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.  

4 of 5

Another spectacular game drive this morning.

We started off by visiting the den of a pack of wild dogs.  Wild dogs are the most endangered animal in Kruger with only about 200 living here. This pack consists of about 23 dogs - 13 adults and 10 pups.  The endangered animal council has recently vaccinated these dogs since another pack was wiped out by canine distemper. This pack will only live in a den for a few more weeks or until the pups are big enough to travel far distances with the adults.

When we arrived the pups were all running around and playing with each other and the adults.

As we watched, they got tired and gathered into a pile to sleep.

Then we saw a group of 4 male giraffes

But the best thing we saw was a male leopard out marking his border.  He was just walking along with an occasional stop to mark a bush or tree.  He could care less about the truck full of people.  These animals are so accustomed to being safe in the preserves that you can get really close to them.

I had no idea how big these guys are. They are much bigger than the cheetahs but not nearly as large as the lions.  The guides said it was good that we saw the male lions in Botswana since there are no male lions living in the vicinity of Kirkman's Kamp.

Speaking of Kirkman's camp here are some pictures

The main lodge

My cottage with an antelope out front

View off the back porch

Travel Day

Today was a bit of a waste as we spent the entire day traveling.

We flew from Livingstone, Zambia to Nelspruit in Kruger National Park, South Africa.  This is our 9th "airport" on the trip.  I'm using quotes since 2 of them were just dirt strips in the middle of Okavango Delta.

Nelspruit is the nicest airport we've been to.  This is the sink in the bathroom

After landing, we had a 2 hour drive to Kirkman's Kamp in Sabi Sands. We arrived in Kirkman's just in time for dinner.  This camp is similar to the tented camp in Botswana except that we have extremely nice cottages as opposed to extremely nice tents. Both camps are run by &Beyond.

Our first impression of Sabi Sands is that it is a lot like Disney World.  There's a huge fence around both Sabi Sands and Kruger National Park designed to keep the animals in and the poachers out.  The roads are dirt but smooth enough that we arrived in a Toyota SUV instead of a bush vehicle like in Botswana.

I'm not really complaining about the Disney-like feel. If it promotes responsible tourism and keeps the animals safe then I'm a supporter.

It's dark now so I'll post pictures of the cottages and camp tomorrow.  Satellite internet access again so uploading pictures will be difficult.

The food is exceptional.  Dinner was risotto, beef with peppercorn sauce and apple crumble

Leaving Zambia

We are leaving Zambia this morning to rejoin the safari portion of the trip.

It was great to have an unstructured afternoon in the middle of the trip. Victoria Falls is definitely worth visiting but you do not need more than 1 day in Zambia. Compared to the other hotels, The Royal Livingstone is not in the same league.  It's fake nice; it looks nice but when you scratch the surface the level of service is not quite the same.

The pork duo from dinner last night

Videos from Angela's GoPro:

They sing when you enter and leave the tent camp in Botswana

Angry elephant

At Victoria Falls

Baboon carrying baby

Eating at the Botswana tent camp.  They feed you a lot at the tent camp and everything is really good.

Next update from Sabi Sands in South Africa...

Victoria Falls

Zimbabwe - That's #35!

We toured Victoria Falls this morning from both the Zimbabwe and Zambia sides of the falls.   

The falls did not disappoint but the guides did. 

First of all, the whole crossing the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe is absurd at best.  On our way out of Zambia, our guide just took our passports into the immigration office for us while we waited in the truck.  I guess matching the passports to the person is optional in Zambia.  Then we crossed over the 100 year old Victoria Falls bridge.  That part was great. 

Here's a picture of the bridge.  I'm sure it's a picture you've seen somewhere before. 

After the bridge, we had to go into the Zimbabwe border crossing office, fill out some paperwork, pay $30, get a visa stamped into our passport, get a tiny white piece of paper, show the tiny white piece of paper to the guy at the gate and then walk through.  

On the other side, the Zimbabwe guide picked us up.  He was bitter about his government being corrupt and was happy to complain to us.  We did not learn anything about the falls from him that we could not have learned by just reading the signs. However, it didn't really matter because the falls are SPECTACULAR!! 

I'm sure my pictures don't do them justice.  Basically, there are 4 sections of falls along the gorge.  The amount of water flowing varies during the year.  Right now, the falls are medium heavy. 

Here's a video of the falls from the Zimbabwe side

After touring the Zimbabwe side, we went back to Zambia by repeating the same tiny white piece of paper procedure to leave Zimbabwe.  To re-enter Zambia, our guide again took our passports into the office for us while we waited in the truck.

Here's the video from the Zambian side

The Zambian side also includes a sketchy bridge that you get to cross

I hope my pictures are good enough for you to be blown away by one of the most spectacular sights in the world.  

Here's picture of me with some school kids at the Falls. The kids were very excited about getting their picture taken and the teacher asked me to email them the picture which I happily did.

Tomorrow we fly back to South Africa to spend 3 days at Sabi Sands.  I'm hoping to see a rhino there.

The Royal Livingstone

As you can see from the pictures, The Royal Livingstone is very British. That is not surprising given its location in the town of Livingstone and its proximity to Victoria Falls.  I could go on about the British and their relationship to their former colonies but that is a bit too heavy for this fun blog.

From the grounds of the hotel so you see the mist from Victoria Falls.

The town of Livingstone has really embraced tourism as an industry. There are a number of hotels, the roads are all newly paved and the airport is brand new; so brand new that it is not even officially open yet.  I hope the tourism money is helping the local people.  Things are very cheap here compared to American or European prices. Our huge dinner at the hotel last night was only about $40.

We asked the guides in Botswana and the river boat captain if they notice any changes due to climate change.  The river boat captain said that things are definitely changing.  They don't get as much rain in the rainy season anymore.  This leads to less flooding so less food and less fish, etc.  Also, the river is not as strong which means that not enough electricity is generated.  Victoria Falls is similar to Niagara Falls. Not only is it the border between 2 countries but it also generates power for the area.  

At Victoria Falls

After our ridiculous chartered flight today, we arrived at Victoria Falls.

We are staying at yet another very nice hotel, The Royal Livingstone.  I'll upload pictures tomorrow but here is the obligatory view from my room

That's not a statue.  There is really a zebra outside my window.  The hotel is in the game preserve around Victoria Falls.

We checked into our rooms, showered Botswana off and headed out for a sunset cruise on the Zambezi river.   I'm not exaggerating when I say "showered Botswana off" as we literally went from our game drive to the airplane.

The travel group booked us the VIP sunset cruise.  I'm not making this up... the boat captain personally picked us up at the hotel, drove us to the boat and we sat up on the top with him and our personal butler.  It was nice but much too much.

Sunset over Zimbabwe

I had antelope for dinner.  It's not just something the cheetahs and lions eat.

Tomorrow we have a whole day tour of Victoria Falls.  This is the thing I've been really looking forward to.