Cape Town to Barcelona: 21 days on the Norwegian Sky via the West Coast of Africa at 25+/- Miles an Hour

Cape Town to Barcelona:

21 days on the Norwegian Sky

via the West Coast of Africa

at 25+/- Miles an Hour

 

Part I

 

The whole reason to be in South Africa in the first place was to take a cruise from Cape Town to Barcelona.  Three weeks.  Repositioning.  $2,500.00!  The deal was too good to pass up and at this point in my life the reality of slogging through both sides of Africa isn’t all that great.  So we slapped down the money a year ago and in mid-May 2025 found ourselves in this part of the world.  I could see no reason to go that distance without seeing something beforehand.  Or at least afterwards.

 

I’ve written about this before, but here it is again.  When I was in 7^th grade, some kid brought in a pen some well-traveled relative had given him.  In it, was a trans-Atlantic cruise ship floating in water.  I was fascinated by it.  Not so much the pen, but that someone had done this, crossed the ocean.  In 8^thgrade, one of the priests in the church my Catholic school was linked to spoke to us about being somewhere in the world doing mission work and telling us about time zones and how air traffic was hard on the body.  In 9^th grade, my family took a three-day cruise from Miami to Nassau.  On our first night out, we hit a storm.  I was the only one not sick.  I hit the casino, gambled, won $15.00 and never told anyone I was only 15.

 

Perhaps that was the seed of Odysseus that was planted in me that was to grow within me for the lifetime of travel that was to come.

 

 

What the sales pitch for West Africa  did no say in the summer of ’24 was how expensive it was get to South Africa, just how far it was and all the additional costs for a cruise to such exotic ports as Senegal, Ivory Coast and Sao Tome.

 

Nobody wanted to go.  I’ve grown very accustomed to that.  Finally, Steve, who doesn’t like to travel but does like cruises said Yes.  And off we were.

 

We met in Cape Town on a rainy autumn day in May.  Leaves were at full peak color and being there just felt weird.  May.  Mother’s Day.  Fall.  

 

We did the normal tourist stuff—Table Top, Botanical Gardens, and a bus tour to Cape Point—the southern-most point of Africa.  That was cool.  We also saw penguins swimming off a beach in a ritzy Cape Town neighborhood—the only penguins on the African continent.

 

Day 1

Cape Town, South Africa

-33°   North

May 14, 2025

 

I always feel safe below the equator.  It seems as if all the crazy stuff in the world happens in the Northern Hemisphere.  If a bomb were to drop in the above the equator, there might be a fighting chance of staying alive.

 

The safari over (big sigh), I found myself in Cape Town, SA on the afternoon of May 9^th.  Steve was in the air and would not arrive until the next day.  It was raining when I arrived, and was raining the morning of the next day.  All of which was ok.  It was a good excuse just to stay in and try to neutralize myself.  I’d been way over stimulated for days, so a day of doing nothing was a good thing.

 

Day 3

Walvis Bay, Namibia

-22°57’ South

May 16, 2025

 

Namibia gets very high marks with tourists who’ve dared driving on the left side of the road.  I’d spent several days in Chobe with two Dutch couples who’d just spent 2 weeks touring the country in a rental car.  Vast, open spaces, sand, desert, modern, small cities, raves all around.

 

I have long realized that traveling via a cruise ship is no way to see a country. An island nation is ok, but not a country. 

 

We joined a tour group off ship, visited one of the massive million+ year old sand dunes, saw salt production then headed to the lovely little city of Swakopmund.  It was one of the those times that the traveler says, Where am I?  Bavarian architecture, signs in Germans, wurst on the menu.  It wasn’t an unpleasant place to hang for a while.

 

We also visited a “township.”  That’s a word I learned from the years on South African apartheid.  This is where the poor—always black—live.  One wonders where hope lives in a place like this?  How do you rise above this, get out? Is it no wonder so many people want to emigrate to 1^st world countries?

 

That night, the sky was black and moonless.  I could see the Southern Cross, the last time I’d see it before returning to the Southern Hemisphere.

 

Days in deep heat and intense sun knocked me out early.  I suppose my body was still in recovery mode. I shut my eyes early.  Tomorrow was a sea day.  

