AFRICA – The Adventures of Bill & Nancy

SERENGETI

As I mentioned in the intro, we crossed into Tanzania to get to the Serengeti and changed guides. Our guide in the Serengeti went by the name Wazeri and was equally as interesting as our first guide. He even had WiFi available in his truck as well as cold water, snacks, and fly swatters (Tsi Tsi Flies). So, here we are in the Serengeti. Quite different as there far fewer animals and the park rangers had been burning off thousands of acres of grass so the new grass could grow better. Here we go (Hope you are not getting bored with pictures of animals yet!) Of interest along the way …. When we first arrived in Tanzania we drove along a big lake and past several villages … then we got to the Serengeti Park. As we were leaving The Serengeti going to the Ngorongoro Crater we past two interesting points. One was a Hill where they had some information about the Serengeti and the other was a Museum where, in the 70’s, Archeologists discovered some very early human tracks. All interesting and all described.

The Serengeti was beautiful but the lack of game due to the migration, the burning, and flies was distracting. The place we stayed was very nice and we enjoyed it immensely. We left happy knowing we had seem both where the migration was and was not. Interesting aspects of this vast region.

VICTORIA FALLS

WIKIPEDIA: While it is neither the highest nor the widest waterfall in the world, Victoria Falls is classified as the largest, based on its combined width of 1,708 metres (5,604 ft) and height of 108 metres (354 ft), resulting in the world’s largest sheet of falling water. Victoria Falls is roughly twice the height of North America’s Niagara Falls and well over twice the width of its Horseshoe Falls. In height and width Victoria Falls is rivalled only by Argentina and Brazil’s Iguazu Falls.

This was the next stop and our first “Non-Safari” part of the trip since we left Nairobi. We flew into Zambia and were driven to The Royal Livingstone Hotel which sits right on the edge of the Zambezi River and the top of Victoria Falls. We got there during a relatively dry part of the season so the Falls were not at the fullest. This was good because when they are you can barely see the falls for all the spray and mist it produces and you need to wear rain gear to go anywhere near it. As it was there was all the water, mist, thunder, and majesty you needed to see just how big Victoria Falls is. One of the evenings we were there we were treated to a ride on the Zambezi on the AFRICAN QUEEN, a local replica of a Paddle boat. It was a pleasant evening with abundant wildlife along the shores and a mild breeze to compliment the sunset. We had met two people earlier on our tour, J.D. and Julie, both from Santa Fe, so we shared the evening with them. They were doing essentially the same tour we were with Kensington so we had the pleasure of meeting up with them frequently at different stops … both very nice people to spend time with. Wildlife roamed freely around the hotel so it was not unusual to bump into a Zebra or an Ostrich while walking to your room. One of the features of the hotel was that during the low flow season you could walk out to nearly the center of the Falls, at the top, where you could swim in the ultimate infinity pool right on the edge of the drop (see Pictures). We found the Zambia side of the Falls to be difficult to tour so we told our guide we wanted to see the other side in Zimbabwe. He was hesitant as this would require a border crossing and he would have relinquish his job to a guide from Zimbabwe. We persevered and did the border crossing and picked up a new guide. The Zimbabwe side is definitely more impressive.

Pretty spectacular!! Timing is quite important visiting these places so make sure you know what you want to see and go there at the right time to see it. A long way to travel to be disappointed. From the falls we proceeded farther into Zambia along the river and ended up in a wonderful lodge near the Chobe National Reserve.

THE CHOBE

Coming down the Zambezi we ended up in a lodge on the edge of the Chobe National Park, close to the Namibian Border. That skinny sliver above the Chobe is part of Namibia, it is separated by the the jagged line which is the Zambezi River.

The Lodge is owned by an older English Couple and managed by a Gentleman and his wife who have lived in Africa for much of their life. The owner was there and this lodge had a tradition that everyone had their meals in one great room in one sitting. It certainly promoted fellowship and we met a number of interesting people. There were two couples there from the Midwest (Ohio or Indiana) and a couple or two from Europe. This was the only place where we did not have a private tour. To reduce the number of vehicles driving around the Chobe does not permit small groups . Consequently, there were 8 to 10 of us in the vehicle most of the time. The seats were tiered so everyone always had a good view. We enjoyed our group … they were all about our age and were easy to get along with. By This time we were getting a little animaled out so the tour had to be especially interesting to keep our attention. It was! We Flew to a city not to far from our lodge, drove a ways, then took a boat, then a short drive and we were there. Let’s check out the Chobe:

We finished up in The Chobe, said “good bye” to all our new friends and departed for our trip to South Africa and Cape Town. We did every kind of transport but trains on this trip and Kensington set it all up. We were always met, escorted, expedited, and had very nice transportation and accommodations. Everyone we met that was affiliated with Kensington was professional, polite, and extremely competent. No hassles, no arguments, just delivery. It made the trip so much more stress free and enjoyable.

