January 26, 2020
Before telling you about our two amazing days in Zimbabwe and Botswana we need to revisit our last night in Cape Town. After we had written the blog post about Cape Town we heard a lecture from Peter Storey. Rev. Storey has an impressive resume. At one time he was the Bishop of the South African Conference of the Methodist Church. A friend and counselor to both Nelson and Winnie Mandela, he was, by many accounts, a quiet voice instrumental in the break down of apartheid. His lecture was based on a book he has published entitled "I Beg to Differ" and was a powerful and inspiriational reflection on both the ending of apartheid and lessons from that event that can resonate in each of our lives. We also had the opportunity to talk with him after the lecture about the LGBTQ issue that the Methodist Church is now facing.
Friday was a very early day as we had two flights that took us to our destination of Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. Victoria Falls is the name of the city where the Victoria Falls are situated. We went directly to the falls from the airport. The first explorer to discover the Victoria Falls was David Livingston in 1855. The locals called the falls "Mosi-oa-Tunya" meaning "Smoke with Thunder", but Livingston renamed them Victoria Falls after Queen Victoria. The falls are on the Zambezi River and is one of the 7 Natural Wonders of the World. The falls are a group of falls interupted by small islands. The total width is 1.7 kilometers, just under 2 miles and the tallest of the falls is about 108 meters, almost 350 feet. The falls truly are "Smoke with Thunder" as there were many times we could not see the falls due to the mist ("Smoke") rising from the bottom of the gorge and the noise was deafening. We were fortunate in that at the end of the long walk observing the falls a rainbow appeared over the falls creating a breathtaking picture. Victoria Falls ranks near the top of the natural wonders that we have seen.
Leaving the falls we were taken to our hotel, The Victory Falls Hotel. It is another beautiful old hotel that hosted then Princess Elizabeth in 1947 when she was on a grand tour of Africa with her parents and sister. The back of the hotel faces the falls and we can see the mist rising up and can faintly here the "Thunder".
On Saturday we celebrated our 51st wedding anniversary spending the day at the Chobe National Park in Botswana. The park is over 11,000 square kilometers, almost 7000 square miles. Chobe is unlike the plains that one usually sees on videos of African wildlife. It is somewhat hilly and is covered in bushes and trees. We rode in safari jeeps that had three rows of three seats each. We rode for 10-15 minutes before we encountered our first animals, a herd of impalas. The Impala is known among the locals as the "McDonalds of the bush". This is for two reasons. 1.Each impala has a distinctive black marking on its rump that looks like the Golden Arches of McDonalds. 2. It is the "fast food" of the bush for the pretator cats. We stopped to watch them graze, the animals totally oblivious to our presense. Suddenly the entire herd froze looking back behind where we were parked, obviously spooked by something. Many of the impalas were emitting warning grunts. Our jeep backed up and we noticed movement the brush in the area the impalas were watching. We excitedly whispered thoughts of a cat hunting the impala. Much to our disappointment a baboon wandered out on the road and the impalas relaxed. Our guide told us the baboon was of no danger to the impalas. We started on our way again and did not go more then 20 or 30 yards when we discovered a giraffe standing under a tall tree munching away at the leaves. Our jeep parked and we watched this large but graceful animal for at least ten minutes.
Leaving the giraffe behind we drove along for another 10 minutes seeing lots more impala until we came upon the shore of the Chobe River. For the next two hours we drove and parked along the river observing the elephants. We must have seen over 50 of these magnificent beasts, many of them walking right next to our vehicle. We "oohed" and "aahed" over a small family of elephants that included the cutest little baby elephants. Lynda elbowed Tim when he started humming Henry Mancini's "Baby Elephant Walk". We laughed as we watched the adolesent elephants wallowing in the mud and marveled at the young bull elephants as they playfully fought with each other. We watched two bulls stalking a female elephant and we all commisserated with the poor rejected bull as he walked off by himself, obviously dejected.
Elephants were not the only animals along the shores of the river. We watched a small congress of baboons (not the ones in Washington D.C.) as the females nursed their young. The mother baboon would walk along on all fours as the baby clung to her underbelly. We also watched a Cape Buffalo as it scratch its massive horns on the limbs of a large bush no more then 20 or 30 feet from us. Our guide told us this was an exercise the cape buffalo did to strengthen its neck muscles. We finally left the river, heading back to the park lodge for lunch. As we drove we still saw many impala and elephants.
