My last post of my African Trip

Here I am, doing one last blog to finish off my trip to Africa.

My previous post was about Etosha, the vast Namibian desert game park.  It was here that I became fascinated by animal behaviour, particularly that of elephants.  As I write in mid October, many of you will have seen the recent delightful news video of the baby elephant rescued in Kenya and galloping to its mother who rushed to greet her.  It was in Etosha that I first became really aware of elephants’ human like emotions, their social structure, their love for their little ones, and their grieving.  Other animals are in awe of the huge elephants, and around the waterholes we watched herds of zebras, giraffes, impalas, oryx, sables, and others, all circling patiently and waiting their turn as the elephants dominated.  That is until two thirsty warthogs decided to brave it and tucked in tightly together beneath those great grey behemoth legs.  We spent enthralling hours watching and waiting at waterholes as the animals interacted and went about their daily activities.

Giraffes have difficulty drinking due to their anatomy and blood pressure problems

Those brave little warthogs

In the vast park the animals roam free, and we humans must stay in our vehicles or enter specially fenced areas to protect us.  There’s a photo below of a fenced-in toilet building, but in fact we all got quite used to bushes and the open air!  There are many man made waterholes in the park to assist the animals.  Wells are dug to source the water, and mini windmills do the job of pumping water to the surface.

Progress comes to Africa

The attraction of water.  In the background are wildebeests and ostriches.

The desert washroom

After several days in Etosha we made our way via Waterberg to the Namibian capital, Windhoek, en route to Zimbabwe and Victoria Falls.  I was thrilled by the Falls, and only sad that we had so little time to enjoy them after all the expense and hassle (yes – this was Africa, there was hassle!) of getting there.  But a helicopter trip over the area was the icing on the cake. 

We saw many beautiful and strange (to us) flowers and bushes

Uh oh!  The lions are watching!

What grubby feet you have!

The proud Korybuster (the world's heaviest flying bird) and the slinky jackal

So many birds we saw

Cute baby baboon

Low water at Victoria Falls.  Full flood comes in April.

Just one section of the majestic Falls, seen from our helicopter

Our final destination in Botswana, became the highlight of the whole trip.  Our lodge beside the Chobe River, and the game drives and boat rides we had twice daily into Chobe Game Park, were quite wonderful.  During the land drives we saw much more of what we had already seen, but in different terrain – lions, giraffes, sables, impalas, and of course my new favourite, elephants, elephants, elephants.  The boat trips brought new delights, masses of hippos (those huge floating beanbags), a few sinister crocodiles, herds of water buffalo on the large flat islands that separated the channels in the wide river, and, you guessed it, yet more elephants.  We watched a family swimming across the river in front of us (however do they do it?), and another family being pestered by baboons.  I’m not sure why, but the baboons were a real bother, and it was fun watching them darting nimbly hither and yon as a young elephant lurched and lumbered after them kicking its legs and swing its trunk wildly.  All to no avail!  The variety of birds was amazing, and a true delight for birders.  I’m sure that in just one photo alone I captured a dozen different varieties of birds twittering and fluttering and stalking around a reedy river bank, but without a crocodile in sight, needless to say.

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'Never smile at a crocodile' we learned as kids.  Can they ever snap fast as a potential meal appears!

'Eats shoots and leaves!'  Whole branches too!  Salad and fibre all in one mouthful.

Just shootin' the breeze in the evening air

A family gets in their happy hour drinks

By now we had seen a vast variety of animals, including four of the so-called Big Five animals – lions, elephants, water buffaloes, and rhinos.  All we needed was the fifth, a leopard, to seal the deal, and on our very last day a leopard we got.  Wonderful!  The trouble is that leopards are cats, and spend most of their time sleeping, only becoming active when they are hungry and out on the prowl.  So the hour and a half spent watching the leopard produced only a few ear twitches, one quick stand, a roll over with a scratch-my-tummy-please pose.  And a yawn!  Hurray!

Last but not least - a leopard

All good things much come to an end, so home we had to go.  My journey covered four days, three continents and six countries before I arrived back in Eastern Canada to the warm welcome of my Ottawa and Nova Scotia families.  Now home in Vancouver, I have thousands of photos to process and wonderful memories to enjoy, and am plotting on when and how I can get back to Africa.  It was beyond my expectations.

Au revoir, Africa!

