Farewell to Africa This morning we rose to the usual increasingly hot day, enjoyed a sumptuous breakfast at the Zambezi Sun buffet, and decided to take a leisurely walk around the grounds one more time before leaving for the airport. The Zambezi Sun and more up-scale Royal Livingstone share the grounds in an enviable location right on the Zambezi River above and at Victoria Falls. The property is also right within the Mosi-Y-Tunya National Park, and consequently zebra and giraffe (and who knows what else) roam freely on the property, grazing on grass and trees. A small pond on the property has a sign warning guests of crocodiles. The resort staff are very alert to families staying there, and quick to stand guard, keeping people away from the wildlife at a safe distance. As we walked ... read more

Bye Bye Botswana Today we traveled from Kasane, Botswana to Livingstone, Zambia across the Zambezi River. We had spent 8 days with wild animals and now we witnessed human commerce at its most competitive. There is no bridge across the Zambezi river but still lots of trade - many trucks waiting their turn for the one-truck ferry, several fast boats for walk-on transfers and some suspicious mocoro dug-outs. One group of dug-outs arrived from down stream and very quickly loaded gasoline, televison sets and other cardboard boxes, then immediately took off paddling fast downstream without any passengers - something looked not quite legal about their behaviour. Our transportation across the Zambezi was a 6 passenger aluminum speed boat complete with life jackets which we were told to put on. On the Zambia side we were greeted ... read more

Savute to Chobe RiverWe left camp early for the morning game drive (6:00 AM) and almost right away spotted two lions resting under an acacia tree. At one point along the way a huge male elephant came directly towards us where his track crossed our track. Guess who got priority for crossing! We followed a firebreak for quite a while, going over many sand ridges that changed colour from deep red to light yellow. Very pretty. Leaving the firebreak, we traveled along a horrible wash-boardy gravel road that ran through a few villages. Beside this road was another road under construction that would eventually be paved all the way to the village of Kachikau. Botswana still has lots of money from diamonds, and so is putting that to good use by building roads, schools, good health ... read more

Travel day - Khwai to Savute This was a long travel day between two national parks. It started with an unsuccessful look for Leopard at the Khwai public campsite. One had been spotted in a tree just before we arrived. Again no luck. We were able to help a tourist (from North Van, no less) get out of a mud hole where he was stuck in his Toyota SUV. Yet another self-drive issue. Coincidentally, we saw him later in the trip on his way to Kasane, where he bid us farewell before going on to Zimbabwe. We crossed the Khwai River Bridge which took us out of the park and into the Khwai Community Concession, which was run by the Khwai people. We stopped at a most unlikely building in Khwai Village that turned out to ... read more

Entertainment - Lion StyleWaking up revealed new lion stories from overnight. In the middle of the night, Joel got up to pee, unzipped his tent door and was a few steps outside his tent when he discovered lions sleeping around our campfire, about 10 metres away. When one big male looked right at him, he decided to wait for morning, backed slowly into the tent and zipped up the tent door. Chris had told us that unlike bears in Canada, lions will not disturb you if you are in an enclosed tent. They see it as a solid object. This gave some of us a tiny degree of comfort, but miracle of miracles it turned out to be true. However, we were also told 'never turn your back and run from a lion' because then you ... read more