One Step Beyond: Baan Sabaidee
We all have our limits. When it comes to food, my limits are farther out there than most – I like taste. I like most cuisines, or at least most of most cuisines. I do have my limits.
One limit is okra / ladyfingers/ bamyi:
One time, at a buffet in Jordan, I told my husband I was going back for something I found totally delicious, and he laughed and said “You know it is okra?” No, I didn’t know. I did go back and get a little more anyway, but it no longer tasted the same – I knew it was okra. It’s the texture; okra is, to me, slimy, gooey, in my mouth it gives me shudders. It’s like raw oysters. Shudder.
Deep fried okra in a spicy tomato sauce was OK – until I knew it was okra.
I was visiting with a friend, working on some projects and we decided to order out from a nearby newly opened Thai restaurant for lunch. She’s a crazy woman, like me. We are not alike – she says “tomahto” and I say “tomato” and somehow we get along just fine. We decided to order things we have never ordered before.
We ordered two safe things – the first was Gai Sate (chicken sate). It was gorgeous and delicious. The sauce is one of the best sauces I have had with Thai food, hot, sweet, and sesame. Delightful.
The second safe thing was Pad Thai, which was also beautiful and tasty:
We ordered Pad Ka Phrao, because we had never heard of it, and because it has basil leaves in it:
It was delicious.
We loved the way the food was packaged. The green curry and the soup was packed in sealed plastic sacks, inside the normal plastic containers. Not a single drop was spilled in the bag. I’m impressed. I love soups, and I hate the mess when soups spill in the bags:
This is the green curry (Gaeng Khew Wan). It is totally delicious.
You know me. I love fish. We had never tried the Tom Kling (smoked herb soup) so we ordered that, with grilled smoked fish. It came beautifully packaged, like the above curry. When we went to eat the soup, however, although it was delicious, I had to fish out the fish. I am not normally squeamish, but their little fishy eyes were too much for me:
AdventureMan and I later made a trip to find the restaurant. It wasn’t easy, but it was worth the trouble. Tucked back behind some of the behomoth apartments on the Southern Gulf Road, it only has maybe six tables, but it is tiny and exquisite. Someone went to a lot of trouble to make this little place beautiful and serene. Although it is a new restaurant, it was already packed when we got there, but a table opened up just as we arrived.
We asked for recommendations, and tried the Tod Mun (shrimp cakes) and a dish I loved. Pad See Ew, which was vermicelli noodles stir fried in soy sauce with shrimp. We also had the chicken sate again – delicious. We were busy watching other people with big pots of something in front of them, shared by groups. We have to go back and try that, whatever it was.
Their take out menu has a nice feel to it – heavy paper with good photos so you can guess what you are ordering:
And- the bonus – it has a map of how to get there on the back, so I don’t have to confuse you trying to figure out the directions:
If they are full, I noticed across the street is another branch of China Queen, one of the best kept secrets in Kuwait for Chinese food with authenticity.
More Three Cups of Tea
The timing couldn’t be better. Thank you, Phantom Man, for sending a link to this New York Times article on Three Cups of Tea, from the July 13th New York Times.
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: July 13, 2008
Since 9/11, Westerners have tried two approaches to fight terrorism in Pakistan, President Bush’s and Greg Mortenson’s.
Greg Mortenson with Sitara “Star” schoolchildren. Photo: Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Mr. Bush has focused on military force and provided more than $10 billion — an extraordinary sum in the foreign-aid world — to the highly unpopular government of President Pervez Musharraf. This approach has failed: the backlash has radicalized Pakistan’s tribal areas so that they now nurture terrorists in ways that they never did before 9/11.
Mr. Mortenson, a frumpy, genial man from Montana, takes a diametrically opposite approach, and he has spent less than one-ten-thousandth as much as the Bush administration. He builds schools in isolated parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan, working closely with Muslim clerics and even praying with them at times.
The only thing that Mr. Mortenson blows up are boulders that fall onto remote roads and block access to his schools.
Mr. Mortenson has become a legend in the region, his picture sometimes dangling like a talisman from rearview mirrors, and his work has struck a chord in America as well. His superb book about his schools, “Three Cups of Tea,” came out in 2006 and initially wasn’t reviewed by most major newspapers. Yet propelled by word of mouth, the book became a publishing sensation: it has spent the last 74 weeks on the paperback best-seller list, regularly in the No. 1 spot.
Now Mr. Mortenson is fending off several dozen film offers. “My concern is that a movie might endanger the well-being of our students,” he explains.