 

I slept almost ten hours.

 

 

Day 6

Luanda, Angola

8° 50’ South

May 19, 2025

 

I have seen poverty in my life, and Luanda was full of it.

 

50% of the population is unemployed.  There is no social net.  People slept under palm trees, on the beach, and in tent-communities in the botanical garden.

 

We were at 2° latitude south, 2 degrees from the equator and it was suffocatingly hot and humid.  We lucked out joining an off-shore tour.  For five hours and $55.00, we were in the presence of 2 enthusiastic and knowledgeable young women were more than happy to share their country with us.  Good ambassadors.

 

At the end of the tour, I asked Jessica, the young tour guide, to steer me to a place where I could buy some Diet Coke.  She went way out of her way and became my hero of the day.

 

What I saw that day raised the question once again.  What is it Americans think they want with our current political situation?  Americans have no idea what they have.  None.  This is why short-term missions like the Mission of Hope are good for some people.  It opens their eyes to the “other”—those who were not born into our good fortune.  I don’t want to waste my energy on these people who vote against their own best interests, but, as one person told me a year ago, “If Trump wins, Americans deserve what they get.”

 

And they’re getting it and it ain’t over yet.

 

Day 8

Sas Tome

0° 20’ North

May 21, 2025

 

Earlier in the day, sometime between 2:00 am and 4:00 am, we crossed the equator.  I was really hoping that it would be done during the day so I’d be able to experience it.  Of course, I could have gotten up and waited out the passage over this imaginary line, but I didn’t.  the day before, there’d been a fun thing pool side.  Neptune.  His consort.  Dousing of water.  Crossing the equator was a big deal with sailors back in the day.  Everything got turned upside down.  Men dressed like women; women dressed like men.  Passengers kissed ugly fishes and got wet.  This little ceremony was pretty tame compared the stories I’d read.  God forbid a man dress like a woman in these days of lunacy.  

 

That morning, we arrived on the small island nation of Sao Tome.  (Country #107!)  Equatorially hot, humid and poor.  There was, about the island, a gauntlet of suffering among the people.  

Hundreds of people selling almost nothing on the street.  A towel on the pavement, some ginger and a few tomatoes at one place, packs of cigarettes at another.  Poverty.  Steve was taking photos and I glanced at a woman on the ground furious with him, ready to pelt him with a coconut.  I tugged on his shirt and told him to put the phone down.  No international incident needed on this trip.

 

Tourist infrastructure was limited and it was the only country in the world since Vietnam in 2000 that didn’t sell Diet Coke.  Imagine!  No Diet Coke.  Not even in the supermarket.

 

Because of time constraints, we were not too adventurous.  We had to be back on the boat by 3:00 pm and had only gotten off at 11:00.  

 

The day was short, but that was ok.  A bit of late lunch,  hot tub and a nap pretty much wound down the day.

 

 

Day 10

Abidjan, Ivory Coast

May 23, 2025

 

I do not like to complain, but this was the singularly worst port experience I have ever had in my life.  First off, cruises are no way to see a country.  I’m sorry, for 8 hours in Helsinki does not really qualify as a visit.  Yes, I was physically in Finland, but can hardly say I saw the even the city.

 

But Abidjan, Ivory Coast takes the cake.  First off, it was a 20-minute ride from the port to the city, NCL, which gives nothing away for free, at least provided buses into the city.  In this case, the “city” was a craft market in the middle of nowhere.  Vendors were aggressive.  No eye contact could be made nor any questions asked.  From there, the bus continued onward to a mall, again on the fringe of the city.  No one dared to go anywhere because we’d been told the city was a) dangerous and b) the traffic so bad that we’d never get back to the boat.  People tried Uber and even that failed.

 

So here we were, sitting in the Moka café, in the capital of the Ivory Coast, checking our email.  By now, we’d made friends with others on board, so we each to commiserate with.

 

There was no reason to linger.  We got back to the boat, lay in the sun and lounged in one of the hot tubs and called it a day.

 

It’s highly unlikely I will ever revisit the Ivory Coast, but I least I chalked up country #108!

