hey there folks....well, i am finally getting around to writing the second half of the safari trip...have you missed me??? i have gone through the pictures i took at chobe with the super awesome camera and will be sending a few of those out with some pictures from my easter trip to italy....i was a bit reckless and crazy with that...italy for three days - crazy girl....put me behind in my work, but i am catching up...and was it worth it...totally - to be able to wear warm, long-sleeved clothes, to wander the paved sidewalks with coffee and gelato everywhere i looked, to take public transport that is easy and affordable....it was terrific....and who doesn't love italy!!!!!
but first, lets get the second half of the safari taken care of...hope people who celebrate easter and passover had good holidays and that folks in the northern hemisphere are enjoying the beginning of spring...got to see that in italy too...things were bloomin'....here in ghana it is officially HOT...i know i have said this before....but i just didn't know....now its a sweat box...and we are still having power outages for ridiculous periods of time, so i have no idea how locals deal, as they do not have generators....it is just crazy...in some places of the city they are doing 36 hours off and 12 on....many of our local crew are exhausted, as no one is sleeping with this heat....and people are not eating well due to lack of refrigeration....it is so disappointing to watch the government here make bad choices for its people....one good thing is that our generator has been working great (knock on wood that it continues)....school is in the crazy time - all grades and concerts and performances and stress of leaving for some families and the end just around the corner...makes for a frenetic pace...i will make it, but i will make it sweaty, tired, breathing heavy and completely ready for the year to be over....just like all schools....on with the safari.....
we spent one night at a place called elephant sands, in bostwana....literally a watering hole that elephants come to for miles around....my travel partner colleen, had her coolest encounter with an elephant here...she was doing yoga on the front porch when an elephant bull just wandered his way down to the watering hole, less than 10 feet away....talk about meditating with nature...so awesome!!!!
this is a shot of the bull who walked past our cabin....i was down at the restaurant having a drink and that is right next to the watering hole as well...amazing....we saw a ton of elephants here all night....they just come down...grab some water, wander around and then wander off...talk about amazing!!!!
the place has quite a few remains of elephants around the property and two months ago it had a viral video on you tube...something about a baby elephant getting stuck in the watering hole and the mother having to spend quite a few hours getting it out...in the end all members of the family were okay....a bit shaken up, but okay....
this sunset shot was taken after a crazy portion of the trip from elephant sands....we took a safari jeep out in the bright and warm sunshine towards the salt flats about 50 km from where we were staying...stopped for some gas and then were out of town and got a flat....the jeep driver let us off the side of the road, as the spare was leaking and headed back to the town to get things patched...as we waited by the side of the road for two hours...its started to get really windy and then rain...not very comfortable..as we were in t-shirts, tanks and shorts....then we climbed back into the safari to get to this place to see flamingos, that were not white, pelicans and sand pipers, and a spectacular sunset....but then we had to drive 70 km back to where we were staying, in more rain, wind, the dark and a lightning storm on both sides of the jeep...needless to say, the sunset was amazing...and it made for a great story...but it was not the most comfortable part of the trip....even though the lightning was amazing!!!!
sunrise at elephant sands...it was the start of a lovely, but very long, driving filled day...bostwana is a big country i tell ya!!!!
on the road.....yep...in this country there are HUGE stretches of nothingness that seem to go on forever....here is one of those shots you have to take while on the road in bostwana, in the middle of nowhere....and yes, they drive on the opposite side of the road....they were once a british colony....
but you see other things on the side of the road too...like a giraffe, hanging out, eating leaves from a tree....there were actually two of them, but i missed the second one in the shot, as we had stopped to take a bathroom break and they just happened to be there....lucky us....and how cool is it to see giraffes by the side of the road....
we were driving through botswana to make it to the okavango delta..one of my all time dreams after seeing it on the serie "planet earth".....and it was just coming into the green season, due to all of the rain up north....we took a flight over the delta and saw herds of elephants and water buffalo and congresses (congressi?) of hippos....many of them were hanging in the water, as it was a relatively hot day in the delta....
here you can see that it is still relatively dry...but a beautiful flight we had...the pilot was a south african who came to botswana to get enough hours to qualify to be a bush pilot in kruger...i guess this is really common, as those jobs in south africa are hard to come by without the right connections and amount of hours to support you....so he was earning time to get him a job closer to home...i have to say though, what an amazing place to fly....simply stunning....
the night before we got to the delta, they had had a huge rainstorm with lots of lightning (the same one we experienced in the jeep safari)....and they had a few wildfires start from the lightning strikes....you can see one of them is still burning in the distance...they seemed to last quite a bit of time....
i had this shot taken, so you could see the size of the plane...only 8 of us inside...it was a great trip with lots of wildlife spotted....loved it!!!!
then we went into the delta for a night....we were poled in on makuro canoes....they used to be made from a dug out tree, but ours were fiberglass....still rode very low to the water...flat and balanced are a great descrition...and very, very quiet, unless your "poler" laughed and talked a lot, like our friend's dude...our poler wowed us with a necklace made from the water lily...he was a smooth creator....but not much of a talker...he seemed to be the oldest man on the trip....he was also in charge of cooking the fish for the "polers' dinner....
