Victoria Falls is a huge tourist attraction with a well-developed infrastructure. Our accommodations (the only place we’ve stayed more than one night) Shearwater Explorers Village, seems uniquely set up for Intrepid, and there are multiple groups heading in various directions. Also, the falls themselves are a national park requiring separate admissions.

On Saturday, after arriving, we had a brewery tour to learn about the process and have some samples. Later, we had a farewell dinner for those only doing the first half featuring a huge buffet and live entertainment…

It takes a while to suss out the situation at a place, but package deals are always good, so we got one. Sunday started out with a helicopter ride at 8:00. We spent almost 15 minutes flying over the Zambezi river and Victoria Falls. There’s some redundence here, and as you can see it was quite dry. When the falls have more water they are twice as wide and much mistier. But it was exhilerating…

We left our lodge again to take the Victoria Falls walk – and it was hot! Sadly, not everyone is benefitting from the tourist industry (first pic). This batch emphasizes the interpretive signage at the entrance to the park and the beginning of our walk…

As you should know, David Livingstone, an English missionary, was the first European to view the falls. (I hope he learned about where he was before he proselytized about where he wasn’t!) Anywayz, as you could see from the air the ground is very dry, but it was a treat to walk through the small rainforest created by the mist coming up from the falls. Even during this extremely dry period, that little area was still delightfully cool & moist. Early part of the 16 view point trail along the rim of the gorge (& monkeys!)…

More of the Victoria Falls, the exit through the gift shop, and some crazy people sitting in the Devil’s Hole on the other, Zambian, side of the gorge. Nobody was bungee jumping off the bridge…?

On the way back from the walk, we stopped at a particularly big baobab tree (estimated to be way over 1000 years old). Before embarking on our river cruise, I cruised through the town of Vic Falls, checking out the many curio shops. Had a couple of nice conversations with desperate salesmen. Always rough to see people struggling to sell art…!

What was supposed to be a relaxing day, but filled with fun activities, ended with a river cruise on the mighty Zambezi. A festive group of fellow travelers also saw some crocs, hippos, elephants, birds, other African wildlife, and a spectacular sunset…

This ended the first half of our first African tour. Stay tuned for more…

Scholars, this is my 8th Intrepid tour and never have we gone harder, that is gettin’ up early and going hard all day. So we did that again at Goo Moremi and off we went to experience the Makgadikgadi Salt Pan and the Nata Bird Sanctuary. After settling in, we went on a safari into the vast nothingness, the far flung flats of Makgadikgadi/Nata, experiencing a few lonely animals (wildebeasts and a hyena), very few plants (but a big baobab), and a whole lotta open space…

Out in the biggest expanse of emptiness we had a cold one while watching the sun set…

The next morning, after watching the sun set, we watched it rise again – after an hour already on the road! We left at 5:00 am so that we could have another safari at Chobe National Park, home to an enormous number of elephants. We saw a lot of them, along with many other animals…

In addition to elephants, buffalos, impalas, a few hippos and crocodiles, we saw some lions! We watched a giraffe get a drink. We saw kudus, elands, and a rare kind of antelope whose name escapes me. Here’s the last batch for this post…

After Chobe, we powered on the border and crossed into Zimbabwe. It wasn’t much farther until we made it to the Victoria Falls Village. And that is gonna be a whole other post.

But first, here are a bunch of pix from my fellow travelers that they have shared on our Whats App group…

Enjoy!

After leaving Kruger, we went to the Big Fig, a nice quasi-resort on the Limpopo River, the border between South Africa. The next day we crossed the border into Botswana and made our way to the Goo Moremi Gorge. This first batch is about getting there…

It was a hot afternoon, already tired from a lot of driving, we nonetheless drove to the trailhead, were assigned a guide, and when on an almost four kilometer hike up the gorge, experiencing the three small waterfalls therein, encountering a few critters along the way…

The wifi on our trip has been a bit spotty and I lost a few pix uploading, but maybe that’s OK? Here’s the rest of our hike up the Goo Moremi Gorge in Botswana…

The next morning we were up early again and powered on to the Makgadikgadi Salt Pans and the Nata Bird Sanctuary. Stay tuned for that…

The Intrepid trip Alan & I are taking is called Experience Southern Africa, but it is made up of two shorter ones: Kruger to Vic Falls and Okavanga & Beyond.

Thus, Kruger National Park is a big part of the first part of our adventure. Early the morning after our meeting, we were off on a long drive to Kruger. This first batch is part of getting there…

Our first stop was to the Black Mambas headquarters where we camped and had an introduction then a walkabout with two of the Anti-Poaching Unit, an all female, unarmed group of dedicated animal protectors. The rhino skulls have had the horns cut off by poachers!

Refer that to scatology, it’s a fecal matter! Yes, this batch begins and ends with poop: zebra, impala, giraffe, and baboon. In between is our walk with the Black Mambas and a nice night around the campfire.

The next day we were up very early for our safari in Kruger. Right off the bat we saw elephants. This batch also includes a female kudu, birds, impala, giraffes, warthog, zebra, and wildebeast (who gnu?)…

A safari in Kruger means a lot of driving, and we made a few detours based on the chatter amongst the guides. This batch starts with visiting a pride of lions, our driver “Jimmy”, up close elephants, a baobob tree, birds, zebra, our safari truck, and a collection of animals on a river tableau with hippos, crocodiles, Impala, elephants, etc…!