 

 

Day 13

Dakar, Senegal

14° 72’ North

May 26, 2025

 

We were on the edge of the Sahara Desert and the day was hot and dry.  Gone the deep of humidity of the previous stops close to the equator.  Our final African stop was Dakar, Senegal—a democracy on paper, apparently well-ordered, regularly subverted by irrational chaos.  A place where I felt instantly at home.

We exited the boat, negotiated a car, driver and guide ($75.00 a person x 3.  Karen, an Australian woman, joined us.)  Falou, the “guide”, had a plan.  

He called me “Papa,” Karen “Mommy.”  Who Steve was in the mix we didn’t know.  He was confident and experienced and we knew right off the bat the $225.00 was never going to be enough.

Churches and mosques.  We navigated narrow streets.  The Islamic holiday of Eid was approaching—the time when the Islamic world celebrates Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac to honor God—and stalls of sheep of were everywhere.  “Sheep week,” I’ve called it ever since I got stuck in Kusadasi, Turkey years ago when all transportation had come to a halt.  Imagine trying to move around home during the week of Thanksgiving, although the two holidays have nothing in common.

It was hot and dusty.  Fine particles of sand, invisible to all of us, filtered the air.  No grass grew.  Gone was the verdant jungle of sub-Saharan Africa.  This was travel that I enjoyed.  Women carried baskets on their heads.  I bought an orange from a boy selling them on the street.  Karen, our companion, was quiet.  At one point, Falou had the driver bring us to a market.  It was a ploy.  We got out of the car on a chaotic street selling all sorts of stuff that look nice but are totally useless—bolts of brilliantly patterned fabric, wholesale items for the tourist retail market.  We were led up three flights of stairs.  Men were busy stitching shopping bags, caftans and assorted carved African wildlife in tiny workshops.  The owner was aggressive.  I caved.  Steve and Karen were firm.  No.  He’d found his sucker and it was me.

He wanted $50.00 for a tee shirt of cotton shoulder bag.  I said $20.00.  He scoffed.  I walked away.  He followed.  $35.00.  No.  $25.00.  He scoffed again.   I walked away.  

He followed, then thrust them in my hand in pretend disgust.  Ok.  $25.00. I’m sure I still paid far more than I should have

How I will get all this stuff him is still a mystery. 

Teeming, hot, dry and full of noise and color… Such was Dakar.  The day ended too soon.  Falou had more plans, but our 4 hours was up.  We demanded to be let off at a restaurant within walking distance to the pier.  

“Quick,” I whispered to Karen.  Get out of the taxi fast and get in the café.  Steve piled out last.  He’s very good at what happened next.  More money.  Angry words.  Broken promises.  Steve held firm then walked off.

Suck are things in these parts of the world.

I was energized, wanted to stay longer.  I lingered at a craft market.  It was prayer time and groups of men and women prayed separately.  Still, Islam permeated the day.  Men, finely robed and women in glorious Senegalese hajibs–the myriad colors of Africa.

I reluctantly boarded the ship.  A day was not enough.  I was back in air con, and in the presence of fat, white tourists.  

That evening the sun set before we left port.  The sky was a smoky yellow haze, sand from the Sahara muting the sharp clarity of a sunset over clean, clear skies of Namibia three weeks earlier.

That night, the ship headed far out to sea.  We began rounding the bulge of Africa.  The NCL Sky pushed against a stiff northern wind.  Not more than a half a mile away a black freighter, almost like a ghost ship against the darkening sky, passed us going south.

The next two days were sea days and African ports had come to end.

The Magic of it All

The Magic of it All

 

I was sad to leave every aspect of the safari.  It would have been an easy place to spend an extended period of time.  This was a country of rich human texture, where people had stories written across their faces.  I was but passing through.

 

It was my good fortune that Tanya was also coming with me.  We got to the Botswana/Zimbabwe border and had to walk across.  It’s always fun to walk from one country to the next.  Our driver dropped us off, navigated us through exit/entrance customs then met us on the Zim side, took a photo of me under the rusty “Welcome to Zimbabwe” sign, then deposited us at the elegant Pioneer’s Lodge in Victoria Falls.

