Elephants

Most people seeking some up close and personal wildlife viewing in the area of the world where Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana and Namibia come together at a single point are there to see African elephants. After all, the area within and around the Chobe National Park in northeast Botswana serves as the habitat for about 25% of the planet's population of these animals. According to the World Wildlife Fund, the global African elephant population is about 470,000. The Botswana Department of Wildlife and Parks claims 120,000 of them live within the vicinity of the Chobe National Park. In late August of this year, I made my own trip to that part of the planet to see what I could find.

Despite the numbers in our favor, which I knew pretty well ahead of setting out for Africa, I was hoping I'd see at least one elephant. Just one. That's all I needed. It was for sure keeping my expectations low so I thought I wouldn't be disappointed, similar to me hoping to see at least one bison in Yellowstone National Park four years ago and at least one alligator when I visited Florida's Everglades National Park last year. In Yellowstone we saw tons and tons of bison, and alligators were all over the place in the Everglades. I really hoped my low expectations bar would be greatly exceeded this time too.

It was. No surprise there. We saw our first elephant crossing the Zambezi on a sunset cruise on our second day on the continent and we couldn't have been more excited. Now, I know these animals are big, bigger in fact than any other land animal today, but it walked through the river as if the current wasn't even there. I wasn't prepared to see that kind of strength in an act so simple as walking. These things are really really powerful.

Our sightings didn't stop there. The next day we were sitting at our lunch table on the houseboat that we called home for the middle two nights of our trip and happened to look towards the bow and saw what to us seemed like an astonishing number of elephants. They stretched as far as our eyes could see. It was like that scene in Jurassic Park when Alan Grant first sees the dinosaurs that have been recreated by the park's scientists. There were herds upon herds of animals. And this was the start of the really good part of our trip.

From our lunchtime look forward to the last morning game drive we took in the Chobe National Park, we saw lots and lots of elephants everywhere. We saw them in the water, in the bush and on the grassy islands that appear in the middle of the Chobe River during the dry months. We saw them from big boats, small boats, trucks, the front porch of our tent at the Elephant Valley Lodge and our dinner table at that same property. We watched them walk, swim, eat, drink, growl at each other, squabble, give themselves dust baths, flap their ears and protect and nurture each other. We learned more about elephants in our six days in Africa just from watching and listening to them than I could have ever imagined.

I like to think that I've seen a lot of elephants in zoos in my life and that I would know a thing or two about them, but there's nothing like sitting on a 15 or so foot boat with the motor killed floating just off shore near a herd of elephants to make you pay attention to detail like you never have before. It's so quiet on the river and these animals are so accepting of our presence (while also being wary of us) so you can get super close and look and listen.

We spent about 20 minutes on our first day on the Chobe River watching a herd eat. They methodically pulled the grass out of the Earth, gently but firmly shook all the soil from the roots and then ate. And repeated. Over and over again. The next day we spent about the same amount of time watching and listening to an enormous group drink from the river just before sunset. All the elephants large and small did the same thing (although the smallest were admittedly learning), slurping water up their trunks and then opening their mouths and squirting the water from their trunks down their throats. It was amazing to hear all that in the calm of the late afternoon.

We got lucky on the timing with our family of drinking elephants. We pulled up just as they made their way to the riverbank and stayed until they retreated into the bush. My use of the word family is not an accident. These elephants arrived and left as a unit following the matriarch as a herd. In fact, every herd of elephants we saw go anywhere traveled as a group. Sometimes there would be a lone male along the riverside seeming to protect the herd's flank (in fact I think that's exactly what it was doing) but for sure all the elephants we saw traveled in families.

And just like families, the dynamic within the herd was fascinating, especially around the watering hole near our last stop in Botswana at dinner under the illumination of a floodlight attached to a tree. We were there two nights and, judging by the distinctive tusks of a couple of the bulls, saw the same animals both nights. They visited our watering hole to drink the fresh water from the underground water line the Lodge had installed and to eat the seed pods of the nearby camel thorn trees which elephants apparently love.

Each night the drama played out the same way. The dominant bull and the babies generally received preferential spots at the water before the male moved on to pinch as many of the seedpods as possible, just picking up one after another and popping them in his mouth. Next up were the female elephants who were allowed to drink under the watchful eye of the bull. Each herd we watched had several younger males and every so often they would receive warning growls from deep in the belly of the bull or if they got really too cheeky they would get a nudge, poke or shove. Some of these seemed like legitimate tests of authority and some challenges were punished. Most of the discipline came not through violence but through what appeared to us to be a self imposed "time out" from the challenger, usually turning his back on the herd and remaining there stationary for a few minutes before turning and re-joining the herd. I could have stayed up all night to watch this sort of show if it weren't for the 5:30 a.m. game drive the next morning.

Finally, since I mentioned zoos earlier in this post, I can't finish my story of Africa without an appeal that surely won't be heeded anytime soon. From the first time we saw a herd of elephants moving deliberately but swiftly over the grassland in Namibia to the moment we watched the final departure of a herd at the watering hole, two things were obvious to me about elephants that will not allow me to ever enjoy seeing these animals in captivity again.

First, it seems to me that it is impossible to capture enough land in a zoo or small park to ever duplicate an elephant's natural environment, let alone a whole herd. Without sitting there and watching, you can't imagine how much territory these animals cover in a short period of time. They need vast tracts of open grassland to move through, not small pens or enclosures of an acre or two or four or slightly more. They need thousands of acres. Like miles and miles and miles of land to walk.

Second, most zoos I have visited have two or maybe three elephants. If you get lucky, perhaps there's a baby. And who doesn't like baby elephants? But a family of elephants this will never be. Elephant herds are complex societies and the individual members each play a role in the herd's dynamic. I can't remember any group of elephants we saw that was smaller than 12 or 15 animals and I can't imagine seeing a couple or three in captivity without feeling sadness for the animals. I wouldn't want to be forcibly removed from my family, why do we continue to do this to these creatures?

I get that zoos have played important roles in allowing people to see different species of animals from all over the world and some have been critically important in protecting species that would otherwise be extinct. But there is absolutely no reason on Earth from what I can see that African elephants need to be confined anywhere in the world. There are thousands of them roaming free in Botswana and that's where they really belong. Only in these open spaces in complex family groups can they really be free. I know it's incredibly selfish for me to write these words since I was lucky enough to travel all the way to Africa to see them in person, but after spending four plus days in and around these creatures I can't imagine them anywhere else. I feel so privileged to have been able to see them and I hope I will again.

Better Safe Than Sorry

So two plus years into my five year travel project, I was beginning to feel pretty good about what I'd been doing and the progress I'd been making against the goals I set for myself. I'd been to Europe a handful of times, wandered a little bit over the United States and even made it to northern Africa when I went to Morocco last year. Not bad.

