The highlight of Jimmy Balodimas’s return to Africa with us was the “Fly-in safari” along the Skeleton Coast in Namibia.

We did a three night, four day safari, flying from camp to camp in a Cessna 210. Our local guide and pilot, Andre, grew up in this area, exploring, and learning about the fascinating geology and ecology. Andre’s experience as a light aircraft pilot are legendary, and his more than ten thousand hours in a Cessna 210 really showed when he was in the pilot’s seat.

Namibia is such a vast country and flying is very often the best way of seeing it. We flew over beautiful dune landscapes, punctuated with oryx and springbuck. We flew low level along the beach, seeing colonies of Cape fur seals, sharks basking in the shallows, dolphins hunting schools of fish, flocks of flamingos flying over lagoons and shipwrecks.

We would stop at intervals along the way, sometimes landing near the beach, to look at old diamond workings, or pieces of an old shipwreck. Sometimes we would land in a valley to look at some interesting geological formations, or to go for a walk and explore some secret caves with ancient Bushmen paintings.

In the evenings we would land on one of Andre’s desert strips, meet up with a vehicle and drive into a simple but comfortable camp where we would settle in with a hot shower, cold beer and good wholesome food.

From the camps we would drive or walk to look at the landscape, or for wildlife such as desert elephants, lions or giraffe or visit a local Himba village.

On our last day we took a boat drive up the Kunene river, looking for crocodiles and birds. We went up to Smuggler’s Point – a place where a man ferries Beryl or Aquamarine stone across the river from Angola to Namibia in his little homemade raft… and then he somehow gets it to Windhoek hundreds of miles away… all because the price is better in Namibia. A little part of life, that we only experienced because of the right local knowledge.

Dave

Filed under: Dave Christensen, Namibia | No Comments »

Peter and Alice Redfield’s  return to Tanzania after more than twenty years away, with their children, and their grand children, was quite a safari. Apart from the optical delights of lions, cheetahs and elephants, News Years Eve yielded a Blue Moon with a partial lunar eclipse.

The Safari was a kids’ delight, with amazing game drives, lots of soccer games with enthusiastic staff members, opportunities to learn how to use Masaai weapons, and the evening cards and domino games.

One of the Highlights was the concert put on by he younger members of the group to see out the year! Dressed of course in the appropriate attire!

Dave

Filed under: Dave Christensen, Serengeti, Tanzania | No Comments »

Tanzania was a dust bowl just before our safari started in mid December 2009.

At Lake Manyara, it looked like we would soon be able to walk accross the lake!

Then overnight it rained, and the following evening the lake was full of flamingos!

Later, in the Serengeti, we could see the grassless plain just before it was hit by intense showers. As the first deluge of raindrops hit the ground, a powdery cloud of dust would rise up, a bit like when a puffball mushroom bursts spreading its spores.

And did we get rain! Literally while we were in the Serengeti Plains, we saw it transform in a matter of days from this dusty wasteland into lush, most, and in some places boggy, fields of bounty!

This meant that the hazy horizons became crystal clear, enabling us to see for miles, and whenever we wanted some entertainment we could always look up into the sky and see changing dramatic cloud formations.

Justin

Filed under: Justin Bell, Serengeti, Tanzania | No Comments »