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Boston 06 South africa/Botswana..1 couple |
Stephen
It was fabulous! Botswana was a rare experience. I think that was my
favorite part of the trip. One gets a real sense of ALONENESS out there.
I kept feeling like I would see another car or a building or phone lines...
but there was NOTHING else there. Kind of exhilarating.
All the arrangements/contacts were flawless. The only hitch was that
they lost our wives' baggage on the Joburg flight and had to deliver it
to us in Kwazulu Natal.
Everything in Botswana was outstanding. The camps were a joy. I myself could
not get into the early morning outdoor showers, however.
It's kind of funny that we had no trouble recharging batteries anywhere in Botswana,
but as soon as we got to Kwazulu Natal we had a problem. It seems that the adapters
that one can buy in the US for Africa are just plain WRONG! The current SA plugs have 3
round holes. Our adapters were for the older style plugs. So we ended up having
to buy adapters over there!
The only one of the Big 5 we didn't see was leopard. There were tracks to be seen
but that's all. And I see that National Geographic this month has another article on the
lions of the Okavango. We never actually saw a lion kill in progress, but did come upon
a buffalo that had been killed the day before. So we were able to see lions at their
meal and then the vultures and Maribou stork came in to finish up.
The KZN part was also enjoyable, but very different from Botswana in feeling. That ALONE
feeling wasn't there as it was in Botswana. We were able to get quite close to the animals there,
since they are very familiar with the vehicles and drivers. So we were ofthen within
20-30 feet of them.
I'm not sure we would do the Garden Route tour again, though. The places we
stayed were very nice and we had a good time, but none of us are particularly
avid shoppers so places like Hermanus were a bit much for us.
The winelands tour was very worthwhile and we found spending the day with Terence
Rapke a real pleasure. He was pleasant to be around and very knowledgable.
One of our free nights we stayed at Cape Agulhas, at the Country Lodge, I think.
That was quie nice. I'd suggest it to others for sure.
Cape Town was a treat. Welgelegen was very nicely located for us. We were able
to walk to dinner at a number of good restaurants right on Kloof St. We got to Table
Mountain just as the clouds were coming in for the next day's bad weather. So we
had probably the best kind of weather conditions up there for photographs. Awesome views.
We regret that we did not get to Robben Island, as the weather forced the boats to
stay docked. But we did get to do a township tour. Maybe next time....
Anyway, thanks for working with us on this. I hope we weren't too big a pain in the
butt about things. I know we hassled you about the Heathrow transfer time, but that
seemed to work out well. However, as we continue to see problems with airliner security
it seems to me that a 1.5 hour connection time could be a problem. We were VERY glad we
had a 4 hour window on return! In Cape Town BA told us our big backpacks full of camera
gear were OK to carry on. But in Heathrow as we were making the connection it was clear that
the packs were WAY bigger than they would allow. So we had to go out through passport control
and back in again, this time checking the backpacks as luggage. With a short connection time
we would have been screwed.
If you get clients that would like to talk to satisfied customers, please feel free to have them contact
me.
And now back to siftin through the 3600 pictures....
Thanks again
Ed
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