Africa Trip

Since it's nearly impossible to share even half the details and stories from our trip, I'm just going to go through all of the things we did and intersperse the descriptions with pictures. The complete gallery of the best of our pictures can be found through the "our photos" link at the right. Here it goes:

Our first main stop was at Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, where we stayed at the very historic Victoria Falls Hotel. From the hotel you can hear and see the spray from the mighty falls. It is a beautiful hotel and the falls are nothing short of breathtaking. There is a fair amount of wildlife in the immediate area and while the hotel grounds used to be frequented by baboons, a new electric fence now keeps most of them out.

From Vic Falls we traveled to Botswana by light aircraft (12 passenger plane) and stayed for three days at the wonderful, amazing and surprisingly charming Savute Elephant Camp in the Chobe National Park. There is so much to say about our time in Botswana but suffice it to say that it was one of our favorite parts of the trip and given the chance, we would definitely return. Each morning and evening we went on game drives with our very experienced drivers. It is exhilarating to look for and find the wildlife I've only ever seen in a zoo, if that. So much fun!

Our next stop was aboard the very comfortable and luxurious Blue Train which traveled from Pretoria, South Africa to Cape Town, South Africa. Forced to do nothing but watch the world go by for a day and a half was the greatest thing right in the middle of our trip. Trains are quite the way to travel if you ask me! Beautiful scenery, great food, and that gentle rocking motion at night...

After the train, we stayed in Cape Town for a couple of days visiting The Cape of Good Hope and Cape Point on a beautiful sunny day. The southern coast of Africa is wild and beautiful. Where else do you see ostriches right on the beach? One day we drove to Hermanus to watch the whales. It was during this day that we experienced our only day of bad weather - nothing short of a deluge came across the southern tip of Africa. While in Cape Town we stayed at the Cellars-Hohenort Hotel. Wonderful. The hotel gardens, even in winter, were awesome.


For the last leg of our trip we stayed at the very memorable Camp Jabulani on the Kapama Game Reserve in northeastern South Africa, where we had the very unique experience of an elephant-back safari. This place, although different from Savute, was just as charming and amazing. We loved it there - it is another trip favorite. Like the other camp, we went on game drives and saw the remainder of the Big Five that we hadn't seen at the other camp. The food was gourmet - literally - and the entire staff became like friends.

We had such a great time - even better than we expected (and we expected a lot!). And like all vacations...it had to come to an end. The trip home was memorable in it's own right but it's a very long story in and of itself. We made it home only two hours later than expected, which was very much a miracle! And home we are - not too happy about it either!