Preperation
This trip was Jan's idea. She wanted to take our Granddaughter, Amy, on a nice trip while she is old enough to a appreciate it and not to old to be too busy. She is 14 years old and enters high school this fall. Amy's mom, Tracy, and Craig gets to go along too. Jan picked June of 2012 to leave.
A trip to Africa is a big deal and takes a lot of planning. Jan spent many hours on the internet looking for tours. We did not want a guided tour where we spent hours on buses with a bunch of people that we don't know. Craig always adopts the old women that need help on and off the bus. None of that.
Jan found a self guided tour through Globus Tours. They would meet us at the airports, take us to the hotels and to events. We were on our own for most breakfasts and dinners and had our own free time.
We had difficulty booking the tour on line so Craig called Bon Voyage Travel. They were wonderful. An agent, Sue, used the tour Jan had selected and did all the arrangements. As of April 1 we have paid for the trip and Sue, our agent, is arranging for visas and side trips.
This is the agenda...
| Day | ||||
| 1 | Phoenix, Atlanta, Amterdam, Cape Town | 1580 + 4380=6960 miles | ||
| 2 | Arrive Cape Town | 6020 miles | Southern sun hotel | |
| 3 | Cape Town | |||
| 4 | Fly Cape Town to Nelspruit, Kruger NP | 1080 miles | ||
| 5 | Kruger National park | Makalali lodge | ||
| 6 | Kruger National park | |||
| 7 | fly to Johannesburg | 210 miles | ||
| 8 | Johnannesburg | Johannesburg: Crowne Plaza - The Rosebank | ||
| 9 | fly to Maun, Okavango Delta Botswana | 690 miles | Camp Okavango | |
| 10 | Okavango | |||
| 11 | fly to Kasane, Chobe National park | 210 miles | Chobe Marina Lodge | |
| 12 | Chobe | |||
| 13 | Drive to Victoria Falls Zimbabwe | 55 miles | The Kingdom at Victoria Falls | |
| 14 | Victora Falls | |||
| 15 | Fly to Johannesburg then Atlanta | 760 + 8440= 9200 miles | ||
| 16 | Atlanta to Phoenix | 1580 miles | ||
| Total miles | 26005 | |||
You can see that we fly to South Africa, visit a park there as well as Cape Town and Johannesburg. Then we visit two locations in Botswana and Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe. We will briefly cross over into Zambia. We will spend 24 hours sitting in planes getting to Cape Town and 20 hours coming back from Johannesburg.
Day 1 & Day 2 Tucson to Cape Town
We were up at 2am on Thursday, June 7th. I didn’t even go to bed. I figured I would catch up on my sleep on the plane.
I had ordered a car from Hertz for pick up the afternoon before. I am a regular Hertz preferred customer. When I got to the Hertz office the clerk told me that she had a big 4 door Dodge Ram truck that she had to get back to Phoenix. She would give it to me for half price. My price was already a good one. It ended up costing me only $30 plus 7 gallons of gas. It was perfect for 4 people and our luggage.
We were at the Phoenix airport at 5:30 am, two hours before departure as instructed. The plane left on time for Atlanta. There was only an hour layover in Atlanta.
The flight to Amsterdam was a great flight. The seats were comfortable and we all had our own movie screen with a selection of movies. We could stop the movie, pause, and backup. I got almost 10 hours sleep on the two flights. Jan, Tracy and Amy read and watched the movies.
We had a 4 hour layover in Amsterdam. We checked out all the shops. It is a beautiful airport. The flight to Cape Town was 14 hours. We totaled three flights, 4 hours, 8 hours and 12 hours for a total of 24 hours seat time and a 33 hour trip.
The Cape Town flight was long but a good one. We were all in 3 row seats with the empty middle seat. We again had a large selection of on demand movies. This was my birthday. Tracy and Amy kept coming up with candy as birthday gifts and the stewardess sang me happy birthday and gave us Champaign.