But then last month came the first of what I hope will be a number of big trips. I'm not talking about a six or seven hour flight to get over the Atlantic Ocean or anything like that. I mean a really huge deal.  Like 15 hours in the air on a single flight. Something I couldn't even conceive of two years ago before I actually did it myself. I'm talking Victoria Falls. Safari. Elephants. Lions. Hippos. All sorts of other animals I'd grown up loving as a kid. The first big one. And it was. It was absolutely amazing.

But before I could fly to South Africa or see Victoria Falls or spend a morning seeing absolutely nothing in Zambia or fear hippos on a tiny boat in Namibia or never want to leave northern Botswana, I had one more stop to make: the doctor's office.

That's right. For the first time in my life, I was traveling to a place where the diseases I might catch could possibly be life threatening. Now I usually consider myself a pretty hardy sort of guy. I never get a flu shot (I mean how difficult is the flu?) and I scoff at MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) vaccinations because I had all three as a kid in England and I'm still here. My attitude toward bacteria and viruses is pretty much bring it on. I can withstand it. But malaria? Typhoid fever? Well, I don't know about those. So a couple of weeks before we hopped on a 15 hour flight from New York to Johannesburg, I spent an hour or so after work at Capitol Travel Medicine about a half mile from my home in Arlington, VA getting whatever I needed to fend off disease in Africa. Here's the menu and the bill.

• Hepatitis A Immunization: $90 for a shot now and a booster shot later.
• Tetanis / Diphtheria / Pertussis Immunization: $65 for a shot now.
• Typhoid Fever Vaccine: $85 for four pills.
• Malaria Medication: $5 for 16 pills. Thank you to my company's prescription drug program for that low low cost.
• Ciprofloxacin (for travelers' diarrhea): $9 for ten pills. Didn't need it. Woo hoo!!

Sometimes travel just isn't cheap. And if the list above for something you might never need doesn't prove that to you, I don't know what would. And despite my bravado about diseases I can catch over here in the United States, I wanted no part of any of this stuff and I was all in. Give me everything. No way am I messing around with these kinds of diseases.

Now, if you are reading this post and heading over to southern Africa and thinking you just don't want to pony up the dough to take care of this nonsense, it's not required. The only real requirement over there is that you prove you've had a Yellow Fever inoculation if you are coming from a country where Yellow Fever is prevalent. And if it's not obvious, the U.S. isn't on the list. So you can really take your chances if you want. And we were told while getting our pre-shot debrief that people actually decide they don't want to do this. Are you kidding me? I know $254 seems like a lot to pay, but the taking a chance on the alternative is way worse in my opinion. 

I hate getting shots. Yes, I realize I'm a big baby and no, it really doesn't hurt. I just don't like them.

In case you don't know, the three primary diseases we got ourselves protected against have some pretty nasty effects. Typhoid, which is bacterial, causes high fever, abdominal pains, diarrhea and headaches.  Hepatitis A is viral and has the same effects as Typhoid with some vomiting and jaundice thrown in for good measure. Both are spread by drinking liquids or eating food contaminated with infected feces. Both the cause and the effects sound nasty enough here. If I'm drinking feces contaminated water, I want whatever protection I can get.

Malaria on the other hand is transmitted between people through a particular type of mosquito (the Anopheles mosquito). Symptoms of malaria are similar to some of those of Hepatitis A (vomiting, high fever and headaches) but in some cases can cause yellowing of the skin, coma or death! According to wikipedia, the disease is caused by parasitic protozoans which sounds like something I never want anywhere near me let alone inside me.

So if it's not obvious from the picture above, I got my shots. All two of them. Although I could have opted for a third shot which would have taken care of Typhoid Fever but I didn't. You can inoculate yourself against Typhoid by taking pills or getting the needle. Give me the pills over the shot any time! The picture of me grimacing in anticipated pain should be enough to convince you of my preference.

Our attitude towards this stuff was really if you are going to protect yourself, protect yourself! Even though we felt absolutely well protected medically, we had pre-trip imaginings of jungles and other sorts of terrain teeming with mosquitoes. David Livingstone's diaries of his time in Africa describe his children with mosquito bites over every square inch of their bodies which sounds like no fun at all. So to make doubly or triply sure we didn't get malaria we stocked up well and each took an extra small backpack with us on the plane stocked full of an unconscionable amount of Deep Woods Off! in both spray (less than 3 oz. there) and wipe (non-liquid and therefore TSA-compliant) form in addition to each buying an insect repellant jacket or hoodie from a company called ExOfficio.

It sounded like we were good to go but we still had to make sure. With all this stuff in the forefront of our minds, we had to talk to some locals about it when we were on the ground, right? And it started as soon as we landed and hopped in the van taking us to our hotel in Victoria Falls. The story from our guides was one that would become familiar by the end of the week. Everyone we talked to from day one to day six denied that there was ever any malaria (diseases caused by infected feces weren't really discussed) where they lived and noted they had never had the disease despite living their entire lives in Africa.

Furthermore, we were told by people in Victoria Falls that you only need to worry about malaria in rural areas. And when we got to the Elephant Valley Lodge in rural Botswana on the last couple of days they told us there was no worry of catching anything out in the bush but it is the city near already infected people where you need to be protected against mosquito-borne diseases. If there was one thing people unanimously agreed upon, it was that in winter, there are no mosquitoes in their country.

It's been about two and a half weeks since I've been back from Africa and I have had no headaches, diarrhea, high fever or abdominal pains and certainly no jaundice or yellowing of the skin or comas. I'm done with my malaria pills (you have to take them for seven days after you return) and I haven't yet gone back for my Hepatitis A booster but I'm feeling pretty confident.

I also feel like the Deep Woods Off! and the insect repellant jacket I wore almost everywhere after dark or before light helped me out. I don't recall getting bitten by anything anywhere I wiped myself or while I was covered up. But I do know one thing we were told just isn't true: there ARE mosquitos in winter in Victoria Falls. The first day we got to Africa I changed out of long pants and put on shorts and headed down for dinner at our hotel in Victoria Falls. Sure enough, I forgot to use the Off! and I paid a price. A couple of bites on my ankles but no malaria. Not yet anyway. And I don't think there will be. When it comes to stuff like this, better safe than sorry is my motto. You should be too if you plan a trip like this. The alternative is way worse. And I don't want to know how much worse it is.

Want to know how my Typhoid Fever pills worked? Read the pamphlet above.

Bwana Kileo

Most of the tales from my African trip last month are stories of everything working out perfectly. Most of them. The one exception to this rule is the story of my side trip to Zambia on day two of my holiday. It was for sure an experience, albeit unexpectedly brief, and it taught me a lesson about what I already knew and failed to do. Here it is for your amusement and enrichment.

