Monkeys Playing on the Patio

This is my first attempt at adding a video to a blog! I took it on my Nikon while watching this family of monkeys playing on our patio: the long-suffering mother, the teen-ager and the two rambunctious kids, all wishing to be invited in to play. A fitting way to end our African adventure. Merry Christmas everyone!

Our Last Night at the Royal Livingstone

Our driver—unfortunately it wasn’t Ren so I didn’t get to report to him about Venus and Jupiter—took us to the little airport at Kasane which services the Chobe Park area, where we flew back to Zambia, repeating en route the ferry crossing and re-visiting the trucks still parked waiting to be transported over the river. We sat in yet another van on the other side while the driver paid graft or whatever to the authorities for permission to re-enter Zambia. Then we drove toward Livingstone Town dropping Gwenna and Don off at the Livingstone Airport for their trip to Switzerland. Finally, we arrived at the Zambezi Sun, the other hotel on the Royal Livingstone grounds. Or, as I might call it, the “cheap seats.”

Our time at Elephant Valley had turned out so well that I was having a few misgivings about having so precipitously agreed to cut it short, but after we arrived at the Zambezi Sun, I realized it would be a nice chance to just relax and get ready for the trip home. Maybe sit by the pool for the first time, or work on the blog, or just cool it with no pressure.

The room was small but adequate. We unpacked the bare minimum to get us through the day and onto the plane the next day, and then the phone rang. No one knows we’re here, we thought. It was Reception informing us that we were being “upgraded to the Royal on orders from the General Manager.” At first, Tom was inclined to say no that’s ok, we’re fine, but I said, no let’s do it. NEVER kick a gift horse in the teeth is my motto.

So we re-packed, no big deal, went up to Reception and when the luggage arrived we accompanied it on the three tiered golf cart type conveyance that they use to carry people and bags from one point to the other. After a couple of minutes drive, the driver stopped in front of a room that looked very much like the one we had originally stayed in some days before, but when he unlocked the door…. Omigod! It was a suite! Do they have us confused with someone else? Movie stars? VIPs? Barack and Michelle?

There was a wet bar in the large entryway outfitted with crystal glasses and ice bucket, every imaginable spirit and wine, a huge living room with curved couch and marble coffee table, a mirrored screen in the corner, game table, large desk, TV, a gorgeous bedroom with a dressing area separate from the bath and shower, and sliding glass doors in both rooms looking out over the expansive lawn and the Zambezi with a view of the Smoke that Thunders—the spume from Victoria Falls-- in the distance.

Are we in heaven yet? Or is this just a tease? Is someone going to knock on the door and say excuse me, we made a mistake, your room is actually over there in the back…behind the physical plant.

But no one came except our personal butler to inquire as to whether we were comfortable and to bring fresh roses and a plate of fruit, nuts and biltong. And so we spent the rest of the afternoon simply relaxing, unwinding and contemplating all that we had seen. I spent almost an hour watching and photographing a family of vervet monkeys romping on our patio and hoping to be invited in. We skipped lunch but had a great dinner at the outdoor patio restaurant where I had the most delicious Zambian chicken stew, another recipe I need to track down. It has peanut butter in it.

Oh, how did we happen to end up in this glorious suite? We knew it had Gwenna written all over it, but didn’t quite know how she had pulled it off. The receptionist told us that Guilio, the General Manager had ordered the upgrade, and seeing him in the lobby before dinner we went over to thank him, having met him the first time around. He seemed to remember us—and graciously said that he had heard we were coming back and figured since the suite was empty it wouldn’t hurt to give it to us. But then the next morning when checking email in the hotel I had a message from Gwenna that said that at the airport she and Don had run into Joanne, another one of the big bosses at the Royal whose title I’m not sure of. We had had a drink with Joanne during our first stay and had spent an hour or so talking with her. At the airport, Gwenna told her we were going to the Zambezi for the night and how much we had LOOOOVED the Royal. Joanne took the bait and made the call which resulted in the upgrade! So old Guilio took credit where none was due and I have to hand it to him for not missing a beat. And many thanks to Joanne. And Gwenna.