We arrived in Cape Town Friday night at 10pm. Our host was there to meet us and take us to our hotel. It is a large luxurious hotel near the Cape Town waterfront.
Our host picked us up at 8:30 at the hotel. It is an exclusive tour in a Toyota minivan. We rode around town looking at the huge waterfront shopping area, neighborhoods, the downtown section and other parts of the city. We toured an old fort in the middle of the city that was built by the Dutch in the 1600s. It is all restored and is the oldest building in South Africa. Then we visited the South African natural museum. We could stay as long or as short as we wanted.
Cape Town is great place. It is surrounded by water on 3 sides with a huge, 3000 foot high mountain and national park called Table Mountain right in the middle of the city. The top is quite flat and about a mile across. The range stretches south to the cape for 40 miles. The sides are straight up but they have a huge cable car that goes to the top. The ride up is exciting and the views spectacular. We could see in all directions out to sea and look down on the Cape Town. The weather was threatening rain in the morning but it cleared. It was cold up on top of the mountain but nice in the city. It is winter here but very mild but it can change quickly.
After a break we took a shuttle to the Waterfront. Hundreds of stores, hotels, restaurants and shops. We walked for 3 hours and then had dinner. The people here are very friendly.
There is a real mix of whites, blacks and natives. There are no obvious signs of discrimination however.
We were glad to catch the shuttle back to the hotel. Jan was asleep at 8 pm.
Day 4 Cape of Good Hope
Days 5-8 Kruger and Makalali Lodge
The terrain is rolling with a lot of bushes and small trees. As it is winter the foliage is not grown out which makes it a lot better for game hunts. We checked into our rooms. They are large bungalows spread out in the trees. They are made of mud, stone and native wood with all hand made iron fittings, big stone fireplaces and a high poster bed with a mosquito net covering. The bathrooms are all stone with big sinks, big tubs and an outside shower. They are very rustic but very nice. We can open the sides as they are folding wood panels. We soon found out that we had to be careful leaving them open and unguarded as the monkeys would run in the rooms, grab things and take off with them. They were cute but real pests. The camp has 6 bungalows for 12 people
Day 4 Cape of Good Hope
We picked up our rental car in the lobby of our hotel. It was a Hyundai Sonata. It was a real nice car with right hand drive. We left the hotel, went west and then south down the Atlantic coast of the peninsula. Just south of Cape Town we went through several beach towns. It was Sunday and there were serious bicycle riders everywhere. It is a beautiful place to ride but the road is narrow and there are no bike lanes.
We parked along the road and spent an hour walking the beach. They are spotless and the sand is like fine sugar. There were few people out even though the weather was perfect. In the summer the beaches must be crowded. There are very few shells. Just a few mussels.
Further south the mountains moved right to the edge of the sea and the road was cut into the side of the hill, sometimes like a tunnel with one side missing. We visited a small fishing village. The views from the road were breathtaking.
Further south there are less villages and the land is more barren but still with large hills. We stopped at one village to see a light house. All along the road there were signs warning people about the wild baboons. You are to stay away from them, don’t feed them and roll up your windows. We saw several. They are large, probably 50 or 60 pounds. We got close to some of them and they didn’t bother us.
At the tip of the peninsula is the national park for the cape. It covers the last 10 miles or so of the peninsula. The admission was $10 a person but was well worth it. On this point the Atlantic Ocean meets the Indian Ocean. There is a large mountain on the tip and we climbed to the top to get views of the sea and the lighthouse.
We returned up the east side of the peninsula. One of the things we were most interested in seeing was a colony of African penguins. There are four species of penguins in the world and the Africa penguin only lives in this area. They are very protected. There are raised walkways through the underbrush and down to the sea to view them without bothering them. They build nests under the trees and lay their eggs. Cute little things.
