Posted by barb on Nov 20, 2016 in
Pictures,
Recreation,
Travels Our third day at Chobe – another full day there – was spent in pursuit of elephants. Mike, our guide, warned that it might be a bit of a goose chase because of the clouds and possibility of rain. Elephants need water every day. During the dry season, they trek to the river each day to drink and bathe. However, they prefer their watering holes, since they are less vulnerable there. Once the rains start, the elephants know that their watering holes will soon have water again. At the end of the dry season, when the weather is cloudy and there are sprinkles in the morning, the elephants walk to their watering holes to see if there is water yet. If there isn’t any water, they have to make the trek to the river – 10 km away.
On our quest for elephants, though, we did find other animals. First thing, we found some zebra.
Including this little one. Our guide guessed that it was less than a month old. Note how long its legs are. Mike said that the baby zebras have long legs to help confuse predators. It’s harder for them to tell the young from the older zebras from just a quick glance.
We continued to see more baby impalas, too.
Next, Mike took us to where he knew a pair of lionesses had cubs. His hope was to get there about the time they would call the cubs out of hiding to exercise them. We drove around the area a bit, Mike looking into the bushes where he guessed that the cubs might be hiding. He spotted a couple tiny cubs through the bushes. Eventually I spied one of the cubs, too – it was barely able to walk, crawling over a branch of a bush. Then it disappeared again. I have no idea how Mike knew they were there or how he could possibly have found them.
Then we found the lionesses.
After watching for a while, Mike determined they weren’t going to call the cubs out, probably because it looked like rain. So, we continued our trek to find elephants. We drove to one watering hole, then then to a more distant watering hole. But…this is what we found:
Mike was so frustrated. At one point he just looked around and said, “Where are they?” And then we continued to another watering hole. Still no elephants. So, next we headed toward the the river again. And FINALLY we spied a family.
We followed them to the river, where they got some water.
And just like that, they headed off again.
We returned to where the lionesses were – Mike thought they might call out the cubs in the late afternoon. On the way, we spied some jackals and a warthog with babies.
Then we found the lionesses in about the same place as in the morning.
The then, before long, one of them went and called her cubs.
They ran around, explored, and played with each other for a while.
And then they went back to mama.
And nursed for a little while.
Finally it was time to head back to camp. On our way, we spied this mama and baby giraffe at sunset.
Tags: safari
Posted by barb on Nov 19, 2016 in
Pictures,
Recreation,
Travels Our second day started early, with a wake-up call around 5AM, light breakfast in the lodge, and then off in the safari truck. After Mike signed us into the park, we didn’t have to go far to find some wildlife.
We spied a hyena patrolling the road. They know that animals get killed by vehicles, so they check out the roads first thing in the morning.
Oh, but then this happened.
And we had to wait for some formidable traffic.
Rule number one of finding wildlife is to go to the last place you saw something, so we started our morning checking out the site where the lions were eating the buffalo the previous evening. No lions, but another buffalo carcass and some scavengers.
I can’t really enumerate everywhere we drove and everything we saw after that, but we did go back toward the river, then drove various roads through the park.
We found zebras…
…giraffes…
…and water buffalo.
Andrew even spied a leopard tortoise, and had Mike stop so we could grab some pictures.
We also spied a few baby impalas. Apparently they all give birth around the same time, just after the first rains. (Or, at least, they have some bit of control over when they drop their babies, but if the rains come too late, they start coming anyway.)
We also found this lion.
She was coming from a kill near the river, but over a rise where we couldn’t see. There was a small group of lions, resting after they had eaten. We saw some vultures moving in toward the carcass, and one of the lions went back out to chase them away. However, the second time the vultures moved in, there was also a tourist boat near the shore, which scared the lions away. We suspect the carcass succumbed to the scavengers after that.
At the same time, there was a herd of antelope keeping a close eye on the lions. They stayed out on the plains, Mike explained, because the impalas best defense against the lions is their speed. In amongst the trees and brush, the lions had the advantage.
After we drove off from the lions, we started to find elephants.
Near the river they were drinking and bathing.
And then taking dirt baths.
Back up on the bank, we found a baby.
