More Zambezi River Activity

This was some of the other activity going on while we watched the elephant parade crossing the Zambezi River.

The first photo is one I took from the helicopter the next morning.  Look at the upper most portion of the river on the left side, then look down to the triangular portion of land and that’s the edge of the island where the elephants went into the river last night.  From there, they walked across the river in a southeast direction until they reached the mainland.

But as the elephants were crossing the Zambezi, we heard loud noises coming from the other side of our boat.  We looked over and saw several pods of hippos including this pod of about a dozen, all close together.

Then as we looked back to the elephants, we saw more wildlife.  In the foreground of this photo, you can see one of the several crocodiles that were swimming around the area of the elephants and our boat.

This hippo photo will help explain some of the loud noises that we heard.

We watched the elephants crossing the river until sundown.  Several more elephants showed up right about that time, but they deemed it too late to cross and looked disappointed to have missed out on the river crossing.  It was a great evening on the Zambezi River and a great ending to our southern Africa safari adventure.

Zambezi Elephant Parade

We were having drinks and just enjoying our time on the Zambezi when everything went into orbit.  We were simply watching the river and slowly cruising along when an elephant walked into the river.  That was the elephant in the prior post in the photo I took of Cory.  At first, we were surprised and made several guesses about why the elephant walked into the river.  We thought it might want a drink or want to take a bath or something like that.

You can see the first elephant to go in the water in the first photo.  It went in rather slowly and cautiously.  But then it kept going and going.

Before long, another elephant followed it in…and then another and another.  One elephant didn’t look too sure about being in this parade and turned around like it wanted to go back to the land.

Eventually, it became obvious that the elephant parade was crossing the river from the Zimbabwe island over to the Zambia mainland.  We noticed that some of the elephants were young and small and we wondered how they were going to cross the river when the water got too deep for them.  But it turned out that the elephants have a built-in snorkel.  Some small elephants had to go in over their heads.

This is a close-up of one of the larger elephants getting into the deeper water and testing her equipment.

Now you can see the elephants coming up on the Zambia side of the river.  It was a fabulous experience that we felt lucky to have witnessed and a great ending to our trip.

Zambezi River Cruise

This is from our Zambezi River cruise, our final dinner in Victoria Falls.  It was really great to be out on the water.  The temperature was wonderful compared to all the heat that we had experienced.  We had plenty of room.  The staff was festive.  It was a great final event for our trip.

This is just a photo of Vicky and Cory, but you might notice that an elephant “photo bombed” me.  The elephant is just to the left of Vicky by the edge of the water.

Here’s a better photo of Vicky and me – and not right after I took a drink of my triple-shot gin and tonic.

This is Cory at the start of an elephant parade into the Zambezi River.  I will tell more about this in the next post.

This is the dinner table.  We were served a wonderful meal with wine and we reminisced about our safari trip together.

Towards the end of our meal, someone in the group asked Cory to share her thoughts on what it was like for a young person to travel with an otherwise entirely – not so young group.

Cory gave us several lists of interesting memories including “references” and “quotes” from the group.

I’ll just mention a few of Cory’s reference highlights:

1.      Hearing things like “Lion at Three O’clock” and trying to determine which direction to look.

2.      Hearing references to Bob Dylan, Roy Rogers, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Woodie Guthrie, and Paul Simon.

3.      Realizing that we didn’t know who the Kardashians were but that we knew all about Medicare.

4.      Than no one took a selfie or even had a selfie stick.

5.      That people referred to photo opportunities as “Kodak Moments”.

6.      That she was the only person who ever referred to Beyoncé.

Sunup’s and Sundown’s in southern Africa were tremendous.  We didn’t have a bad one the whole trip.

Vic Falls Food and Drinks

This was not a “foodie” trip but we didn’t miss any meals or drink opportunities either, so I’ll give you a posting with some Victoria Falls food and drinks.

I’ll tell you what Cory is thinking right here: “Shoot, when Dad asked me to go on this trip, I completely forgot about all the crazy food he eats – and now here I am looking at two big hunks of Warthog!  Next time I need to think the whole trip with the folks through a little more…”  I would add that the warthog was excellent.  It was sweet and tender and more like beef than anything.  Cory thought it was a tinge gamey, but she ate all of hers too.