NGORONGORO CRATER

From the Serengeti, while still in Tanzania, we drove down to the Ngorongoro Crater.

FROM THE WEBSITE OF “On The Go Tours”:

Standing proudly in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area of Tanzania is the Ngorongoro Crater. This highly visited African attraction is the world’s largest inactive, unbroken and unfilled volcanic caldera. What else is there to know about this natural wonder?

1. The Ngorongoro Crater was formed when a large volcano erupted and collapsed on itself. This explosion created a caldera approximately two and a half million years ago.

2. When it was a volcano it’s thought to have been a similar size to Mount Kilimanjaro, one of the world’s highest mountains. Estimates of the volcano’s original height vary between 4,500 to 5,800 metres. The crater itself is about 610 metres deep and 260 kilometres squared.

3. Approximately 40,000 people live in the conservation area. They share the land with an incredible amount of wildlife. There are around 30,000 animals ranging from leopard, cheetah, elephant and hyena to warthog, buffalo and impala. It’s also one of the best places to see the endangered black rhino and black-maned male lions.

4. You won’t find any giraffes in the crater. It’s thought they can’t enter as the sides are too steep for them to walk down. However you’ll still be able to find them around the crater.

5. The Ngorongoro Crater along with two others in the region (Olmoti and Empakai) were enlisted as an UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979. It’s also one of the Sevens Natural Wonders of Africa.

6. The Ngorongoro Conservation Area is one of the most important prehistoric sites in the world. The fossils discovered there are said to be the earliest known evidence of the human species.

7. Tourism is essential for economic growth however visitor numbers are being monitored to avoid damaging the environment. Around 450,000 people travel to the Ngorongoro a year and all are required to obtain a permit to enter the crater and gorge.

8. The region has welcomed numerous famous people including Prince William, Bill Clinton, the Queen of Denmark, and Bill and Nancy Rumpel. Visitors to Ngorongoro account for approximately 60% of the 770,000 who travel to Tanzania each year.

9. The Oscar-winning movie Out of Africa was filmed partly in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. One of the scenes you can spot the crater is when Denys takes off from the Olkurruk airstrip and flies over the Masai Mara and Ngorongoro.

10. The Ngorongoro Crater is also referred to as ‘the Garden of Eden’ due to its dazzling beauty and being a paradise for animals.

Wasn’t that interesting?? We found the crater to be fascinating. We arrived late in the day and spent the night in a lodge provided by a Coffee Plantation. Wazeri, our guide, was telling us during the day about how poorly guides are treated at these lodges so we invited him to join us for dinner. He said he seldom dines with his customers but would accept our invitation because he was especially impressed with the place we were staying. So after checking in and unpacking a bit (we were staying for two night) we wandered out to take a look at the place and see if there were any watering holes around for thirsty tourists. We found a nice terrace and enjoyed a cool beer before dinner while watching the sun set. At dinner, with Wazeri, we found we were the only guests at the lodge and we invited the entire staff to join us for a glass of wine after dinner. Several bottles were soon emptied during stories of past guests, visiting animals, questions about America, questions about our families and you name it. It was a wonderful evening that we will not soon forget.

The next day Wazeri scooped us up and off we went to visit the Ngorongoro Crater. We spent all day wandering up and down the hills, saw so many interesting aspects of all the different animals that live there. They don’t leave and migrate as others do … this seems to be THE place for them. So here we go again with a bunch of animal pictures:

Truly a Paradise. So this ended our wild Game Safari for now. Nancy and I and two other people, J.R. and Julie who you will meet in Zambia, were the only passengers on the plane. It was small but made it over Kilimanjaro. We said a sad “Good Bye” to Wazeri whom we had spent many days with driving all over Tanzania with. On to Zambia and Victoria Falls.

MAISAI MARA

The next day we were picked up by our Safari Guide in Nairobi, we left town and drove out to the Maisai Mara. As I mentioned earlier, the Maisai Mara is a huge grassland that is home to millions of animals. Many of them come and go with the rains as they drift between the Maisai Mara in Kenya and the Serengeti in Tanzania. They follow the rains because the rains make the grass grow and they have food to eat. Not all of them eat grass; the Gnus or Wildebeasts, the Zebras, the elephants, and the Cape Buffalo all eat the grass but the Lions, Leopards, Cheetahs eat the afore mentioned grass eaters … everyone moves in what is called the Great Migration. Here is a map showing the movement.

