So, without further ado...
We stopped by an ostrich farm on the way down to Cape of Good Hope. The pictures will get better, I promise.
These flowers were all over in Capetown - King something.... that was like 2 months ago, you can't seriously expect me to remember!
A penguin hiding out in its little burrow, I might have chased it there, who knows...
Nelson Mandela's cell at Robben Island, off of Capetown.
I think this is sunset in Camps Bay in Capetown - I took so many, I can never be sure - but they are all kind of different - at least in hue...
A bedazzled car in Capetown!
A snapshot of Fish River Canyon in Namibia - it was nice, but I still think the Grand Canyon is way cooler.
A rhino at the watering hole next to our tents in Etosha (Namibia).
Ann and Mina were apparently bored by our safari in Etosha and napped on the truck.
Ann and Mina posing by their mukoros (dugout canoes) on our way to our campsite in the Okavango Delta (Botswana). We rode in these canoes while our "polers" pulled us for 2.5 hours in the delta! My poler sucked, he got me really wet. I was not happy.
Crossing the river in the mukoros. I wanted to bring one back and use it as a bookshelf - a bunch of the lodges in Tanzania had them as furniture. I didn't think I could check it at the airport.
Baboon sitting in and eating elephant poo. Love the primates.
Hippos just chilling in the Chobe River - this is at like 6:30am mind you.
Hyena being lazying in Chobe National Park - they are ugly!
Crocodiles munching on a dead buffalo in the Chobe River!!! You can see the horn of the buffalo - it is severely bloated.
Two elephants chilling, going for a walk.
Elephant and hippo stand off at the edge of the Chobe River. Here's how it went down, the two elephants in the pic above were walking along the edge as the hippo came out.. and then the 2nd elephant turned around and kicked some dirt at the hippo and trumpeted a little and then turned around and stormed off - as much as an elephant can storm. The hippo didn't really pay it any attention. But hippos are scary - they can run up to 35 km per hour!
Here is me, Mina and Ann at Victoria Falls, thoroughly drenched from our walk of it. Highly recommended - altho they are supposedly better from the Zimbabwe side, since the Zambia side only has about 500 meters of the falls.
Our last dinner with the overaldn group! This is Kelly (she's the red head, I'm the Chinese one) - she's from Australia.
Mina and I in our "bus" t-shirts (I will have to explain to non-Michigan folks some other time) in front of our overland truck - with Letaloi, our driver. He is not a bus driver - he is a truck driver.
Here are some pictures from our Lion Encounter adventure in Zimbabwe. These are the two 12 month old cubs - when they said cubs, I thought they would be like kittens, but apparently, they are almost full grown. And like to make out.
Me and Mina petting one of the cubs... I kept freaking out whenever he twitched!
Lions are really beautiful animals, even if they could rip me apart in one swipe. But you know, still really pretty.
Me on the gorge swing by Victoria Falls in Livingstone, Zambia. Never again. Thanks a lot, Mina - you big bully.
Our guesthouse in Johannesburg - we stayed in the Houghton Estates suburb - very posh, 4 blocks from Nelson Mandela's home. Behind 5 different forms of security. That's Mina if you can make her out.
Butcher shop in the Soweto townships in Johannesburg! YUM.
A view of Mt. Kilimanjaro from our plane.
A warthog up close in the Ngorongoro Crater - they are ugly! But I got used to them and in the end, found them kind of cute. Pumba (Lion King) really put the warthog on the map!
Baboons in the road in Ngorongoro - we had to stop and wait for them to move, the babies are kind of cute, but that's about it.
Giraffe crossing in Ngorongoro.
After the Ngorongoro Crater, we stopped by a Masai village before heading to the Serengeti. The Masai tribe spans Kenya and Tanzania and most of the warriors wear the traditional red blankets - one of our overland tour guides is a Masai warrior, and he always had his blanket draped over his normal clothes - he said it was better than a woman!
Here is a traditional Masai "manyatta" or hut - they live and cook in these! It's so crazy!
Now onto the Serengeti, apparently lions chill out in trees!
Beautiful giraffe, can you see the eyelashes?
Wildebeest crossing - we were in the middle of the migration - probably over a million wildebeest moving from the Serengeti up to Kenya...
Hippo pool - they really smell.
Another one of the mom lion and her two cubs - soo cute!!!
We kind of drove off the track to get a little closer to the lion...shhh.
Isn't he beautiful? Look at his yellow eyes!
Here's that preening leopard again...
The buffalo seem a little mad that we're snapping pics of their baby....
And finally, here is the beach at Zanzibar. That was the view from our bungalow. A great ending to an amazing trip.
So, there you have it - I know that was a lot of photos, but I have 1151 that I need to edit through and then I will upload them to picasa or something and send out the link - and if any of you go to Africa - bring a REAL camera, not a small digital one - you need a serious SLR to get the great animal pictures - a lot of mine are fine small, but even blown up to my laptop screen, a ton are blurry - sigh, digital zoom vs optical zoom I guess...
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