On this afternoon, Vicky and Cory decided that we needed to hurry to finish shopping so that we could walk over to the Victoria Falls Hotel and have “High Tea” at 4:00pm.  I went along with them but when we got there, we made a “game time” decision and opted for “High Cocktails” instead.  We sat out on the veranda, soaked up the British tradition, and enjoyed the afternoon.  The drinks were excellent and we didn’t buy those drinks to match our shirts either – that was a coincidence… 

The morning that we rode the elephants, we had breakfast at the game reserve.  The chef cooked everything right out in the open and we took our plates over to the grill to load them up.  They also had juice and coffee and some other food items, but we mostly went for the sausage, eggs, and toast right off the grill.

On our last night in Victoria Falls, we went on a dinner cruise on the Zambezi River.  I was drinking a gin and tonic.  I watched the bartender pour it and he gave me three overpour shots of gin.  If you look at my face, you can tell the drink was a bit stiff…

We were just getting ready to sit down to dinner on our river cruise.  The temperature was great, the food and drinks were great, the animal entertainment was great, and how about that sunset?

Victoria Falls Miscellaneous

I said that Victoria Falls was an adventurous tourist town with lots to do.  Well, in case you were wondering, I thought I would throw in something that we DID NOT do: Crocodile Diving.  Maybe if we had remembered to wear our swim suits into town…

We did plenty of shopping in the town of Victoria Falls, but we did most of it at the Open Market.  That’s where the locals peddle their wares either out in the open or on mats or under lean-to shelters or sometimes inside stores.  It’s heavy bargaining and lots of vendors for every tourist looking to buy something.  And there is just about everything African that you could imagine…

We were inside the Zambezi Art and Craft Women’s Shop, where women make and sell all the goods.  Cory picked up a chatenga and instantly, a half dozen or more women picked up some for her to buy and surrounded her.  Cory was on the top of her game and handled them all with ease as she picked through all their goods and finally made her selection.

This is a multi-purpose photo to talk about several things.  It was about a fifteen minute walk from our hotel to the middle of town and probably that far to the Victoria Falls.  You can see the Victoria Falls Bridge behind Cory in the photo.  And with regards to our tie-dyed shirts, they were a big hit in town and especially in the Open Market.  Many locals went out of their way to come over to us and tell us how much they liked our shirts.  Several people insisted on buying our tie-dyed shirts from us, but we turned them all down.

How much were we offered for our shirts.  This is how much one local offered me – just for my shirt.  Yep, he offered me seventy-five billion, five million, and two hundred thousand dollars.  I turned him down flat.  Did I mention Zimbabwe is having economic problems right now?  Can you say “inflation”?

Helicopter Ride over the Falls

On the morning that we left Zimbabwe and Victoria Falls, we had one more adventure.  We flew around Victoria Falls in a helicopter.  It was just Cory, Vicky, myself and the pilot.  I got to fly co-pilot.  It was a fifteen minute flight, which might sound short but it was plenty of time.  We flew all the way around the falls twice and saw some of the nearby area as well.

Cory and Vicky are moving in to board the helicopter.

This is the view from the western end of the falls, which is the Zimbabwe side of the falls.  It was quite spectacular, even if it was the dry season.

This view is from the eastern end of the falls and the Zambia side.  You can also see the gorge leaving the falls and part of the Victoria Falls Bridge.  The town in the upper left is Victoria Falls.

This is a closer photo of the center of the falls.

This is looking down the gorge near the center of the falls.

International Zip Lining

After our elephant ride, we went zip lining.  I don’t know this for sure, but I would guess that this is the only international zip line in the world.  We started in Zambia and zip lined across the Batoka Gorge into Zimbabwe.  Victoria Falls exits the falls area through the Batoka Gorge and the Zambezi River.  The gorge is about 425 feet high and we zip lined over it.

The Victoria Falls Bridge opened September 12, 1905 joining the countries of Zambia and Zimbabwe.  We are on the Zambia side of the river gorge and are packing our zip lining gear.

Per our instructions, I had my passport along for our zip lining adventure.  Again I’m in Zambia but you can see the zip line on the left which goes to the left side of the bridge, or Zimbabwe.

Vicky looks comfortable but I believe that she had a pretty good grip at that point.

This is Cory just taking off from Zambia.  I was waiting for her in Zimbabwe.

This is the Batoka Gorge and the Zambezi River which is what we zip lined across.

