Africian Safari - part 1

It's been a while since my last post in August but it took a while to weed through our hundreds of pictures and other information on Africa.  I will post this blog in two parts because it is long with lots of pictures.

This trip was initially planned for April 2019 but kept getting delayed until we were finally able to safely go.  This was our second Overseas Adventure Travel trip (we went with this company to Machu Picchu & Galapagos Islands in 2017).  O.A.T. is a leader in small group travel and is well known for the "Road Less Traveled". In fact we had only 13 people in our group with a travel leader with us the whole time-plus lots of local guides.  We visited 3 countries, staying in 4 safari lodges and taking about 25 game-drives.  We also spent a week in Cape Town, South Africia on our own after the safari tour.

We flew into Johannesburg three days early to give us a little time to tour the area and get over Jet Lag!  Our flight was LONG-two seven hour segements with change in Dubai. 

We stayed one night at 12 Decades Art Hotel on the edge of the city  While we felt a little uneasy in this area, during the day it was safe and interesting to explore. 

The hotel discription reads: "An avante-garde Johannesburg accomodation featuring well-appointed and stylish guestrooms each representing some of South Africa's most celebrated Artists & Designers".....well that must have been a long time ago!  

We decided to concentrate on learning about and seeing the country's largest black urban complex of Soweto which is just on the outskirts of Jo'burg and joined a tour the next day to Kliptown, the oldest residential district.  The name SoWeTo is an English acronym for South Western Townships and is made up of over 35 "townships" with over 3.5 to 5 million people.  

the tour was led by residents of Soweto

Kliptown was first laid out in 1881 when black workers flocked to the city looking for work in the mines.  It is one of the poorest areas and we walked through a community of tin-roofed shanties with no plumbing and only dirt roads.  Most people do work even if it is collecting recyclables and the children go to school.  However the people basically "squat" in their homes paying no rent and "steal" electricity by connecting into the power lines.

No plumbing just "communal" toilets for hundreds of people

Shacks were tiny and jammed together.  There was no open ground for gardens.

The Little Rose community center was built & is run with volunteers.  Here they have a small library, afterschool space and a meeting room for community classes 

The library and community room are converted shipping containers 

the preschool is offered to parents who can afford it-the kids just wanted hugs

and there is one central water faucet for the community

we toured Nelson Mandela's house-our guides had mixed feelings about Mandela that he didn't do enough to promote opportunity and thus expand financial means for the black population 

 On June 16, 1976 about 15,000 students gathered to protest over mandated government teaching only in Afrikaans and not in the languages of the people.  Police responded with gunfire and this young boy, Hector Petersen was shot and died.  In the aftermath, at least 600 students died and many tortured or imprisioned before the language was changed to English in 1979. 

Our second night in Joburg was at a very different hotel!  Here we met up with our O.A.T. tour and flew to Victoria Falls and on to Zimbabwe.

 

we all had the same O.A.T. duffels (one per person) as we took so many small planes

From the get-go we experienced the governmental bureaucracy of health checks, border crossing and immigration.  We had to purchase on-site visas for Zimbabwe and later Zambia totaling about $100 per person.  This is one of the times where the trip leader was invaluable as he directed us through the process.

Boarding our comfortable bus we drove about 2 hours to the Hwange National Park to stay inside the park at the Safari Lodge operated by Wilderness Safaris.  All of the camps we stayed at were managed by this company and were exclusively for O.A.T. tours groups.   

the largest conservation preserve in the country

We were glad to start our safari in Zimbabwe-and really enjoyed the country- because it only went "uphill" from there!  Zimbabwe is one of the poorest countries and racked with a government full of corruption.  Our trip leader, Savior, is from Zimbabwe and shared a lot of both the bad and good of the country.  

Our O.A.T. group leader, Servious "Savior" Nyoni

In this area, conservation and tourism are in conflict with the coal mining operated by both Zimbabwe government and Chinese companies.  We had a talk one day from a young man who shared his story and views of how on the companies expoits the underground workers, destroy the environment and don't pay the workers.  We also heard from a young woman who worked in the office of a Chinese company who was thankful for a job to support her family.  Very different perspectives and was controversial for us trying to understand with our "Western Eyes".

The Safari Camps were definately special and while not "5-star Luxary" they were not what one might think of as a "bare-bone" safari camps.