Can you find the hippopotami, kudus, wildebeasts, impalas, and giraffes? Which two like to hang out together? Which females have horns, and which males don’t?

More wild animals in very dry KNP. Can you find the snake in the tree, the buffalo from afar? What else?

Can you find the hyena, the elephant statue, our guide Jimmy? After a whole day, we went back at night! Can you find the dead impala in the tree (we couldn’t find the leopard that put it there)?

The next day we were up early again and off to our next destination.

Can you guess where that was? Stay tuned, stay curious, stay intrepid…

After a wonderful summer in La Honda, the trip planned to Africa with Alan Burr has begun. We flew to London, then to Johannesburg arriving a day before our Intrepid Tour: Experience Southern Africa began.

This first batch is in the sky and on the ground. A good guy named Lebo drove us from the Joburg airport to the Holiday Inn in Rosebank, a rather upscale neighborhood. Sunrise from the room…

After an attempt to recover from long flights and hardcore jetlag, we went first to the Apartheid Museum (via Uber, which worked great). A uniquely designed building with a large wrap around entrance, here’s the considerable approach. Inside, photography was not allowed, so this is most of that…

In spite of the restrictions on takin’ pix, I snapped a few, and then there was the nice café where we took a spot of lunch. The museum had a lot of interpretive signage in not a discernable order with a lot of emphasis on Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, and a few other ANC leaders…

After the Apartheid Museum, we Ubered to the Museum Africa in a sketchy section of downtown Joburg. The building is vast and cool, but obviously not a priority for the government. We were practically the only ones there – and it was free! Amazingly, it covered all kinds of topics: history, politics, art, anthropology, geology, photography, etc. It was great, but sadly neglected and rather unkempt. The opportunity to reorganize and revitalize is huge. Makes one think of the art of curation…

In addition to lots of cool stuff, what I really loved about Museum Africa was the absolute randomness. Take your time, stop making sense, stay curious…

Outside the Museum Africa, and the Nelson Mandela bridge. That was plenty for our first day, but we still had to meet the group back at the hotel. Bright and early the next morning (a theme so far), we headed out to Kruger National Park in an awesome truck/bus…

Get on the bus…

After an epic excursion to Scandinavia & the Baltics, we’ve been having a fun summer at home in La Honda. I swim everyday, bike most, go for a few hikes, and move stuff around. I prepared for and participated in the Pescadero Art & Fun Festival, and have continued my artistic endeavors by doing some ceramics.

Charlie has been working at Vida Verde this summer, and Veronica has been spending most of it with Justin up in Shasta. Soon, they’ll return to UC Santa Cruz for their senior years and, hopefully, both graduate in June 2025. ML has already gone back to work teaching music, etc. at all three school sites!

Dr. Alan Burr and I have planned an exciting trip to southern Africa (two Intrepid tours with Mozambique etc. in between), which of course I’ll be documenting next! This post will constitute the randomness of my two month adventure interlude. Here we go with some art, mine and Lynnette Vega’s (last 2)…

Random clouds, suns & moons, a new bathroom at Pie Ranch, and an evening dinner overlooking the sea with Ruby & Boman. The “Bienvenidos” sign in a barn with all the rest of the PAFF stuff…

One day I went for a hike at horseshoe lake (an old cattle pond just off Skyline with Josh Becker, our State Senator, and a bunch of fellow constituents…

Allow me to explain the blast from the past below! I’m thinking of applying to work at LA28, the return of the Olympics to Los Angeles in 2028. So, I looked up some of the pix I had from the first time I worked at the Olympics in 1984 – my introduction to living in LA, and the start of my teaching career in LAUSD. As a bilingual host (French), I worked at the UCLA village with a bunch of other fun people, and hosted the welcoming ceremonies for Togo (’cause I lived there) and Greece (’cause the Olympics started there). This batch also includes my former Hamilton High colleague, Dr. Jon Amsden, and a day when it snowed in Riverside…!

Randomness! A good blood pressure reading, an empty weed jar, phone screen grab, four minis in a La Honda driveway, some naked ladies, and an old basketball hoop. ML & I had dinner at the beach with Ruby & Boman again! Some homegrown and a map of the fire fuel mitigation project in town…

More shots – mostly panos – of the forest clearing project to protect us from fires. Why? Because to me this is a great opportunity to make some new mountain bike trails – don’t you agree?

The King’s Mountain Art Fair on Labor Day weekend 2024…

CLHG Finance Committee meeting, and how we train our children to be school shooters – nerf guns!

A batch of randomness! First up, my Covid Vax card, then a bike ride on the coastal trail, a property for sale in Princeton, harbor boat in the fog, a chili party at Karl & Rita’s, and the Pie Ranch harvest dinner. Then, some random shots at the house (a front door needing to be replaced and my corral studio), posed banana slugs (couldn’t get ’em to get freaky), kids bikes parked at Veronica’s house in SC, and two medicine bottles for a trip to Africa (potential malaria and diarrhea)…

Thanks again friends. This is being posted from SFO on our way to southern Africa for two more Intrepid tours: Experience Southern Africa & the Garden Route. Stay tuned for more…