Elephant Ride

Victoria Falls is a real adventure tourist town.  They have river rafting, hang gliding, rock climbing, and many other things for the adventurous tourist to spend their time and money.  We stayed very busy while in Victoria Falls and hardly had a minute of downtime.  Mind you, we didn’t consider having cocktails at Victoria Falls Hotel to be down time…

On this morning, we went for an elephant ride.  Vicky, Cory, and two others in our group went for this adventure.  After we received our instructions for riding the elephants, the guy in charge said that they had one elephant, Mocha, that would not go into their loading ramp and had to be mounted from the ground.  He asked for two volunteers.  Vicky and I volunteered and were the first two to climb onto their elephants.  As it turned out, we ended up at the rear of the elephant parade, despite being mounted first.  But I got a lot of good photos of Cory, who was two elephants in front of us.

You can see Cory and our friend Jill just getting started on their elephant.  Our elephant ride was in the Stanley Livingstone Preserve which is a 6,000 acre game reserve.  Our elephant ride lasted for an hour.

You can see Cory with her tie-dyed shirt two elephants in front of us.  You can also see a giraffe off to the left.  We also rode past warthogs, impalas, marabou storks, and other animals on our ride.

I finally figured out how to get a sort of selfie of Vicky and I riding Mocha.  I liked this photo and was pleased to have gotten the idea.

This is a better photo of Mocha and not too bad of Vicky and me.

Cory is feeding her elephant some treats after the ride.  It’s customary to reward your elephant with treats.

Victoria Falls

We left our last safari camp at this point but we didn’t leave the area.  Our last stop was in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe.  Victoria Falls is the town nearest Victoria Falls.  It sits on the southern bank of the Zambezi River and on the western end of Victoria Falls.  It began as a settlement around 1901 when people were looking at Victoria Falls for hydro-electric power.  Today the town has about 35,000 people and tourism is a major industry.  Victoria Falls is near the meeting point of Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana and Namibia.  Victoria Falls is located in northwestern Zimbabwe.

Victoria Falls (the Falls) was our first stop in Victoria Falls (the Town).  The falls are just over a mile wide and some 355 feet high.  The native name for the falls is Mosi-oa-Tunya which means Smoke that Thunders.  The smoke is the mist that rises from the falls.  The mist or spray can rise several thousand feet high and is visible from thirty miles away.  The thunder is from the roar of the water as it hits the bottom of the canyon below.  It can be very loud indeed.  Victoria Falls is classified by some as the world’s largest falls, based on its width and height combined.  David Livingstone, the Scottish missionary, was the first European to view Victoria Falls in 1855.

The rainy season here is March to May and that’s when the falls are at their peak.  On our first trip to the falls back in late February 2001, the falls were at full capacity.  In some ways, this was more interesting.  This is the dry season, so the falls were not flowing anywhere near their capacity.  If you look at this first photo, you can see down the canyon where the falls tumble.  On our first trip, you couldn’t see into the canyon as it was all spray.  On the lower left, the exposed rock would be covered with water during the wet season.  Another point from this photo is that you can see that the Zambezi River runs parallel to the falls.  So the water falls between two high rock faces or a rock canyon and the spray has nowhere to go but up, hence the spray rises several thousand feet into the air.  This is the western end of the falls. 

We are moving west to east along the falls trail.  In the wet season, this would be a continuous line of falls.  While they are having a severe drought right now, that’s still a lot of water coming over the falls.

This is approximately the middle of the falls and again, during the wet season, this is a solid line of waterfalls.  But this allowed us to see plants growing on the side of the falls and many other things that we didn’t see when we were here in the wet season.

This is just a lovely photograph.

This is the eastern end of the falls and there was barely any water falling on that end.  This would also be a continuous line of falls during the wet season.  The dry season allowed us to see the bottom of the falls and the Zambezi river bottom.

QUIZ Answers

Remember to page down to the QUIZ first – if you want to try your luck – before looking at the Quiz Answers.

1.  What came first: the termite mound or the tree?

Answer: the termite mound.  These are not wood-eating termites, but rather fungus-eating termites.  So they do not build nests around trees or brush.  The termites build their nests in the open.  After the termite mound is built, birds like to land on top of it in order to get a better view of things.  The birds of course leave their bird droppings on the termite mounds and the bird scat has plant seeds in it.  That’s the source of the trees and bushes growing out of the termite mounds.  But the termite mound always came first, no matter how big the tree.