 One last thing: various people have asked about my camera equipment.  I use Olympus, and 'wore' two cameras as I prepared to go out each morning.  They were hands-free and comfortable and not too heavy to walk fair distances and be forever up and down from the ground.  My E510 bore my wide angle lens and I wore it on an elasticized harness made by my friend, Catherine, hanging at my centre waist.  My E5 (love it!) bore my zoom lens with a teleconverter hanging via my lumaloop on my right hip.  Thus I was ever ready with a focal range of 24 - 560 at my fingertips.  My hand just went to the one I needed at the moment, no fuss no muss.  I also brought along a macro lens with an extender, but after the flowers of Namaqualand, where I really needed it, I found it too much trouble to carry.  I didn't bother with a tripod.  Three of our group of fifteen keen photographers carried huge lenses and tripods.  I eagerly wait to see their images, which will be tack sharp and gorgeous I know.  But that would have been too much for me.  I am happy with what I have got.

See you all - and thanks for reading.   Margaret

Etosha Game Park

From the town of Opowu we travelled on to the Etosha Game Park, and from then on we saw animals, animals, animals. The first sighting of a zebra, an elephant, a giraffe, was quite thrilling. But now we have seen hundreds of thousands of zebras, hundred of elephants, and many giraffes. It has been an exhilarating time as we have done game drive after game drive. I shall download some images for you in my next blog, but probably I will not be able to do captions, so bear with me. I am just uploading a photo of an iconic African tree for now.

The Himba people

We visited an interesting tribe of people who live incredibly simple and unworldly lives in Northern Namibia. They are the Himba people. They live totally without amenities as we know them, in their compounds of huts, covering themselves with ochre to protect themselves from the environment, with hairstyles that they redo three times a year, and eating a diet mainly of maize as they tend their goats and cattle for a livelihood. But strangely they are quite happy and totally unfazed to receive us as visitors with all our camera gear. They smile and go about their daily activities. We brought food for them as "payment". Our guide was a young Himba man, with some education - most of them never go to any kind of school - and he told us all about their culture. Our visit was very respectful, and to my surprise I felt quite comfortable among these pleasant and primitive people. By the way, the blogger system seems to have changed, and I can no longer type in captions.

Internet up and running again

Hello all: We are now in Botswana, and the internet connection seems to be pretty good for a change. Hurrah! Anyway, I think the post that I tried to make earlier this month has now actually gone through. So this is just to let you know that I shall process some more photos about our amazing adventures and will post again tomorrow. We are here at this very glamorous lodge for several days and will be going on on game drives, and boat trips on the Chobe River. Hippos and crocodiles are now in my sights, after surfeit of elephants and zebras (millions of them) and giraffes and such like. So watch this space! Margaret

Zebras, Elephants and Giraffes

 Hello all:

The amazing adventure continues.  Our bus with us 15 stalwart photographers, our resourceful guide, and superb driver, continues to rattle and rumble and roll Northwards as we travel great distances across the vast Namibian desert with roads that are simply compacted sand.  First great plains, then great mountain passes, have all been traversed, with an enormous variety of interesting sights along the way.  We have seen the Skeleton Coast, so called because of the many ships that are blown onto the hundreds of miles of beaches, and are left to rot gradually in the sand, rather than be broken up on rocks as in other parts of the world.  We saw an 80 - 300 thousand strong seal colony, and now have gradually reached the tropical area of the country where at last we have seen zebras, giraffes, and elephants and many other exotic animals.  We are now near the Angolan border, and tomorrow we enter Etosha Game Park where there will be animals, animals, animals to feast our eyes, and our cameras, upon.  I have passed the fitness test!  I went on a 5k hike into the bush in the searing desert heat, scambling over sand and rocks, to reach some 2,000 year old cave carvings. It was 38 degrees, they said, in full sun, and it took a full gallon of water to rehydrate.  But I did it!  Another great adventure was going on an elephant-hunt in a special open top vehicle, equipped with huge wheels to traverse deep sand and boggy marshes alike.  There was much excitement as we came across a family of about 20 elephants making their lumbering way down a valley, breaking off branches to eat as they went.  Helping a local group get their broken down vehicle moving again was part of the adventure, and it was all finished off with the sighting of masses of  baboons scrambling over vertical rock faces.