Mr. Mortenson found his calling in 1993 after he failed in an attempt to climb K2, a Himalayan peak, and stumbled weakly into a poor Muslim village. The peasants nursed him back to health, and he promised to repay them by building the village a school.
Scrounging the money was a nightmare — his 580 fund-raising letters to prominent people generated one check, from Tom Brokaw — and Mr. Mortenson ended up selling his beloved climbing equipment and car. But when the school was built, he kept going. Now his aid group, the Central Asia Institute, has 74 schools in operation. His focus is educating girls.
To get a school, villagers must provide the land and the labor to assure a local “buy-in,” and so far the Taliban have not bothered his schools. One anti-American mob rampaged through Baharak, Afghanistan, attacking aid groups — but stopped at the school that local people had just built with Mr. Mortenson. “This is our school,” the mob leaders decided, and they left it intact.
You can read the entire article in the New York Times by clicking on the blue type.
Three Cups of Tea
My best-friend-from-college and I were chatting the other day and I asked her “what are you reading?” because we have always exchanged book recommendations back and forth.
“I’m reading a biography of Teddy Roosevelt,” she started, and I groaned, because most of the time biographies don’t interest me that much. “And I am reading Three Cups of Tea . . . “ and I interrupted her (rudely) to exclaim “so am I!”
Three Cups of Tea is a must-read in the US. It was actually published in 2006, and has sold more and more books every month, and has been on the New York Times best seller list almost since it was published.
The book begins with a failure. A mountaineer, attempting a climb on K2 runs into problems, including evacuating two severely injured fellow climbers from the mountain. Exhausted, and devastated by his failure to capture the summit, he gets lost on his way back to the base camp, and ends up in a village where the people are very kind to him. He is treated as an honored guest, he regains his strength, and on his last day in the village, learns the children have no school. He rashly promises to come back and build a school for them.
One of the great redeeming features in this book is Greg Mortenson’s endless humility. He has a co-author, to whom he gave a long list of people he could talk with, including all his enemies and people who thought he was crazy. He’s that kind of guy. He talks about his life’s personal failures and his toughest moments, and he moves on.
He doesn’t take credit for the dogged persistence with which he keeps his promise, in spite of daunting obstacles. He doesn’t take any credit for the good will he builds.
Several years ago, I read another book which has changed my life, The Purpose Driven Life (which, by the way, the hardcover is $9.99 and the paperback is $10.19, go figure) in which the basic premise of the book is that we are each created uniquely, individually, by a loving creator, for a purpose. As I read Three Cups of Tea, I thought this man is greatly blessed; he discovered his purpose and nothing kept him from fulfilling it!
The book deserves every single one of it’s Amazon Five Star ratings.
I had a hard time putting the book down. Even though my life is full of other demands, once I had the chance, I spent an entire afternoon finishing this great book.
Greg Mortenson isn’t discouraged that his first school takes three years, and first he has to build a bridge. His second, third and fourth schools take just . . . three months! He has a gift for inspiring others, and people give what they can. The villagers give their time and their efforts, and western supporters donate funds.
By the end of the book, 24 school have been built, in the very poorest mountain villages in Pakistan, where money from the government for education doesn’t trickle at all, until near the end of the book. He doesn’t build the schools himself – he meets with the villagers, they donate a plot. He buys the materials, and together, they all build a school. These villagers are hungry for their children to become educated, to have a chance for a better life. Mortenson learns to focus on the girls.
He learns that as the boys become educated, they leave the villages for the city, but as the girls become educated, they come back, and like yeast, they raise the standard of living for the entire village, providing health care services and information, providing education for the newest crop of children, learning new skills, bringing them back and sharing them.
One of Mortenson’s gifts is that he isn’t interested in changing these mountain people into westerners. He likes them, and he learns from them, just the way they are. He dresses like them, he prays with them, he learns their language, and he has no western agenda for the curriculum in these schools. He also helps the government schools – building an additional room here for an overflowing school, paying a teacher’s salary there – his goal is to educate children. That’s it. No political agenda. The people of the villages love him for it, and give him their full support.
You cannot undertake a project like this without a lot of help. Mortenson had some extraordinary experiences, experiences that to me look like the grace of God, that drew together teams of people to help build and supply his schools.
“I looked at a sign in front of the school and saw that it had been donated by Jean Hoerni, my cousin Jennifer’s husband,” Bergman says. “Jennifer told me Jean had been trying to build a school somewhere in the Himalaya, but to land in that exact spot in a range that stretches thousands of miles felt like more than coincidence. I’m not a religious person,” Bergman says, “but I felt I’d been brought there for a reason and I couldn’t stop crying.”