 2.  What caused this plant destruction?

Answer: Elephants.  This should have been an easy one.  The size of the trees that the elephants could bring down and destroy was surprising.  But that is the normal behavior for these large animals. 

 3.  What is the closest living relative to this small animal? 

Answer: Elephants.  This small animal is a Hyrax.  It’s got some peculiar functionalities that link it to the elephants and also to manatees.  It’s their biological and developmental similarities that make this determination.  We were told that elephants were the closest relative to the hyrax in both eastern Africa and southern Africa.

 4.  What animal is this and what is this animal’s “grouping” called?  

Answer: A Business of Mongoose.  This is the Banded Mongoose and there were at least a dozen in this grouping.  We were given two grouping names for mongoose: a Business and a Mob.  Personally, I liked calling them a Business of Mongoose but Mob would also be correct according to our guides.

 5.  Who are the greatest conservationists in Africa?

Answer: The Tsetse Fly.  This, of course, is an opinion, though it’s not just my opinion.  I’ve read it in different places and heard such sentiments while in Africa.  Millions of square miles of eastern and southern Africa are still in their natural state due to the inhabitance of the tsetse flies.  They can transmit sleeping sickness and they can be miserable to be around.  The native African tribes usually chose to live somewhere else where the tsetse flies didn’t live.  The British sprayed them and eliminated the tsetse flies from some areas, but the areas where they didn’t eliminate them are still sparsely populated.

St. Mary's School

Our fourth stop today was at the St Mary’s Catholic Primary School.  The school is just on the edge of the Diki Village and is also in the town of Hwange.  This school was established in 1935.  We spent two hours at the school and also made a donation to the school.  We met the school principal and she spoke to us for about twenty minutes.  She said the school has 801 students and 24 teachers.  For kids aged three to five, they have 111 students and five teachers.  The school has three terms with each term being three months with one month off school in between terms.  School costs $15 per term or $45 per year.  The school accepts children from all religions.  Kids walk to school from as far away as three and a half miles, and some of them are very young.  The ages of the kids at this school is three to twelve, but sometimes they have students as old as fifteen or sixteen.  The school does not provide food for the children.  You can see the kids gathering to greet us on our arrival next to the school sign.

We visited a classroom and each of us met with a few students.  You can see Cory and Vicky at a table in this photo.  After visiting with a few students, the students sang us a few songs.  Then we sang them a few of our American songs.  After that, our tour guide was talking to the kids about all things good and great – and I was looking around the classroom and thinking about it all.  Suddenly, I heard our tour guide say “and I’m going to ask Bill Bosworth to address the class and share a few words of wisdom”.  With that jerk back to reality, I said a few words to the class, though I’m not sure how wise were my words.

We got lots of smiles from the school kids.  The Overseas Adventure Travel company is owned by the Grand Circle Company who runs the Grand Circle Foundation.  The foundation contributes to schools all around the world where they conduct tours.  This school is one of the schools that Grand Circle supports.  We have very much enjoyed our stops to schools on our trips and this was a good one as well.  It’s tough to beat their smiles for making me feel good.

This is the kids play area.  It looks just like the wilderness parks where we went on game drives.  But from all the smiling and laughing, you would think this was a fantastic play area. 

I was getting ready to leave a school room when I noticed a small, faded sign on the wall.  Ever the nosy tourist, I checked it out.  I think we should put this sign on the walls at all of our schools and our work places too. 

The Diki Village

Our third stop was the Diki Village.  This village has about 5,500 to 6,000 residents.  The village is big, open, and sparse.  Each unit is a homestead or family compound with multiple houses and outbuildings.  The units are far apart from each other as well as far apart from the stores, schools, and everything else.  Space is not a problem here as they seemed to have plenty of room for everyone.  It was a low-density village but everything is within walking distance.  This village is the Mpala Tribe.

The man in the middle is the Head Man or village chief.  He told us that his position as chief was inherited and that he is not elected.  He told us that the Diki Village is a privileged village because it has a water system, schools, a medical clinic, and more.  His head man job is to solve disputes and run a Kangaroo Court under the village Baobab Tree.  I think he also organizes major projects for the village.  His main problems are malaria, drought, and wild animals.  He said the wild animal problems include elephants destroying the crops and the predators (lions and leopards) killing stock animals or people.

Men in the Diki Village do the heavy work which is building structures, digging, hauling logs and rocks, and protecting their livestock from predators.  Women do everything else.  Women fetch water, cook food, take care of the children and school, work at growing crops, pound the millet, do laundry, and so on.