 

Two days later I was sitting in the Victoria Falls airport. I had that feeling in the pit of my stomach that something was lost.  There was a sadness.  What I had seen was so astounding that I knew it would be hard to replicate, even if I returned.  There is nothing like the first time.  I had read that once you experience Africa it’s difficult not to be impressed, and that’s my case.  

 

I wish I’d had more time to sit with the land.  I wish I’d had more time to sit with people and hear their stories.  I wish I’d had more time in general, not just for the animals and the people.  Africa is different.  I’ve never been here before in any form.

 

I will forever remember the spacious solitude, silence and stillness, its splendid isolation and showers of starlight let loose each night.

 

I remember once coming out of a grocery store in Buenos Aires on a nice summer’s day.  I stopped, and looked around.  where am I, I thought?  I could have been in Paris.  I could have been in Manhattan.  There was that sense about the moment that I could have been just about anywhere in Europe or North America.  I even get that feeling once in a while in Mexico.

 

But not Africa.  As my friend Glenda used to say, “we’re not in Dannemora.”  

 

Really, what do we learn about Africa in school?  When I was a child, we donated pennies to save pagan babies on the dark continent.  Hopefully, they don’t do that today, although radical right-wing, MAGA Protestant denominations end missionaries to Africa to evangelize a radical form of American Trump Christianity.  Some of the most heinous anti-LGBTQ legislation in the world exists in some of these countries thanks to American evangelicals and their cultural agenda.

 

And it’s not as if Africa is on everyone’s radar.  It’s far, relatively unknown and expensive to get to. The average tourist who ventures out of the USA talks about river cruises in Europe, trips to Paris and London or winter breaks on a Caribbean island.

 

Where on the globe have you have ever seen hippos grazing in the forest or elephants playing in the shallow waters of a river?

 

Two weeks earlier I’d left Mexico City, an absolute blank slate.  I’d had no time to do deep research about the places I’d see, had no expectations—something I’d learned to do years ago.  Expectations create disappointments and that’s not a good thing.  That fact that this part of the journey—Sao Paolo, the safari Victoria Falls even happened was a small miracle what with the issue with my visa and being so sick.  I was beyond grateful.

 

The flight took off on time.  It was a full 90 minutes into the flight that I saw any sign of habitation below me.  South Africa spanned out as far as I could see as barren desert.  It was a land of spacious solitude, silence and stillness.

Two small town finally emerged and it made me wonder who lived there and why.  Like Australia, South Africa is built along its coast.  Inland is too hostile.

 

I landed in Cape Town.  A new adventure was waiting.  Steve was in the air somewhere over Europe on his way to Quatar then on to South Africa.  The whole purpose of being in Africa in the first place was a cruise that would begin midweek.

 

But first, some de-stimulation.  It had been a most extraordinary 10 days in the bush and some downtime was welcomed.

 

 

 

 

Victoria Falls

Victoria Falls

 

If there is a town that Disney built, it’s the village of Victoria Falls.  Its sole purpose is to provide an extraordinarily high level of service to the tourist who’s will to spend spend inflated prices to hang around.  Best rule: pull in, see the falls, then leave.  There are as many ways to spend a dollar as there are bees in a hive.  Bungee jumping, Canopy tours, a Hemingway High Tea ($180.00), and a full day Teddy Roosevelt Experience ($350.00).

 

My experience at Victoria Falls was a bit like a visit to the coast of Maine on a glorious summer’s day, except off-coast fog occludes vistas of the sea.  You know it’s there because you can hear the gulls, the fog horn, but weather just gets in the way.  It was like that at the Falls.  Numbers are astounding.  Five million liters of water spill over the falls each minute and that water tumbles into a narrow gorge.  Only from the air does one get a really good view.  Of the 16 view-points on the 1.7 km ridge, only five provide clear vistas.  The other 11 vista points are so close to the falls that a heavy mist, at times so thick that being within it was like being under a strong shower, soaks the visitor. There was no point trying to stay dry.