As I lay in my luxurious bed that night, I felt like we were the luckiest people on the planet to have had the opportunity to visit this wonderful place, to experience the animals in all their wild glory, to talk at length with a few people who know what they are talking about when it comes to Africa and its culture, and to see a varied cross-section of such a vast and diverse land. Although we barely touched the surface of all there is to see, never again will we feel that it is a strange and forbidding place. What we did see has merely whetted our appetites to see more. Maybe some day we will.

We flew home coach on a packed Delta plane, not a single empty seat, thirty hours in the air, 36 door to door, but that discomfort was a small price to pay for so many memories. Thank you, Gwenna and Don, for allowing Tom and I to accompany you on this fabulous African adventure.

Our Last Night Together

We got back to the Lodge around eight and although I think the staff was pushing for us to have dinner right away, we announced we would like a drink and to get cleaned up first, which they graciously acknowledged. After a wine and a shower—by now the tent had cooled and truly was rather charming in its rusticity—we returned to the main lodge where tables had been set up on the lawn overlooking their own private watering hole where animals come and go all night. There were only a few other occupied tables so it was like having the place to ourselves.

We were in very good moods by then, in stark contrast to our earlier dark ones, and sitting down to a formally decked out table under the stars on the grass while an elephant sipped at the watering hole next door was really quite a magical moment. Never mind the bugs as big as birds which persisted in slapping us upside the head periodically, not to mention landing in our soup, where, with a flick of a spoon, they were easily ejected. We were now true bushmen and women. Worry about bugs? Nah! They don’t eat much. We got a case of the sillies and giggled our way through a delicious four course meal and plenty of wine.

We had figured out early on that extinguishing the candles, while making it difficult to see, did at least reduce the insect population somewhat, and so we were able to enjoy most of our meal relatively unscathed. We had a lovely time, many laughs, a few post mortems, and when it came time to retire we said good night knowing tomorrow was the end of our time together.

And sleeping in the tent really was a nice experience. It was so cool we didn’t even need the fan, and the jungle noises had a tranquillizing effect that put us right to sleep. In the morning, we awoke to some unusual but not unfriendly sounds, dressed, packed up, and had a wonderful cooked breakfast before leaving for Livingstone.

Night in Botswana

A less-than-stellar view of the beautiful sunset on the Chobe

The sun setting on water lilies


This is the best picture of the moon phenomenon I could get with my inferior camera. Ignore the bottom part and just look at the crescent and the two planets and that's what it looked like.

More Elephant Pictures--Sorry, I can't help it!

Crossing the River Chobe

Safely on the other side, all members accounted for.


And always sooooo protective.

More pictures on the Chobe

Elephants preparing to cross the river. Look how protective they are of the little one.


Enlarge this one so you can see the baby inside the protective cocoon of the adults.


Four giraffes frolicking on the shore.

Pictures from the Chobe River run

Not a very good picture, but you get the idea--tree covered with a flock of white egrets. Be sure to enlarge this one and the next one.


And next to it a tree covered with black storks. Very beautiful sight.

An African darter, or snake bat, a type of cormorant.

The Elephant Valley Lodge

After the morning run at Mowana, we packed up our stuff and prepared to move to our final lodge, romantically called Elephant Valley Lodge. This lodge is also in Chobe Park, only about a half hour from Mowana. Again, Dragonfly wanted Gwenna to see the types of accommodations available and that was why we were moving yet again.

This was a different type of lodging in that we were to stay in “luxury tents.” The setting had been described as one where the elephants roamed freely on the grounds and the sounds of the jungle would lull us to sleep at night. Our dear friends the Rothsteins had stayed in tents during one of their African safaris and Marion had told me that it was a wonderful experience—just be sure the tents are air-conditioned.

You guessed it—they were not. When we arrived there, we were greeted warmly as was the norm, offered a cool drink and given an orientation to the place. Sean, the manager, young and handsome, asked us whether we wanted to do a river cruise or a land run that afternoon. The plan was that Gwenna and Don would be leaving the next morning for Switzerland where Gwenna was attending an annual meeting for her industry, and Tom and I would stay on another day at Elephant Valley before leaving for the long trip home. Since this would be their last game experience, we decided on the river cruise since the weather had grown quite hot.