Generally speaking, I think of myself as a fairly prepared person. Whether I'm at work or just living life, when I go somewhere I know how to get from point A to point B, have contingency plans if things go wrong and I know what to do when I get wherever it is I am going. I like to have a schedule and stick to it but understand how to improvise if something goes wrong.

I travel in much the same way I live my life. I know this drives some of the people I travel with a little nuts, but I just can't live any other way. A typical vacation for me is scheduled. Like really scheduled. I make a list of everything I want to see, create a schedule that makes sense and then stick to it. Sometimes there are maps and diagrams and in really extreme cases bound books of information to help me out along the way. I'm a good scheduler so I always try to allow some float in my timetable which allows me to detour in case I want to do something I didn't expect to find, like searching for Roman ruins in Barcelona.

In contrast to one of my usual vacations, I did not plan our Africa trip much at all. We made the decision early on to go with some sort of packaged tour since the area of the globe we were traveling was terra incognito for us. That made things easy. Most of our days were jam packed with stuff to do and see and we barely knew where we were going some days. But we had one day off to ourselves. And that's the day we decided to go to Zambia. And we didn't plan. And it didn't go well. And I should have known better.

Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe where we spent our first two nights in Africa is right on the Zambian border. The Zambezi River which flows over the Falls divides the two countries so considering it's a short trip to the nearby city of Livingstone, Zambia, many travelers to Vic Falls take advantage of the proximity and choose to spend a day north of the Zambezi. We were no exceptions, even planning for a potential day trip by buying a Univisa at immigration when we arrived at the airport. A Univisa purchased at Zimbabwe's port of entry allows you to enter that country, go to Zambia and re-enter Zimbabwe without incurring additional fees. It's made specifically for folks intending to visit both countries in one trip. Like us.

Despite our Univisa purchase, visiting Zambia on this trip was no sure thing. If Victoria Falls turned out to be some sort of paradise where there was all sorts of stuff to do and see 24 hours a day, then we probably would have stayed put. But in our first half day in country we found what we expected and decided to venture across the border and pick up a couple of new passport stamps. Just to be sure we were doing something sensible and fun, we mentioned to two people that we planned a trip north of the border. Both said don't bother. We ignored them. Remember that so you can say they told us so.

So it's now the morning of day two of our trip, we've eaten breakfast in our hotel and we set out on the half mile walk down to the Zimbabwe border. The immigration offices to pass out of one country and into the other are not right next to each other. Each country has its border post firmly on their own side of the Zambezi. So to get to Zambia from Zimbabwe, you have to walk across the Victoria Falls Bridge which links the two countries. I guess it's a no man's land of sorts.

The Victoria Falls Bridge with one (and only one) vehicle crossing it.

The Victoria Falls Bridge opened in 1905 after a 14 month construction period. It spans the approximately 500 foot gap between the two countries about 400 feet over the river below. Getting to the bridge requires another sort of half mile walk downhill through what I just called a no man's land. But it's not literally a no man's land because there are a ton of people between the two immigration points just hanging out. And they all want to sell you something, Now this is OK for the first few feet or so but when a dude follows you all the way to the bridge from the Zimbabwe border asking everything he can ask you about Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton before pulling out some jewelry, it gets to be a bit much. By the time we reached the Zambian border and had promised to look for at least three people selling things on the way back, we were good and ready to be left alone. Of course, that didn't happen. It picked right up again on the other side. But hold that thought for a minute.

The walk across the Victoria Falls Bridge is either awesome, a little frightening or both, depending on who you are and how well you deal with heights. And if you intend to bungee jump off the center, I guess (we didn't choose to do that). The drop off the side of this bridge is tall; taller in fact than the Falls because by the time the river gets to the point of the Bridge, the riverbed has dropped a bit. The view off either side is absolutely tremendous. It's just a gorgeous unspoiled gorge with a raging river at the bottom. If you are OK with heights.

The Bridge has stood for 110 years so it's not going anywhere any time soon. But it was clearly built to hold a different kind of traffic load than the buses and cargo trucks which regularly pass over it. The vibrations when a large vehicle is driving over the Bridge are obvious and little unnerving. The signs prohibiting two way traffic and multiple vehicles on the main span at the same time don't make it better. I was glad of the signs. I didn't want to find out what might happen if that rule was broken by some impatient truck driver.

Despite what I wrote earlier about being unprepared for Zambia, we kidded ourselves that we actually were. We knew from reading travel guides and blogs prior to our departure that we should look for light blue cabs immediately after getting our passports stamped. So I was a little thrown by a taxi driver soliciting our business before we passed immigration. He promised he'd take us anywhere we wanted after we were in Zambia. But seeing no light blue cab in his possession and not understanding how he could take us into Zambia from the other side of the border station, we passed and made a beeline for the nearest light blue car we could see. It was easy and relatively painless.

Then came the part we weren't prepared for: where did we want to go? Well, our target was Livingstone, which we imagined as sort of a larger version of Victoria Falls on the other side of the river but beyond that we didn't have any specific destination in mind. So we left it up to the cab driver who was pretty much at a loss.

The view we had for most of our time in Zambia. Yes, our cabbie's a Liverpool fan.

What we expected here was that there was some logical tourist-y part of Livingstone that he could take us to, drop us off and where after a couple of hours of shopping and maybe some lunch we could catch a cab back to the border. There isn't such a spot. It was all imagined. So what we were basically doing was asking a cabbie to take us to a place of his choosing in a city of 70,000 people and leave us there. That's like getting in a cab outside my condo building and asking to be taken into D.C. and then being disappointed when you end up downtown rather than at the National Mall. What on Earth were we thinking?

Now in our defense, we hadn't quite figured out yet that the part of Africa that we were in catered to tourists on a sort of organized activities basis. The way it works is you pay someone to come pick you up at your hotel (could be a safari, a cruise on the river, a walk with lions or whatever); they take you to where you have paid to go; you have the experience; and they take you back to your hotel. You don't just wander around a city. We didn't know this yet.

So we are in the cab with our driver taking us nowhere in specific and we try to make some conversation. So we ask him about the guy that offered us a ride just before we passed through immigration. Yep, just as we suspected he told us we were better off with the light blue cabs because sometimes the guys who offer you rides across the border are engaged in drug smuggling or human trafficking. 

What?!?!? Go back a second. The last thing I want to hear when a cab driver is driving me somewhere random in a land I don't understand is him making a reference to human trafficking. Especially right before he pulled off the road unexpectedly without our asking (he wanted to show us the river). Thankfully, our driver was fine and that was the last we heard or suspected of anything like we were going to be sold into slavery. Although he did at one time on the ride dedicate a song on the radio to us and it happened to be Elton John's "Sacrifice." Take that as you will.