We needed to get to town for a boat ride, but as we were heading that direction, we found another group of elephants. This one just off the road.
They turned toward the road, and one came very close to the truck.
She took a few quick steps toward the truck – it was heart stopping (and I saw Mike grab toward the keys in the ignition, ready to get us out if necessary). When she stopped, she was no more than 15 feet away, and she and I looked into each other’s eyes…or that’s what it felt like. I took exactly one picture, then put the camera down to take in the moment.
From there, we made our way through Kasane and to the boat for our cruise along the Chobe River.
On the boat, we found a water buffalo – very close-up.
We also passed an elephant carcass (stinky!) with some small crocodiles trying their best to get at the meat. One curious thing, though, was that the carcass was missing it’s face.
Down the river from the carcass, we spied a group of crocodiles going after something. We guessed a buffalo carcass first…
… but as we got closer, we realized it was the elephant’s trunk. Our guide later wondered if the wildlife enforcement had taken the tusks to keep them from being a trophy for someone. Thus, freeing the trunk for the crocodiles.
We watched them eat for a while – it was fascinating. Eventually, one of the crocs tried taking off with the trunk. The others were hot on his tail, though. We continued on down the river.
The boat ride was the first time we got to see hippos out of the water. And we saw a lot of them!
After our boat ride, we made another quick pass through Chobe park, and spied a herd (or tower?) of giraffes.
Then it was back to the lodge for dinner and bed.
Tags: safari
Posted by barb on Nov 18, 2016 in
Pictures,
Recreation,
Travels As was going to become custom, when we arrived at Chobe Elephant Camp, we were greeted with a house drink (non alcoholic) and a safety briefing in the main lodge. While hanging out in the lodge, Andrew and I were looking over the river and plains, wondering whether we were seeing cattle and livestock or what. The camp manager comes over, looks over our shoulders and says, “oh, those are zebras.” Of course. We were looking at a herd of zebras.
We got settled in our cabin, had tea, and then were taken off for our first game drive. For us, this was the first game drive ever – we were looking forward to what we might see, but trying to temper our expectations. We might see nothing – this is nature, afterall. Nature can be giving and nurturing, or, well, not.
Mike would be our guide for our entire stay. We got in the truck. It was just me, Andrew, and one other guest (who was only staying one night). We stopped briefly, just outside the camp, for a truck safety briefing. Essentially, the animals are used to seeing safari trucks, and the perceive them as a giant, weird, single thing with too many eyes. And they mostly ignore the strange beast. However, if you start to individualize yourself from the truck by standing up, leaning out, or even getting out of the truck, the animals will recognize you as human and a possible threat. Depending on the animal and their mood, it could cause them to run away or to attack. So, don’t do any of those things!
Then we started on our way. But we didn’t get very far before running into a group of elephants, complete with a silly baby! We stayed and watched for a little while before moving along.
We arrived at the national park, where Mike stopped and signed us in.
And we were on our way into the park!
We were soon introduced to the..ahem…well-manicured roads and an “African massage” – or the wonderful side-to-side rocking from those beautiful roads.
We made our way to the river, where we were treated to herds of impala and zebras. Andrew and I took loads of pictures – it was our first “close-up” for most of these animals in the wild.
We moved on from the open plain, but stopped again when our guide spotted a tiny baby baboon. It was the first time I learned that even the guides are impressed by the wildlife – and when they are impressed by something, you know you are seeing something special.
Mike thought the baby was maybe just a day or two old. We watched him climb around his mama for a while.
Next we found a group of giraffes. I think I squealed when we first saw them – so much for staying quiet around the wildlife!
Finally, somehow Mike found some sleeping lions.
When they make a kill, the lions will gorge themselves, nap not too far away, then return to the carcass to gorge some more. We chose to do our “sun-downer” in the truck and wait to see if the lions would get up and return to their downed water buffalo. The gamble paid off, and before too long, one of the young lions got up.
After pestering her mom, she decided to go to the carcass by herself. She didn’t need anyone else to pull the carcass over.
Then the other young lion joined her, and finally the two grown ups.
We stayed until we needed to speed out of the park before closing.