Then we were shown to our tents. Ours was in one direction and Gwenna’s and Don’s in the opposite direction. We were already having misgivings because Sean had showed us a couple of the closer tents in an effort to familiarize Gwenna with the complex. To say they were hot is an understatement.

From the outside they are bona fide tents made of canvas with flaps for doors and windows and seated on a small wood deck. Inside they were furnished with proper furniture—twin beds, small dressing table, luggage rack. But luxurious, they were not. No closet or armoire, just a couple of shelves and a rod for hanging things. Two hangers. The bathroom had a sink, a shower whose fixtures were attached to a real tree that was growing through the floor, and a toilet. The bathroom floor was made of slats that the water could flow through. Sean flipped on the fan which did nothing but move the scorching air around a wee bit.

Of course, spoiled rotten by all of our previous accommodations, this, which was to be our African swan song, came as quite a disappointment. Tom and I managed to change into something a bit cooler and then went in search of Don and Gwenna’s tent; I thought maybe theirs was air conditioned and ours was not—in which case we would demand equal treatment.

Well, although on the opposite end of the camp, their tent was similar to ours, i.e., hotter n’ hell. But Gwenna, ever the planner, had an idea. She would call our contact with Dragonfly, and arrange for us to leave with them in the morning and return to the Royal Livingstone where we could spend our last night relaxing in cool luxury rather than sweating here in the bush. This sounded great to us. All we had to do was to endure this one night.

When we went back to the lobby to meet our guide for the river cruise, Gwenna made the call and all was arranged. Since this was a change, we would pay for the Royal and worry later about getting a refund for the second night at Elephant Valley. Gwenna returned from her phone call and said she had put us in the Zambezi Sun, the sister hotel to the Royal Livingstone, because it was about a third of the price. This was fine—we had seen it on our walk to the falls and it looked attractive though not as luxurious as the Royal. And at least it would be cool.

The day grew hotter and hotter—42 Centigrade according to Sean, which, by our quick calculations is about 114 Fahrenheit. Tom was about to have a stroke. Mind you, so far the weather had not been uncomfortably hot at all, maybe a little hot at the African village, but otherwise it was not.

Now it was time to make the most of the rest of the day and get through the night. We got into the range vehicle with Ren, a nice enough young man who had driven us to Elephant Valley from Mowana, who said he would be our guide for the river cruise. Hrumph, we all secretly thought, Ren is a driver pretending to be a guide. My Catholic guilt decided that this comeuppance was our punishment for having had the rest of the trip turn out so beautifully.

We drove quite a distance, sweating profusely, and finally arrived practically back at Mowana! I mean literally five minutes away! We could have just stayed there, we grumbled out of earshot of Ren. We went down to the boat, Ren carried a cooler with who-knew-what in it and a plate of Biltong and dried fruit. Biltong is an African jerky which we had come to love and eat at every opportunity. Off we go onto the river, and although the boat had a cover, the sun was so high in the afternoon sky that it was literally impossible to stay in the shade. We moved around like flapping fish trying to avoid the relentless sun.

A couple of minutes later, in the middle of the river, the boat suddenly stops cold. Oh no, says Ren, my helper must have put the extra gas tank in that other boat! We have no gas! Things are deteriorating from worse to worser, if that’s possible, we thought. We will die on this boat, petrified by the sun, turned into biltong, and then eaten by crocs and hippos.

About a hundred yards away, on shore, was a small dock and beyond it a small building. Just then two men walked out of the building and down to the dock. Call them for help, Don ordered. We didn’t have oars, but there was a pole aboard our vessel and Ren began poling laboriously toward the dock.

Here came a cultural difference. In the US, if you are on the water and you come across another boat in distress, not only is it a Rule of the Road that you have to help that boat, but you do it willingly and cheerfully! And immediately! This has always been our experience when boating in the US. Ren seemed reluctant to ask these guys for help, and they weren’t offering any. But Don was insistent. Tell them we’ll pay them, he said, ever the resourceful one. And anyway, all we really needed was a ride, or a tow, back to the other dock, to pick up the gas tank. (Of course, the nagging feeling was, what if the helper hadn’t put the gas tank on the other boat either).

