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African Wildlife--September-October
Linda Fitzgerald and Lynda Hughes 
Slide Show of Photos with captions at end of trip information

Planning a trip nine months in advance can sometimes bring disappointment as anticipation can lead you to overestimate the pleasures of the trip.  That was not the case with a trip to Africa that we just completed.  The trip began with a 27 hour flight, including a 5 hour layover in Dubai, to Johannesburg, South Africa.  It was perfect to start in a big city and refresh our learning about the history of Africa from colonialism to apartheid.  We visited Soweto, Nelson Mandela's house, drove by Desmond Tutu's house and enjoyed a museum.  After 3 days it was off to Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, where we stayed in the Edwardian style Victoria Falls Hotel built in 1904 as housing for the railway project of Cecil Rhodes to connect Cape Town to Cairo.  Here we had our first game drive to see animals. Our guides worked hard to have us see the Big 5 and we saw cape buffalo, elephant, and the elusive black rhinoceros that walked right up to our jeep.   We had to wait a few days to see a lion and a leopard.  We also saw our first giraffe here and our first glimpse of an impala was magical, but little did we know that we would see hundreds if not thousands in the next few days.  It's hard to describe the feeling of being in the safari vehicle and seeing so many animals in their natural habitat.

After our time in Victoria Falls, we flew to our next destination, Chobe National Park in Botswana.  Here we saw more animals and could see how they roamed together on the river banks - elephants, hippos, giraffe, cape buffalo, impala, kudu, and baboons.  We also saw lions and had one male walk within about 4 feet of our vehicle.  Exhilarating!  One day we took a small boat across the Zambezi River to Namibia to visit a village.  

​Our final stop was at the Royal Zambezi Lodge in Zambia.  We flew in a small plane that landed on their remote airstrip.  Our new accommodations were what you think of as typical for a safari with rooms that had tent sides that were zipped up to keep mosquitoes out.  We slept under mosquito nets, as we did at all of the rooms.  We were right on the Zambezi River and could hear the animals, especially the hippos, at night.  If it was dark, we needed an escort to the main lodge as animals roamed freely on the grounds.  Since this was a more remote lodge there were only a few safari vehicles out when we were.  We were still trying to spot the last of the big 5, a leopard, and luckily on our final game drive we saw one, perched in a tree along the road.  This made a perfect end to our African trip.  Wildlife was promised and we were not disappointed.