Livingstone, Zambia's second class market. From the back seat of our cab.

So what did we actually do in Zambia? Well for one thing, hardly got out of the cab. We toured through the second class (according to our driver) market where as far as we could tell from the cab's back seat they primarily sold fruits and vegetables. We managed to take in some local atmosphere there and avoid a guy banging on the cab who (again, according to our driver) wanted us to get on a bus to Lusaka, which is the capital of Zambia. Why we would want to go on a bus to a city that is according to Google Maps a six and half hour bus ride away is beyond me. But maybe folks like me want to do that all the time. Who knows? Maybe he was a slaver?

After our very brief tour of the second class market, we drove through the first class market (auto repair shops seemed to be common here) and then headed out of town at my desperate suggestion towards the river in hopeful search for a tourist resort or something like that. Who knows, maybe we would find a spot for some lunch with plenty of cabs waiting before we headed back to the relative calm and comfort of Zimbabwe. We did find some lodges out there that had some great views of the water and some boats. The problem? It was about 10:30 in the morning.

So after checking out the not yet opened bars at two resorts; looking into the Zambezi to see if we could determine if we were seeing a crocodile or a log (later that day we would find out this was called a log-odile); and declining an offer to go see rhinos that a friend or cousin or friend's cousin or something like that of our driver could take us on, we decided to call it quits and head back home. A seven mile cab ride from the Zambian border is about $10. We got a ride there and back plus a trip out to the river and back and paid $50. Maybe that was too much. But we made it back in one piece to the border no worse for our efforts. I won't forget the lesson I learned in Zambia: don't go anywhere unprepared ever again. I'm glad I went but I'm sure it could have been so much more.

The view of the Zambezi on our way back from Zambia.

But that's not the end of the story.

Of course once we pass through the Zambian border we are not back home. We still have to make the trip back over the Victoria Falls Bridge and fend off the guys selling wooden animals, jewelry and bowls in addition to the potential (thanks to our cab driver) drug smugglers and white slavers. Not looking forward to that especially.

Luckily we found a solution that not only got us over the bridge relatively unbothered but that also provided the title of this blog post. Coming out of immigration we spotted a group of about seven white people ahead of us about to pass over the border. Most of these people were wearing almost identical t-shirts with a map of Africa on the back and a tour company's name with the slogan "Safari, so good!" These people had to be Americans! We caught up with them so we could use them as some sorts of human shields against the folks we thought would bother us all the way across the bridge.

And it totally worked. We hung at the back of the group with our new friend Bill from Kansas and all his fellow travelers leading the pack got accosted for money for things they likely didn't need and wouldn't ever use. It was perfect. And of course along the way we chatted with Bill and found out a little bit about his history traveling the world and the safari company that had brought him to Africa not only in 2015, but as his shirt attested, in 2010. And we had to ask Bill about his shirt.

I already mentioned that the t-shirts Bill and his companions were wearing were almost identical. Besides being of various colors, the shirts had a different words in them towards the top of the African continent. Bill's shirt read "bwana kileo." 

Apparently their primary guide on this trip (who was not with the group when we tagged along) spoke Swahili and had assigned each person in the party a Swahili name which was printed on their shirts. Bill's name (bwana kileo) means "man who likes to drink alcohol" which as it turns out is perfect because that's my Swahili name too! We looked it up on Google Translate when we got back to the hotel which yielded an even better translation: alcohol maestro. Thanks, Bill. You just made my trip to Zambia worthwhile. Next time you see me, just greet me as bwana kileo. Or alcohol maestro if you prefer not to speak Swahili.

The Smoke That Thunders

On December 8, 1840, a 27 year old missionary named David Livingstone departed his native England on an expedition funded by the London Missionary Society to bring Christianity to southern Africa. He wouldn't return home until December 9, 1856. In the sixteen years he was gone, he had established three missions (all destroyed); met with and befriended a number of native tribes and chiefs in a way no other white man had; converted almost nobody to Christianity; and walked across the entire continent from his landing point at Luanda, Angola to the end of his journey at Quilimane, Mozambique. Along the way, on November 16, 1855, he discovered a great waterfall, which he named Victoria Falls after England's reigning monarch at the time of his journey.

Of course, Livingstone's discovery is a matter of perspective. He was certainly not the first person to lay eyes on what he named Victoria Falls; people living around the the Zambezi River had known about and feared the Falls for generations and stone age tools as old as 50,000 years have been discovered near its location so it's not like folks didn't know it was there. Livingstone was merely the first European man to see the falls, which we white people naturally have a tendency to confuse with actual discovery, although I'm sure Livingstone would not think this way. It is very likely that he knew exactly when he was going to find it since the natives he had stayed with on his trek likely told him all about it, using the name they had given the place: Mosi-Oa-Tunya or "the smoke that thunders."

On August 20 of this year, a 47 year old architect (me) departed his adopted United States for Africa on a trip that promised to be a vacation of a lifetime (so far). And Mosi-Oa-Tunya was my first stop after arriving at my final destination. Like pretty much literally my first stop. A quick check in at the hotel for a clean shirt and we were off on the half mile trip (we drove...or more accurately rode) to the famous Falls. It didn't take a 15 year journey, although the 28 hour plus trip might have seemed that way to me at the time (and hence the clean shirt), and for darned sure I was in no way any sort of discoverer of anything other than myself on this trip. But two hours after arriving in Zimbabwe, I was on my way to a place that meant the start of an eye-opening journey for me.

When I think of amazing waterfalls, I think of Niagara Falls, probably because that was the only truly awe inspiring waterfall I'd visited in person prior to last month. And by Niagara, I mean a wide river flowing fast and deep over a massive drop into a large-ish body of water all of which is in plain view. Basically a cliff with a ton of water flowing over every second and minute. Pretty much your classic waterfall.

Victoria Falls is not Niagara. And by that I mean my preconceived notion of what this waterfall would look like was nothing like my ideal large waterfall based on my past experience. Instead of falling off a large drop into an open pool like the water at Niagara does, the water at Victoria Falls drops into a slice in the Earth and then zigzags down a tight fast canyon which snakes its way along the border between Zimbabwe to the south and Zambia to the north. I'll try my best to explain how this happens and how it's not as easy to appreciate as Niagara.

The land under the Zambezi River (which is the river that drops over the falls) is made up of alternating vertical layers of basalt and sandstone which form "stripes" perpendicular to the flow of the river. These "stripes" of course are not visible to the eye below the river but sure enough they are there. I'm not sure why it is this way but somehow, somewhere way back in time some sort of geological action must have formed this sort of phenomenon.

Basalt is hard. Sandstone is not. So over the millions of years that the Zambezi has been flowing over the riverbed, the action of the water is gradually eroding the sandstone layers. The result at the location of the Falls is that the softer sandstone has been washed away to form canyons which the river dives into while the basalt around the sandstone remains in place. This appears to the first time tourist as a gash in the land about 350 feet below the upper riverbed everywhere there used to be the softer stone.