Anyway, bottom line, Ren convinced a rather sullen stranger to drive him back to the other dock in his small boat, leaving us stranded in the hot sun, not sure whether we would ever see him again. He left, we broke into the cooler and found some beers, and decided if we were going to die, we would die drunk and with a plateful of biltong in our stomachs.

But happily, Ren returned in short order with the full tank of gas, the other guy smiling by now, we offered him a beer and a snack which he gratefully accepted and we were quickly on our way.

Now here is an example of a situation going from the ridiculous to the sublime. Although happy to be out of that fix, we still (at least I didn’t) hold out much hope for the rest of the evening. Too hot, and, I’m ashamed to admit, I kind of thought, what else can we see that we haven’t already seen?

But in what now seems a very short time, the sun sank on the horizon allowing for some cool breezes, Ren turned out to be every bit as knowledgeable as the rest of the guides we had had, and we saw some wildlife, if not new species, in situations we hadn’t seen before. We saw a herd of elephants come out of the bush, approach the river, and cross the river, all the while protecting a couple of babies who hardly seemed large enough to make the crossing at all. We were so close to the elephants that we could watch them as if in a movie. We saw so many hippos, both in the water and grazing on land. We saw four giraffes on the bank of the river, closer than we had been able to see previously and not obscured by trees and brush.

And so many birds. We saw a flock of egrets (pure white) covering a bare tree, and right next to it a flock of storks (all black) covering another bare tree. And never the twain shall meet. We saw the most beautiful African darter (they are also called snake bats because they look like snakes in the water) sitting on a tree right in front of us. And finally, we saw the most beautiful sunset we had seen anywhere. As it began to grow dark and we headed back to the dock we could not have been more thrilled. Nor did we harbor any more negative thoughts about inconsequential things like heat.

Driving back to the lodge—it was by now completely dark—I happened to look up at the sky since I had the clearest view from the vehicle. There, in the sky, was a thin sliver of a crescent moon, with the crescent on the bottom like a smile. On either side of the moon was a bright spot, so close that the three formed a single entity. Look, sez I, and Ren almost drove off the road! He pulled over to the side and we marveled at this beautiful and unusual sight. He had no idea what it was and neither did we. We had never seen anything like it. We surmised that the two bright spots on either side of the moon were planets since they did not twinkle like stars. It was a most ethereal, even surreal, sight, the perfect ending to our perfect run.

The next morning I went to the lobby where there was one lone computer and looked up the phenomenon on Google. I couldn’t find a name for it, but I did discover that the crescent was flanked by Venus on the left and Jupiter on the right, and although not all that rare, it is still a sight that thrills astronomers and laymen alike, and we were very lucky to see it.

I’ll save the rest of the evening for another posting since this one has grown quite long-winded.

The following pictures were all taken in Chobe National Park, Botswana and the subsequent verbiage refers to them.

More Animals at Chobe

Unfortunately, my camera would only take a fraction of this herd

A pair of jackals, the only ones we saw on our trip


That's the mean look that makes this guy the second most dangerous animal to humans

More Animals at Chobe

The spitting image of its mom

A little family

The closest we came to a giraffe. We saw many more back in the bush but they are shy and it is rare to see one pass in front of the vehicle like this.

More Animals at Chobe

A male impala--we saw so many I forget to show their pictures--they are truly beautiful

Baboons with Guinea Fowl


So, so sweet

Early Morning Game Run at Chobe--The Lions

My favorite picture


What has caught her attention?


She will soon find out...

Sightings on the Chobe

Hippo eying us up close and personal. He could capsize the boat if he had a mind to.


Rather large croc


Fish eagle looking for prey

Mowana Lodge, Chobe National Park

The Bride, with friends

Mother of the Bride

The Baobab Tree, 1000 years old

Pictures to Accompany the Mowana Post

Folks waiting to be taken from Botswana back to Zambia


The yacht that ferried us into Botswana


The car and truck ferry

Botswana and Chobe National Park

After two glorious days at the Royal Livingstone which I’ve already reported, it was time to move on again. We were driven to the border between Zambia and Botswana, about an hour’s drive, where we were to take a ferry across the Zambezi River to yet another African country--Botswana.

