impala | The Casual Blog

April 28, 2023

Traveling to Africa, and getting back

Last week I was in St. Augustine, Florida, at the annual Birding and Photo Fest. I took a lot of pictures of the big birds at the Alligator Farm rookery, and will be sorting through those and sharing a few soon.

But first, I wanted to pass along a few more pictures from our March safari adventure in Botswana. Even though it was only a few weeks ago, it’s hard for me to believe all these animals are really there! So much of the earth has been taken over by humans, and there are only a few places where other animals still live their lives as they did long ago. Africa is really special in that way. It was a joy and a privilege to be there, and I look forward to going again.

However, the air travel to and from was far from pleasurable. To get there, we were scheduled to fly United from Raleigh to Washington to Newark to Cape Town. But our first flight was delayed, and the tight connection in Washington meant we had to change everything. We eventually got from Raleigh to Washington to Munich (overnight, with a ten hour layover in Munich), and then (after another overnight flight) to Cape Town. We were quite fried when we got to Cape Town, but the morning was sunny and mild, and our room at Noah House was charming. We slept for a couple of hours, and then went to find the Red Line bus stop for a little tour of the city.

On the way, we got scammed out of two credit cards. I’d like to think that things would not have unfolded so badly if I’d had my normal wits about me, but anyhow, I didn’t, and they did.

As we walked down the city street, a well-spoken man stopped us and said that they were shooting a movie on the street, and we needed to walk on another street. I’d seen movies being made on the streets of New York, so this didn’t strike me as particularly strange. As we were discussing this, another local man came up, and said he had the same problem. The first man pointed him in the direction he needed to go, and told us we should follow along.

We followed along around the corner and into a convenience store, where the fellow there said we needed to get a document. To do this, we needed to put our credit card in the credit card reader. We hesitated, but another man said there was no charge, and this was a normal requirement.

The credit card reader didn’t seem to be working, and one of the fellows offered to “help.” Then we tried a second card, which disappeared in the machine. Someone said that the machine was slow, and it would come out in a minute. After three minutes, I realized something was definitely wrong. The men in the store were gone.

Then a young woman appeared in the store. She said the men were scam artists, and they made her stay in the back of the store.

We were confused and shaken, but realized that one of the men was skilled at sleight of hand, and had made our cards disappear. Sally urged me to call the banks straight away, and I did. In the few minutes it took to get to the fraud departments, the scammers wracked up almost $40 thousand in charges.

We were not held accountable for the charges, which was good. And once we’d settled down, we were grateful that we hadn’t been held up at gunpoint or physically assaulted. Fortunately, we had one more credit card to use on the trip. Things could have been worse. But it was a rocky start. The one positive I took away was a dose of humility, and more sympathy for others who make big errors of judgment.

Our travel within South Africa and Botswana, by buses, airplanes, and boats, all went smoothly, but returning to the U.S. was brutal. Although I’d picked aisle seats when booking through the Chase travel service, United put us in center seats all the way back. Our route again involved a long layover, this time in Newark, trying to get to Washington, and then, finally, to Raleigh. We waited the better part of an hour at RDU to get our bags. Total door-to-door travel time: 43 hours.

But for all that, I’m so glad we did it, and already starting to think of our next trip there. We learned a lot about the animals, but there’s so much more to learn. Spending time with them also helps our thinking about other dimensions – the communities of big animals, the relationships between communities, their relationships with other forms of life, and our relationships with all of these.

April 17, 2023

Our vegan safari trip to southern Africa

In March Sally and I went to South Africa and Botswana for a safari adventure. It was a great trip in many ways, though the air traveling was grueling. I wanted to share some of the photographs I made, and an overview of the experience.

The trip was organized by World Vegan Travel (WVT), which puts together novel and elegant trips with vegan dining. For years, we’ve struggled to match our plant-based eating preferences with our adventure travels. It was wonderful to find that problem was solved: the vegan meals ranged from very good to amazing. Our fellow travelers were mostly vegans who had interesting life stories. Seb and Brighde of WVT were excellent leaders — thoughtful, cheerful, well organized, and resourceful. The trip photographer was Jennifer Hadley, a friend from Raleigh, who shared a lot of good ideas on how to make better images, and was generous in helping solve equipment and other problems.