 

Victoria Falls is the highest, widest sheet of falling water in the entire world, and in May the water falls at full force. Clouds of spray, thick with water, form as the Zambezi rages over the falls. It deserves some credit for traveling 2,700 km from its source in Zambia, near the border of the Congo where it travels through parts of Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique.  It’s unfair to compare it other marvels of its kind, but at least Niagara Falls is visible, as is Iguazu in Argentina.

 

To say that I was disappointed with Victoria Falls—the mightiest waterfalls in the world—is tourism sacrilege.  I’d traveled a very long way to come here and to be disappointed was a let-down in itself.

 

Unlike Iguazu, where I spent two full days, Victoria Falls got five very wet hours.  When I exited the park, I parked myself in a café, in the sun, and ordered a really good piece of carrot cake and a Diet Coke.

 

When I finally got back to the Lodge, I had dinner with Tanya who was horrified that I was disappointed with the Falls.  “I cried,” she told me.  “It was a lifelong dream that was fulfilled.”  I felt badly.  The unapologetic country bagger is no jaded traveler, but Victoria Falls just didn’t cut it.  I don’t like to compare places in the world.  Every place is wonderful is in its own way, but I’d seen Iguazu and that had been the bees knees, the cat’s meow.

 

A week later, we met in Cape Town for dinner.  She’d flown back to the city several hours after I had.  Her seat mate vindicated me.  He’d been to Iguazu, too, and confirmed my bias.  

 

Some things just are better than others.

 

I suppose I could revisit. I hear there’s barely a trickle by end of the dry season—October into November.  But it’s no easy task getting to this part of Africa, and once will have to suffice.

 

The carrot cake gets high marks, though.  

 

I might return for that.

 

 

Zim-Zam

Zim-Zam

 

The unapologetic country bagger takes every opportunity he can.  Thus was it in the early afternoon of May 7^th that, after settling into the swank British-colonial style Pioneers Lodge in Victoria Falls, he set off immediately for the Zimbabwe/Zambia border.  Because the Zambezi River functions as the natural boundary between the two countries, a relatively short bridge separates the two.  It wasn’t difficult to get from one side to another.  

 

I had a driver drop me off at the Zim side, and even before I reached the border station, I was bombarded with men trying to sell me stuff.  I was in the market for nothing, and I lost count of the number of times I said “I’m not buying anything.”  Poverty is a difficult thing to observe, and even more difficult to diffuse.  There was absolutely nothing I wanted to buy, yet these guys were desperate to earn some money.  

 

To make it local, crossing from Zim to Zam is a bit like crossing from Rouses Point to Vermont.  On the left side of the bridge was a partial view of Victoria Falls and its mist forced me to put on my raincoat.  Two young men joined me, both heading to the center to watch the fool hardy bungee jump off the bridge.  

 

Once on the Zam side, I contracted with a car, driver and guide who filled my day with unexpected surprises.  Perhaps some marketing skills would increase business, because “do you want to go to the village,” just wasn’t convincing enough, although I did say yes and yes turned out to be good thing to say.

 

We set off.  Baboons were everywhere, but I never saw any other wildlife other than a statue of a zebra is someone’s front yard.  This wasn’t a national park.  We stopped at the village of Lampasa.  I had to remind myself that this was not a Disney set. Every family home in the village of 700 was made of mud and sticks.  The village has been continually settled since the 13^th century when people arrived from what is now Zimbabwe and the Congo.  If the three pigs had built a village, this would be it.  But there was no big bad wolf to frighten me away. Instead, a woman emerged and told me she would be my guide.  We did a slow walk around the village, saw the school, the medical clinic, the community center, where the chief lived.  This was the first time in over a week that I heard music and it came from a transistor radio that a group of women were listening to.  Rose, my guide, asked me if the young people of the community could perform me.  This was just an obvious.  Why wouldn’t I want an added cultural experience.  What emerged astounded me.

 

There must have been 20 young people involved in the production.  First boys played drums, then the dancers emerged.  They told a story of which I did not understand.  What impressed me, in a time of disappearing values, was how this village imparted its traditions to a younger generation.

 

This was a country of rich human texture, where people had stories written across their faces and told them through dance and music.  I longed to stay longer, travel deeper into the country.