Mark was in Botswana while he was in medical school and brought home some wonderful pictures and a funny story about being stuck in an outhouse all night because through the small window he noticed a huge elephant eye staring at him. The elephant didn’t leave, and neither did Mark. Thus the night in the outhouse. Now that we’ve been to Botswana, we can certainly relate to the story. There are 100,000 elephants in Chobe Park where we stayed.

It rained torrentially during the drive to the border. Thank God that by the time we arrived the rain had stopped. Otherwise we would have been in big trouble.

We have seen some border scenes in our day, but this one takes the cake. The crossing only takes five minutes, but no bridge has been built--although it continues to be on the drawing board according to our driver. Instead of a bridge which could expedite the crossings exponentially, there is a car ferry which can hold maybe ten cars or two or three large trucks. In addition there are several small pontoon boats and motorboats which ferry passengers with all of their luggage from one side to the other. This is how we were to cross the river.

In addition to hundreds of passengers waiting to be transported across the river by pontoon or motorboat, there were hundreds of trucks, of every variety from huge semis to smaller delivery trucks, parked on both sides of the river, waiting their turn to board the larger ferry. Our driver told us that the trucks often sit there from four days to up to three weeks! The drivers set up housekeeping beneath their trucks where they cook and socialize. They sleep in their trucks and apparently a thriving prostitution ring has sprung up due to the entrepreneurial spirit of ladies on both sides. These ladies of the evening are, for obvious reasons, among several factions who are fighting the building of the bridge. The trucks are parked for as far as the eye can see.

We, fortunately, did not have to wait three weeks for our crossing, but rather we skirted the parked trucks and the waiting natives and went immediately to the edge of the water where we gingerly boarded a smallish motorboat and the ever present helpers loaded all of our gear onto it with us. Five minutes later we were in Botswana and met by yet another driver who would take us to our next lodging.

This is an interesting area for more reasons than just the long-suffering truckers. From this vantage point on the Zambezi River one can see four countries: Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia, as well as the coming together of the Zambezi and Chobe Rivers. Near that spot the Indian and Atlantic Oceans also meet.

After the helpers schlepped our stuff into the vehicle we were driven by Innocent, our new driver, to Mowana Lodge, deep inside the Chobe National Park, where we would spend the next two days doing game runs of a different kind. As we were checking in, a large wedding party arrived complete with bride and groom and attendant guests. We loved their colorful outfits. The word Mowana means baobab tree, a most interesting tree with bark that looks like elephant skin and a huge circumference. The one on the grounds of the lodge is said to be more than 1,000 years old.

Our first activity at Mowana was the afternoon river cruise on the Chobe River. We had taken a river cruise in Livingstone on the African Queen which held at least 100 people and where each group had a table with drinks and snacks while watching the hippos and the sunset. This cruise was a much more intimate affair—a small covered boat with 12 passengers plus AG, the guide and navigator. In some ways the small boat was much better than the big boat because AG was able to navigate right into the weeds to get close looks at giraffes, elephants and the huge variety of antelopes like kudu, springbok, bushbucks, impala, lechwe, and the newest variety in our repertoire—the puku. He went right up to the shore and showed us some crocodile eggs, one hatched and the other cracked and ready to hatch. He said that crocs can lay 60 to 90 eggs, but only 5 to 10 survive because of the monitor lizard which is their principal predator. It’s not easy to make it to adulthood in the jungle.

Then AG took the boat right up to a sleeping crocodile about 10 feet long who dutifully slept through all of our picture taking before changing position and slithering into the river. Crocs can live for more than 100 years and continue to grow all of their lives. AG surmised that this one was about 45 from its size. I’d hate to see it full-grown.

The trees and shoreline were alive with birds, most of whom I can’t remember but I do know there were storks, African darters (a type of cormorant), sacred ibis, vultures, fish eagles, and even the common egret which certainly seems to show up everywhere in the world. We saw lots of fish eagles, which look just like our bald eagle, one of which kamikazied into the water and pulled out a good sized fish. There are 450 species of bird in Chobe.