Musical welcome into camp

 We had a large individual "tent-cabins" with windows, bathroom, comfortable beds, and electricity.  The main area consisted of a wonderful lounge always open to the woodlands or river, dining room, bar and a campfire area.  The staff were friendly and extremely attentive. 

Our days started with a 5:30 am "wake-up" (guides walking by our tents to call out "good morning") and a small breakfast with coffee, bread and fruit.  Then we all climbed into our 4x4 jeeps for a 3 hour game drive with our most excellent local guides.  

Back for brunch or lunch, a well-deserved afternoon rest and tea (always pastries) then off for another evening game drive ending with a daily "Sundowner" with wine or beer out in the bush.  Returning to camp, dinner was served around 7-8 pm and afterwards campfire and/or drinks and then we were escorted to retire to our tents (due to the chance encounter with animals we could not walk outside after dark).  

Hwange N.P. has very little water and the elephants and giraffes have stripped the trees.  

Spotted Hyena-scavengers with powerful jaws 

One of the "signature activities" of O.A.T. are Family Hosted Visits of which we had two on this trip  The first was at a "homestead" inside one of the tribal villages.  This was fantastic and we had the opportunity to learn about their substance living, have an open conversation with the village people (including the ladies curious about childbirth in the U.S.) and finally sharing tea and a taste of their daily polenta meal and their delicacy of mopane worms.  The worms, or caterpillers of the mopane tree, are richer in protein than milk or chicken and are affordable. 

we all chipped in about $20 each and were given a shopping list in both Shona and Ndebele languages and we had to wander the market finding the items

the women carry baskets with water and food and even firewood on their heads

The Zimbabwe basket has traditional designs with a square flat center

They paint their walls with mud from the termite mounds because it hardens like cement

the kitchen-they cook over a small open fire and the meals are always the same

Mopani worms, or actually the caterpillar from the tree, are a delicacy in Zimbabwe

they eat polenta for every meal adding "relish" when they have it (vegies, worms, or occasional meat)

the worms are dried and cooked until crisp

the ladies were proud to serve us their food

"Sundowners" hosted by our guides

Next morning we drove 2 hrs back to Victoria Falls, crossed the border into the town of Livingston and flew in two small bush planes into remote Zambia 

People buy cheaper in Zambabwe and walk across the border to sell in Zambia

dirt airstrips

Lufupa Camp sits right on the bank of the Zambezi river where our "game drives" one day were on the river boat.  

netting around our beds at night

Here we had warthogs and baboons in camp during the day and elephants and hippos at night (we only heard their sounds and saw footprints). 

the guide circled the big hippo prints so we isolate them among all the others

One afternoon, M'longa, the lovely manager of the camp entralled us with the history and traditional culture practices of Zambia.  Some included kneeling to elders, no eye contact, married women kneel to husbands to hand them something, girls older than 8 years can't wear anything above the knee, the marriage proposal and "lobola" or dowry often still include cattle, and we were given lovely chitenge wrap.

In most African villages it would be very unusual to find a woman not wearing a chitenge. Chitenges have an edging only on a long side and are often batiks of colorful prints. It is a practical item that covers their clothes which can become dirty quite quickly in the dust and daily chores of rural life; women also use them to cover their hair so it doesn’t smell of smoke from cooking; it can be coiled onto the crown of the head as padding when fetching water and are essential for carrying babies. (source: wilderness-safaris.com)

Karen smashing groundnuts (peanuts) which is a staple food.  They are grown by about half of the rural smallholders in Zambia, approximatelhy 700,000 farmers, on nearly 9% of the cultivated land.  

PAKU-they must be by water and breed all year long (unlike other antelope)

Bateleur "bird of prey"-very acrobatic flying

Vervant monkey

Water Monitor lizard- 3-4 feet long-similar to Komoto Dragon

Hippos live in the water during the day but go alone into the woodlands as night to graze and sleep

elephant dung was burned in a smoke pot hung from our vehicle to deter bugs

Greater Kudu woodland antelope can weight up to 700 pounds with long spiral horns

Warthogs go down on their front knees to dig in the dirt

One of our night game-drives.  The guide used a big spotlight to see the reflection of the eyes 

male Impala-beautiful horns with rings

This mother elephant wanted to cross the road but we were driving by.  She stopped in the road and you can see the feet of her baby positioned on the other side for protection.

After she was satisfied that we weren't a threat, she led the baby off but not before flapping her big ears and stomping her foot in the dirt to give another warning!