Looking east at the Falls from just west of the Devil's Cataract.

The way Mosi-Oa-Tunya was formed makes it extremely difficult to understand for the first time visitor and I spent the majority of my time walking through the national park on the Zimbabwe side trying to wrap my head around how this part of the waterway was created. The park itself is one of the basalt layers that make up some of the riverbed and millions and millions of years ago, the Zambezi actually flowed over where you are walking. It doesn't now because time eventually caught up with the sandstone layer north of the park and created a new canyon for the Falls to drop into. Make sense? If not look at the picture above the one above. Hopefully that helps.

Victoria Falls is neither the highest nor the widest waterfall in the world yet it claims to be the largest. At its highest point of 360 feet it is more than twice as tall as Niagara which tops out at just less than 170 feet but it is nowhere near the largest drop of over 2,600 feet you can find at Angel Falls in Venezuela. And despite it being just over a mile wide (Niagara is about 25% narrower), it is significantly smaller than Iguazu Falls which separates Brazil from Argentina and is over 1.5 times as wide.

So why is it the largest? Well that's just not clear to me but I suppose it has something to do with the amount of water dropping at any one time which would be a combination of height, width and depth. Despite searching for hours on the internet, I was unable to find a satisfying answer. I can say having been there that Victoria Falls is so wide and the viewing angles are so few that it is really hard to comprehend just how big the Falls is. It would be a lot simpler if the drop was just like it is at Niagara. But the fact that the water dies into a canyon so suddenly makes it almost impossible to see the whole thing from one spot on foot. I was more impressed by Niagara.

The Main Falls. Pretty strong in winter. Imagine the flow in summer.

For those of you reading this post who have made a visit to Niagara Falls and hate it, please understand that I love Niagara. I could stare for hours at the enormous amount of water flowing over the Canadian side of those falls. And the geography there makes that viewing angle which is so awesome just so perfect. You don't get that same view of Victoria Falls and so it doesn't seem as powerful. Don't get me wrong here, Victoria Falls was gorgeous and there are so many different places to see the Falls from and it just keeps going and going as you walk through the park. And I've also never seen so many rainbows in my life. But it didn't impress me like Niagara always has. Maybe I need to go back to the U.S.-Canadian border to make sure I'm remembering things correctly.

I suppose at this point I may need to offer a disclaimer. One of the difficulties for us in visiting southern Africa to see Victoria Falls and also spend time on safari was that those two concepts are fundamentally opposed. To see the animals I grew up loving in zoos and books, you need to go in August to September when the water levels on the Zambezi and Chobe Rivers are low. The lack of water in the bush draws wildlife to the riverbanks  for ideal game viewing. To see Victoria Falls at its most powerful, you really need to visit in April when the rains have been falling for a few months and the Zambezi is at its highest water level.

We visited Zimbabwe after essentially three to four months of solid drought so it shouldn't have been any surprise to me that the Falls were less impressive than they could have been. I can imagine if we went at a different time of the year, I would have come away from the Falls a lot more enthusiastic. You can see where the water flows in wetter times by looking at the face of the drop; anywhere the rock is without plant life is a spot where there is water in the summer months (August is winter in the southern hemisphere). There were a lot of plant-less areas on the basalt face, especially on the Zambian side. I can imagine just how powerful the curtain of water is at full force. You apparently get soaking wet during this time, which I suppose is an advantage to when we visited.

The east side of the Falls, getting close to Zambia and no winter flow.

The town of Victoria Falls is all about "the smoke that thunders." It is clear from spending a day or two there that this is a unique spot on the African continent and the entire economy revolves around tourists coming to look at the Falls, or raft the lower Zambezi or bungee jump off the Victoria Falls Bridge (350 feet down? uh, no thank you). I suppose if the Falls weren't there, the local Zimbabweans would survive off the game that is all around the river and sometimes found wandering around town. I still think it's odd to find baboons and warthogs roaming the streets. I can imagine it would be a little freaky seeing an elephant or hippo on the sidewalk on the way home from a bar. We stuck to the hotel at night.

Our choice (or maybe better said as what was chosen for us) of hotel in Victoria Falls was the Ilala Lodge, which is located about a half a mile from the Falls. The balcony in our room looked toward the Falls and from the moment that you opened the balcony doors in the morning to the time you closed them at night, you can hear the rush of water from Mosi-Oa-Tunya. Coming from the United States it's easy to mistake it for the roar of traffic, only there isn't any traffic to make such a noise. The spray from the drop apparently can rise a half a kilometer or more into the air and I completely believe that. We got up before sunrise the second day we were in town to look for wildlife on the hotel lawn before daybreak. We were disappointed in the animals (just more warthogs…sigh!) but the spray was always visible, shifting like smoke in the air against the emerging light.

Early morning view of "the smoke that thunders."

In addition to the natural wonder of the Falls, there's something else to see in the national park adjacent the waterfall: a statue of David Livingstone. I think it's worth spending a few moments considering Livingstone's presence in Africa. 

Before I started researching this trip, I always thought of Livingstone as an explorer who "discovered" Victoria Falls and crossed Africa for the glory of Britain. I honestly had no idea that he was a missionary. Call me ignorant. Last September I visited the outside of the Royal Geographical Society in London which features a statue of Livingstone prominently in a niche on the outside of their headquarters which reinforced my impression.

In the late nineteenth century, David Livingstone acquired almost mythological status in Great Britain. While he was away, the public was fed stories about his complete isolation for years in a foreign world; accounts of the distances he traveled and things he saw; and too good to be true tales like him surviving a lion attack (true, by the way). For a population that rarely had any opportunity to leave their hometown let alone the small island they lived on, I can imagine how their imaginations were captured by Livingstone.

Statue of David Livingstone at Mosi-Oa-Tunya.

Livingstone was a missionary AND an explorer. His initial visits to the dark continent were funded by the London Missionary Society; later on, when he could no longer secure cash from his first sponsor, the Royal Geographical Society picked up the tab. From reading stories about Livingstone before leaving home for Africa last month, I believe he genuinely believed in the good of Christianity and went to Africa with the intent to convert as many people to the faith as he possibly could. I'm not convinced he ever really wanted to explore and find things for the glory of queen and country, however.

But his real reason for spending so much time away from home was that he firmly believed opening the continent to trading in goods unique to that land would be able to halt the east African slave trade. And this really became his life's work. Indeed his first trek across Africa was to find an overland route for passage of goods which could bring the tribal chiefs who were selling their own people into slavery the riches that they so desperately sought.