We returned to the lodge at sunset quite satisfied, yes thrilled, with the cruise.

The next morning we went out with Lungu, our new land guide. We were still somewhat in mourning over having lost William, but Lungu proved to be a formidable replacement. We entered the park after a ten minute drive and immediately began seeing more animals than we had seen before, even in Kruger. Lungu noticed that there were three or four other vehicles pulled off the road and we soon discovered that they were watching two sleeping lionesses. We watched as well and after a few minutes the other vehicles drove off, having seen enough. Just as we were about to drive off too, one of the lionesses got up and with great purposefulness started to stalk—what we didn’t know. Then the second lioness woke up and was stalking too. Don and Gwenna had said that seeing a “kill” would be the coup de grace of an African trip for them, although Tom and I were not so sure we wanted to see one. There was a group of impala just down the road and it seemed that the lead lioness was headed straight for them. McDonald’s for lions. It was fascinating to watch the two females inch slowly slowly ahead staring into the bush, ready to pounce on an unsuspecting prey.

We watched the lions for a while but no kill materialized. Just as well, for my money. We drove on.

Ahead were about 60 hippos grazing out of the water, our first sighting of the massive beasts outside of their element, and now we understood why they are so dangerous. We didn’t test their patience. We learned from Lungu that a group of hippos is called a raft as well as a pod. A raft of hippos…cool.

Lungu had said at the outset that our quest for the run was to see hyenas. We didn’t want to burst his bubble by telling him that we had seen one in Kruger—he seemed determined to find them. Apparently they nest inside a couple of huge drainage pipes within the park and at the beginning of the run he went there and parked and looked and then drove around the area looking, but no hyenas. At the end of the run, after we had seen so many other animals, he went back to the drainage pipes and parked again. It was almost dark and we needed to leave the park by 7:00, and no hyenas. Then Lungu started to call the hyenas. Haaaaaa-RUP! Haaaa-RUP! Haaaa-RUP! He did this with his hands cupped around his mouth, softly and melodically. It was almost better than seeing hyenas!—listening to Lungu sing Haaa-rup, Haaaa-rup, Haaa-rup. So slowly, so softly.

But alas, the closest we came to seeing a hyena was some movement inside the darkness of the drain pipe which both Don and I, using binoculars, saw as clear as day. We think the movement was a hyena, too scared to come out and greet the love of his life—Lungu.

Goodby to Tinga and Kruger Park

An enthusiastic farewell from Oscar and our sweet spotter, Manuel

More of Kruger National Park

A beautiful pride of lions resting in the shade


The guys at Tinga: Gordon, William and Gerhardt. Aren't they the cutest?

A scene from Hitchcock's "The Birds"--Vultures in a naked tree

A Pod of Hippos

William, ever the teacher, instructing us on the wonders of dung

And the dung beetles industriously rolling their ball of dung across the veldt. Was it Sisephys who was condemned to forever push a rock up a mountain, only to have it roll down again? This seems about as thankless a task.

The next day we had two more game runs with William and Manuel, early morning and late afternoon, and each was more wonderful and informative than the last. We saw giraffes, a hyena, huge fat black millipedes that William picked up and let crawl on his hand, as well as a whole pod of huge hippos wallowing at the river’s edge. We learned that hippos are related to the whale, that they mate, give birth, suckle and sleep under water, although they can only stay under I believe for up to fourteen minutes at a time. We learned that the hippo is the most dangerous animal to people and that more humans are killed by hippos than any other animal including the Big Five. When a hippo makes a growling noise, opens its cavernous mouth, and bites at the water, look out! It’s about to charge! They also have been known to swim under water and tip over boats.

At one point, William stopped the truck, bent over and picked up some nasty looking stuff and announced that it was time for our shit lesson. He showed us small round pellets (impala poop, or dung as we now call it), medium size pellets (giraffe dung), and large compacted balls of rhino and elephant dung. He proved to us that these varieties don’t smell bad because they are from vegetarian animals and are made up of vegetable matter only. The dung beetle is a fascinating little character. I think I posted a picture of one of the fearsome things struggling to right itself in front of our hotel room door. When they fly they are apt to hit you smack in the face, and in fact Don got hit several times, luckily not to the point of unconsciousness.

