Month: September 2014

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.

 

We’re now in Egypt, but I’m still catching up on London, so hopefully I haven’t forgotten too much in the whirlwind of the last couple of days. On our second day we took one of the tour buses around London. It’s a great way to see the city if you can get over being those people on top of the bus gawking at everything (which I guess isn’t that different than being on the ground gawking at everything.) We explored the proper City of London with the Tower bridge, the Tower of London, and the aptly named “More London” area of amazing modern architecture.

 

Afterwards we proceeded to get lost, or at least unable to find a tour bus stop, near the Marble Arch. During this time, we ran across speakers corner, which is London’s famous “free speech” zone. People stand on soap boxes and spout whatever they feel like and people heckle them. It’s basically like any street corner in San Francisco.

 

The next morning we were up early again, jet lag has some benefits, and went to see St. Paul’s. It really is an amazing piece of architecture. It gives St. Peter’s in Rome a run for its money. Unfortunately there’s no photography allowed inside, because it really is beautiful. We climbed up to the very top of the dome, something like 1000 steps, all at full speed because Jack wanted to get there before the crowds. There are some amazing views of London though, so I suppose it was worth it. Our legs are still protesting though.

 

After this, it was straight off to the airport. I do have to say how impressed I was with the efficiency of security through Heathrow (terminal 2 at least.) They had awesome robots for returning the empty bins to the beginning of the line, I’m a sucker for automation.

Hopefully I get Egypt photos and a post  up when we’re in Jo’burg.

 

We’ve been in London for two days now. Since this is our first time in London, we’ve been doing a lot of exploring and seeing the major sites. That and fighting jet lag. I’ve started uploading some of the better photos to smugmug but I’ll include a few here as well in posts.

We got up early yesterday and wandered around Westminster in the rain. Given the weather back at home this year, it was a nice change.

London is so incredibly dense with landmarks, but it was still quite a trek to walk to the ones near our hotel. This was partly due to poor route planning.

We eventually made it over to the British Museum, where exhaustion and museum-itis set in quickly. It’s vast, with amazing things, but overwhelming.

Naturally, the day was broken up by stops at pubs, and we finished up with watching a performance of Phantom of the Opera a block from our hotel.