Today marks my 25th and final post on our African Safari. As you read this, Peggy and I are driving between Carson City, Nevada and the Central Coast of California where we will spend the next two weeks exploring Big Sur, Carmel, Monterey, Pinnacles National Park and the surrounding area. The visit will kick off our next series: A three month, thousand mile journey following the Pacific Coast through Northern California, Oregon and Washington— one of the world’s most beautiful coastlines.
But first, a wrap up on South Africa where we will visit the Cape of Good Hope, Cape Town and Table Mountain.
I tried, I really did. This was supposed to be my last post on our African Safari. But when I looked through the last thousand photos of scenery, people, and a catch-all-miscellaneous that I considered blog worthy, I just couldn’t do it. Eventually, I got the thousand down to 82. I’ve divided them into three posts. Today I will focus on Victoria Falls and the surrounding area. The second post will wrap-up Chobe National Park, Hwange National Park and Lake Kariba. The last post will feature South Africa.
When the Zambezi River was flooded in the 60s to create Lake Kariba, several villages of Tonga people were flooded— without compensation. Some of them were later granted limited fishing concessions on the lake. Our guide was eager for us to meet Africans as well as wildlife and arranged a tour of one village located on an island. I found the people and village life quite similar to what I had experienced as a young Peace Corp Volunteer in West Africa 50 years earlier. Following are some of the photos that Peggy and I took.
Peggy and I are on the road again. Tomorrow we start our journey west where we will be taking three months to travel up the West Coast from Big Sur to Olympia National Park camping out in our travel trailer as we go. I will blog about the trip as we go! Hopefully, I’ll be able to wrap up Africa and the Everglades on our two week drive across the US. I’ll continue to read blogs and respond to comments as time allows.
We were on a mission to find zebras. They were the only major animal on our must-see list that we hadn’t seen in Chobe National Park. Finally, deep in Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe, we found them, a whole herd. As is obvious from their physical appearance, they are closely related to horses and donkeys. In fact, zebras can mate with them. When a zebra and a donkey get together, their offspring is a zonkey. Not surprisingly, the offspring of a horse and a zebra is called a zorse. This is definitely party conversation material! Like mules, zonkeys and zorses are sterile, however. You won’t find them in large numbers.
As for the marvelous black and white stripes, scientists aren’t exactly sure of their purpose. One might be to confuse predators. It’s really hard to pick out vulnerable individuals in a herd, especially when they are running like heck to get away. They may also serve as a form of identification for other zebras, a name tag if you will, since the stripes are different on each zebra. Controlling body heat might be another factor.
I’ve mentioned before in this series (several times probably) that Peggy and I were both surprised and impressed with the bird life we found on our safari through Botswana, Zimbabwe, and South Africa. We ended up focusing on the birds as much as the other wildlife. I’ve already introduced several. Today, I’ll do a wrap up on the others that captured our attention.