A few months later, at Hoerni’s memorial service, Bergman introduced herself to Mortenson. “I was there!” she said, wrapping the startled man she’d just met in a bruising hug. “I saw the school!”
“You’re the blonde in the helicopter,” Mortenson said, shaking his head in amazement. “I heard a foreign woman had been in the village, but I didn’t believe it.”
“There’s a message here. This is meant to be,” Julia Bergman said. “I want to help. Is there anything I can do?”
“Well, I want to collect books and create a library for the Korphe School,” Mortenson said.
Bergman felt the same sense of predestination she’d encountered that day at the school. “I’m a librarian,” she said.
After struggling for many years, seeking donors who would help to build a school, Mortenson now has a foundation eagerly supported by many Americans, and especially the mountaineers, who continue to build schools. At the end of the book, the foundation is moving into the poorest sectors in Afghanistan, and building schools there. They have children’s programs in many of the schools in the United States, where children donate pennies to help pay for books for the schools, and for the teacher’s monthly salaries, where salaries are not reaching the teachers. You can donate to the school building fund, teacher’s salaries and books using your credit card, online, at the website Three Cups of Tea. You can order this book there, too, as well as music CD/s and learn more about the work being done.
Al Shamal Travel
AdventureMan called his contact at Al Shamal Travel about an upcoming trip:
“Mr. Flan, I have our itinerary, is everything still on schedule?”
“Yes, Mr. AdventureMan, I just checked on it this morning. You are booked all the way through, all the flights are exactly as shown on your schedule. I booked your seats on all the legs and I think you will be very happy. Just show them your itinerary; the reservation number is on it.”
(Sigh of pure pleasure)
Real service, CUSTOMER service. So rare that when it happens, we notice it.
Things We Love About Robin’s House
We had reservationsin Nkwali, the jumping off place for most of the Robin Pope Safaris, but we had to change the reservations by a couple weeks, and that meant a total reversal of the reservation. We started off in Tena Tena, then we went to Nsefu, then we ended up in Nkwali. We have always loved Nkwali, loved the cabins there, but this time we were happier than happy – they put us in Robin’s House.
Robin’s House is where Robin and Jo Pope lived before they built a gorgeous house on the other side of the camp.
It is perfect for two couples, or two couples and children. It is perfect in so many ways that I had to make a list of all the things I loved about being there.
* Space – spacious bedrooms, spacious, private bathrooms on each side of the house with a spacious common living/sitting/dining room in the center.
* Indoor/ outdoor living – the windows have screens on them to keep out critters, but indoors or outdoors, it all feels a part of a whole.
* Wrap around windows – a view anywhere you look
* Huge walk in shower, with animal prints molded into the painted cement floor. Love the whimsy.
* High, airy ceilings, with ceiling fans
* natural materials, canvas colored curtains, a neutral palette with beam accents
* great big soft fluffy bath towels
* all our favorite drinks stocked in the refrigerator, and a liquor bar, which we barely touched, that had Amarula, which I love.
* electricity! We could recharge our own camera batteries without going to the camp itself
* being taken care of by a hostess, a cook, a dedicated guide and Thomas and Amos, who took care of us without over-taking-care of us – they gave us plenty of privacy when we needed it, and were there when we needed them.
* variety of seating for people of different heights
* Tribal Textiles accents – pillows, covers, etc – in rooms
* a book case! With books! and games!
* multiple views of hippos, and hippo sounds at night
* grand, comfy beds with good sheets, good pillows and good mattresses
* kikoys provided for our use
* shaded porch with a variety of seating options
* a hammock with a view
* insect repellant – with a good smell and nice texture, and it really seemed to work
* ditto shower gel and shampoo and conditioner provided
* a drying rack for swimming towels, washed clothes, etc.
Our last day there, LawAndOrder Man and EnviroGirl had to leave for their 32 hour return to the USA, flying Mfuwe – Lusaka – Johannisburg – Dakar – Atlanta – Pensacola – imagine. And they had to work the next day. It was such a sad parting, and we were all glad to have had the last days together in this beautiful, very private location.
Photos:
This is the wing of the house where AdventureMan and I stayed
This was our room (sigh!)
And this is the shower we loved
This was the living room/sitting room where we would gather
This was the second bedroom – there were additional beds for kids
This is the pool. Other guests from the camp could use it, but no one did while we were there. It was separate from the house but very close.
