Finally on my way home

After spending a night at a hotel by Heathrow Airport complements of British Airways, I am finally on my way home.  I'll be arriving 24 hours later than originally planned but  I am not going to complain because it was an amazing trip and we met some really interesting people during all the confusion and long lines.

This is where Angela and I part ways on this trip.  She returns to San Francisco on a later flight.  I left her at the Renaissance Hotel which had by far the most comfortable bed of any airport hotel that I've ever stayed.

I leave you with some more videos of the animals

Baby elephant checking us out

Scratching rhinos

Hyena eating hippo skin

One step at a time...

The rumor is that the flight from Jo'Burg to London is on time this morning.  It might take off but I have strong doubts about it taking off anywhere near on time.

The checkin lines were as bad as expected.  We stood in line for 45 mins and there were only about 8 people in front of us.  This plane holds 500 people so I'm not sure how they expect to get them all checked-in in a few hours.

I don't yet have a connection to JFK. They want to see what time the plane actually leaves Jo'Burg to book the connections.  I will be spending the evening in London and then taking a flight home on Monday.  Butch is on standby to bring my apartment keys and Google badge down to NYC.  I left that stuff in CT because I did not want to lose it on the trip.

Stuck in South Africa

Hit a snag on the way home.

They did not have a full crew so our flight from Jo'Burg to London was cancelled.   That's when the fun began. British Airways was completely unprepared for dealing with a plane full of people.

We had to get off the plane, go back through immigration, collect our bags and stand in line.  Angela and I did a divide-and-conquer approach; I got in the line upstairs while she waited for the bags. Eventually British Airways informed us that Business class and First class passengers should go to the City Lodge hotel for the night.  Our flight is scheduled for tomorrow morning.  So we walked over to the City Lodge hotel only to find a really long line of pissed off passengers.  British Airways only send over 13 vouchers for the entire collection of First and Business class passengers.  Angela and I just booked rooms on our own credit card and will deal with British Airways later.

Anyway, I'm booked on a 9:20 am flight tomorrow morning to London.  I doubt that I will make the last flight out of London to JFK so I'm probably going to spend a night in London too.

Anyway, at least it was a good trip and, as my friend reminded me, at least this didn't happen on the way there.  

Last drive. Better pictures. Summary.

We started off the morning with another trip to the hyena den.  This time we were in luck and found 2 adults and one baby hanging around the den.

Notice the odd shaped body.  They are built to be efficient at running long distances and carrying carcasses long distances back to the den.

The baby is eating a hippo skin.  These guys can digest anything.

Fun fact: Hyena poop is white when it dries because of all the bones they eat

After visiting the hyenas, we happened upon 2 male white rhinos just wandering along.  This is the first time we were able to get this close to the rhinos.

This one has a small bird on his back.  It is common to see these birds on the larger animals.  This is a symbiotic relationship where both sides benefit since the birds eat the bugs that are attached to the larger animals.

The rhinos stopped to scratch themselves on a fallen tree.

The craziest thing is that the hyena must have heard the rhinos scratching because, after the rhinos had moved on from the tree, the adult hyena showed up and was sniffing the same spot on the tree.  Their sense of hearing and smell are off the charts.

I'm now sitting at the airport in Kruger National Park, my 10th airport of the trip.  I fly from here to Jo'Burg and then Heathrow and then JFK.  If everything is on time then I should be home in Connecticut in about 32 hours.

This has been an amazing trip.   It's time for the questions and the awards.

Would I visit here again?  Absolutely.  Maybe not these exact lodges or countries because each place is different and I'd like a new experience but I'd definitely return to Africa again in the future.  If I had to do this trip again then I would probably spend less time at Victoria Falls and Kruger and more time in Botswana.  I think July is the best time to visit.  It is cool so cool that they wrapped us in blankets and a hot water bottle on the truck in the morning.

There are also very few mosquitos this time of year.  On the other hand, the water is low in Kruger at this time of year so there are fewer animals.  For example, we only saw that single wildebeest.

Most unusual food?  With each trip this one is getting harder to answer.  I had kudu, impala and springbuck shank.  They were all good but didn't taste much different than pot roast.  They were more like beef than venison.  I also had some yummy fish cakes in Botswana but I don't know what kind of fish.

This is the springbuck shank

Best thing?  This is easy.  Hands-down, no contest it was the female lions.  They are elegant and imposing at the same time.

That's it.  I hope you enjoyed reading.  I'll add a few more videos when I get home.

Stay tuned for my next adventure...

