Chobe

This past Friday was a public holiday here, Sir Seretse Khama Day, honoring the founding father and first president.  I decided to head to northern Botswana and Chobe National Park, home of 55,000 elephants, for the weekend.  We left Thursday evening and got in early Friday morning.  Friday morning we went on a game drive into the park for several hours. 

It is the dry season right now, which means that it has not rained for several months.  This forces animals to move close to the Chobe River in search of food and water.

Hippos!

We also (almost literally) ran into a bull elephant in must. 

He started kicking up dust with his trunk to try and intimidate us.  We retreated gracefully. 

There were also giraffes around.

Elephant bones!  Apparently this one died recently and scavengers scattered the bones.  As they encounter them, elephants will push the bones together in a pile.  They are the only animal outside of humans to have a known death ritual.

Buffalo, not a friendly animal.

!

From a different angle.

 We then went back into town and had lunch before setting off on a boat cruise in the afternoon.

 Because there is little to eat on the mainland, many elephants swim to the islands in the middle of the river to eat.

We sat and watched them for a while. 

A herd coming down to drink.

They drank.

They threw mud on themselves.

The babies wallowed in the mud.

 With that, we headed back, camped for the night, and bused back on Saturday.  It was a great trip.  I am planning to leave on Saturday to go to Mozambique, coming back to Gabs on the 20th and flying out on the 21st, so this will probably be my last update.

A baobab tree,

The past, the recent past, and a little bit of the future

Things have been going well lately.  Zimbabwe Week was earlier this month and went really well.  Since then most of my work duties have involved writing reports of various sizes, which has been good.  Last Friday Michelle Obama was in Gaborone as part of her tour of southern Africa.  She actually visited the office right next door, the Botswana-Baylor Centre of Excellence, which is a big partnership between the US Government and Botswana that deals with pediatric HIV/AIDS.  Of course, any visit from someone in that position means that the Secret Service is everywhere.  They shut down the road early in the morning and had it blocked off by the Botswana Defense Forces.  Secret Service agents spent several hours making sure the road was clear and putting people in the proper position so Michelle could stop in for her twenty minute visit. 

Mrs. Obama arriving.

While she was in town she also hosted a luncheon with a number of prominent women and youth leaders that my boss attended, which is pretty cool.  In other news, this Friday is Sir Seretse Khama Day (founding father, first president, etc.) so I am taking off north to Kasane and Chobe, home of 55,000 elephants and where Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton got married (for the second time).  Next week will be my last at my internship.  After that I am going to spend ten days and head to Harare and than on to Mozambique to sit on a beach for a few days.  I'll be back in Botswana briefly and fly out on July 21. 

Cape Town

After Namibia, I spent three days in Gabs taking care of all of my schoolwork for the semester.  Once I finished with that, I headed off to Cape Town with a friend.  We took a bus to Jo'burg and then took an overnight sleepliner bus to Cape Town, which was hands down the most comfortable bus I have ever slept on. 

The nice thing about Cape Town is that you can always see Table Mountain.

We spent our first day wandering around.  These are the Company Gardens.

World Cup stadium on the left.

The next day we headed to Simon's Town to see the penguins.  

Simon's Town has a reasonably attractive setting.

African penguins.

Penguins negotiating a difficult task--in this case, walking. 

Safety first.

In zoos, penguins usually look graceful as they exit the water and smoothly land standing up on the ledge.  In reality, they get washed up on the sandy beach and have to spend several minutes flailing around in the shallow water until they can figure out how to stand.  

They also enjoy waddling on rocks. 

The next day we took the cable car up to the top of Table Mountain, which affords views like this:

Cape Town, from above.

The clouds rolling in. 

We spent one day going on a wine tour in Stellenbosch.  It mostly consisted of us getting disapproving looks from much older and wealthier people as we shamelessly chose to taste only the most expensive wines. 

The vineyards are all gorgeous.

We also spent a lot of our time in the city wandering around and appreciating the small aspects of city life that Gabs is lacking, like coffee shops and used bookstores.  We took the train from Cape Town to Jo'burg, which is 28 hours and involves a lot of views like this one:

 

In other news, my internship is going really well.  We have been organizing a big seminar on Zimbabwe that will be held this week, so that has been eating up most of my time.  Still found the time to make it back to the Rhino Sanctuary last weekend, so it's not too terrible.  More on that later. 

Namibia

The gang and I set out for a 10 day whirlwind tour of Namibia on April 22.  After  little hiccup on the way there, we passed briefly through Windhoek, the capital, and went to our first big stop, Soussevlei.

The road in was a little, uh, notional

The dunes

Climbed on top of them

 

and rolled down, of course.

Namibia is the second least densely populated country in the world, just after Mongolia, so we would rive through miles and miles of beautiful terrain and not see a single person.  These pictures are from our drive from Soussevlei to Swakopmund. 

Just a few of those miles.

Consequently, visiting Namibia necessitates many long hours in the car.

Which is fine when the views are like this.

Some parts of the country are a little more desolate.

Swakopmund

We headed north out of Swakopmund to see the seals. 

There are a lot of them.

They are very loud, smelly, and silly. 

 I have a lot of seal pictures, but I will spare you. 

The skeleton coast lives up to its name.

 We tried to go and see Welwitschias, a plant that is considered a living fossil and found nowhere else in the world, but our efforts were thwarted when the river flooded for the first time since 1974. 

The raging torrent wiped out the road.

After our failed adventure, we turned north and headed to Etosha National Park.  We saw 81 giraffes during our two days in the park.

Just a start.

There are so many zebras living close together in Etosha that they are a hotbed for disease and infection.

 These next few pictures are just a few selected from my upcoming coffee table book, Etosha National Park: Things Standing in the Road, available wherever fine books are sold. 

Hyenas

Mr Elephant.

The most terrifying thing I have ever seen. 

Lions!  A little further away this time. 

After our Etosha adventure, we headed back south and spent a day in Windhoek, which is a really beautiful city. 

Downtown.

The gardens around Parliament, currently hosting a wedding.

After Windhoek we began the long trip back to Gabs.  I then spent three days in Gabs taking care of all of my finals for the semester and then headed to Cape Town for a week before my internship started on the 16th.  Pictures of that to come.