These spaces for outdoor sitting were outside the other wing, where our son and his bride slept
They served our meals privately, too. What wonderful luxury privacy is
You know, the little Alaska girl is still alive and well inside me, and I am always fascinated with fishing techniques. This was right across the river from Robin’s House, and they caught quite a few fish.
Robin and Jo Pope have expertise, and also VISION. Problems, to them, are opportunities. Need to get tourists to the camps? Invest in an airline. Need to get them to the national park across a river? Build your own pontoon bridge – it gives Zambia additional park revenue, provides additional employment, and gives tourists a thrilling experience. When they solve a problem, everyone wins.
We crossed several times on this boat, and once, in pitch dark, got caught on a tree snagging us from under the water. It took about 15 minutes to maneuver us off, and to get across, but it is not like this ferry is on a schedule. It goes back and forth when vehicles are going into or coming out of the park.
How the boat is pulled across the river
We had some fabulous game drives; I will only bore you with this one. The hippo ponds are covered with nile cabbage, and I just loved this hippo with his nile cabbage blanket
Maitland and The Company of Liars: A novel of the plague
I had just finished The Swallows of Kabul and still had a long flight to go. Fortunately, I was in the Johannisburg airport, with it’s truly wonderful bookstore, and came across The Company of Liars: a novel of the plague. Well, it isn’t exactly a novel of the plague. The story opens in 1348, a year in which le morte bleu hit the British Isles, only later to be called the plague. The author captures the times, the filth, the lack of bathing, the superstitions, the ways of life.
The plot centers around a group who wanders through the island, just trying to stay alive. The spreading plague impacts on their wandering, but to call this a novel of the plague is just not accurate. The plague is the reason for the journey, but the journey is the center of the novel, not the plague.
Before I started reading the book, I read the Historical Notes in the back, and that is where I came across the most interesting information in the entire book:
The 1348 plague was only the latest in a series of disasters to hit Britain. The period between 1290 and 1348 had seen a rapid and drastic climate change which was so noticeable that the Pope ordered special prayers to be said daily in every church. Eyewitness accounts claimed that 1348 was a particularly bad year, for it rained every day from Midsummer’s Day to Christmas Day. Climate change brought about crop failure, liver fluke in sheep and murrain in cattle, as well as causing widespread flooding which virtually wiped out the salt industry on the east coast. This, combined with a population explosion, meant that as many people died from starvation as from the plague itself.
Interestingly, the book will not be released in the US until September 2008. The cover shown is nothing like the cover of the book I bought.
American issue cover:
Cover on book bought in Johannisburg:
I like the cover of mine better.
Some reviewers call this book “enthralling” or “gripping.” I wans’t all that enthralled or gripped, but it did make good airplane reading. I learned a lot about the grim brutality of life in 1348, but as I told AdventureMan, this is more a book about a slice of time than a book with a great plot. The plot isn’t that great, it is the historical detail that is interesting, and fiction just makes it more easily absorbed. (my opinion)
Masumbe’s Wisdom By the Campfire
Every night before dinner in these camps is a time for gathering around the campfire, sharing stories, getting to know the fellow guests. At Tena Tena our third night, we are sitting with Msumbe, the assistant camp manager, and listening to him talk about Zambia.
Zambia is a peaceful nation, and it is a miracle. More than seventy different tribes, and that many different languages and dialects. Rich in natural resources, full of children hungry to learn, Zambia has placed a high priority in educating everyone in getting along with one another.
“So like when you come across another person, not from where you are from, you don’t start in with a lot of questions. First you ask ‘How is it where you are from?’ and then you listen. When you know where he is coming from, and how are things there, then you can ask better questions, and not offend someone.”
Hmmmm, I thought, good advice. Sometimes I feel a little shy, especially when there are large groups of “others” like South Africans, or British, and they have their own values, their own ways of communicating, different from ours.
Soon, I was sitting next to a British woman, and desperately trying to think of a way to get HER talking, so I could be listening, and that is exactly what I asked “Tell me what life is like where you are from?”
She looked at me like I was a little crazy and asked what I meant. I said that I knew her life was very different from mine, and I was interested to know what her daily life was like. So she started telling me she wasn’t very interesting really, but gave me some details, and actually, it WAS interesting. Once she got going, knowing I really was interested, I learned a whole lot!
One detail I will never forget is that she rides to the foxes every weekend in the fox hunting season, this very respectable woman, and that they all do, even if it is against the law. No matter what the weather, they ride, hour upon hour. She laughed and said they ride so long and so hard that her clothes become discolored from the saddle leather, and she comes home stained and filthy from her rides.