 

The music drew out a group of younger kids, some of whom danced to the music.  With all the tourists in the area, it surprised me that I was the only one.  But the package tour people were on their way to the Zambian side of Victoria Falls and bypassed this piece of rural magic.  What a shame.  Journey vs. destination.

 

We left, although I was heavily pressured to buy stuff.  The men of the village are craftsmen who have a cooperative. The handicrafts that I’d seen were astounding, but I had no room in my luggage nor room in the house.  My collecting days are over.  Plus, there’s no African theme going on at 8 Lynde St. so nothing was purchased.

 

Twenty minutes later we arrived at the gateway to the 300-meter stretch of Victoria Falls that Zambia has to offer.  The trail went in two directions.  I did not know why the guide stripped down to gym shorts and sandals, but once we got close to the falls I understood why.  This is May, and the Zambezi, the fourth longest river in Africa, raged with excessive rains that had fallen during the wet summer months from January to April.  Countless steams, tributaries, rivulets and lesser rivers all pumped trillions of liters into the Zambezi.  The flow over the falls was so great that it was almost impossible to see them.  Mist rose in the form of heavy rain.  

 

I was soaked.  Boots, clothes…everything.  We walked the other trail, to a “beach” of sort,not much more that 10 meters from the falls.   The guide told me people get stupid, step into the water, lose control and get swept over.  Talk about going out in a splash.  I wonder if bodies are ever found.

 

By now the sun was low in the sky and I was running out of steam.  I’d had enough.  I was also hungry.  The day had started early and I’d eaten nothing since having a slice of toast with peanut butter on it that morning, so I treated the guys to a late lunch.  I’m ashamed to say that my only dining experience in Zambia was at an American-style fast food joint named The Hungry Lion eating fried chicken, fries and a Diet Pepsi.   Still, after my guide told me about dried antelope meat cooked into a stew with vegetables and corn, it seemed the right thing to do.

 

My driver dropped me off at customs in Zambia.  Another stamp in my passport.  I walked across the bridge once more, this time long after dusk.  Only the light from a half moon illuminated what I could see of the Falls.  My boots squeaked from being waterlogged.  I was tired.  I’d walked 13,500 steps.  I cleared Zimbabwean officials, then got a cab to bring me back to the hotel.  

 

I was bushed, pun intended.  I had the driver drop me off at the 7 & 11 (not to be confused with 7/11) convenience store at the entrance to the hotel.  I had no appetite and no interest in anything substantial dinner for dinner and there was nothing more that I wanted than a cold Diet Coke.  I also bought a can of bush beans (Yes, again), some crackers.  The price was $2.65.  I handed the clerk at $3.00 and waited for changed.  There was none.  I asked her where it was and she showed me an empty till. 

 

“I can give you a banana.”

 

I started to laugh.  “A banana?”  No one had ever given me a banana in change before.

 

That was a good one, just as good as “Mr. Daniel, I put your sandals indoors so the baboons won’t take them.”

 

I walked toward the restaurant and requested a spoon, a bowl and a half bucket of ice.  I dropped my pack on a table in the glorious park-like gardens outside my room and fine-dined on bush beans, ginger snaps, a Diet Coke and a small candy bar.  The Southern Cross looked down on me.

 

I was another perfect day.  I’d zim-zammed my way between two countries.  The unapologetic country-bagger had now clocked 104 countries.

 

 

 

Suset on the Mokoro

Sunset on the Mokoro

 

A late afternoon excursion offered by the lodge packed a Land Rover full of us off to the Mokoro River, a quiet tributary that flowed into the Chobe.  Awaiting us when we arrived was a group of men—polers—who piled us into canoes and pushed off into the shallow waters.

 

First we see the hippos,” said my poler.  This is not a sentence we hear every day and was just part of the ongoing sense of wonder that waited just about every minute in both the Delta and Chobe National Park.  My poler pushes me off first, which is good.  I get a good view of just about everything.  

 

This is s not water you want to fall into.  Menacing crocodiles laze along the banks of the river.  A snake slithers on its surface. Lily pads display glorious white and purple lotus flowers.  At the round of a bend, in a large shallow pool, was another bloat of hippos.  Just another slice of wonder in days of surprise and awe.  Hippos!  We kept as safe distance.  Periodically they come up for air.  One left out a huge yawn, providing the perfect Instagram moment.

