Author: matt

We’re taking an easy day in Cape Town, so hopefully I can catch up on these posts a little bit.

We left Londolozi and were driven out to the Nelspruit airport where we caught our plane to Livingstone, Zambia. It had been chilly and raining in Nelspruit, so it was quite a shock to climb off the plane and walk across the tarmac in 100 degree intense sun. From there we drove out to our hotel, about an hour away along a pretty good stretch of highway, through a national park where we saw elephants, giraffes and baboons from the car. The last 8 km to the hotel were over a washboard dirt road which our driver was taking at about 90kph.

Arriving at the hotel, we were told that we’d been upgraded to the island lodge a little ways up the Zambezi river, so after checking in and looking around a bit, took a 10 minute boat ride to the island. It seemed like they were consolidating the three couples staying at the two hotels into one to simplify things, which was just fine by us, since we got a great bungalow looking out over a small tributary with enough privacy that there was a bath tub on the deck. A

Shortly after getting settled, we left for a sunset cruise a little ways down the river. Unfortunately, what we didn’t know was the the opposite side of the river was part of a big reserve in Zimbabwe (the river is the boundary between Zambia and Zimbabwe, and I think Botswana and Namibia a little ways down as well.) Expecting to see a sunset, and not much else, I’d failed to bring my big lens, and just brought my 17-55mm. Of course, that was the day when we saw three male lions hanging out on the shore.

This was really quite a treat for us, since the only male lion we’d seen so far was pretty much just napping in the middle of the road and was at night. The other passenger on the boat, a nice guy from Germany via Switzerland hadn’t seen any lions in his few weeks in Africa yet, so he was ecstatic.

And of course, there was the sunset. Every night was a vibrant red sunset, and what better place to see it than on a boat with drink in the middle of the river.

 

The next day was Victoria falls. On the way out there, going back through the reserve, we saw a Zebra Crossing:

First we went to the park overlooking the falls from the Zambia side. It was the dry season, so it wasn’t the huge wall of water that it can be, but they were still pretty spectacular. There were probably about 9 falls going at the time which is nothing to complain about.

 

We also took a short helicopter ride to see them from above. Finally, we took a boat ride out to Livingstone Island, which is right on the edge of the cliff, roughly in the center of frame in the above photo, just next to the really big waterfall creating all of the mist. On the boat ride out, you approach this cloud of mist on the river, which is of course where the waterfall is. Just as we started to question the wisdom of being in a boat headed straight for this, we pulled up to shore on the island. We were taken out to the edge of the cliff, to look over the gorge and the waterfall. Our guide stuck us on a rock about two feet away from the edge for a series of photos that he was quite practiced at taking. Then it was time for the Devil’s Pool, which we were both getting pretty nervous about at this point. To get there we swam across a narrow bit of river about 10 yards from the waterfall, and while it was never a problem every time the current pulled at me just a little bit I had a minor freak out. Then we just had to climb over a few rocks to get to a little pool on the very edge of the main waterfall. We had two guides at this point, one came with us into the pool, presumably to make sure that we didn’t find ourselves out of the pool and in the waterfall. The other walked on the edge of the waterfall and took pictures with Jack’s camera of us sitting on a little shelf of rock also on the edge of the waterfall and of the waterfall itself.

While in the pool, trying to not have a stupid look on my face for the pictures, and of course worrying about being there in the first place, a fish decided it wanted to nibble at my feet, so I kept having to move around a bit to scare it away.

Once we were safely back on land, we had a nice lunch, thankfully with beer, under a tent on the island with a bunch of other tourists and headed back.

 

 

 

 

 

We’ve now arrived in Zambia so I should try to finish up writing about Londolozi. Our internet access is still pretty bad, so I’ll just write and upload pictures as I can.

Londolozi is a private game reserve attached to the Kruger reserve, which is a huge fenced in area for wildlife that straddles the borders of several countries, but is primarily in South Africa. The main attraction there is of course, the wildlife, which is why the schedule revolved around the twice daily game drives.  While we were there, we had great encounters with just about everything there was to see.

There were lots of elephants, giraffes, a number of rhinos, plenty of hippos, a couple of lions, three leopards, and plenty more. Spectacularly colorful birds were also quite plentiful.

The second day we were there, we were treated with a herd of elephants hanging out in the river in front of the camp for a few hours. We sat on our deck watching them munch away with a glass of wine. It was just amazing.

The third night we were there, we came back to our room after the evening drive to find that they’d set up a private dinner on our deck, decorated our room with rose petals and setup a bubble bath. They really make every day special.

We’d also gotten to see lions at a kill that evening. A pride of female lions and some cubs had taken down a water buffalo earlier that day. They had plenty of time to fill up before we got there, several of them were napping on the buffalo to protect it from other animals. When they did decide they wanted a bite, they would jostle around for position with each other, particularly the cubs.

The next morning we drove up to a hyena den and luckily they were all still up and about. There were about 10 hyenas there, mostly young ones, and they were quite active playing with each other. At one point one was dragging around a set of impala horns taunting the others with it. They behaved a lot like dogs, but apparently they are more closely related to cats. The rest of the morning was relatively uneventful, we were searching for a black rhino, whose tracks had been spotted on the property earlier, but we never found it.