Tags: safari
Posted by barb on Nov 18, 2016 in
Pictures,
Recreation,
Travels For the most part, I’m not going to chronicle our transfers – after crossing into Botswana, our transfers were nearly all the same. However, getting from Zambia/Waterberry Lodge to Botswana/Chobe Elephant Camp was quite an adventure involving a van, a boat, and a couple safari trucks.
Our journey started in a van from Waterberry Lodge. We drove for about 45 minutes or so until we saw an imposing line of semi-trucks along the side of the road.
Our driver said that the line of trucks extended to the border river crossing, over a mile away. The river did not have a bridge crossing it, instead the trucks needed to wait for one of the available ferries. On a great day, there would apparently be three ferries running, but usually one or two were broken down. Often the drivers would need to wait a week to cross the river. In fact, a small economy had been built around this spot, with folks selling produce and necessary items to the truckers.
We approached the river crossing, and our driver passed us and our luggage on to a small boat to cross the river. From the boat, we could get a good look at the bridge that was being built. We were told that the existing bridge was constructed to help in building the final, public-worthy bridge. I wonder what will come of those little economies that have arisen once the bridge is completed.
From there, we met up with another driver who would be taking us to meet with the Chobe Elephant camp representative. The driver shepherded us through the Botswana border crossing – even coming into the customs house to move us into the correct line. From there, we walked toward where the truck was parked; however, before officially crossing into Botswana, we had to step into a pan of water.
From there, we hopped into the truck (easier said than done, especially in an orthopedic boot – but I got used to it by the end of our trip).
This driver took us to the airport in Kasane, which is a common meeting point for exchanging safari tourists. We had to wait for about 10-15 minutes, but then a guide from Chobe Elephant Camp arrived to collect us.
From there, we drove through Chobe National Park – getting a taste for what we might see on our game drives later in our visit….
… including elephants!
Tags: safari
Posted by barb on Nov 18, 2016 in
Pictures,
Recreation,
Travels On our first (and only) full day at Waterberry, we took the day trip to Victoria Falls. After breakfast, our guide for the day took us through Livingstone and on to the Zambia side of the Falls. He escorted us to the entrance, and took a minute to talk about the history of the falls and how the current falls are the fifth (?) falls throughout history as the river carves a new path. The he told us what to expect, mentioned with paths to take, and sent us on our way.
Along the path, we first found a statue of Livingstone overlooking the falls. We also had to keep an eye out for baboons on the way, but we weren’t carrying anything but our cameras, so they pretty much left us alone. (There was a warning in our room that asked ladies not to bring their purses because of the baboons!)
There wasn’t much of the falls to see from the Zambia side, since we were there during the dry season. Instead, there was a huge expanse of bare rock wall. We could only imagine what the falls would look like during the wet season. Reports are that you don’t actually see a lot during the wet season, because there is so much mist in the way.
We crossed the knife-edge bridge to get to the very end of the Zambia side of the falls – it was where we could get the best view from Zambia. Still very little of the falls were visible.
We trekked back to the entrance, spent a little time at the market there, but left quickly after we decided that dickering wasn’t our thing!
Our guide then took us to the Zambia side of the border crossing and gave us instructions on how to get to the Zimbabwe side, how to cross the border, and where to find him when we returned. We decided to walk, rather than take a cab across – it was only a mile or so. However, it was *hot*!
After paying our visitor visa, we found our way to the Victoria Falls park. There were lots of paths that we could have taken, but since I was in my orthopedic boot, we decided to take basically the shortest path that showed the most of the falls.
It was definitely worth the trip across the border, because we got to see actual water! From web searches, we determined that the water flow rate was about a third of Niagara, so we had certainly seen falls with more water. However, here, the falls are so much closer – they are essentially in a narrow canyon.
We popped into several observation spots to see the falls from as many vantage points as we could. At one point we even saw a group of people on the falls-side in Devil’s Hole – an experience to be right on the edge of the falls during the dry season. No thank you!
One thing that struck me was the barriers that they had erected on the edges of the path. In the US, we would have had concrete barriers with loads of signs and warnings. Here, there was just a bramble “fence”, and only at the places where the path led to the edge.