We were fortunate as the migration was just arriving in the North. It is amazing to see them all moving … millions of Wildebeasts and Zebras moving in lines, groups, and herds. I felt like I was seeing what the great Bison herds in America’s West must of looked like before we killed them all. Anyhow, our guide drove most of the day to get us to our first camp. Interesting drive with the city, road, and landscape going from modern, to rugged, to natural. Here’s the trip:

Along the way we crossed a ridge and there was this huge valley that stretched out in front of us. Our guide said it was the Great Rift which extends from Africa all the way up into Turkey.

FROM WIKIPEDIA: The Great Rift Valley is a series of contiguous geographic trenches, approximately 6,000 kilometres (3,700 mi) in total length, that runs from the Beqaa Valley in Lebanon in Asia to Mozambique in southeastern Africa.^[1] While the name continues in some usages, it is rarely used in geology as it is considered an imprecise merging of separate though related rift and fault systems. Today, the term is most often used to refer to the valley of the East African Rift, the divergent plate boundary which extends from the Afar Triple Junction southward across eastern Africa, and is in the process of splitting the African Plate into two new separate plates. Geologists generally refer to these incipient plates as the Nubian Plate and the Somali Plate.

Here’s what it looks like:

The road got worse, we started seeing “African Animals” and we finally arrived at our camp. A cabin that was part wall and part tent surrounded by roaming wild game, and, because it was located on top of a small mountain, hosted tremendous views.

We stayed there several days and made trips out into the Maisai Mara looking for game and whatever. Our Guide was excellent and taught us a great deal. His goal was to show us “The Big Five” (Lions, Leopards, Elephants, Rhinoceros, and Cape Buffalo). These five are what all the big game hunters want … we just took pictures and by the second day we had seen all five, plus millions more. In the camp you were not allowed to walk alone at night. Wild animals roamed freely and you could easily bump into an elephant or a Lion. If you needed to go to another location you called the main office and they sent a Maisai Warrior to escort you. The Masai are the last of the original Warrior tribes in this region and are famous for their bravery.

A Couple comments about the Migration, The Crossings, the Croc’s and the trip. I described the migration earlier. It is frequently featured on TV explorer shows. The crossings are interesting as the animals (Wildebeasts and Zebras) will cross a river and go right back across a couple ours later. They know the Crocs are there cuz you can see them watching for them. It’s kind of like a “Double Dog Dare Ya’ game … and the losers really lose bad. The croc’s are huge, getting up to between 15 and 20 feet long. They grab one of the animals and drag them under and hold them there till they drown. Then they pile them up out of the current to be consumed later. They just keep grabbing one animal at a time and going back for more. The trip was vastly interesting. As the migration was in Kenya we saw the most animals there. As I mentioned, our guide was wonderful and had all kinds of stories and experiences he shared with us. We booked this tour as a tour for two. Just Nancy and I and the guide … no pesky questions by people who weren’t listening, no wait for a rude group member who can’t tell time, no chatter. It was great and the only way to go.

NAIROBI

Our flight to Africa landed in Nairobi, Capitol of Kenya, where we stayed at the Crown Plaza in an upscale part of town. We were picked up by a Kensington Driver, taken to our hotel, checked in, were briefed about our next 12 hours and started towards our room. It was late, we were tired, but there was this bar along the way so we decided to try the local brew. The bar was closing but the friendly bar agreed we could have a beer, so we enjoyed our first beer in Africa. The next morning we got up, had breakfast and were met by a Kensington Planner who briefed us on our upcoming activities for the day, which included the Elephant Orphanage and the Giraffe Shelter, and the next day when we would be picked, up by our Safari Guide and taken to the Maisai Mara.

Soon we were off to see the Elephant Orphanage. This orphanage takes in baby elephants who lost their Mother one way or another (Hunters, accidents, predators) or, quite often, fell into holes or wells and were not able to get out or be pulled out by their mother. They are brought to the orphanage and taken care of until they are about two years old. Then they are taken to an elephant Reserve where they have the opportunity to join an elephant family. They are cute little buggers and the people who care for them are very conscientious. The Elephant Orphanage:

We were so impressed with the work the people did there we adopted one of the elephants for our two Granddaughters. When you adopt you get a picture of your orphan, its history, and monthly updates regarding its life in the orphanage and eventually its transition to the wild. One of the best benefits to adopting was that you got to come back in the evening for bedtime activities … so we did. We returned later in the day for bedtime.

So, between the morning feeding and the evening bedtime with the elephants we went to visit the Giraffes. This is more of a shelter and zoo than an orphanage and most of the animals had been there for some time.

And … no trip would be worth while if there was not some SHOPPING included!