The evening’s game drive was also relatively uneventful, there were the usual sightings, but nothing too out of the ordinary. We stopped to look at a lot of birds, since we didn’t have any particular query in mind this time. When it came time for the usual sunset break for drinks, we turned a corner to find that they had setup a candlelight bar with drinks and snacks for our truck overlooking the river. The camp manager Will was there to greet us, and we had a lovely time. They never missed an opportunity to do something special and unexpected.

Unfortunately, that was our last night there, and our flight the next morning had been replaced by an earlier road transfer due to weather, so sadly we didn’t get a morning game drive.

Edit: More Londolozi pictures are on smugmug

We left Joburg in the morning by Federal Air. Since we were flying on a little 12 seat plane, I’d not really been expecting much. But after leaving the bus terminal at the main airport, we arrived at probably the best airport waiting area I’ve ever been in. It was safari themed, of course, but it was very comfortable, and a nice place to be. The flight was about an hour, with one stop and one… disconcerting, descent.

On arrival we had a briefing about how things go at Londolozi, the daily schedule, don’t leave your room at night without an escort, etc. They keep you busy at Londolozi, which is why I haven’t been updating this as much, and why we haven’t been contacting anyone really. Every morning we get up at 5AM, ready by 5:30 for a quick coffee, then off on the morning game drive. This lasts about 4 hours, then it’s breakfast time. After that, there are optional activities, and lunch, another game drive at 15:30, then dinner. So far we’ve been lucky to make it through dinner without falling asleep.

After our briefing and lunch, we had just enough time to get a hint of the local wildlife that shows up right in camp. There were warthogs, nyalas, and monkeys hanging out on the front lawn. Actually the Nyalas are pretty much everywhere, and they barely notice people.

Then we were off on our first game drive with our ranger Talley and tracker Freddy. The drive’s mission was to find a cheetah that had been spotted nearby. On the way though, we came across some zebras saw and elephant herd off in the distance, and an elephant right on the trail.

But the star of the day was the cheetah.

He had been lying near some brush apparently after quite a large meal, because his stomach was distended. Cheetahs will eat this much sometimes if they have the opportunity.

After spending a while watching him, we came across an ostrich, the only one in the area apparently, and a very large herd of water buffalo wandering across the terrain. We finished up the night with a surprise dinner out in the bush. They had setup a beautiful dining area for all of Londolozi out among some trees hung with candles. It was quite a sight, and tasty as well.

I’ll probably hold off doing any more posts on Londolozi until after we leave, between the schedule and overloaded internet out here, it’s quite challenging to get the pictures uploaded.

I’ve only got time to share one thing about yesterday, so here it is:

 

More to come later today.

We arrived in Cairo a little before midnight and we had to get up early for our tour, so we stumbled (from exhaustion) into the hotel bar and had a couple of expensive drinks, then stumbled up to our room. The next day was an insane tour through Cairo. I’ve just got a couple of pictures up so far, but you can find them on smugmug.

Our tour guide met us at our hotel and we drove out to Giza City (pretty much a Cairo suburb, but with pyramids) through the teeming streets of Cairo.  As you might expect, Egypt is messy and disorganized, but everyone was incredibly friendly. Unfortunately, part of the messiness involved garbage collection problems, which means burning garbage, so it was incredibly hazy.

The pyramids are truly amazing, there’s simply no describing how huge they are. No pictures I’ve ever seen have done them justice, nor do mine. I guess not too surprisingly, there weren’t that many people there, one advantage of going so soon after the revolutions. There are a total of nine pyramids at the site and the Sphinx. The Great Pyramid towers over the other two large pyramids, but they’re all just staggeringly huge. We went down into the second pyramid (it was significantly cheaper) by climbing down through a tiny shaft about 3 feet square, angled at maybe 30 degrees. I was grateful not to have been allowed to carry my camera backpack, which would have made this nearly impossible. Then we went up a similar shaft into the burial chamber. There really wasn’t anything there, it was just a large room in the center of the pyramid, but it was quite something to think of all of the engineering and labor that went into it, and of what it once held.

After wandering around the pyramids, we rode camels around the desert a bit, not for any particular reason, but it was fun. Our guides insisted on taking a series of embarrassing pictures of us in front of the pyramids, holding them, pointing at them, pinching the tops of them, etc. These will not be seen without significant bribes. We then took a short drive to the Sphinx, which was actually smaller than I’d expected. Perhaps my scale was just out of whack from the other sights of the day.

After this we drove out to Islamic Cairo and visited the Mosque of  Muhammad Ali. It’s really incredibly beautiful. Inside, lanterns are hung in a breathtaking pattern beneath the high domes. I’ll get some pictures up soon I hope.

Afterwards we visited another mosque with a minaret that you can climb up for a great view of the city. It’s getting late here, so I’ll skip the details, and the photos since I haven’t actually gone through them yet. We finished off the day with a trip to through the markets, wandering through the streets. Stay tuned to smugmug for pictures of that, and of course Londolozi, where we are now.