We finished and made our way back to our guide in Zambia (we used a cab to get across this time – much faster and less sweaty than walking). On our way back to the camp, we stopped and had a lunch that the camp folks had packed for us.
We had some time between returning to the camp and our planned sunset cruise in the evening. We sat on some chairs on the river bank (some distance from the river), and at one point spied some elephants across the river bathing.
We took another river cruise, this time one highlight came after sunset. Our guide found a troop of baboons who were getting themselves ready for the night. The leader scouts out a tree, generally close to water. Then the troop grabs a drink, cleans each other, and starts to make their way up the tree. We got to see all of this.
Before that, we also spied some zebra and a number of juvenile crocodiles. And for a while we followed a couple of water buck with their “friend” the cattle egret.
The next morning, we had one last experience at Waterberry before moving on to our next stop – we took a morning bird walk. I don’t remember many of the names or stories (not being a big birder), but we did enjoy the walk and seeing the birds.
Tags: safari
Posted by barb on Nov 16, 2016 in
Pictures,
Recreation,
Travels I’ve dreamed of going on a photo safari since I was a little girl. My family had a membership to the Science Museum of Minnesota from the time I was in third grade until I was an adult. As a kid, I would page through their mailings, which included museum-sponsored trips in the back. Often there was a photo safari listed. I would read through the description and dream that I could go. This year was the year I would finally get to fulfill that little-girl’s dream.
Our trip started early on one of the longest days I’ve lived through – 1 hour drive to the airport, short flight to New York, 15.5 hour flight to Johannesburg, 2 hour flight to Livingstone (Zambia), 45 minute drive to our camp, plus all the layovers, time in security lines, and time in customs lines. By the time we reached our camp, we were exhausted, but it was only 1 PM local time, so we had lots of day left.
When we arrived at the camp, we were greeted with a (non-alcoholic) house drink and a safety briefing for the camp. This turned out to be standard at all the camps – both the drink and the briefing.
From there we were offered lunch and brought to our cabin and left to our own devices until our scheduled sunset river cruise. We took the opportunity to unpack a little, walk around the grounds, and relax. One thing we noticed immediately was the sound of hippos in the river. We chose this camp so that we could spend a day at Victoria Falls, not for its game, but we quickly learned that everywhere in Zambia and Botswana was close to wildlife – and big wildlife.
We took a short walk through their nature trail, sat on the side of a little lagoon, and found some baboons who didn’t like us disturbing them at all. It was fairly hot in the sun, so afterward we settled in the shade until it was about time for our river cruise.
We were struck by the volume of the cicadas at the camp. The noise level was similar (worse?) than when we had the Brood X cicadas in Maryland. If you turned your head the wrong way, the volume bordered on the pain threshold.
We weren’t sure what to expect on the river cruise, but we had heard that the land across the river – the Zambezi River – was a national Zimbabwe game reserve. And of course, we already knew about the hippos.
Within a few minutes of taking off, our guide pointed out a baby hippo grazing on some grass on a small rock outcropping. Her mama was nearby, keeping a constant eye on us. Our guide estimated that the baby was about 4 months old. The mama hippos keep the babies separate from the rest of the pod until they are about 6 months old. We also learned that baby hippos can nurse underwater!
After watching them for a few minutes, we turned around and headed down river along the Zimbabwe side of the river. We found some impala, baboons, waterbuck, and crocodiles. We learned that the impala and baboons live together for part of the year, because the impala rely on the baboon’s higher vantage point to alert them to dangers. In addition, the baboons are messy eaters, so will drop things that the impala can eat. However, once the impala start having their babies, they separate from the baboons, because the baboons will kill and eat the baby impala.
We stopped for drinks and a snack right around sunset and watched the sun go down. It seemed to sink very quickly!
On our way back to the lodge, our guide spied the silhouette of a giraffe on the shore. He had told us that they came to shore to drink after sunset, and as if by magic, one appeared! I could barely make it out, but my camera has somewhat better eyes.