We returned to Cape Town going north up the east side of Table Mountain and back to the hotel. It was fun driving on the left side of the road. I had not done it for several years but it came back quickly. The roads were good but narrow. There was little traffic. We returned to check in the car and take a shuttle back to the waterfront. We ate in a pub full of enthusiastic succor fans.
Tomorrow we are on our way at 6:15 to catch a flight to Johannesburg and then another flight to Kruger National Park. We will see our first big game tomorrow evening. We might not get internet access for several days,
Days 5-8 Kruger and Makalali Lodge
We were up at 5 am to catch the plane from Cape Town to Makalali Lodge. We got to the airport and they had a completely booked flight to Joburg. (This is what they call Johannesburg) That would have been okay but they had no record of Jan’s ticket. The agents were very helpful in resolving the problem and put Jan, Tracy and Amy in Business class. We arrived in Joburg on schedule and after a 2 hour layover caught a small prop plane to Hoedspruit. It is to the north and west on a one hour flight. We landed on a small strip in the middle of the bush country with a small shack for a terminal. Our bush hunt guide was there and gave us an hour and twenty minute ride to the lodge. The last few miles were down a single track dirt road. We were in the middle of nowhere.
The rangers and trackers told us some of the rules. We are not to leave the camp on foot. Also after dark we are not to walk between buildings without an escort. The greatest danger is from elephants and lions. We were not in our room for 5 minutes before a large elephant walked past our deck.
Our first game ride was the afternoon we arrived. The four of us are in a Toyota Land Cruiser. It is a large vehicle with three raised bench seats in the back. Out in front of the front bumper a single seat is mounted for the tracker. They had a rifle mounted across the dash. We drove down small trails and sometimes off road through the bushes looking for animals. Our prey the first day was to find some lions. They had killed a zebra a couple of days before. We found the zebra carcass and two young teenage lions. We went looking for the female.
It was getting dark and we started back along narrow trails. The tracker out in front had a large hand held searchlight. We saw a few small animals, a porcupine, an antelope and an owl. Then up the trail was a large bull elephant with big tusks in the middle of the trail. They do not shine their light on elephants and rhinos as they don’t like it. As we approached him he moved off the trail. We stopped about 20 feet in front of him. Then he turned toward us, made a loud roar and charged the truck. We got out of there fast. Amy was not happy.
It was getting very cold by now. We returned to camp for a group dinner with five other guests. It was outside in the common eating area. I had ostrich. We went to bed but it is real cold and the only heat in our cabin is a large fireplace. We kept it going all night
They woke us up at 6 am for another game ride. It was just starting to get light and was very cold. We wore every bit of clothing we had and they gave us blankets and hot water bottles. We were out for 4 hours before breakfast. Our first hunt was for rhinos. After about an hour we found 2 females, a nursing teenager and a huge male. We stayed about 50 feet from them for some time.
We then went looking for a cheetah. There were a lot of tracks that the guides followed but we never found them. We will look again tomorrow. While looking we spotted a herd of zebras and impalas, giraffes, gnus, wart hogs, kudu, three different eagles, a black tail jackal and water buck. We saw a lot of zebras and giraffes.
We returned to have breakfast and to relax until the next hunt. We have nice decks around our cabins. We watched as some impala and baboons went through the camp. The monkeys ran along our railing and sat in the trees around the deck. Jan had left the door to the outside shower open and one was in the bathroom sink.
At 3 pm we left again. About 1 km from the camp the guide spotted a large bull elephant in the bushes. We waited as he ate his way out of the bushes and then toward the truck. The guide told us to just sit still. He came about 10 feet from me and then turned to chew on more leaves.
The hunt was for a cheetah and a leopard. Our guides follow tracks. They can tell what breed of animal, the sex, where they are going and how fresh they are. In the meantime we saw many other animals. We circled many times cutting through the bush but never found them.
