
I wish I could have taken a photo of the border crossings (especially the one we had to walk to in Namibia), but there are huge signs everywhere prohibiting photography. But I was able to get a Google Maps overhead shot of the shore-to-office route we had to take. It was pretty much soft sand all the way.
They all had something interesting about them. The Zimbabwe border had baboons everywhere, and to enter Botswana, you had to walk across mats soaked in insecticide to keep their cattle herds safe. We also had to turn over any other shoes we had with it to two people from AMA, and they had to dip them in the disinfectant and then get them back to us. And Namibia was just nuts. You walked all that way through domesticated animals (I had a nice talk with a dog while waiting for some fellow travelers to walk back with me) plus roosters that would not shut up.
I think that about covers our transition day. It was probably the only thing I didn’t love about our time on the Zambezi Queen. That and all the other times we had to do the border crossings. Everything else was just about perfect. More about that later.
Reminds me of my safari in Africa. Somebody forgot the corkscrew and for several days we had to live on nothing but food and water. —W. C. Fields
Just a quick note to let you know we haven’t been eaten by a lion. We’re currently on the Zambezi Queen riverboat on the Chobe River between Botswana and Namibia. The WiFi onboard is equivalent to cell phone service, with all 40 people trying to use the same connection. This means uploading photos isn’t possible. I hope to be back on Friday with updates on what we’ve been up to in the meantime. Not all at once, but day by day. Stay tuned.
I am off for my third animal viewing boat ride of the day. On the first two, I took more than 500 photos…on each ride. Hard to cull them down, but I will do it. About to leave for my third, and the boat itself is headed down the river. I can look out our windows and see elephants, cape buffalo and hippos. OMG!
My regular readers might remember that we have not traveled since our visit to see my brother and Jamie in California for a week last December. Since then, I have gone through radiation treatment for prostate cancer (the prognosis is good), we got a dog (whom we love dearly), and I have taken 178 days of photos (as of this writing).
Now! It’s finally here! It’s time to REALLY travel again!
And we are going somewhere we have never been before—Africa.
On Wednesday of this week, we will get up very early (we leave for the airport at 3:30 am) to catch a United Airlines flight from Seattle to Newark (I know…but we had the tickets months before Newark had anyproblems). And then, after about a five-hour layover, we board a 15-hour nonstop flight from Newark to Cape Town, South Africa. The rest of the trip looks like the map you see above.
First up is four nights in Cape Town. I know the map has a little three on it, but we are going in a day early. After Cape Town, we fly north to Kasane in Botswana, and then we take a cruise.
Sounds strange to say that we are taking a cruise in the middle of Southern Africa, but our entire trip is planned, coordinated and carried out by AmaWaterways—a European river cruise company. So, in the middle of this trip, we get a four-night river cruise on the Chobe River that is the border between Botswana and Namibia.
After our four nights on the Chobe, we will drive about 90 minutes on a “luxury motor coach” to Victoria Falls on the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe. We will spend two nights there, which will include a train ride (with dinner and drinks) across the falls, a boat ride at the bottom of the falls (with drinks and appetizers), and finally (yes, I actually booked it) a helicopter ride above the falls.
The next morning, we are off on another flight to Johannesburg (back in South Africa), where we will spend two nights. During the second day, we will tour one of the townships north of the city. That should be very interesting.
We finish up the trip with three nights at the Tintswalo Lodge in Kruger National Park, where we hope to see even more of Africa’s diverse wildlife. After our time there, we board a plane to fly back to Johannesburg, change planes and fly home. Everyone who has done this trip tells us it will be “the trip of a lifetime!” I just want it to be the equal of our current “trip of a lifetime,” to the Galapagos. I think it will measure up.
My first post from the trip should go live on Wednesday, either from SeaTac before we depart or from Newark while we layover before our 15-hour plane ride down to Cape Town. See you then.
I dream of an Africa which is in peace with itself. —Nelson Mandela