Our trip involved two segments: 1. the Garden Route of South Africa, which runs along the coast east from Cape Town, and 2. safaris at two camps in Botswana. We found Cape Town lively and beautiful, and enjoyed exploring the Garden Route to the east of it by bus. One of the highlights was a two-day safari at the Gondwana Reserve, where we saw a cheetah and a two-week-old rhinoceros. The baby rhino was about the size of a pig, and frisked about like a new puppy.

After returning to Cape Town, we flew to Botswana and stayed at a camp in the Savuti area of Chobe National Park. We traveled in Toyota Land Cruisers and saw all the iconic species – lions, leopards, elephants, giraffes, zebras, buffalo, impalas – and quite a few others. We had our own spacious and pleasant cabin with all the modern conveniences (shower, toilet, electricity) except internet. It turned out to be therapeutic to get off the net for a while.

After Chobe, we flew in a small plane to the Okavango Delta, where we walked from the grass airfield on a raised boardwalk through the forest to our camp. Here, too, we had a pleasant cabin, and nice common areas for dining and relaxing. As in Chobe, we were strongly encouraged not to walk by ourselves in the camp at night, but instead to get a staff member to escort us, in case of animal encounters. Also as in Chobe, the hospitality of the staff was outstanding. In addition to great service, they shared with us singing and dancing.

The highlight at Okavango were boat trips in the channels, where there were a lot of hippopotami. These huge and strange animals can be aggressive, and kill more humans than any other large animal in Africa. We kept a respectful distance, and drew back a few times when they approached us.

We also did walking safaris on a couple of the islands, where we saw elephants, buffalo, impalas, and beautiful birds. One morning on a walk our guide saw fresh lion tracks. We were in tall grass, sometimes as high as our necks, and the guide began carrying his rifle with more purpose. I realized the lion could be a few feet away and invisible to us. We didn’t locate the lion, though it was the most exciting non-sighting ever.

On this trip, I became more conscious of grass. There were vast grassy areas, with many grass species. I finally understood why there were so many animals, like impalas, springboks, waterbucks, kudus, wildebeests, zebras, and buffalo, that subsist mainly on grass: there’s a lot of it! We saw most of those species in sizable herds. Grazing is a successful survival strategy. (By contrast, there are only a few species that eat other animals, and there aren’t very many of those.)

Of course, it’s exciting to see the rare animals, like leopards and cheetahs; they’re beautiful. But a lot of the joy I got from our safari experiences was watching the more common grazing animals living their lives. It seemed like the most natural thing in the world to be an impala or a zebra, eating some grass when hungry and hanging with the herd.

I particularly loved the elephants, who are also plant eaters, and who generally live with family members. The herds we saw always included little ones, who were very cute. I realized that a lot of what gives the elephants purpose is taking care of the young. That’s true of many species, including us.

Being with so many remarkable animals can be a life-changing experience. It gives a different perspective on what life is for and about. It is more varied and vibrant than we usually see.

I’m planning to share a few more pictures from the trip soon, along with some stories of our air travel challenges. But first, I’m heading to St. Augustine for Florida’s Bird and Photo Fest. I’m hoping to get some good photographs of the big birds at the rookery there.

August 30, 2022

Processing Tanzania animals and travel

Baboons in Tarangire National Park, Tanzania

I’m still working my way through my photos from Tanzania, and processing impressions from the trip. We saw a lot of animals! In some situations, I took dozens of pictures, and it’s tough to decide which is my final favorite.

Anyhow, here are a few current favorites. What I was looking for was more than just the beauty and strangeness of the animals. The trip helped me appreciate better that their lives are part of complex relationships with their fellow creatures and their environments.

But the much bigger point is Tanzania is a fascinating place. Getting there from the U.S. is hard on a body, at least if you’re not in an ultra high-end airline seat/bed. It took us about 36 hours from airport to airport each way. We flew on Qatar Airways, which treated us better than our recent U.S. carriers. It had planes with seats that didn’t seem specially engineered to torture you and flight attendants who seemed to view their job as helping passengers.