Now how would I ever have known all that without Masumbe’s good question? It’s like being given a key that opens many locks. You never know what treasures you will come upon, but you have this wonderful key. Thank you, Masumbe!
Tena Tena, RPS, Zambia 2008
We travel to Africa almost every year, but the Robin Pope Safari camps are the only ones we have ever visited more than once. After our first visit, I think in 2003, we went back for a Hiking with Robin Pope safari in 2005 and enjoyed every minute of it. When we first dreamed of taking our son and his wife to Africa with us, we thought we would do the Hemingway Safari with CCAfrica (it’s twelve parts but this link takes you to the first entry) but that takes 14 days, and LawAndOrder Man doesn’t get that much time off.
No problem, we know that the Robin Pope Safari Camps do it right. We know they will be totally WOWED. We set up some dates, and then when the Cupertino wedding comes up, we revise the dates, which means that we do the same trip we did the other two times, only backwards. This is fun! When you are booking a Robin Pope Safari, you need to book early, they fill up fast.
We love Tena Tena, the first camp we stayed at. Each couple has a very large tent, with furniture and books and oriental carpets. The bedcovers are kilim, the whole flavor is very fusion, like Zanzibar – African, Indian and Middle Eastern. There are only five tents, maximum of ten guests. We feel so at home.
During the day, each tent is totally open in the front to a large patio from which you can watch passing game. Our very first day in Tena Tena, just after lunch the elephants came through, and we watched, enchanted, from the porch. First AdventureMan went to our son’s tent to watch as they passed, and then all three came to our tent. My heart was so full of joy that I didn’t know whether to watch the elephants or to thank God for the sheer happiness I felt, all of us together and the miracle of elephants walking right past our door as we watched in wonder. I found a way to do both.
So here are some more photos of our time at Tena Tena:
The airplane we flew in on, and Mfuwe International Airport. Once a week or so, a flight comes in from Malawi, and so it is genuinely an International airport:
The South Luangua needs these small planes to get the visitors to their camps, so Robin and Jo Pope invested in their own airline, ProFlight.
The guides at the Robin Pope Camps are so patient. I am absolutely ga-ga about the sky, seeing blue sky and clouds and a sunset. I get gorgeous sunrises in Kuwait, but I never see the sun set. The guide is patient when I ask him to stop to take a photo. While we are stopped – a hyena comes slinking along, totally ignoring us, crossing behind our vehicle.
The next morning, it is up at 0530, out of the camp by six (not a vacation for people who want to sleep in!) LawAndOrder Man and EnviroGirl have been awake since three a.m. – jet lagging – and are bright and shiny!
As we are watching the baboons wake up and take care of daily business, we see the most amazing fight – a set of four birds fighting over a tree top territory. One hops up on his partner’s back to scold and intimidate the other two into leaving:
Back in Tena Tena, a delicious lunch – every meal is delicious – and just as we are finishing, there are elephants crossing the river to our side. What is cuter than a baby elephant?
The elephants crossed the river, then came foraging down past our tents:
I know you are all dying to see LawAndOrder Man and Enviro Girl – that’s them, watching the elephants on our tent front porch.
Our guide, Bertram, was amazing. He would ask us “what do you want to see?” and we would tell him, and he knew just where to find them. The first night drive, I said “We love seeing everything, but it would be a real thrill to see a leopard.”
We drove around, looking at all kinds of things, and then he said “over on your left is a hammerkopf – and a leopard.” And there she was, relaxed, soaking up a little sun before she hunted up something for the night’s dinner. She posed, she stretched, she changed positions and gave us plenty of time before she sauntered off. Wooo HOOOOOO! We had been to Africa three times before we ever saw a leopard, and here was one on their very first night of their very first safari. God is Good!
One of the best parts about Tena Tena is hearing hippos. There are hippos everywhere:
Thank you for being so patient with all my vacation stories and photos. I know, I know, I am turning into that boring old aunt who always shows up with photos! 😉
Chongwe River Camp, Zambezi, Zambia
I used to be such an organized person. I had a responsible job where I juggled many important things. I had meetings and messages, and events and proposal deadlines, and somehow, I did it all, and I did it well.
Now that I have somewhat less to handle, I don’t handle it as well. I am too relaxed. I don’t obsess about details, I don’t wake up in the middle of the night gasping about something I may have forgotten, I don’t even keep a notepad by the side of my bed to write things down that wake me in the night.