Livingstone made three major trips to Africa. The first one may have started out as a missionary trip but there's no doubt the end of that journey and the entirety of the last two were to find any way to halt the movement of humans from the African mainland to the slave market at Zanzibar off the coast of present day Tanzania. Over the course of his life, he tried to find new paths for trade, gave speeches that fell mostly on deaf ears on his return trips home and eventually found a way to try to embarrass the crown into taking action by feeding accounts of the government's inaction to the New York Herald via Henry Morton Stanley, who found Livingstone when everyone thought he was dead with the now famous greeting "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" 

Eventually his efforts paid off, but he wouldn't be around to see it. He died on May 1, 1873 from malaria and dysentery in present day Zambia. In 1874, the British government, mostly through threats of force, brokered a treaty with Zanzibar to close the slave market on the island and end the trade in that portion of the world. Four years later, all human trade had been essentially squashed. Livingstone was an integral part of that effort and I'm sure he would be prouder of the progress he made toward that goal than anything else he accomplished in his lifetime. His statue at Victoria Falls has a series of words around the base, including "Explorer" and "Missionary." The most signifiant is "Liberator."

Victoria Falls was a great way to start our Africa trip but it's sometimes difficult to have it all. Since I returned to the U.S. I've looked for aerial shots of the Falls online and they truly are spectacular. Maybe one day I'll get to go back at a different time of the year and see the full force of the Falls. Or if I ever make it back in winter, I'll have to take a helicopter ride above the Zambezi to get the view of the whole thing that you can't get from the ground. It's only $162 for a 12-13 minute ride. A bargain, right?

Nine Days, 15 Passport Stamps

Giraffe at sunset in the Chobe National Park.

Last month I spent six nights in southern Africa. When I told people this before setting out on this trip, the most frequent question I got was something to the effect of "you are going all that way for just six nights?" Yes, I am. Or did. Six. That's right. Just six. It was not a decision I entered into lightly but I think it worked well for us as a first trip to the real dark continent (Morocco last year doesn't count!). We got out of it what we intended to get and we got a whole series of great stories from and insight into all of the places we visited.

Despite the short duration, we managed to pass through immigration in five different countries, in addition to stopping in a sixth to re-fuel. Six nights, six countries? Well sort of. Sounds like a lot, right? It really wasn't. The point of this post is to discuss our thought process in selecting this vacation; how we did it; how in many ways what we did is exactly what other folks from the rest of the world are doing; and to pass along some of the insight we gained about taking this sort of a trip and visiting the places we visited. Oh…and why it worked out pretty much perfectly.

I have to tell you this holiday had the potential of being a real sort of freak me out vacation. I've spent a lot of time over the past 25 years or so traveling the United States and Europe and I am very comfortable piecing together a week or more in a sort of a la carte fashion: booking all my hotels, flights and transportation separately to customize the trip to my tastes and how much I want to spend exactly. I'm really comfortable doing this, even with last year's trip to Morocco. But deep in the heart of Africa? Not so much. I needed a different solution.

Now being a big brand guy, I turned to an airline, specifically South African Airways Vacations, to solve my problem. With no travel agents who specialized in Africa in my knowledge base, I figured why not go with a recognizable brand name. Plus SAA Vacations seemed to have a ton of different packaged options for us to choose from in all sorts of different lengths and all kinds of different price points, although none was especially cheap. But if cheap vacations are your thing, maybe safari in Africa is not up your alley unless you really know what you are doing.

Four countries meeting at a single point.

So with the "who" out of the way, now it was time to determine the "where" and that took some doing. Our original strategy was to maximize the number of nights on the continent at the cheapest possible price while getting some safari experience in. We looked at a nine or so night package to South Africa that would allow us to see animals in a private reserve or National Park (both fenced as we learned on this trip in that country) in addition to seeing penguins off the south tip of Africa; touring some historical sights; and spend time South African wine tasting for a day. We also checked out a rhino focused vacation in Namibia (as I recall) and some other options.

Ultimately, we decided this trip was not about wine or history or penguins. It was about safari; seeing elephants and lions and giraffes and all sorts of other creatures that filled my imagination as a kid. So instead of two days out of nine on safari, we decided to maximize our wildlife viewing potential while also allowing a day or so at the famous Victoria Falls. We picked the Chobe and the Falls package, which seemed to get us what we wanted the most. While we didn't know it at the time, these packages are totally customizable. We ended up not doing that but SAA Vacations will allow you to do whatever you want.

Six days, four on safari. The vacation we chose would require us to spend time in Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia and Botswana again while passing through South Africa both coming and going and detouring into Zambia if we felt like it (we did). That sounded like a lot of travel but we'd sure get a lot of passport stamps, which is always attractive to me. But the lot of travel? Turned out to be not so much. Despite all the visits to various exotic countries, the three places we stayed at were about an hour and a half drive to get to all three. If I told you I was visiting Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado in six days, you wouldn't think twice. Same story here. Just like those four states come together at the four corners, the part of the world we visited last month joins four countries at one point.

And as we found out from other folks we met over there, moving around after a couple or three nights is not unusual. The experiences can vary drastically from one place to the next, just like it did for us. And the distance we traveled compared to some of the people we met seemed very very small.

Warthogs digging for food on the banks of the Chobe River.

So at this point we have someone to arrange things for us, we know what we want to see, now we just needed the "when". Now if we were just going to see animals in their natural environment, the best time to go would be simple: when there was as little water as possible, which would bring every creature in the bush down to the river to drink every day, including those creatures that wanted to eat other thirsty animals (it's the circle of life, folks…).

But the dry season, which runs from May to September, isn't such a good time to see the Falls in all their majesty. And when I say "dry", I mean DRY. Like no rain at all for those five months. The river rises six feet or more during rainy season (summer) over the dry season (winter). So we tried to strike a balance, visiting sort of halfway through the winter and hoping that the Falls would be busy enough to allow us to get a full picture of what they might be like in summer. It almost worked because I have a good imagination. But that's a story for another post.

We booked this trip last October and waited ten months before we could get what we paid for. So we went to bed the night of August 19 knowing the next day would be one of the roughest travel days of our lives. Here's how the whole thing went down, with some of what I found remarkable and some pictures thrown in for good measure. Plus where we got all our passport stamps from.

Marabou storks standing in a tree.

Days 1 and 2

Out of the United States (zero stamps); into and out of South Africa (one stamp); into Zimbabwe (one stamp)

At 4:15 a.m. on Thursday, August 20, we hopped into a taxi at the Westin Hotel outside my condo building in Arlington, Virginia. One cab ride, 28 hours and three flights later, we arrived in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, having passed through New York's Kennedy airport and Johannesburg, South Africa. It's by far the longest I have traveled in terms of distance and time to get to any one place in my life. And the Victoria Falls airport is the smallest I have ever been to. Or at least it was for the next week or so.