The building behind the head man is a typical building in southern Africa.  The head man’s homestead does not have any electricity.  They also do not have any eating utensils and eat all their food with their hands.

The house on the left is the head man’s house.  In the center is the girl’s bedroom.  The small building on the right is their tool shed.  If you look between the houses and off into the distance, you can see the nearest homestead.  The homesteads do not abut one another, but rather have a substantial amount of space between them.

The third photo is looking right of the first photo and left of the second photo.  In this photo, the main building is the summer kitchen which is where we spent most of our two and a half hours visiting time here.  To the left of the summer kitchen is a chicken coop, stock animal pens (where the animals stay at night), and some kind of a utility area.

This is the winter kitchen.  It’s a lot nicer than many third-world kitchens we’ve seen but there really isn’t much to it.  They did cook us some snack food here.  They cooked us some Mopani (moth) worms.  These worms were originally larvae about the size of my index finger but they cook them down to about gummy worm size.  The Mopani worms were well seasoned and had a consistency about like beef jerky.  They also served us tea and some dried Baobab fruit which had kind of a citrus taste.

This was our grand finale.  Only some of these women are from the head man’s family.  Many others are from his village but came over for our visit.  Our tour group put together a gift of food that we purchased in town at the OK Market.  You can see some of our gift in a basket on the ground.  We bought things like bags of rice.  The women all danced around and sang “Tawuka Kasa” to us for quite a while.  You miss a lot not being able to hear all the singing in southern Africa.

Town of Hwange

Today was a “cultural” day on our safari excursion.  Our tour company, Overseas Adventure Travel (OAT), calls this day, “a day in the life”.  We do things that bring us into interaction with the local community.  It’s commonly one of our favorite days on our OAT trips.  Today was a good day.

We started our day in the town of Hwange.  Hwange has a population of about 100,000 people.  We saw many churches and a large nearby coal mine which uses pit mining.  Our guides said that lots of locals farm but I only saw a few cows and goats and pigs and some small scale gardening, so I’m not sure what kind of farming or where the farms were located.

Our first stop in Hwange was the Hwange Open Market.  We love visiting open markets on our trips but this one was not a great open market.  The pickings were pretty slim and I would say that the economy of this area is not doing very well right now.  We stayed here for thirty minutes and walked through most of the market. 

Our tour guide surprised the ladies with “chatengas” which were wraps to wear like skirts.  This was what all the local women were wearing.  The locals were all smiling and laughing at the site of our ladies wearing chatengas.  The funniest part was that many of the local women would stop our women and retie their chatenga.  They indicated that it had been tied wrong.  But then, a short time later, another local woman would stop the same lady in our group and retie it again, also indicating that it had been tied wrong.  There is obviously more than one correct way to tie a chatenga.

The open market was also a transportation center.  Here you see a taxi dropping off a customer to catch the bus.  Loading cargo on top of the bus kept at least three guys very busy.  It seemed like most of the bus customers that we saw had quite a bit of cargo with them.

This dying Baobab tree had a ring of vendors around it.  It was right next to the road and got a lot of traffic.  The vendors were mostly selling drinks and snacks.

Produce was the largest part of the open market.  Most produce places offered limited choices and many of the crops did not look particularly good.  Of course, this is the dry season, so I’m not sure but that may have accounted for the produce not looking its best.

The rest of the market was more like an industrial / agricultural / hardware market.  They had lots of chains and tools and rope and so on.  We saw few people shopping at this area of the market.

Southern Africa Safari QUIZ

This is my Southern Africa Safari Quiz.  It has a few tough questions but what fun would an easy quiz be anyway. 

If you’ve been paying attention, you should get a couple of these, so see what you think about these questions.

1.      What came first: the termite mound or the tree?

2.      What caused this plant destruction?

3.      What is the closest living relative to this small animal?  (…and yes, it would help to know the animal – but that will come with the answer)

4.      What animal is this and what is this animal’s “grouping” called?   (like a parade of elephants)

5.      Who are the greatest conservationists in Africa?

 Answers to come shortly in another posting.

Hwange Miscellaneous

These are some miscellaneous items from Hwange National Park.