We started back in the dark. The guide turned down a small trail and then started cross country. They had the spot light on and turned off the truck lights. Off to one side in the grass we spotted a lion and then another one. He kept moving the truck slowly and one lion left and another stayed. He was not 5 feet from the back wheel, laying down and watching us. Then we spotted others as they left. It was a large pride of lions. We counted 18 of them. Many were cubs. No adult males. The one near our truck never left. We returned to the camp for dinner.
The next day we were out early looking again for the cheetah and leopard. We were joined by our other truck as two trackers walked through the bushes. No luck again but we saw many other animals.
That afternoon the objective was cape buffalo and hyenas. The buffalo are in a large area, several square miles that is completely fenced off from the other areas. The area contains many types of animals but no cats. This is done to protect the buffalo as the lions would kill them off. We found a large group of them. They would come to within a few feet of the truck.
We also looked for hyenas with no look. We did find a crocodile and a hippo but it was getting dark. We should go back in the morning.
This was our last morning. We again started to look for the cheetah and leopard. No luck. We saw a lot of tracks. Then they started to see some lion tracks. One guide got out of the truck and walked up a stream bed with his rifle. He radioed us that he had found them. We drove over near them. Two young males and two females had caught a kudu. One was eating and the others just lying around. The males were 2 or 3 years old and just starting to grow their manes. They we both about 6 to 8 feet long and at least 400 pounds. We were within 20 feet of them and they just watched us. We are told to sit still. The one eating was really chewing on the carcass. I think Jan, Tracy and Amy are now vegetarians.
We saw a lot of hyenas, jackals, antelopes, zebra, giraffes and others. Then we went back to find the hippos and the crocodile. We found them both. The crocodile just lays there and the hippos will not come out of the water until after dark.
It was back to breakfast, to pack and drive to the airport for Johannesburg.
Johannesburg
Johannesburg
We arrived about 3pm. Our driver was there to meet us. This tour is called a “self guided” tour which means we are not with other people, just the four of us. We have our own drivers who all have small Toyota vans. They give us guided tours as needed and pick us up and take us anywhere we need to go including the airport.
We are in a large luxury hotel in a neighborhood north of town. We walked to a mall and had pizza.
Our driver picked us up after a good breakfast at the hotel. Our whole time at Joburg will be spent at Soweto and talk about Apartheid and the freedom movement. Soweto (southwest town) was the center of it all. The driver showed us the rich, medium and poor areas. They are all a lot less than we have. They are working to eliminate the slums through government financed housing. They are making good progress. They really have no homeless population. They have many shanty villages.
We first went to a memorial to the original bill or rights that was written by the first freedom fighters in 1955. There is a tower with a monument listed all the human rights they were working for. They would not be implemented until 1994.
Next was the Regina Mundi Catholic church. This was the center of many of the early protest meetings and police resistance. Nelson Mandela spoke often there and has been visited by many American dignitaries.
We visited the area where the real freedom movement accelerated with demonstrations by school children and others. Many were killed but due to a famous photograph that got world wide attention showing the death of Hector Pleterson, a 12 year old boy. We visited a museum built in his honor. We also visited the house where Nelson Mandela lived as a young man.
We then went to the Apartheid museum. It documents the whole struggle for equality and the end of Apartheid. We are all now know the whole story well.
We went back to the hotel. We think we will have dinner at the hotel as we have an early plane to Botswana.
Okavango Delta
We were up early for a ride to the airport. We had a driver that was quiet until I asked him a question about SA development. He talked all the way to the airport. We were on a Botswana Airlines flight to Maun Botswana. This was a large 737. We landed at a small airport and had to walk a quarter of a mile across the tarmac to a small terminal. Jan said that if we thought SA was a third world country we are now is a fourth world country. It wasn’t that bad. It is a small airport with a lot of chaos but everyone is real friendly and helpful.
Our next flight was to Camp Okavango. We boarded a single engine plane. I sat up front with the pilot. There was only room for the 4 of us and pilot. We had a 45 minute flight over the delta and landed on a dirt strip on an island in the delta.