After the adrenalin high of the morning and a large lunch we were feeling a bit languid, wishing for time for a nap. It was not to be as we boarded a large pontoon boat in which all 26 of us in our tour group could fit. Knowing that we probably would see the same animals we had seen in the morning we were less than excited. That feeling did not last long as we saw our first hippopitamus, the top of its head just sticking above the water. As we watched,three more heads popped out of the water. This was a recurring theme the rest of our 2 hour cruise. We never ceased to get excited as we watched these large heads come up to the surface of the river. We also observed several hippos grazing on the grass on the large islands in the middle of the river.
We had two more elephant encounters of note. It turns out elephants like to swim. We watched two young bulls as they splashed in the water, at times becoming totally submerged. Not everyone saw the last bit of excitement as it occurred in a matter of a few seconds. We were lucky enough to be watching a large bull elephant as it walked into the river. Suddenly there was a large splash, the elephant reared up and scrambled, as much as a large elephant can scramble, out of the river and ran for 50 years at least. The elephant's exteded private parts had been attacked by a crocidile. We looked back at the river and could see the head of the crocidile above the water staring back at the elephant. Even our guide who was fortunate to see this was beside himself with excitement. We have had many memorable anniversies over our 51 years together. Our day in the Chobe National Park ranks high on the list.
Saturday night we had an elegent five course dinner in the Livingston Room in our hotel. We won't list each course but highlight the first course which was ostrich carpaccio with a hard boiled quail egg on top of ostrich tartare. The entre was a delicious Zimbabwian beef tenderloin filet. During the break between one of the courses, our MSU faculty host stood up and announced that it was our wedding anniversary. We received an nice round of applause and many well wishes later when we left the restaurant. It was a wonderful end to a great day.
It is Sunday as we compose this posting. We have nothing scheduled until 3:00 when we board the Rovos Railroad train for our three day trip to Pretoria, South Africa. This is a luxury train on the order of the Orient Express. We will be relaxing in the lap of luxury for three days as the only event on the schedule is another safari experience along the way. We have been told that there is no wifi on the train so the next blog may not occur until Thursday. You can check back on Wednesday if you like, just to be sure.
As always, thanks for reading. And as this is now January 26th...Happy Birthday Jilayne!
January 26, 2020
Before telling you about our two amazing days in Zimbabwe and Botswana we need to revisit our last night in Cape Town. After we had written the blog post about Cape Town we heard a lecture from Peter Storey. Rev. Storey has an impressive resume. At one time he was the Bishop of the South African Conference of the Methodist Church. A friend and counselor to both Nelson and Winnie Mandela, he was, by many accounts, a quiet voice instrumental in the break down of apartheid. His lecture was based on a book he has published entitled "I Beg to Differ" and was a powerful and inspiriational reflection on both the ending of apartheid and lessons from that event that can resonate in each of our lives. We also had the opportunity to talk with him after the lecture about the LGBTQ issue that the Methodist Church is now facing.
Friday was a very early day as we had two flights that took us to our destination of Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. Victoria Falls is the name of the city where the Victoria Falls are situated. We went directly to the falls from the airport. The first explorer to discover the Victoria Falls was David Livingston in 1855. The locals called the falls "Mosi-oa-Tunya" meaning "Smoke with Thunder", but Livingston renamed them Victoria Falls after Queen Victoria. The falls are on the Zambezi River and is one of the 7 Natural Wonders of the World. The falls are a group of falls interupted by small islands. The total width is 1.7 kilometers, just under 2 miles and the tallest of the falls is about 108 meters, almost 350 feet. The falls truly are "Smoke with Thunder" as there were many times we could not see the falls due to the mist ("Smoke") rising from the bottom of the gorge and the noise was deafening. We were fortunate in that at the end of the long walk observing the falls a rainbow appeared over the falls creating a breathtaking picture. Victoria Falls ranks near the top of the natural wonders that we have seen.
Leaving the falls we were taken to our hotel, The Victory Falls Hotel. It is another beautiful old hotel that hosted then Princess Elizabeth in 1947 when she was on a grand tour of Africa with her parents and sister. The back of the hotel faces the falls and we can see the mist rising up and can faintly here the "Thunder".