An impala — a delicate, speedy creature that loves grass

On long flights, I’m usually not able to sleep much, but I look forward to having extra time for reading. There comes a point, though, even for a big reader like me, when the eyes and mind get too tired for reading. Instead, recently, on planes equipped with individual screens, I watch movies. I try to pick ones that Sally probably wouldn’t be interested in, and ones that haven’t made my must-see list. The point is to achieve a state of mild engagement/distraction – enough so as not think about how many more hours before I can get off the plane.

Cape buffalo — a stolid creature that also loves grass

Part of the point of Qatar Airways seems to be to raise the profile of that little country and get international travelers into its hub airport at Doha. We had long layovers there going and coming, and it was impressive, in a post-modern way. Even in the middle of the night, shops, restaurants, and bars were open, and the assemblage of luxury goods stores (handbags, watches, jewelry, clothing, luggage) reminded me of Fifth Avenue, or Zermott. We were a bit confused about the value of the local currency, and so managed to set a new high-end record for an airport meal in their Italian restaurant.

We also had a long layover in London’s Heathrow airport on the way home. There had recently been reports about Heathrow’s poor operations in handling passengers and baggage, but we had no special problems, other than a very slow line at a coffee shop.

One thing I confirmed coming back was that it’s definitely worthwhile on long trips to wear compression socks. I’d worn a pair on the way over, but mine were among the items lost when our tent at Serian Serengeti North was blown away. Regular socks just didn’t cut it. When I got back to Raleigh, my ankles had swollen dramatically, and were very sore. For my next trip, I got a replacement set from an outfit called Vim and Vigr.

As to that storm: we were out late in the day on the savannah close to the Kenya border watching a pair of lions, which seemed to be considering whether to take another nap or go for a hunt. We had great close views, but the cats weren’t doing much. As the sun started to set, huge dark clouds rolled in, and we started the long drive back to camp.

A few minutes later came the first drops of a deluge. Our guides unfolded the canvas top and plastic windows of the 4Runner and put up the windshield. Visibility quickly dropped to near zero, while the winds picked up. Then we began to have lightning flashes and thunder close by every few seconds. Our driver asked if I thought it was OK to stop, and I said I saw no other choice. It looked entirely possible that we would not be able to make it back to camp that night.

Not long after, visibility improved enough to move forward, and our driver managed to get us through some creeks that had gotten a lot deeper since the earlier crossing. We came across a vehicle that was stuck in the mud, and tried unsuccessfully to push them out of their rut. Finally we got back to the camp. We were happy to be there, but everyone else was in a state of high anxiety, trying to figure out how much of the camp had been destroyed.

Alex Walker and his dedicated team managed to feed us a satisfying hot meal in one of the two remaining dining tents, and worked through the night assessing damage and starting repairs. Our tent had been flooded and blown away, but most of our possessions were eventually found. The staff worked hard cleaning and drying things while we were out on our last game drive the following day.

Of course, it’s always good to get home. We’ve been watching some documentaries this week, and I wanted to particularly recommend one: Eating Our Way to Extinction. It’s a powerful summary of the problems with our animal agriculture system, and especially the part it plays in climate change. The presentation is upbeat, with narration by Kate Winslett and cameos by several celebrities. It emphasizes that it is not too late to change the system, and we as individuals can help.

Thompson’s gazelle — also a speedy grass lover

One last thing: I read a good book on the trip: The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck. In my teens and twenties I made a point of reading quite a few officially recognized “classics,” which may or may not have been the best use of my time. In any case, Grapes is one that I never got to, and I came to it without a lot of assumptions.

The book tells the story of a poor farm family forced from their farm in Oklahoma and hoping for a new life in California. Their story is both specific (each character is an individual) and general (there are many thousands in their predicament). I was pulled along by the classic story telling, but also got a better understanding of the economic and social forces that created their desperate poverty along with dramatic wealth for a few.

I was surprised at how timely the book seemed, as climate change and political upheaval unleashes enormous migration around the globe. Steinbeck helps us process these kinds of forces, and encourages us to show compassion and work on solutions.