here's a shot from my birds eye view in the makuro....you can see the poler stands in the back and poles the canoe....we had one woman poler, but we realized after we got to camp, that she was also included to do the dishes and tidy things up...it was a bit disconcerting....
this shot was taken by my friend ben....and i am hoping he will not mind i am using it here....as it gives you a great perspective down the pole... i loved this shot....this is the head poler....elijah....he spoke excellent english and was good with a joke :) funny guy, as you can see from the shot below....
this was some more glamping in some ways...especially the bathroom...we actually had a seat....ha! i have actually never seen something like this before, but was pretty happy it was around in the middle of the night....we did sleep in proper tents, on a sleep mat, so some of it was not true glamping....
i had to include this shot, as i have been waiting most of my life to see a baobab tree up close and personal...it has to do with a story i read in elementary school and a joke between me and a friend, that i can no longer remember....but the pronunciation of this tree's name blew my mind at the time and i thought it was hilarious...and now, i have seen one up close and personal....loved it!!!!
we did a walk through the delta...and caught a few herds of animals and frightened one wild boar....when it ran out form under the bushes we were in, all i could think in my head was hakuna matata....but i was also quite happy i was not in its pathway....we caught a male zebra with four females wandering thorugh the same stretch as us....
and again we had an amazing african delta sunset....it never gets old and they seem to always be spectacular....
the next morning we were up before the sun, as we had another long drive ahead of us...but this meant we got to watch the sunrise form the makuros on our pole out....this was an amazing time to be on the water....so peaceful and actually slightly chilly...which i loved :) i took many shots of our trip out, but did not think you would want to see them all :)
so i just included two....here is a shot of the woman poler....she was pretty amazing and did not speak much...she was also selling woven reed things to us from their tribe...she had to do all of the same things as the men, plus the dishes....some aspects of this trip really bothered me, as the roles in society here are very old school....with no change expected....
from the delta we travel quite a distance to get to the kalahari desert...where we met a desert tribe, who spoke in the "click" language....we also stayed in yurt-like desert tribe styled huts....the door did not lock here...as you can see from the picture....it was not totally traditional, as we had cots we slept on, a cement floor and had one light bulb for the evenings....but it was a cool experience none-the-less...and you should have seen the stars in the desert....actually the stars on the entire trip were amazing...and there were two guys who were really interested in the stars, so i did some astronomy stuff at night for them....we even saw the four main moons of jupiter in the binoculars i brought along....so cool :)
these are some of the desert tribesmen and women...with two of their little kids...so cute....they are extremely traditional and had to have a translator to explain their lives and what it was like to live in the desert...their story is not a happy one...5 years ago they had over 500 members of their tribe....but in the past 5 years, their teenagers have been leaving the tribe for the comforts of modern living...and now their numbers are down to 80....they do not think they will survive another 5 years with these changes....so depressing....
these next two pictures were taken at the border between bostwana and namibia...it was the one place on the trip where we had mandatory ebola training from a nurse...what to watch out for and signs and symptoms...it was very well done....the condom box above was hilarious, because it actually had a portable ruler on the right side...i am not really sure how you would measure anything in public...plus, the condoms that were left were small....the irony....many public places we were in had condoms readily available with no questions asked...a very smart thing here in africa...as AIDS/HIV is still a huge problem here....
we also got to see where you could make suggestions for the border crossing and where you could report corruption....funny how the boxes were positioned next to each other....loved it...i had to ask nicely to take this picture, as you never want to anger people at the border crossings....but they said i could get the shot as long as no people were in it....happy to oblige....
this last shot is the last night of our trip in windhoek, namibia....7 of our crew jumped off the trip here, and 5 continued all the way down to capetown...overall, it was an amazing experience....and now i can say i have taken a safari, seen some of the big five and used a professional camera...it rocked my world...and i hope to get to another place....maybe kenya or tanzania to try it out again...the safari that is....really, it was an incredible trip, and i have tons of amazing memories of my time...if you have this on your bucket list, and really, you should, bostwana is incredible...and i really hope some day i get to spend more time in namibia....simply spectacular....
so there you have it...safari part 2....again, sorry it took me so long to get this update out...but that seems to be my story of late...behind for many things...life here in ghana is busy, busy, busy....next update will be some of my more professional shots from the safari (chobe) and italy...next weekend i am headed up to lake botsumtwi here in ghana for two nights of camping....and chilling by the lake..i am excited to see a new section of ghana....we have five weeks left and i know it will fly....trips this summer include - ireland, england and france...and then a road trip in the northeast part of the states....so get in touch if you will be anywhere i will be and maybe our paths will cross...i hope to get the next update out sooner...but you never know...thanks for reading and i hope you enjoyed this trip...i sure did :)
have a fab day :)
dani
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