Anyway, the dung beetle’s mission in life is to collect little bits of dung (I’m not sure if they are particular about the variety or not) and roll it into a ball which they then bury—to what purpose I’m not sure. But it’s quite interesting to watch one or several of the walnut sized bugs pushing and rolling and adding to the ball until it is two or three times its own size. This keeps them busy all day until dusk when they take to flight and fly into your face or smack you on the arm, giving you a severe case of the heebie jeebies.

We seldom had to drive more than a few minutes without seeing something. We saw a whole herd of elephants that second day as well as two venomous snakes, the snouted cobra and the puffed adder. William, ever the teacher, told us the difference between poisonous (you have to ingest the poison through your mouth) and venomous (you have to be injected with the poison through fangs). Manuel proved his talent by spotting the most beautiful green lizard which William leaped out of the truck to capture for our up-close look.

We saw a white rhino cross the road right in front of our vehicle, a “dazzle” of zebra grazing not ten feet away, a bare branched tree loaded with vultures that looked like it was right out of a Hitchcock movie, a klipspringer (another antelope type I’d never heard of) sitting on a rock, and another small pride of lions with a beautiful male and several females and cubs.

That evening we were treated to a Boma, a traditional African feast which the staff prepared just for us since by then we were the only guests at the lodge. There was a huge bonfire in the middle of a large clearing fenced with bamboo poles. Tables were set up and a buffet with many exotic foods like barbecued kudu and ostrich meatballs was ready for our perusal.

The next morning we went on our final game run with William and Manuel before leaving Tinga and Kruger for Zambia and Victoria Falls.

Kruger National Park

Refreshments al fresco

Apres Refreshments al fresco

It is our last day in Africa. Tomorrow we will be delivered to Livingstone Airport, we will fly to Johannesburg, wait-wait-wait, then reverse our steps and end up back in Dallas via Dakar, Senegal and then Atlanta.

We find ourselves enjoying a beautiful suite back at the Royal Livingstone, but I’ll get to why that miracle occurred in due time. The point now is that I plan to catch up on the blog which has taken a back seat to the many wonders that we have seen. Not to mention that access to the internet has been practically zero.

I posted some pictures from our time in Kruger National Park where we stayed at the Tinga Private Game Lodge but told you nothing of that amazing experience. Kruger is in South Africa and was our first contact with the animals. By the time we arrived at Tinga, which is about 30 minutes into the park, we had already seen a lioness resting by the side of the road, a family of warthogs, lots of graceful and delicate impala (they are known as McDonald’s for lions we were sad to hear), a small herd of zebra and several kudu (the second largest type of antelope). Seeing a lion 30 seconds after entering the park set the tone for the rest of our stay: we knew we were going to hit the jackpot.

We were greeted at Tinga by Gerhardt, the general manager, who introduced us to Gordon and William, two of the ranger/guides, and then showed us to our cottages. Tinga is a beautiful, rustic, thatched-roof game lodge with 14 cottages for guests, each with its own viewing deck and small pool overlooking the Sabie River. The cottages have a living room area with couch and easy chairs for watching TV, a canopied bed, and bathroom with outdoor as well as indoor shower. Of course there was no time to avail ourselves of all those amenities. We settled in, went back to the lodge and had a lovely lunch of warthog (kind of like pork roast) and chakka lakka (a delicious pepper and bean mixture which I must get a recipe for). After lunch we did have a couple of hours to relax before our first game run. William, who would be our guide for the next two days, told us to meet for “tea” at four and then we would leave promptly at 4:30.

William is a big strapping happy good-lookin’ 37-year-old white guy who, until four years ago, was a civil engineer in Johannesburg. He shed the city life and became a ranger which he calls a life style not a job. He is engaged to Angie, another ranger, who was burned out on bush life until meeting William, and now the two are an enthusiastic team. Angie is a writer as well as a ranger and they have plans for a book about their life among the animals.