Giraffes came, and zebras came, as on we travelled onwards.  There is so much to tell, and it is impossible to do more than just glaze over the highlights.  A special activity yesterday was a visit to a local school, which is oh so poor, and oh so lacking in the basics.  We gave them pens and footballs and all sorts of school supplies, but they need so much more.  We will have to do something on a continuous basis.  It is a harsh, dry land, and the people are very poor.  Many of them live as they have done for hundreds of years, and I will try to tell you more about that in my next blog.  For the time being, here are a few photos.

A 2008 wreck on the Skeleton Coast.  Many others are much older and more skeleton like

A cute Cape fur seal on the skeleton coast

The harsh terrain of the 5k hike - on and on, up and down

2,000 year old rock carvings, that I trudged to see

Desert elephants - a thrilling encounter for us

Some of our group managed, eventually, to help get this vehicle going again

The view from the (rather glamorous) tent we stayed in at one lodge

I had my photo taken with a Herrero woman.  They wear these clothes every day!

A typical little Namibian hut, with the livestock close by

A Namibian boy and his horse - we had fun with him and his friends for a while

One of a splendid herd of zebras we came across

An oryx grazing

A giraffe - I've been waiting all these days to be able to catch sight of these magnificent animals

Some of the cheerful children at the school we visited

Some of the mothers.  They were visiting to pay the school fees for the coming term - less than $10, which is all they can afford.  The football is one of the new ones we brought for the kids.  They wear these costumes every day!

Internet problems

Hello all:

Many apologies for not posting.  We are really in the wilds now.  Elephants, rhinos, giraffes, zebras, warthogs, antelopes - on and on, we are feasting our eyes and cameras.  But the internet is very, very spasmodic.  A few days ago I posted quite a long blog with lots of photos, but it never went.  Tonight I have spent an hour trying to get on to this posting site, and can only hope that at least this goes.  I dare not even try to show you some of the amazing photos I have.

Needless to say, we are having a fantastic time.  Every day is filled with fascinating  new experiences.  Today's highlight was seeing all the animals at various waterholes during our game-drive.  How wonderful seeing twenty elephants drinking, with all the giraffes, zebras, springbok, etc. waiting their turn and showing due deference to these huge beasts.

Photos will come later, I promise.  But for now I had better sign off and see if this will go. Hopefully tomorrow will be the first sighting of lions.  Leopards and cheetahs are a bit too elusive, but we have a good guide, and he will try for us.

Will write again when I can.  Margaret

Swakopmund August 31

Hello all:

We have traversed the vast Namib Desert in our very bumpy and very, very, dusty bus.  Wow, this dust permeates everything, just as bad as in the Sahara.  Night termperatures get down to near freezing, and days climb up to near 30 degrees.  I had heard about this, but it is quite an experience to be actually here, peeling off layers and layers of clothing, then gradually adding them all back on again.  Thank heavens for my sturdy "Mom" jeans.  I can roll up the legs for day and roll them back down again as we "dress" for dinner.  Heavy duty clothing and shoes is the order of the day as we try to stay clean-ish, for dinner and all.  The 'ish' is the operative part, as photography in the desert is no place for neat, clean, or even remotely fancy clothes. 

Anyway, there are interesting things going on every day.  The ghost mining town was fascinating, with the sand blown into all corners of the abandoned houses, some of which were quite gorgeous back in the heyday of the 1920's.  The fabled Namibian sand dunes lived up to expectations, and now we are in the charming seaside town of Swakopmund, having seen all sorts of animals and interesting sights along the way.  Malaria pills need to be started tomorrow as we make our way steadily Northwards towards elephant and lion country.

Here are a few photos, quickly culled from the several thousand I already have.  I wish I could share more with you.

Kolmanskop ghost town, with houses abandoned nearly 100 years ago

Inside one of the once lovely houses

Namib family on the way to town, forty miles away.  We gave them money and oranges

A huge secretary bird, showing off its wonderful desert camouflage

Typical savannah landscape with tough grass, steeply rising rocks and mountains, and lonely trees

  

More desert camouflage

A young springbok.  Herds of them are common grazing on the dry savannah grasslands

Just one view of the amazing sand dunes of Sossusvlei

This is the type of grass the springboks and other animals eat

This strange 1,600 year old fossilzed plant is carefully fenced, but in the middle of the desert

 

Mother flamingo and her two chicks

Sally the pelican, a rescue bird, comes in to land and collect her fishy reward

This rescued seal (injured by a fish hook) just jumps aboard to pose and collect his reward too

I made friends with Sally, who was injured by a fall off a high ledge before she could fly.