On Saturday we celebrated our 51st wedding anniversary spending the day at the Chobe National Park in Botswana. The park is over 11,000 square kilometers, almost 7000 square miles. Chobe is unlike the plains that one usually sees on videos of African wildlife. It is somewhat hilly and is covered in bushes and trees. We rode in safari jeeps that had three rows of three seats each. We rode for 10-15 minutes before we encountered our first animals, a herd of impalas. The Impala is known among the locals as the "McDonalds of the bush". This is for two reasons. 1.Each impala has a distinctive black marking on its rump that looks like the Golden Arches of McDonalds. 2. It is the "fast food" of the bush for the pretator cats. We stopped to watch them graze, the animals totally oblivious to our presense. Suddenly the entire herd froze looking back behind where we were parked, obviously spooked by something. Many of the impalas were emitting warning grunts. Our jeep backed up and we noticed movement the brush in the area the impalas were watching. We excitedly whispered thoughts of a cat hunting the impala. Much to our disappointment a baboon wandered out on the road and the impalas relaxed. Our guide told us the baboon was of no danger to the impalas. We started on our way again and did not go more then 20 or 30 yards when we discovered a giraffe standing under a tall tree munching away at the leaves. Our jeep parked and we watched this large but graceful animal for at least ten minutes.
Leaving the giraffe behind we drove along for another 10 minutes seeing lots more impala until we came upon the shore of the Chobe River. For the next two hours we drove and parked along the river observing the elephants. We must have seen over 50 of these magnificent beasts, many of them walking right next to our vehicle. We "oohed" and "aahed" over a small family of elephants that included the cutest little baby elephants. Lynda elbowed Tim when he started humming Henry Mancini's "Baby Elephant Walk". We laughed as we watched the adolesent elephants wallowing in the mud and marveled at the young bull elephants as they playfully fought with each other. We watched two bulls stalking a female elephant and we all commisserated with the poor rejected bull as he walked off by himself, obviously dejected.
Elephants were not the only animals along the shores of the river. We watched a small congress of baboons (not the ones in Washington D.C.) as the females nursed their young. The mother baboon would walk along on all fours as the baby clung to her underbelly. We also watched a Cape Buffalo as it scratch its massive horns on the limbs of a large bush no more then 20 or 30 feet from us. Our guide told us this was an exercise the cape buffalo did to strengthen its neck muscles. We finally left the river, heading back to the park lodge for lunch. As we drove we still saw many impala and elephants.
After the adrenalin high of the morning and a large lunch we were feeling a bit languid, wishing for time for a nap. It was not to be as we boarded a large pontoon boat in which all 26 of us in our tour group could fit. Knowing that we probably would see the same animals we had seen in the morning we were less than excited. That feeling did not last long as we saw our first hippopitamus, the top of its head just sticking above the water. As we watched,three more heads popped out of the water. This was a recurring theme the rest of our 2 hour cruise. We never ceased to get excited as we watched these large heads come up to the surface of the river. We also observed several hippos grazing on the grass on the large islands in the middle of the river.
We had two more elephant encounters of note. It turns out elephants like to swim. We watched two young bulls as they splashed in the water, at times becoming totally submerged. Not everyone saw the last bit of excitement as it occurred in a matter of a few seconds. We were lucky enough to be watching a large bull elephant as it walked into the river. Suddenly there was a large splash, the elephant reared up and scrambled, as much as a large elephant can scramble, out of the river and ran for 50 years at least. The elephant's exteded private parts had been attacked by a crocidile. We looked back at the river and could see the head of the crocidile above the water staring back at the elephant. Even our guide who was fortunate to see this was beside himself with excitement. We have had many memorable anniversies over our 51 years together. Our day in the Chobe National Park ranks high on the list.
Saturday night we had an elegent five course dinner in the Livingston Room in our hotel. We won't list each course but highlight the first course which was ostrich carpaccio with a hard boiled quail egg on top of ostrich tartare. The entre was a delicious Zimbabwian beef tenderloin filet. During the break between one of the courses, our MSU faculty host stood up and announced that it was our wedding anniversary. We received an nice round of applause and many well wishes later when we left the restaurant. It was a wonderful end to a great day.
It is Sunday as we compose this posting. We have nothing scheduled until 3:00 when we board the Rovos Railroad train for our three day trip to Pretoria, South Africa. This is a luxury train on the order of the Orient Express. We will be relaxing in the lap of luxury for three days as the only event on the schedule is another safari experience along the way. We have been told that there is no wifi on the train so the next blog may not occur until Thursday. You can check back on Wednesday if you like, just to be sure.
As always, thanks for reading. And as this is now January 26th...Happy Birthday Jilayne!
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