We were warmly greeted by everyone. They led us to our tent cabins. They are permanent tents with real beds and full bathrooms. They are going to be real comfortable. There is no heat and the power generator for the whole camp shuts off at 10:30. We will be in bed by then.
We had high tea at 3 and then boarded a small boat with an outboard engine and started through the delta. There is high grass everywhere with channels for the boat. They went every direction. It would be real easy to get lost but our guide had the twists and turns all memorized. We looked for wildlife from the boat.
We found some small crocodiles. Then we went hunting for hippos. We were afraid we would not find any but we came around a bend and there was a school of about ten of them ahead of us. The guide kept the boat a good 200 meters from them. He said they are very unpredictable and dangerous. We watched them for a long time. They would go under water for several minutes and then come up blowing a stream of water.
We then found an island and docked the boat and had wine, a beer and snacks. We then went back to camp at a quick pace winding through the channels.
At 7 pm we met for a social time. There are 24 people here tonight. The place is full. There were people from Italy and SA. A group of about 20 staff came doing African songs and dances. It was wonderful. The have a great sense of rhythm. They later told us they were traditional songs and dances that they had know since they were children,
All 24 of us sat at a long table for dinner. The Botswana native cook told us the menu. They take real pride in presenting the food.
It was a long day and we were anxious to get back to our tent. We were hoping it would not be too cold at night. It was not bad. They gave us a bush baby to keep us warm (hot water bottle). They woke us at 6 am.
This morning we went for a walk on an island in the delta. We took a boat to the island. The islands are home to all the land animals. The large animals including elephants, buffalo, giraffes stay on one island until the food supply is limited and then walk or swim to another island. The smaller mammals are confined to one island. We walked for a couple of hours. The guide talked about the trees and other plants as we looked for some big game. All we found was some giraffes several hundred meters away. We did learn a lot about how the animals live and how they move to survive. Today was Father’s Day. Amy and Tracy had a card for me and two gifts. It was a nice surprise.
In the afternoon we went out on the delta in canoes. They were small canoes that would hold 2 people plus the poler. The polers pushed the boat with long poles. The water in most places is only 3 to 5 feet deep. We did not expect to see much wildlife. We saw a couple of small frogs.
The water is so clear. They said you could drink it. There was a lot of tall grass and lilies. Our guide was a former bushman. His family had lived in the delta for generations. Several years ago the government moved all the native people to town. They then had the opportunity for education for the kids and health care. They spoke very positively of their government. It has been a democracy since 1962. On the way back to camp we spotted a large male giraffe. They are such beautiful animals.
The next morning we said our goodbyes. We had got to know all the staff people real well. They are all so friendly. We boarded a plane to Chobe. It is an hour flight. We were on another single engine plane that carried about 10 passengers. Chobe is in the far north east corner of Botswana. We arrived at a beautiful native hotel.
Chobe
Our rooms are great. We have rooms with decks overlooking the Chobe River. Amy and Tracy are in the unit above us. We have seen baboons and wart hogs walk past us just off the deck. I was pleased that we have WIFI in the lobby. We had a nice lunch overlooking the garden and the water.
Our first tour is this afternoon. It is a boat tour up the Chobe River. We are on a fairly large boat with about 20 other people. It is a platform like a house boat and we could move chairs around or stand anywhere we pleased. The river west of the lodge is all national park. There were birds and animals along the shore. We saw a lot of antelope, buffalo, crocodiles and other animals. On one island we found 3 hippopotamus on the shore. We watched as they yawned, got up and went in to the water. Further up the river we saw a herd of elephants. We counted 29 of them. We watched an African sunset and the came back to the lodge.
At the lodge they had African dancers all in traditional dress. They are really fun to watch. We are off to dinner soon.