Four thirty on the dot we got into our range vehicle and met the other member of our team, Manuel, a black African who would be our “spotter.” Quiet and shy but always smiling, Manuel said little but his eyes darted back and forth over the landscape and we came to believe that he had eyes in back of his head as well as in the front.

We saw the Big Five on our first run! In case you are not impressed, this almost never happens, we later learned. The following day Angie said that we were the talk of the camp and that all the employees were saying that the Texans had brought luck to Tinga.

Your assignment was to know which animals are included in the Big Five. In case you didn’t complete your homework, the Big Five are the Lion, the Leopard, the Elephant, the Cape Buffalo and the Rhinoceros--the most sought after and dangerous of the world's big game, and not what I would have guessed. Legend has it that "The Great One put the animals here for us to use wisely and respect, even as we hunted them, but he knew that without fear we might lose our respect for these creatures. So he put the five here to help us remember. The lion and leopard taught us fear of the night, that only the daytime was ours. The buffalo, the elephant and the rhino taught us to fear their strength, that we might respect the strength of nature." (the quote is from our "promotional" materials).

William drove and kept up a running commentary while Manuel scanned everything within his field of vision. The impala seem to be everywhere—there are 160,000 of them in Kruger. The birthing season had just taken place so delicate little babies on spindly legs were running behind their mums while the dominant male—the only adult male in a group of females and young’uns—keeps tabs on his harem. We were surrounded by the most beautiful birds and William could name every species. It turns out that birds are his favorite (incongruous we thought, given his macho appearance) and he told us many interesting facts about the various types. His personal favorite is called the bataleur and is a hawk-like bird of prey with a powerful beak and huge wing span that lurks in leafless trees waiting for an unsuspecting hare or mouse to present itself for his dining pleasure. Another bird, called the red billed oxpicker, sits atop the impala and eats the parasites off of it, an example of a symbiotic relationship where two different species mutually benefit one another. He also pointed out the lilac breasted roller, a stunning little bird of 24 different colors, which in addition to being beautiful, has a talent which allows it to "roll" over and over during flight --perhaps out of sheer happiness with life.

The first of the Big Five that we saw was a herd of buffalo on a far hillside. I’ll grant you that we couldn’t see them very well nor could we take decent pictures, but it counts as a sighting just the same. Later in the trip we had ample opportunity to see the murderous beast up close and personal, but at that point we were thrilled just to know that they were there. We saw a herd of white rhino the same way—far away on a hill, but again for the first sighting we were properly excited.

The lions were resting just off the road and we parked and watched for some minutes while they slept—a beautiful male with full mane, and three females. We were thrilled beyond measure when one of them turned over and lifted her head.

At every turn we saw the various antelope—kudu, impala, dyker, and a species I hadn’t ever heard of called Lechwe—along with warthogs with faces only a mother could love, a leopard tortoise, zebras, banded mongoose, countless exotic birds, and then…as we rounded a curve in the road there were two elephants on the grass in full view—our first elephant sighting. We sat in the open vehicle and watched them and took pictures for the longest time and the most amazing thing was that they didn’t mind or move away. We stared and took pictures and they stared back or ate grass. We had this experience over and over where you can drive right up to the animals—at a respectful distance of course depending on the animal—and they go about their business without the least fear and also without ever giving us so much as the time of day. William told us that the animals mostly see the vehicle as a single entity, not as a car with six people in it, so as long as we don’t jump up and down or leap out of the vehicle, they will not bother us.

By now we were pretty excited at seeing four of the Big Five and William pulled into a clearing and told us we could stretch our legs. While we did that, Manuel was setting up the bar! Yes, we were able to enjoy an adult beverage of our choice right there in the bush! Very fun. It was almost completely dark when we got back on the road, so I put my camera back into its case and into my bag.

It was then that Manuel spotted it. He trained his spotlight right on the most beautiful leopard not more than ten feet away from us walking along the side of the road, eying us warily, but not running back into the underbrush. I was frantically trying to get my camera back out but it was so dark I couldn’t see to set it and the result was I got NO pictures of the leopard, the only one we would see on this trip. We watched it for several minutes as clear as could be in the bright spotlight before it eventually wandered out of sight.

And that’s our story of the Big Five.