 

The poler is in no particular hurry.  We round another bend, pass a safari lodge on the river, and meander forward.  The poler alerts me to a lone elephant on the shoreline a few hundred meters ahead of us.  Fortunately, we were first in the line of canoes.  I stare is wonder.  I’ve seen lot sof elephants on this trip, but not by a river, at sunset, grazing by a river.  The guide pushes as close to the elephant as he dares.  I sit in wonder as this glorious creature, at the close of day, has chosen to come to the river to feed.

 

Magic. Eden.

 

I was evening when we returned and the glow of sunset sent shafts of orange light through the air.  As we return, the sun begins to set.  An almost reverse type of alpenglow occurs on the eastern side of the river.  The trees illuminate an orangey gold hue.  It looks like full peak autumn color in the Adirondacks. 

 

I should not be surprised.  It is fall in the Southern hemisphere, but at this latitude no leaves change color.  It was just one of nature’s glorious illusions.  This could have been a river in the Adirondacks, and this could be mid-October. But we were 8,000 miles away from there and six months off season.

 

By the time we return to the shore we are all giddy from excitement and exhaustion.  Dusk rapidly turns to dark.  Fortunately, it issn’t far to camp.  Dinner awaits, then bed.

 

I had been a day of peculiar splendor, when leaf and flower and bird and sunlit stone and shadow all seemed to proclaim the glory of God.

 

 

 

Under the Southern Cross

Under the Southern Cross

 

“Mr. Daniel.”  The voice was barely audible.

 

“Wake up call.”

 

It was 5:30 am on day four of a safari in northern Botswana.  I had not slept well the night before.  Just before nodding off, I’d hear a loud roar directly behind my luxuriant cabin.  It spooked me enough to prevent me from getting back to sleep right away.

 

I had purchased a package that gave me three nights in the Okavango Delta, another three nights in Chobe National Park and two nights at Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe.  Bush flights, all meals, transfers. Pampering included.

 

Breakfast is served on a long table, buffet style.  It’s still dark at 6:00 am and the table is lit with four lanterns.  It’s also cold and we’re bundled in sweater, scarf and light jacket.  It is the 7^th week of autumn and at the 17^th latitude south it's downright chilly before the sun rises.

 

We set off at 6:30.  Each camp has dedicated, professional guides who not only drive, but have the eyes of hawks and can spot animals long before we see them.  They can also answer any question thrown their way.  Life span, gestation, mating habits.  Name it, they know it.

 

Botswana is blessed with some of the greatest wildlife spectacles on earth.  There are more elephants here than any other place on the globe.  I am not disappointed.

 

Animals are illusive.  This is not a zoo.  Animals are where they choose to be, and every game drive is an adventure in hope.  But because this park in general is one on the most active in Africa, it did not take long to see spottings.  Elephants 30 yards off the road, herds of grazing impalas, baboons everywhere.  Giraffes are my favorite.  While other animals ignored us, the giraffe often seemed to stop and stare at us, as if they were checking us out as much as we were checking them out.

 

I have spent weeks trying to find the right words to describe what I’ve experienced.  I can plug in astounding, extraordinary, amazing into my thesaurus but I still end up with words insufficient enough to describe this.  It was my very good fortune to meet a fellow traveler, Tanya M from Cape Town, who was actually working her way from lodge to lodge and evaluating them for a safari company she worked with.  She seemed to follow me a day behind each destination.  We became fast friends.  At dinner one evening we were discussing this.  Her first language is Afrikans, a variant of Dutch.  ONGELLOOFLIK, she said one evening.  “That’s the word.”  ONGELLOOFLIK. It’s a Dutch word that means awesome, but it goes beyond that.  But more on that later.