When we returned to camp, they had set up a private dinner for us on our balcony. This seemed like a lovely idea…until the cicadas took notice of our cabin’s light. They started dive-bombing us almost as soon as we sat down. We later realized that we probably should have turned off the light on our cabin and just relied on the candle on the table, but who knew? We made it through the appetizer and main course but I had to go back into the cabin before dessert. While dinner itself was lovely, the experience was not.
Tags: safari
Posted by barb on Sep 1, 2014 in
Cute Pets,
Pictures 
My 16-year old kitty crossed over the rainbow bridge early this morning. We’ve known for a while that we would need to make hard decisions soon, so it wasn’t a shock, but that didn’t make it any easier.
Baby Artemis
She came into my life in my last few months living in New Mexico. A friend had found a mama cat with a litter of kittens who were about 2-days old in March 1998. I was leaving New Mexico to move to Maryland at the end of May, just about the time the kittens would be ready to leave their mama. Artemis was the only girl of the litter, and I claimed her, since I already had a boy cat, and he marked.
In late May, just after my undergraduate graduation, Artemis, Ares, and I drove with my parents back to Minnesota. We spent a couple weeks in Minnesota, getting some of the things I would need to start my graduate student life in Maryland, and then Dad and I drove with the two cats to Maryland.
She, Ares and I all went through many life milestones together. I entered grad school with them, got my master’s degree, quit grad school, went back to grad school and graduated with my PhD with both of them. I met Andrew, dated, moved in with him and his cat, Duncan, and married. I also lost my Dad with both of them in my life. Ares crossed the rainbow bridge a few months after I lost Dad, and I think that was the beginning of the end of Artemis – she had known him as long as she had known me, and spent more time with him, since they were always in the in house together. She never quite recovered from losing her friend.
This weekend I told her that if she was ready to stop fighting, I was ready to respect her decision. On Sunday, she stopped showing any interest in food, and lost some control. We knew it was time. Overnight she was in some distress, so we had to let her go. I have to believe that she’s now finding her friend Ares again, sitting in my Dad’s lap, purring and getting pets.
My names for her included: Artemis, Little Miss, Baby Girl, Little Girl
Favorite stories:
Hiding Artemis: Jocco couldn’t find Artemis when he was pet-sitting for me once when we were in grad school. He ended up calling my friend Stef (who was also going to help out with the pet-sitting) for help. She asked him a bunch of questions, like, is food disappearing? have there been poops in the litter box? Since he wasn’t himself a cat-owner, I’m sure these questions seemed odd. I don’t remember if he found her, or if Stef finally had to come over, but in the end, Artemis had been hiding under the ottoman of my comfy chair. Silly, clever girl.
Alpha Artemis: Artemis had always been shy around humans, so we kind of assumed that she was a submissive kitty. In my apartment, it was just her and Ares, and I never really saw them squabble, so I had no evidence to the contrary. However, Andrew brought a new cat into the mix when he and I moved in together – his cat Duncan. It took some time before we saw them interact much, but I remember one time they both rounded the corner on the landing of our second floor at the same time from different directions. We watched as Duncan started to challenge Artemis, and she put him right in his place. There was some growling, and maybe some paw swipes (I can’t remember), but fairly quickly, Duncan submitted (can’t remember if he slunk away or laid down — over time, we saw him do both). I think Andrew and I had different reactions – I uttered a “go girl”, encouraging Artemis, but Andrew felt a little bad for his kitty. We were both shocked to learn that she was the alpha in the house.
Snooze-control: When I was still a full-time student, I had a lot of freedom for what time I would get up in the morning, as long as I was to school on time for class. I would set an alarm to make sure I didn’t sleep away the whole morning, but usually would snooze 1-5 times (it was fairly random). Somehow, Artemis would know exactly when I had decided that THIS snooze was the LAST one for the morning. She would choose the moment when I hit the snooze button to jump up on the bed and lay on my chest. Almost every morning. And often, she would get me to snooze once or twice more.
Laptop patrol: Ever since I got my first laptop (and more recently a tablet), Artemis was sure to let me know when I had spent enough time with it sitting in my lap. She would come and sit on the arm of my comfy chair, and head-butt my hand or bat at my fingers – making it clear that SHE should be in my lap, not the stupid computer. Most of the time she was right…and pretty much all of the time in the past few months.
