birds – Dave and Kay's Travel Adventures

Wednesday, September 19th

Today we were up at 2:30 AM! It was our earliest start of the trip because we needed to have our luggage on the bus and heading to Cape Town’s airport by 4:00 AM. We checked in at the airport for about a 2 hour flight to Johannesburg. Then we had another flight from Johannesburg to Livingstone, Zambia. When we landed at the airport in Zambia it was a long line to get our entrance visa which cost $50.00 per person. Once we were through the line and had claimed our luggage we met one of our guides, Duncan. We boarded smaller buses that took us from the airport, stopped at the Zambia border checkpoint, then drove to the Zimbabwe checkpoint and had to collect our passports a second time.

Children walking home from school. (Zambia)

After school hanging with friends on the street corner.

It’s quite interesting to see a sign earlier that said to watch out for elephants and then a sign leaving the area where elephants cross. We see deer crossing signs in Ohio!

The border crossings were quite interesting to see and experience.

Our driver said these trucks wait at the borders for up to 3 days to get their papers to cross from Zambia into Zimbabwe and vice versa.

The first time we needed to worry about mosquitoes!

As we were waiting to take our bus through one of the border checkpoints, we saw baboons around!

By the time we arrived at our hotel, The Kingdom, we didn’t have much time before our scheduled sunset cruise.

Our hotel, The Kingdom, at Victoria Falls.

The first time we’ve experienced a mosquito net for sleeping.

We had a great time on our sunset cruise on the Zambezi River. We didn’t realize that we would see wildlife as we cruised down the river. We saw elephants,

crocodiles,

hippos,

and birds.

It was a relaxing way to end our long day!

Tomorrow we will visit Victoria Falls!

Friday, September 14th

We were up at 4:00 AM and then boarded our motor coach by 5:00 AM to travel to Kruger National Park. The park opens at 6:00 AM. and we were in line to get to our jeeps to begin our tour. By 6:15 we were exploring the park. It was chilly in the morning riding around!

We took a 50 minute break at 9:00 AM for breakfast, then back in the jeep until almost 1:00 and then ate lunch and we had an hour. After lunch we were back out looking for animals until 3:30ish!

We saw zebras throughout the day!

A male lion with his kill, a kudo, and he had eaten most of it!

“The King of the jungle”

You don’t want tangle with the Cape Buffalo. They are known as being very dangerous animals. They are one of the Big 5!

It was amazing to see elephants roaming around. They were busy eating, drinking, and walking along the river bank.

Giraffes were spotted many times. Some of them were alone and sometimes we saw several together.

Impalas are like the deer in Ohio, they are abundant and we saw quite a few!

Notice the birds on the impala. They are getting the ticks off of them.

We really noticed how difficult it was to spot the animals. Their camouflage really does help them to blend into their environment. We saw several leopards. The one was in action and we watched him go after an animal that we couldn’t see in the distance but we watched him pounce!