 

I finally choose Edenic.  Let’s face it, our entire exposure to wild African animals is though zoos, National Geographic, toys, stuffed animals, and children’s literature.  I remember the 6’ high lush giraffes at FAO Schwartz on 5^th Avenue years ago when my father brought me to New York.  I can not help thinking of George and Martha when I see hippos in shallow water, or Babar when I see the myriad of elephants.  We are suspended in unreality when it comes to wild animals.  It’s easy to anthropomorphize them into something they are not.  The majority of them are wild, savage animals.  It is not our experience to see them up close in their natural habitat.  Instead, they became cute and cuddly and fun.  Even in the wild, there’s a tendency to want to get out of the Land Rover, walk over to a parade of elephants and say “Hey….  I loved Babar when I was a kid.  Know him?”

 

Edenic it was. Within the Delta and again in Chobe, the closest place I can identify to describe the landscape was Miner Woods.  Truly.  While the Delta is savannah, Chobe is woodland; more than once I had the feeling I was tooling through blueberry territory on the Flat Rock.  But that’s about where it ends.  It is no Eden. Beyond the extraordinariness of it, was the constant life and death struggle to survive.  That sleek impala?  Dinner for a lion.  That lame zebra who trailed behind the rest of his pack?  He won’t survive the month of May.  Edenic is might be to us, but we live in a fallen world and Eden is a myth.

 

While Miner is large for what it is, both the Delta and Chobe comprise thousands of square miles.  All protected.  For more than 60 years Botswana has safeguarded its natural treasures and its animals.  As a result, animals are somewhat “domesticated,” but only in the sense that they aren’t threatened by vehicles.  There is no such thing as “taking a walk.”  Anywhere.  (At both camps, escorts were required to walk us to our rooms after dinner.)  Even exiting the Land Rover to pee meant walking behind the truck, pushing my back as close to vehicle as possible, then quickly doing my business. Dangerous mammals aside, black mambos and snouted cobras hid in lairs waiting for the gringo to approach.  I was very obedient when the guide said “Don’t venture too far Mr. Daniel.”

 

Thank god I never had to do a number 2.

 

What I saw in the six days in the middle of Botswana could fill a small encyclopedia of African wildlife. Privilege, was the only word I could think of to express my gratitude for this great gift.  Leopards, a lioness and her cubs, zebras, fun flocks of guinea hens, giant eagles, kudus, one cheetah eating a recently killed impala, hippos, elephants, jackals, impalas everywhere, waterbucks and reedbucks, crocodiles, monitor lizards, a spotted genet, hyaenas.  I saw more, much more.  Edenic.

 

In the Delta and within Chobe, our land Rover stopped to let a tower of giraffes, herds of impala or a dazzle of zebras pass the road.  Elephants, who only emerged from within the woods during the heat of the morning, were often no more than twenty feet away.  Once, we were too close to a mother and her calf who got within three feet of me. I was sitting in the front seat.  “GRRR,” she announced, although it wasn’t “GRR.” It was guttural and a sound of warning.  Whatever the sound was, she let us know we were too close.

 

The Delta and Chobe a Disney set or some theme park.  It was the real thing, and as such it had a surreal quality about it. How can place like this truly exist for real, when all we ever see are protypes of it?  Warthogs come close to lodges, mongoose and baboons hang around the Namibia/Botswana border station, rare and endangered wild dogs cool under umbrella trees, and elephants play in rivers.

 

I never did see a lion, which I guess is OK.  There’s always something left for another time.

 

But I did see the Southern Cross.  Each night, I found a safe place from as much ambient light as possible.  I’d lay down a blanket and study the night sky.  The constellation has always grounded me in the southern hemisphere, and memories of it are as keen as Orion straddling Mt. Everest in Tibet or rising over the island of Koh Samui, Thailand on Christmas Eve north of the equator.

 

The Southern Cross and I have shared time in the Atacama Desert of Chile, on Bolivia’s Island of the Sun and on the rim of Ayer’s Rock in Australia.  Much like the Big Dipper, which always points to home, the Southern Cross tells me I’m far, far from home.

 

On the last morning I was in Chobe Elephant Camp the young woman who cleaned my room and I bumped into each other.

 

“I moved your sandals off the porch and into the lodge, Mr. Daniel.  If I don’t, the baboons will carry them off.”

 

Well, that woke me up.  It’s not every day someone tells you baboons will carry off your shoes.  

 

I plan to return.  Now…to find the time.