A Happy Zanzibarian Christmas!

Got to Zanzibar on Saturday for the last leg of our adventure - some time to enjoy the sun and the sand - before we head home on Saturday to the New England winter.

Had a great sunset cruise on a local dhow

Went on a tour of the local spice plantations (Zanzibar is known as "the Spice Island") - the red pit is nutmeg

Said goodbye to all of our Australian overland safari friends, and checked into the Zanzi Resort to enjoy our first 4 nights of luxury in a long time (and some long overdue hot showers) before we head to the airport in Dar es Salaam on Saturday for our flight out.

Last night was a dual celebration:  a traditional Zanzibarian Christmas (bear in mind that Zanzibar is something like 98% Muslim).  Like most of you, I am sure, we ate goat and lobster tail, while being entertained by local musicians (not your traditional Christmas carollers)

And of course the traditional Christmas python dance

And, finally, the last of my 50th birthday celebrations!

Well, the pool is calling me, so I wish you all a very merry Christmas.  Home on Sunday!  And then "funemployed" reverts to just old "unemployed"......
 
 

 
 
 
 
 

Tanzania

Just arrived in Dar es Salaam, the capital of Tanzania.  It was a 10 hour drive in 90 degree heat in a bus with no air conditioning.  Luckily, the bus only broke down twice along the way.  Dar seems like a typical East African city - much like Nairobi and Kampala - with the exception of the heavy Muslim influence (I admit that the van that pulled up along side us with the big picture of Osama bin Laden in the back window kind of unnerved me - Seal Team 6 where are you when we need you?).  Tomorrow we're up at 4 to take the ferry to Zanzibar for a week of rest and relaxation on the beach before we head home to the snow and cold.

Earlier this week we did the Ngorongoro Crater and Serengeti National Park.  I won't post lots of pictures due to limited internet bandwidth here, but just a couple:

The spotted hyena:

The elephants surrounding our campsite when we woke up in the morning:

And a great shot of a large leopard lounging in a tree:

Well, that's all for now.  We'll try to make one more post from Zanzibar.  Home 1 week from tomorrow!  Please try to get rid of the snow and cold before we get back......
 
 

Viva Mandela and Happy 50th Birthday Kenya!

It was a very cool week to be in Africa.  Watching Nelson Mandela's memorial service in Uganda and celebrating Kenya's 50th anniversary of independence yesterday.  Lots of activity as well as lots of travelling back from Uganda to Kenya with stops at Jinja - the source of the Nile, riding all-terrain vehicles through fields and villages around Jinja, a game drive at Lake Nakuru National Park in Kenya, and last night's celebration of Kenyan independence in Naivasha (interestingly, while most Africans are huge Obama fans, many Kenyans don't like him because he hasn't visited Kenya).

The landscape and wildlife here never get old.  These pics from Lake Nakuru National Park:

Tomorrow, we head back to Nairobi, and then Sunday its off to the Serengeti and the Ngorogoro Crater in Tanzania, then on to Zanzibar  next weekend for the last days of our great adventure......
 
 
 
 
 

Rwanda

Yesterday was a very interesting and very sad day.  A group of us hired a taxi and drove across the border to Kigali, the capital of Rwanda.  Kigali is a surprisingly clean and modern city (by East African standards).  In Kigali we visited the Genocide Museum and a church.  The museum commemorates the 1994 genocide when an estimated 1 million Rwandans were massacred in a period of 3 months.

 They also had exhibits commemorating other genocides including the Holocaust, the Armenian genocide and the killing fields in Cambodia,  More than 250,000 bodies are buried in mass graves on the site of the museum.  

We had lunch at the hotel in Kigali made famous in the movie Hotel Rwanda.  It was a beautiful hotel and quite busy with both locals and foreigners. Interestingly, they did not have even a plaque commemorating the heroic acts that occurred at the hotel during the genocide.

After lunch we went to a church 25 km south of Kigali.  The church was sheltering 10,000 people who were all killed.  They have racks of skulls and bones of the victims, with the marks from the machetes and clubs used to kill them very evident.  On the front gate of the church you can still see the damage caused by the grenades used by the attackers, and the clothing from the victims is still in piles on the floor.  It rought back memories of Yad Vashem for those of you who have been there - though the fact that these massacres occurred so recently made them all the more shocking.

Our tour guide was 12 years old during the attacks and survived by hiding with two of her sisters in a swamp.  Her parents and 2 other sisters were killed at the church. 

All in all, a very informative and very depressing day that left all of wondering how something like this could have happened while the Western world stood by and did nothing.

Gorillas in the Mist

After 3 lomg days of bus travel through Kenya and Uganda, including a stop at the equator

Friday of last week was our day for tracking the mountain gorillas in the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest in western Uganda.  We set out on our hike with a local guide, two armed rangers and several porters to carry our day packs.  

The landscape was as lush as any we have ever seen anywhere in the world

Only 840 mountain gorillas remain in the wild along the borders between Uganda, Rwanda and the Congo.  The gorillas move among the 3 countries and we were lucky they were not in the Congo last week, as the security situation in the Congo would have prevented us from seeing them.

Only one group goes out to see each gorilla family each day, and you are only allowed to spend 1 hour with the gorillas once you find them.  Because they share 98.4% of their DNA with humans, no one who is sick is allowed to go out and We were fortunate to be assigned the largest family - a group of 26, including 2 silverbacks.  The photos of the gorillas are great, but don't convey how impressive they really are.