Before stepping off the plane at Vic Falls airport and walking myself into immigration, my impression of the town of Victoria Falls from looking at Google Maps was that it was probably a smaller sort of Key West. I have no idea why I thought this other than I imagined it was a resort sort of town with a series of restaurants and bars arrayed around a few hotels.

I must have been absolutely bonkers. My impression of course couldn't have been more unfounded in reality. First of all, Zimbabwe is absolutely nothing like southern Florida and it likely never will be. Sure there are chickens roaming the streets of Key West and there are warthogs, elephants, baboons and all sorts of other creatures roaming the streets of Vic Falls but the similarities stop just about there. Other than the fact that there are some quite luxurious hotels in Victoria Falls to serve the tourists who flock to see the famous waterfall, the town is developing, impoverished in many places and surrounded by the African bush, which in mid-August makes it resemble more of a desert than anything thriving.

Baboons running across the lawn at the Victoria Falls Hotel.

Despite what might seem like complaining in the previous paragraph, Victoria Falls was the perfect place to start our trip. It got us a good look at the famous Falls and allowed us a preview of some of the animals we would see later in the week. In a sense it got us really excited about wildlife viewing by almost bumping into warthogs, baboons and hornbills in the streets and trees around our hotel. If we had seen this little wildlife at the end of our trip, we might have just yawned. The preview was perfect.

We tend to be super prepared before we visit other countries in the world. So we were very ready to have people following us around asking us to buy whatever they had in their hands to sell, whether it be carved animals, wooden dishes or a few trillion Zimbabwean dollars (one American dollar is now worth 35 quadrillion Zimbabwean dollars; that's a 35 with fifteen zeroes after it and yes, I did have to google that). But what we weren't prepared for was how consumer goods starved the people in Zimbabwe are. It's like the Soviet Union in the early 1980s, or so I imagine.

When we declined most offers to exchange our American dollars (now the official currency of Zimbabwe) for whatever the people following us really wanted us to have, the requests changed from money to t-shirts, shorts, shoes, socks or even shampoo. I wish we had known all this for a couple of reasons. First, we could have taken some things over that we no longer needed and just given it away. We managed to scrounge all the shampoo from the hotel (sorry, Ilala Lodge), a couple of old t-shirts and socks we had with us along with some trail mix we had brought to snack on and hand it over to someone waiting outside our hotel.

Secondly, our goods are actual currency over there. We traded in a bandana for a couple of pieces of jewelry and two shirts for a wooden giraffe. The quality of shirts we can get in the United States is just far superior to what you can get in sub-Saharan Africa, even if most of our stuff is made in sweatshops in southeast Asia. We bought some souvenirs from one shopkeeper over there who was wearing the absolute worst NBA jersey knockoff I have ever seen (Toronto Raptors, in case you were wondering). The NBA logo wasn't even close to resembling the actual NBA logo. I could have hooked that guy up with a Wizards jersey from my closet; he'd instantly look more credible and more stylish at the same time. Missed opportunity. I wish Lonely Planet had that in their Southern Africa guidebook.

Crocodiles. The Nile crocodile is one of the most gorgeous creatures we saw in Africa.

Day 3

Out of Zimbabwe (one stamp); into and out of Zambia (two stamps); into Zimbabwe (one stamp)

Considering how juiced we were about getting as many passport stamps as possible, we couldn't be a river gorge away from Zambia and not visit. We had prepared for this at the Victoria Falls airport by purchasing a double entry visa (allowing you to enter Zimbabwe, leave and re-enter) for $50 rather than the single entry visa for $10 less.

Zambia was almost a total waste of time. Almost. And it was all our fault. But more on that later. I feel a Zambian post coming on. At least we got four more passport stamps out of it.

For those of you looking to get a good look at Victoria Falls from the Zambian side of the border in mid to late August, don't bother. It won't work. There's barely any water. Stick to the Zimbabwean side. Walk over the bridge maybe but be prepared to be pursued the whole distance.

My first baobab tree!!!!

Days 4 and 5

Out of Zimbabwe (one stamp); into and out of Botswana (two stamps); into Namibia (two stamps)

I almost feel guilty coloring in Namibia on my countries visited map on the "The Maps" page of this blog. I spent maybe 20 minutes on the actual soil of that country: about ten minutes to get into the country through immigration and about ten more minutes to get out. The rest of the time we were in country was on a houseboat. However, all the time we were on the boat we were technically in the country of Namibia. So there! Plus…five passport stamps in one day. How cool is that?

Staying on the Ichobezi Safariboats was amazing. You book one of four cabins on the main boat (we got the front cabin and only one with a private-ish balcony) and are then provided with your own personal tender boat plus pilot for game viewing excursions. The kind of personal attention we received on board was incredible. Everything we needed, including getting all too close to some very dangerous looking pods of hippos under the watch of our pilot, David, was provided for us. Of all the places I stayed in Africa, I liked the houseboat the best, even if you did have to shower in filtered (but still green-brown) Chobe River water.

The Ichobezi Safariboat: the main houseboat...

…and the tender boat. We stuck to the one on the left.

Two other stories are worth telling about our time in Namibia. We were picked up at the Botswana border by David and his tender boat and immediately taken to immigration on Impalila Island in Namibia. David needed to stay with the boat and our luggage so he gave us directions to the immigration office: walk up the beach and turn left at the baobab tree. Seriously??? A baobab tree??? How awesome is that. I've wanted to see one of these upside down trees since I first read Antoine de Saint-Exupery's The Little Prince and to a much much much lesser extent first purchased "Pink Floyd"'s Delicate Sound of Thunder album which features a picture of baobabs on the rear cover.

Seeing one of these trees with their super thick trunks topped with their teeny tiny root like branches was a signature African moment for me. There are nine species of baobabs in the world and they only grow naturally in Africa and Australia, although I didn't realize the Australian connection until I got back from my holiday. Seeing a baobab was so totally off my radar that finding one as a marker to turn left to immigration was a real treat. Now I feel a little closer to Le Petit Prince. Oh and "Pink Floyd" is in quotes because Floyd without Roger Waters isn't really Pink Floyd.

The second story worth noting about our trip into Namibia is how well oiled the tourism machine in Africa is and, quite frankly, why I would still be reluctant to engage in travel arrangements myself. When we got ready to depart our hotel in Victoria Falls, the only thing we knew was that we had to be at the front desk at 11:15 a.m., which of course being most always on time, we were. We boarded the minivan that showed up in front of our lodge and then went to pick up some other folks at some other hotels. From there we drove (or rode, I guess) about an hour or so to the Zimbabwe border where we were taken through immigration by our driver and then walked to the fence separating that country from Botswana.