We rarely got out of our vehicles except for tea and lunch breaks.  There were some exceptions such as when our vehicle broke down.  But this was a rare exception.  In this instance, we saw probably more than a hundred vultures fly up out of a ravine.  We couldn’t see into the ravine from the road.  Our guides wanted to see what was up, so they walked down to the edge of the ravine to see what was happing down below.  In this instance, our safari guide took his rifle with him.  They didn’t find anything of note and we never determined why all the vultures were down there.  But the guides had to be ready to defend themselves in the event of a big cat that didn’t like to be disturbed.

We heard animals at night at all four of our camps.  But at this camp, each night we heard a leopard “sawing” (rumbling noise) all night long.  Our guides weren’t sure why but speculated that it was looking for a mate or just warning off any intruders into its territory.  We also heard the wild dog pack at night that was just below our tent.  This photo lets you see that we were really “out in the woods”.  This tent was as in the wilderness as any of our tents but in this case, we were somewhat right inside the woods.

This is our main lodge area where we ate meals, had drinks, and heard our safari guide talks.  This facility too was out in the woods.  We saw game from here several times.

A big controversy in Hwange is the elephants and their potential overpopulation and what to do about it.  Of course, there is substantial disagreement.  Some say there are too many elephants and some say there aren’t too many.  Some say they need to thin the elephants and some say they don’t.  But one problem that we learned which was a probable cause of some of the elephant problems was wells.  Somewhere back in time, people felt sorry for the animals not having enough water in the dry season.  Of course, back then, the animals migrated to other areas where there was water during the dry season.  Now that they installed wells and water holes, the animals don’t need to migrate, but that means that this area doesn’t have an opportunity to recover, which it had when the animals had migrated along.  In this photo, you are looking at a man-made water hole, from a well and piping into this pool.  The water inlet is the concrete square right below the small elephant’s trunk.

There are at least eight elephants in this photo.  You can see that there isn’t much for them to eat here in the dry season.  They tend to destroy many trees, bushes, and areas of the ground.  Others, of course, say that this is not destruction of the land but rather just the normal life of an area with elephants.  We learned about a lot of problems, but we learned very few answers.

More Hwange Animals

These are more animal photos from Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe.

Giraffe’s live in Hwange in large numbers but we never saw more than a few at once.  Most of our sightings were like this one, where we only saw part of the giraffe.

This is a Kudu, like the photograph at the entrance to Hwange National Park.  I loved the horns on the Kudu.

We got to see this parade of elephants clearly because they were leaving a water hole and walking up a dry riverbed.  There was about a dozen in all.

This is the same lion from two posts ago.  But now you can see that he got some company: a jackal and just to the jackal’s right, a vulture.  There were lots more vultures in the area as well.

This Yellow-billed Stork seems to be enjoying the view from high in a tree.  They are another very large stork that likes to sit high up in tall trees.

Plant Life

I haven’t posted anything about the plant life in southern Africa.  I’m a big plant guy, so I usually do post about plants but I guess on this trip, the animals and birds stole the show.  But I will give you this one posting because the plants play big roles in this area and because they also had some effects on us while in Africa.

This tree is dormant but that makes it all the easier to see the weaver-bird nests.  There are lots of different weaver birds and they weave elaborate nests, as you can see.  These nests have a front and back door, making it easier to escape predators.  The nests are quite intricate and I’m sure very comfortable for these birds.  You might also be able to see two squirrels in the tree with one on the end of the large limb above the nests.

Our guides often cautioned us to be sure and stay fully inside the vehicles while on game drives.  The animals were of course one reason for this, but not the main reason.  You can see an acacia tree that we scraped past in this photo.  You can just imagine having an arm hanging out of the vehicle and dragging it through these branches.

This is a Sausage Tree or at least that’s its common name.  The trunks of these trees were used to make dugout canoes.  The fruit can be over three feet long and weigh over twenty-six pounds.  Plenty of animals get involved with this tree and the fruit.  I just tried to make sure that one didn’t fall on me.

The Baobab Tree are one of the most iconic trees of Africa’s hot plains.  These trees can have a diameter of over 65 feet and live for over 1,500 years.  As young trees, they can grow many feet per day.  That’s because they have to in order to survive getting eaten and killed in its early growth period.  The animals use this tree for many purposes.  The roughest animal on this tree is the elephant.  Many Baobab trees never reach maturity due to the elephants.  This tree was a huge tree but you can see what the elephants have done to it.  It’s half the tree it used to be.

