(Note: To keep all the text from becoming boring, I will drop in some non-related photos taken during the trip.)
Two pied kingfishers hover as they look for prey in the Chobe River.
I just got home from the trip that wasn’t supposed to be. Three weeks of safari game drives and brutal travel. Lots of surprises, sightings, some exciting adventures, and places familiar and new.
I decided a couple of years ago that my bank account was correct when it told me I shouldn’t travel anymore, especially with the increase in prices of everything from food to utilities. Besides, I was nearing 84 years of age and slowing down. I hated feeling like I needed assistance. I felt as though I were becoming a burden on those I usually traveled with. (Okay, “...on those with whom I usually traveled.”)
I was gob smacked when the call came. Someone had to drop out of the group due to medical reasons, less than a month before blastoff. Normally, I would have declined, but I had recently received a message that I would be getting a check soon from my friends who had taken my Alaskana to sell in their gallery, and when I contacted them and asked, the check would be in an amount that would more than pay for the trip.
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| A Nile crocodile basking in the sun on the banks of the Chobe River in Botswana. These massive reptiles can weigh more than a ton, and ambush mammals that come to the water to drink. This I found on the Internet, so it must be true: "The sex of each hatchling is determined by the incubation temperature of the egg. Females are produced in temperatures between 26 to 30 degrees and males in a higher 31 to 34 degrees." Those temps as in Centigrade. |
There’s more. My Canada travel pals Marg and Shelly had formed a company called Marshel Adventure Tours, and this trip was their maiden voyage, so to speak. I know how these things work. The venues that take a group reservation quote a specific rate based on the number of clients. Those clients provide—through tipping—income for their staff and guides, so it’s important to have a full group complement.
I accepted the invitation, convinced that The Fates decreed I should make one last trip to Africa.
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| The rolling camera bag. Never checked in as baggage. Always stays with me. It weighs more than my checked bag. |
The trip was advertised as the Botswana 2025 Hide and Seek tour. Clever name, as we would be seeking birds and animals on game drives as well as photographing from the underground hides that put you at eye level with a waterhole. That’s exciting stuff, those hides.
My travel “plans” called for me to fly to Seattle and then connect to Edmonton, Alberta, in Canada, where I would spend a day with Marg Wood, a long-time friend and mentor, and the “Mar” part of Marshel. That part went well and as planned.
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| Anchorage to Seattle, done it dozens of times. |
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| Seattle to Edmonton. |
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| A flowering tree along the Chobe River. |
What wasn’t planned was the message Marg got as we were getting ready to leave for the airport for a flight to Amsterdam, connecting with a flight to Johannesburg, South Africa. The flight was a) late or b) cancelled, or c) any other thing that meant we were going to miss the connecting flight.
Marg immediately called the special number for KLM Platinum members and spent the next couple of hours making sure all of us would get on the plane after it arrived, as well as getting reservations for the flight to Joburg the next day. It would put us into Joburg a day later than planned, but Marg, a well-experienced traveler, had planned for two nights at the City Lodge in Joburg airport.
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| The rolling duffel bag is my checked bag. The small chartered planes we will use in country request soft-sided bags for better sowing in the bellies of the planes. And, there was a weight limit of 25 lbs. |
It wasn’t as easily resolved as it sounds because removing one flight from the airline’s schedule means hundreds of passengers must be rebooked.
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| My hand-carry item. to be stowed under the seat. I call it the Football. I carry my iPad, Kindle, paper and pens, plus miscellaneous stuff I might need in flight. |
Nonetheless, off to the airport we went. Our late-arriving plane landed, we boarded, and off we went to Amsterdam. The show is finally on the road. Had I known of the travel difficulties that lay in wait, I might have stayed home.
I’ll tell you something: travel these days is not for the faint-hearted.
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| Edmonton to Amsterdam to Johannesburg. That was the plan. Who could have guessed that before the trip was over, I would have touched base in five countries, and almost a sixth? |