Not everyone from our minivan was headed to the same place so naturally there were a number of different Botswanans waiting for our party on the other side of the chain link fence that divided the two countries. Some of us were handed off to one driver; others to a second but in all cases our names were on the manifest of sorts that these guys had in their hands and our Zimbabwe driver wouldn't leave until everyone was handed off correctly. So we hopped in another minivan and kept going through our new country. We let a group off at a lodge in country and then headed to immigration out of Botswana at Kasane, which ended up being little more than a small building near a beach. Once again there was someone waiting for us and we were handed off securely.

Booking a package tour had really allowed me to not think about the logistics of traveling out of one country, through a second and into a third in the span of less than an hour. But if I had to think about it and worry, I didn't have to. As it turned out, we knew far less than the people that were responsible for getting us safely from point A to point B. And I guess that's the whole point of it, right? It all worked so beautifully that I didn't really have to think about it at all.

Cape buffalo. Male in the foreground, the remainder of the breeding herd behind.

Days 6 and 7

Out of Namibia (one stamp); into Botswana (one stamp)

Namibia was a perfect second stop on our six day trip. After the wildlife preview we got in Victoria Falls, there was seemingly every variety of animal everywhere on the banks of the Chobe National Park and we drank it all in greedily either from the deck of our houseboat or from the water level view of our tender boat while avoiding hippos on the Chobe River. We couldn't have imagined it getting any better.

But it did. The only thing on this trip that topped watching game from the water was watching everything we already saw and much much more from on land. If we had started with a land stop, we would have been disappointed with the rest of the trip, especially Victoria Falls. The sequence provided to us by South African Airways just built the excitement every day. We made a list of new creatures we had seen every day. We added at least three new species to our list every day except the last half day. The result in reverse would have been a lot of stuff up front and nothing new on the back end.

Tent number 14 at the Elephant Valley Lodge. Home sweet home for two days.

I already mentioned my favorite place to stay on this trip was the Ichobezi Safariboats; I just don't think you can beat the attention and care we received while staying there. There's not a whole lot more personal you can get than a place with four cabins and an equal number or more of people there looking after you. It even overcomes a river water shower. But a close second was the Elephant Valley Lodge, our base for our last two nights on the continent.

Elephant Valley Lodge sits right on the Botswana - Zimbabwe border and is made up of 20 tents where us tourists sleep and a central lodge facility that houses reception and is there to feed us three meals a day. I know this sounds sad but this is the first time I have ever slept in a tent that I can remember. And by tent, I don't really mean tent like something temporary set up for the night. I really mean a 12 foot high or so fabric and wood structure that looks like a tent but actually has a full plumbed bathroom complete with shower.

The best part of the whole experience was that most of the property was laid out to focus on a watering hole just outside the fence designed to keep elephants out of our camp. The dining area and tents 13 through 20 face the watering hole which is frequented by all manner of wild animals. We watched a herd or two of elephants slurping water, jockeying for dominant positions and sometimes getting a little upset with one another every night at dinner. We also got up and looked out the front door of our tent every opportunity we got, whether that was first thing in the morning to see the sunrise, in the middle of the day to watch a single elephant about 30 feet from our porch or in the middle of the night on a bathroom run. Hey, you never know when you are going to see a giraffe or hyena or something else out there.

Impala by the water.

We thought we knew what to expect before we got to Elephant Valley Lodge. But our expectations were shaken up a bit by talking with another couple earlier in the week who stayed in a non-fenced camp where all the tents were on stilts and you required an escort to move anywhere within the lodge so you wouldn't get stomped or attacked by something really dangerous. We hadn't counted on this sort of experience. And it threw me a bit.

So we were relieved when we arrived at the Lodge to be told that the camp was surrounded by an electric fence to ensure the elephants that were all around us didn't wander among our tents and possibly trample us in the middle of the night. But the statement about the fence keeping the elephants out was quite a precise one. The fence did keep elephants out but there was a section of fence where the bottom five feet or so was just wide open and we watched a bushbuck (a deer type thing) walk out of the camp shortly after we got there.

Now if a bushbuck can walk in and out of the camp, can't a hyena? Or a leopard? Or a whole pride of lions? The answer as it turned out was yes, but they won't. But just in case, there's a flashlight in the room and a whistle if there's ever any trouble. OK, so nothing happened but if there's a whistle in case of trouble, doesn't that mean trouble might exist? A bit unnerving at first but the folks in the Lodge made sure we were safe. Or maybe nothing tried to get in while we were there.

As great as the Lodge was, we didn't spend a whole lot of time there. Most of our time was spent being away looking at animals on land or in the water. That's the point after all, right? And that's a story for another time.

Lions playing in the bush. It's amazing how well they blend in with the grass.

Days 8 and 9

Out of Botswana (one stamp); into and out of South Africa (one stamp); into the United States (zero stamps)

Time to go home and get our last passport stamps.

I like to think I don't complain about much in life (it's the English person in me I guess; stiff upper lip and all that). But the flight from Johannesburg back to Dulles Airport is a killer. We started day eight with an early morning game drive followed by breakfast and then a ride to the Kasane airport down a dirt road that actually took us around the airfield. I now think Kasane is the smallest airport I've ever been to. They seem to have all of one gate, which is really just a door leading to the tarmac.

From Kasane, we flew back to Johannesburg where we caught a 6:30 flight to Dulles via Senegal. An 18 hour scheduled flight with one stop, from 6:30 p.m. South Africa time to 6:25 a.m. Washington (or Virginia) time. What kills is the stop in Senegal for refueling and to pick up and drop off some passengers. The stop is about 2 a.m. but they can't land a dark plane full of sleeping people. Instead, you all have to wake up, the lights have to be on in the cabin and all window shutters have to be up. So it's 2 o'clock in the morning, I'm dead tired in a fully lit airplane going through cleaning, security checks and boarding. Brutal. I'm not sure I've ever felt more tired in my life. Never want to do that again, even if it is the only way to get back from South Africa to home on a single plane.

On the other hand, arriving at Dulles at 6 a.m. and passing through immigration was one of the most surprisingly pleasant experiences of my life. I never thought I'd write "immigration" and "pleasant" in the same sentence but there was literally no line. Unfortunately, there were also no passport stamps for coming back home. Stupid fast pass immigration...

So that's it. There are many ways to get to southern Africa. We chose South African Airways Vacations and it worked out just fantastic for us. I'm sure there are other ways which are just as good. If you go, I think the package we picked was well worth the price. We learned so much in the short time we were over there. This trip really changed my perspective on a number of things about our world. I hope the thought process we went through helps and use it or discard it as you see fit. But take something American to trade if you ever go to Victoria Falls. It will benefit everyone. And if you see a guy named Eric with a red bandana, say hi for me.

Elephant at Elephant Valley Lodge. Taken from the front porch of Tent number 14.