These succulents were in several places that we visited.  We also saw palm trees and a wide variety of types and sizes of trees.  In this tough climate, I’m not sure but it seemed to me at times that the plants and trees were more endangered than the animals.

Hwange Animals

Hwange National Park is a huge park at over 5,600 square miles or roughly the size of Belgium or Wales.  It’s the largest park in Zimbabwe and includes desert sand areas, woodlands, grasslands, savannah, and granite outcroppings.  It has some 108 mammals and over 400 species of birds.  The park lies in the north western corner of Zimbabwe and borders Botswana.  The park gets very little rain and in large part, the animals are supported by wells and pumps that keep year around water holes.  The best time to see game is in the dry season, which is when we were there.  That’s because during the dry season, the animals tend to congregate near the water holes and the trees and bushes have lost their leaves.

Hwange National Park is where Cecil the Lion lived for thirteen years before being killed by an American dentist.  The safari guide that was killed by a lion three weeks before we arrived in southern Africa was also killed in Hwange National Park.  The park has large numbers of elephants, zebra, giraffes, predators, and wild dogs.  This was where we saw the wild dogs on a night game drive.  These won’t be our best animal photos as most of the time, the animals were in the woodlands.  But we still got to see plenty of the animals, so here we go. 

There was a dozen or so Zebra in this dazzle but they were spread along in a row in this dense woodland.  The animals tended to walk in lines due to the thick woodlands.

Warthogs were one animal that we saw often in Hwange and also one animal that we saw near the roads quite often, giving us some better photos.

You can find this Jackal right in the middle of the photo.  It’s not a prize winning photo but this guy didn’t want to stick around and pose for me.

This lion wasn’t shy but rather was resting from having just killed a wildebeest, all by himself.  He’s just to the right of the center of the photograph.  The dead wildebeest is out of sight.  We were not allowed to leave the road in the park, so we couldn’t get a better photo than this.  You can only see his head as he is lying down and the rest of his body is behind the downed tree.

This Tawny Eagle was in Hwange but we saw these eagles in all four parks.  Tawny eagles are residents here, mostly in open, wooded savannah areas.  They are effective hunters but also effective thieves of animals caught by other birds.

Kashawe Camp

Kashawe Camp was the last of our four safari camps on this trip to southern Africa.  Hwange National Park and Kashawe Camp are located in Zimbabwe.  Our guide said kashawe means “springs” but I didn’t see any springs in the area.  Of course, they have had multiple years of severe drought here.  This was probably my least favorite of the four camps but it was still a good stop for us.  In some ways, we were disappointed that everything was so dry and looked a bit bleak.  But we had some friends that took this same trip to here in June and they said we were lucky to come when we did.  The area was green and growing when they were here and consequently, they didn’t get to see very many animals as the animals were in the woods and since all the trees and bushes in full leaf condition, they simply couldn’t see the animals.  So while the area was dry and looked a bit desolate, we did get to see plenty of game in Hwange National Park. 

Vicky and Cory are getting some refreshments in the main building.  The dining table is to the left and the bar is right behind Cory.  They had nice big over-sized couches and comfortable seating areas and we could see game right from here.

Vicky is in our tent.  This tent was about middle sized but we had plenty of room for everything.  The shower and toilet are in the back of the tent, behind the door.

The camp staff often decorated our tents far beyond my expectations for a safari tent cabin.  Those are our bath towels folded to look like elephants.

Vicky and I are enjoying our front porch at the end of our tent.

Cory took this photo from the porch of her tent.  It was a ways down the hill but we saw several different groupings of game, but mostly zebras and impalas.

The African Smile

The first photo was taken at the entrance to Hwange National Park, our fourth and last safari stop.  Our new local guide stopped our land rover so we could read the sign and give us some information on the park.  But then he asked us if we could identify the animal in the sign.  I complained bitterly to our main tour guide that if they wanted us to identify animals, they should show us the animals from the view that we most commonly received.  This was an inside joke as I had complained on numerous occasions that when we came upon the animals, they turned around.  Our guide would always laugh and tell me that they weren’t being unfriendly or inhospitable, they “were just showing me the African Smile”.  So up to now, I’ve shown mostly our good photos.  I’ll show you a few in this post of animals that showed us the “African Smile”.

Here’s an elephant that showed us his African smile.

These sable gave us their African smile in unison.

This wildebeest seemed to enjoy giving us his African smile.

This impala gave us his African smile, but then decided to give us another look anyway.