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Trip Diary: Beastland
Meals at Splash Camp are timed around the game drives: breakfast at 5:30am, brunch at 11:30am when you return from the morning drive, no lunch because why bother, when you just had brunch at 11:30? Instead, tea is at 4pm, which feeds you enough to keep you going until dinner around 8:30pm after the evening…
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Trip Diary: So This Is the Delta
The difference between Old Drift and Splash Camp can best be defined in two examples. First, Old Drift has a phone in the room, with a five digit number to reach the office if you need anything at all, at any time of the day or night. Splash Camp has no phones at all, including…
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Trip Diary: Where Are All the Elephants?
The Lookout Cafe is the centerpiece of Wild Horizons’ empire of Victoria Falls tourist attractions. It’s a restaurant, but that’s a little bit like saying that Broadway-caliber dinner theater is a restaurant. At the Lookout Cafe, lunch is respectable, but it’s really all about the view.
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Trip Diary: Paying Calls
The first visit we made today was to a nearby Zimbabwean village. But it began with a stop at the supermarket in town. Some village tours in this area compensate their hosts by way of a monetary payment to the village chief. That isn’t how Old Drift does it. Instead, they first help you buy…
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Trip Diary: Tenderness in Warthogs
There’s a line in an old Robert Heinlein book, in which the main character muses about the perfections of female humans, and then adds, “No doubt a gentleman warthog feels the same way about a lady warthog. But if so, both of us are very sincere.”
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Postcard: Birthday
Hippo Birdie (two) ME!!
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Trip Diary: Crocodiles and Rhinos
When I was very small, my father used to sing silly things to me, as many parents of small children do. One of his favorites was to sing the words “Heffalumps and Woozles,” from out of the Winnie the Pooh books, to the tune of “Politics and Poker,” from the Broadway musical “Fiorello!” I now…
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Trip Diary: Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe
The bags were right there when I got back to the airport. I’ve never had such an easy time dealing with an administrative issue. I didn’t even have to give my name — the guy at the luggage desk took one look at me, obviously thought, “Oh right, the white lady who’s picking up this…
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Seattle to Johannesburg
It’s 5:30 in the morning, and I’m lying in bed feeling perfectly content as a baboon chatters outside my window. The birds have a great deal more to say
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Last Steps
Tomorrow afternoon, I’ll be on my way to Africa. It’s really hard to believe, after two and a half years of planning, that it’s happening NOW. I’m packed! Somehow, I have managed to pack everything I need for seven weeks and four different climates in two small, soft-sides suitcases and a carry-on backpack. The climates…