Another drive. Another animal.

I'm wondering if people are reading the blog just to see what new animals we encountered.

My list is now complete. We saw the hyena this afternoon. We were hoping to see an entire family at the hyena den but there was no activity when we visited. We just saw this single ugly guy hanging around near the den area. It's not a very good picture - he is that blurry thing in the middle of the picture.

This is a kudu. Look at the big ears.

The other people on the drive had not yet seen any elephants.  As you might remember, Angela and I saw many elephants in Botswana including the ones that charged us near her tent.

We came across this single bull walking along the Sand River.  What a surprise - he charged at us!! These guys have some attitude.

Just when I thought I would be forever scared to death of elephants, we found this family of more than 20 walking in the river.  These are females with babies.  We were told that the mothers would be very protective of the babies but they were actually quite relaxed around us.

One of the babies was quite curious and wandered over close to the truck.  The mother did not get alarmed at all and let him check us out.

One of the babies was really small; well, small for an elephant that is.

We have our last game drive tomorrow and then we start the more than 30 hour trip home. 

Seen them all

This morning we saw 2 more of the animals on my list: the wildebeest and the rhino.  Neither one of my pictures is very good.  In order to protect the land, the rangers cannot drive off road unless it is an exceptionally rare animal.  

Wildebeest

White Rhino. It's hard to see but this is a group of 5 female white rhinos.

The white rhino is the more common but still endangered rhino.  The black rhino is very rare.  Some of the game preserves have started to cut the horns off the rhinos in an attempt to protect them from poachers.  It is a difficult problem because Kruger National Park is over 6 million acres (bigger than Connecticut) and shares a border with Mozambique.  Botswana has done a much better job of fighting poachers since they have a much smaller human population and have a shoot to kill policy against poachers.

The only remaining animal on my list is a hyena.

The guides are really great about asking which animals you'd like to see and then going out to find those animals. Our group includes 2 very pleasant couples from the north east of the US.  They are much better than Know-It-All Claude and his wife Smug Christine from the Botswana trip.

I also forgot to mention that we saw the other male leopard in the area at the end of last night's game drive.  Another interesting fact: a leopard carries its kill up into a tree for eating in order to protect it from the other animals. 

At the end of this morning's game drive, we had breakfast out in the bush 

Last night, we had dinner outside in a large area enclosed by a high metal fence. You need the fence to protect you from the animals.  No fence offers any protection from the monkeys.  A monkey stole Angela's loaf of bread at lunch.  I had impala for dinner last night. 

The lodge includes a score board where you get points for the animals that you see.  Rare animals = more points.

They don't even have Honey Badger on the board and everyone was very impressed to hear that we saw one in Botswana.  

We have 2 more game drives and then we start the long trip home.  The length of this trip has been perfect.  We've seen lots of things and are ready to go home.  My only complaint about this trip is that it is not very active.  We did a lot of flying and sitting in the trucks during the game drives.  It was nice to have that half day of walking at Victoria Falls.  You can't really walk around much at the game lodges because of the dangerous animals in the area.  

More videos

Wild Dogs

Leopard Walking

Pride of the Trip

On our afternoon game drive, we set off to find the female lions.  We drove and drove and drove with Victor, our tracker, pointing the way.

We found this Nyala which has orange legs and a shaggy coat and looks like something out of Dr. Seuss.  I was expecting the Lorax to jump out of the bushes to remind us that we broke the planet.

We also saw mongoose, more giraffes, some buffalo, a group of waterbuck and then finally we found a pride of 4 female lions sleeping in the shade.

They were sound asleep until a kudu wandered into the area.  2 of the lions put their heads up while the other 2 just kept snoring.

The more enterprising lion decided to get a closer look but first had to stretch. You don't want to pull a muscle running down an antelope.

She quickly got bored with the kudu and started to yawn. Look at those teeth!!

She went back to join her friends one of which had rolled over on her back.  It's good to be the queen!

We still have not seen a rhino.  We did see rhino tracks tonight so we are getting closer.  The guide was telling us that they are going to move 100 rhinos from Kruger to Botswana.  Poaching is a big problem in South Africa and it is virtually non-existent in Botswana due to the wetlands.

Mosquito Update: Not bad.  I've been applying liberal amounts of bug spray before the morning and afternoon game drives but I'm not sure I even need it.  You don't even hear them buzzing in your ears. They were heaviest in Zambia in the evenings.  I slept wrapped in my mosquito netting in Zambia.  The winter is the dry season in South Africa so there are not as many mosquitos.