We were up at 5:15 for an early game ride. Here they use Toyota pickup trucks with a frame in the bed that is covered and seats 9 people. Jan and I were in the rear seats hanging over the rear bumper. The bumps really tossed us around. We were out in the bush when the sun came up. We are in a national park. They told us that they have 60,000 elephants.
There were many game trucks out. We drove down single track roads looking for animals. We saw herds of impalas. There were other antelopes, giraffes and groups of elephants. Our driver heard on his radio that a leopard had been spotted and he drove fast to get there. The leopard was in a tree and difficult to see. There were 5 or 6 vehicles parked around it with cameras clicking. With this leopard we have now seen all of the big five.
On the way back we were following the river and we saw a school of hippos. They were in shallow water tightly together.
We returned to the hotel. It was nice as we had some time to relax. We haven’t had too much of that. Jan read a book; I worked on the blog and scanned the internet. Tracy and Amy stayed in their room and read. After we went to lunch and then out for another game ride.
On the afternoon game ride we were to see more groups of animals. Instead of staying on the banks of the river our guide turned inland into some low hills. We saw lots of elephants, giraffes, impalas, kudu, buffalo, baboons, hippos and others. Our guide was looking for zebras as that is Amy’s favorite and we had not seen any in Chobe. We drove through some wooded area and there they were. They are the shyest of the animals and they kept their eyes on us all the time. We got fairly close to then. There were 8 including a young one.
As we leaving our guide spotted some lions near a water hole. We drove over by the water to watch. There were 6 of them. They came out to drink and then laid down to rest. They seem to do that a lot. I guess when you are king of the jungle you can do anything you want. Nothing threatens them. The looked over at us now and then but we really didn’t interest them much.
On the way home we saw more animals and watched the sun set. When we returned we watched the traditional native dancers again.
We were up at 5:15 again for our final game ride. We were out in the park before it was light. The highlights of this day’s ride were first some hippos we saw along the river. Then we went looking for the lions we had seen the day before. We found that they had a dead elephant that they were eating.
We went back down the river and found a huge herd of buffalo. There were over 500 of them. They ran past our truck and just kept coming.
We then headed back to pack and get ready to catch a bus to Victoria Falls. It is only about 40 miles east.
We took one bus to the Zimbabwe border. We had to get out and go through Botswana customs. Then we had to drive a short distance, get out again and go through Zimbabwe customs. Then take our luggage out of the bus, carry it over the border and get on another bus. Then we were off to Victoria Falls.
We checked into our hotel. It is a large hotel with a jungle theme. It sort of reminded us of Las Vegas. Jan was not too thrilled with the room. There are several extra tours here that we could take like a helicopter ride. For the 4 of us for 15 minutes it is $540. That is not going to happen. We were going to go see the falls but they want $30 a day per person just to look at the falls. We will wait until our walking tour tomorrow.
The girls did some shopping. Then we had high tea at the Victoria Falls Hotel. It is a 100 year old hotel that overlooks the gorge and the bridge. You can see the mist from the falls. It is a very classy place. We enjoyed the tea. We are going out for hamburgers tonight.
We had a good breakfast. All the breakfasts have been great. Then a driver picked us up to go to the falls. With Jan’s persistence they agreed that our entrance to the falls had been paid for and the driver gave us back our $120. He warned us that it would be wet or wetter and gave us all raincoats. It turned out that they were not enough as we all came out soaked to the skin.
We walked back into the falls. It is 5600 feet long and 350 feet high. We started at the west end on a cliff directly opposite the falls. It falls into a gorge and we were directly across from the falls. The views are terrific the whole length of the falls but the overspray is huge and toward the east end you have to wait to see glimpses between the mists.
We walked the entire length. We went back to our room to dry out.
We are going to take it easy this afternoon. We leave the hotel at 10 in the morning and get back in Phoenix at 10 on Saturday morning. It is a shorter trip home but still 33 hours. It has been a great trip.