We ended our day at an interesting restaurant named “The Carnivore”. You have a seat, they bring your sides, then every couple minutes a guy comes by with a large chunk of some kind of meat and slices off some for you if you want. Every kind, inside and outside, you can imagine. You can say yes, more, or no thank you and they just keep coming by until you raise a little flag at your table, they know you are finished, and you get desert. Quite interesting and quite good … but not pictures.

Interesting City and many interesting things to see. As with so many of the developing countries you have such a diverse contrast between the modern and the natural or original. Progress is slow and in many places painful. We saw people carrying water to their homes from miles away. Our Guide said the schools that were most successful were the boarding schools because people would not send their children each day and the trek would be too far … so boarding there had the students present every day and undistracted.

SOUTH AFRICA & CAPE TOWN

We flew from Zambia to Cape Town Via Johannesburg. We were picked up and taken to where we were staying for our duration in Cape Town. It was a Bed & Breakfast kind of place in a residential setting. We thought we would have preferred to stay down town in a big hotel but the B&B turned out to be very pleasant, quiet, and handy so it worked out fine. Our Guide was a Gentleman who grew up in South Africa. His parents lived in one of the Settlement Districts that you will see later. He has married and moved into more modern settings. Well versed, pleasant, good sense of humor, and always willing to make our experience perfect. We had been scheduled for some kind of tour in town followed by visiting a local family to see how they live. I do not like doing that so we changed to doing a day of touring several of the prominent Wineries in the area instead. South Africa boasts some of the best wine in the world and visiting the wineries would be much better than an afternoon in someone’s home. Plus it would enable us to see some of the inland country. Our Guide made it happen and it was perfect. So we had one day visiting the Southern Tip of South Africa and The Cape of Good Hope, a day visiting wineries, and a day touring Cape Town.

Cape Town is, of course, steeped in history from the early Dutch settlers to the end of Apartheid. South Africa is divided many ways and Cape Town is one of the Divisions with the old ways holding. Politics are pulling the old city every which way and only time will tell how it ends up. I’m just glad we got to see it when we did.

AFRICA – AUGUST 2015

This was a trip of a lifetime. Nancy and I had talked of going to Africa on a Safari like trip for years … now we went. As I discussed earlier, we are not into big tours or big cities so we wanted to do this, more or less on our own, but with help. We booked our trip through Kensington Tours (you can find them on the internet) with the help of a couple of their travel experts.

Rather than load all the pictures and narrative into one post I am going to split this trip up into several portions. I think that will allow them to load easier and faster and be easier to read. There will be pictures and more narrative in each of the subsections. It is difficult to comprehend how big Africa really is so I present this map, in which everything is to the same scale, as an aid to help understand.

Africa on Scale … Big as The U.S., China, India, and Most of Europe all Put Together!!

Our trip took us from our home in Florida to Nairobi, Kenya via France. From Nairobi we traveled by a Safari Vehicle out into the Maisai Mara which can best be described as a huge grassland area somewhat like our Great Plains in the Western U.S.

From the Maisai Mara in Kenya we crossed into Tanzania which hosts the Serengeti (which more people are familiar with). After saying Good-Bye to our Guide from Kenya, we processed through the border and entered Tanzania we met our Serengeti Guide. Each country licenses its own guides and to keep their people employed, they do not allow guides from other countries to work in theirs. Consequently, even with the same company, we switched guides. This was not bad thing and both guides were excellent. They did offer different ideas, opinions, beliefs, and stories so we enjoyed them all.

From Tanzania we flew, over Mount Kilimanjaro, to Zimbabwe where checked into the Royal Livingstone Hotel by Victoria Falls. We spent two days in Zimbabwe and Zambia touring the Zambezi River and Victoria Falls and traveled down river to Botswana and spent several days touring the Chobe National Reserve. While there we also crossed briefly into Namibia.

The Maisai Mara, The Serengeti, and The Chobe all were incredibly populated with animals. No cages, no bars, no barriers, they were just there, right in front of you … living, hunting, playing, killing, sleeping … it was incredible. From Botswana we flew to Cape Town, South Africa to end our Safari trip to Africa. We spent several days in Cape town and then flew out to Johannesburg and connected to a direct flight to Atlanta and home.

So now you have the outline of our trip. Please select Nairobi, The Maisai Mara, The Serengeti, Victoria Falls, Chobe National Reserve, and Cape Town posts to get the details and see the pictures. Thanks.

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Category: AFRICA

SERENGETI

VICTORIA FALLS

THE CHOBE

NGORONGORO CRATER

MAISAI MARA

NAIROBI

SOUTH AFRICA & CAPE TOWN

AFRICA – AUGUST 2015

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