When I was making arrangements for this trip, AdventureMan said to add on a few days at the Chongwe River Lodge, so I told the travel guy at Robin Pope Safaris to book us at the Chongwe River Lodge. Then, I just paid what the invoice said and never thought about it again. If you go to the RPS page, it will show you Chongwe River HOUSE, and that is where we thought we were staying. When we arrived, we were a little disconcerted to discover we were at the Chongwe River Camp, not the house, but our tent/cabin faced a pod of hippos, and we were immediately enchanted, and sometimes things happen for a reason, you know? We knew we were there for a reason, and just relaxed and enjoyed what the camp had to offer.
And oh, WOW, what the camp had to offer. First, every tent is situated to have a fabulous view, and the front of the tent is all clear net, you CAN close it if you want to, but you don’t have to, you have absolute privacy with on one looking in. They have a wide range of activities, lots of water sports, fishing, kayaking, hiking, fly camping . . . so much to do! Or . . . you can do nothing at all, too.
Our view overlooked a pod of hippos. All day and all night long, we could hear hippos. In the middle of the night, a hippo mom and a baby hippo were grazing two feet from the entrance to our tent – when I got up to watch, they quickly slipped back into the water.
That might disturb some people, but it totally enchants me! I was told some people get grumpy because they can’t sleep, that they request earplugs . . . I cannot imagine. I love the sounds, and somehow, it makes me feel safer inside knowing wild things are roaming around at night. I’ve always felt human beings were the far more dangerous threat than the animals.
So I will bore you with a bunch of photos, and you will see the things I love – details of the tents and lounge and dining areas, and photos that I wish had sound attached so you could be lulled to sleep by the laughter of the hippos.
This is the Chongwe River airport:
This is the airstrip we flew into – you can see elephant dung all over the strip, but there were no elephants on the strip when we flew in:
Zambia was experiencing a huge airplane fuel crisis while we were there, so flights were being consolidated. One night, there was NO fuel at any of the major airfields. Here us the fuel storage at Chongwe:
This is my idea of camping – king size bed, good sheets, a great bathroom and a great view of hippos:
The bathroom! Can you see why I enjoy camping so much? The shower has a European style flash heater – so practical, and you get hot water in a heartbeat without burning a lot of trees.
Storage/clothing shelves in the bedroom. Rooms come with flashlights, insect repellant sprays, and a whistle in case you feel in danger:
Dining in the bush – and the food was great. Because it is the middle of winter in Zambia, nights can be chilly, and we had charcoal braziers between diners at night to keep us from shivering. It was toasty warm! When we would get back to our tents, there would be hot water bottles warming our beds, so we could just jump in.
The coffee/tea/hot chocolate bar, with French press Zambian coffee, yummmmm:
This is how the camp would look at night when we would come back from a game drive or a boating trip – purely magic, with all the twinkling candles. The camp offers fishing, hiking, game drives, kayaking, all kinds of activities, or . . . just chilling:
This is the lounge area and library in the daytime:
These are “my” hippos – oh, this just made my time at Chongwe River Camp, hearing their laughter, hearing their arguements. Just up the river all the animals would come down to drink at dusk. I could sit and take photos and never intrude on them – warthogs, impala, elephant, waterbuck, geese, heron, egret, ibis . . . and lots of baboon.
We saw everything on our game drives, but I will start with the great Kudu, because finding a male kudu not shyly running away is a great treat:
I think this lion finds tourists boring – he and his wives endured our presence for about 45 minutes before ambling off to another shady glen:
This was a great thrill for me – an elephant swimming to one of the Zambezi islands. Don’t worry, I was using my great telephoto, I was not that close. We did not bother the elephant, we kept our distance.
Here is the big guy safely on his island:
And just look at this guy! He was a big as a HUMMER! Our guide said he had seen even bigger on the Zambezi. (gulp!)
The Great Adventure
This week AdventureMan and I are celebrating our wedding anniversary. He kids me – when we were married, we had a goal. We wanted to go to Africa, so we saved our money for a whole year. We didn’t eat meat – or not often. We didn’t go to movies; we went to the library. We did buy cameras, and we saved and saved and saved, and when we had been married a year, we went to Kenya for a month – three weeks on safari and then one week on the beach.
Life has been so good to us, has blessed us so richly. Today we give thanks for the good times, and even the bad times – it takes both to glue a marriage together. We thank God for his abundant mercy on our foolishness and our pride, for our mistakes, and for our good intentions gone wrong. We give thanks for all his blessings and we pray for many more years together.
May the great adventure continue!
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