 

One last comical note.  As my beard has grown over the last 3 months, my nickname in Africa had progressed from Sean (for Sean Connery) to Santa Claus.  When we were out on the gorilla trek, our local Ugandan guide insisted that I send him a picture of the two of us together.  In his words "when I see you in heaven, I will know I am with Moses."

Home 3 weeks from today!   Time flies.....

 
 
 
 

Suitable for Mature Audiences Only

When anyone comes back from a safari in Africa, the first question they get is almost invariably, "did you see a kill?"  Almost always, the answer is "No".  After 8 weeks in South Africa coming close, we finally did get to see a kill 2 days ago in the Masai Mara in Kenya.  The pictures are pretty graphic, but they're nothing like watching it live!

We had been out most of the day in a rickety 4x4 driven by a Masai guide who was the son of the local Masai village chief.  The car stalled out 10 times during the day and we had to get out to push to get it started again.  In mid-afternoon we stopped at the Mara river to see the hippos and crocs.  As we left the river we saw a large herd of zebras being pursued by lions.  They were trapped between the lions and the river.  As we watched, a pride of 5 lions took down a baby zebra only about 30 feet from our vehicle.  It was sad and thrilling at the same time.  Check out the pics:

Lots more pics and video we can share when we get home.  Arrived in Kampala, Uganda tonight after 2 long days of driving.  1 more day of driving tomorrow and then we trek to see the mountain gorillas on Friday.  Hopefully, will have more cool pictures to share after that experience.

Hope everyone is well at home!
 
 
 
 

A Happy Hyena Thanksgiving

While you are all celebrating your Thanksgiving tomorrow, your thanks will be no doubt be shared by one lucky brown hyena now safe here at Shamwari.  As I reported on our most recent blog post, a hyena was spotted on a cattle farm just north of Shamwari, and the farmer gave the Shamwari conservation team the opportunity to capture and relocate it before he shot it.  We set a trap last Friday.  Last night we went to check on the trap - no luck.  The bait was still there, and no sign of a hyena.  We sat near the trap and played the sounds of distressed animals (not pleasant sounds).  We were not optimistic that we would catch the hyena, and started to doubt whether the farmer had actually seen one.

This afternoon, the Shamwari conservation team got a call from the farmer - the hyena was in the trap.  Seems like the sounds we played did the trick, and the camera trap we set captured this picture of the hyena at the cage only 20 minutes after we left last night!

Tonight the team retrieved the lucky hyena and brought him back to the Shamwari Wildlife Rehabilitation Center

So that he could be measured, tested, collared and photographed

Tomorrow we'll release him onto the reserve, where hopefully he'll be safe.  And with that, we will bid a fond adieu to Shamwari, and off we go on the next leg of our adventure!

To all our friends and family, we wish you a very Happy Thanksgiving!  Save us some turkey and stuffing!

 
 
 

 
 

Winding Down at Shamwari

Well, only 3 days left in our 8 week stay here at Shamwari.  Where does the time go?  On Thursday of this week, while all of you are eating turkey and watching football we'll be making last minute preparations for our upcoming adventure in East Africa.  We fly to Nairobi on Friday and begin our overland safari on Sunday.  5 weeks from today we'll be home.

The weather here has been awesome the last few days.  It finally feels like Africa - sunny and in the 80's.  Friday we headed out to a cattle farm just north of Shamwari.  The farmer has spotted a hyena on his property.  Rather than shooting it he called the conservation team at Shamwari to give them a chance to trap and relocate it onto the reserve.  So on Friday we collected some bait

And headed out to set the trap.  We'll see if we have any luck.....

I think I earned my dip in the lake after (and yes, I know, I'm beginning to bear an uncanny resemblance to Santa Claus)

This weekend we went whitewater rafting on the Fish River.  The guys who run the company are very smart - they intentionally separate spouses into separate rafts which otherwise they say are referred to as "divorce boats."  

Here's Melanie and her partner going over one of the rapids as Melanie struggles fiercely to stay in the boat

And here's me and my partner experiencing slightly less drama

We capped off the evening with a delicious braii (South African for barbecue) including bacon-wrapped cherries - a new delicacy we'll have to share with you when we get home!

 
 
 

 
 
 

If the Lion Don't Get You, the Snake Might.....

This past weekend, Melanie and I drove to Tsitsikamma National Park for a weekend away.  It's about 3  hours from Shamwari along the coast west of Port Elizabeth.  The weather turned out to be pretty wet,, but we made the most of it nonetheless.

On Saturday morning we went for a 3 hour hike along the shoreline.  Despite some torrential downpours and having to take shelter under some trees from thunder  and lightning, we enjoyed the scenery along the way

And were rewarded by a beautiful waterfall at the end

There was a brief respite from the rain on Sunday morning which allowed us to go zip lining about 30 meters up over the forest canopy in the park

Monday morning it was back to the grind here at Shamwari.  One of the challenges in running a game reserve is keeping the right balance of animals.  Here, the lions have been a little bit too successful, so they decided to move one of their young adult male lions to a neighboring reserve.  After we found him and the vet got him with the tranquilizer gun, we loaded him onto the back of a pickup truck

And posed for a couple of photos before he woke up

While we didn't enjoy the weekend rain, it provided lots of large puddles for the elephants to splash about in.  The young ones seem to enjoy splashing about in puddles as much as young humans do!

The most recent excitement we've had was today just before lunch when we found one of the deadliest snakes in South Africa in a tree that stands about 15 feet away from the entrance to the building we eat all of our meals in.  Apparently there is no anti-venom to treat this snake's bite.  Lets hope his stay is a short one!

 Hope all is well back in America!