I was originally planning to combine the two areas of the Sabi Sands I stayed at into one highlights post, but I’ve been having such difficulty finding the time to work on my photos the last few weeks that it just wasn’t feasible. Fingers crossed I’ll be able to get to the final highlights post this weekend, so I can move on to the other editing projects that I want to do – and get out and do some more shooting too!
This time-lapse was one of my first attempts, and shows a mid afternoon at the dam in front of Chitwa lodge. Lots of waterbuck around that afternoon!
While I have been home now almost a week, I thought I would continue on with posting my highlights of each area I visited in Southern Africa, and then move on to other blog post formats. I came home with over 13,300 images, so I will have lots to work through over the next couple of months.
I spent an amazing few days at Phinda recently, and was lucky enough to not only have a fabulous ranger and tracker team to work with, but also got along brilliantly with the other guests on the vehicle. I have so many photos to go though when I get home; some of the highlights included some of the tiniest babies I have had the pleasure of seeing in the bush (elephant and rhino), spending time with two families of lions, a mother with 3 cheetah cubs, 3 older cheetah brothers, and some really cool eagle sightings. I’d still rather be outside than on the computer, so here are just a few of the special moments from Phinda.
The area of the delta where I stayed was one of permanent water, but day by day, changes in the landscape were apparent as the flood waters flowing in from the Angola highlands began to fill previously dry channels. I think I had the best of both worlds as I was able to see the delta from both land and water – and as a special treat, by air on a helicopter tour.
I took over 1800 photos in 3 nights in the delta. I hope you enjoy a few of the highlights.
The Kalahari was far, far greener than I anticipated. I had expected a dry and dusty, somewhat barren landscape. But we arrived at the end of the rainy season, and the desert had received rain only a day before we arrived, so everything was quite lush and green. As such, all the animals we saw were very well fed.
Here are a few images from my time at Kalahari Plains.
I know once I am home I will be able to fill several posts with photos from my time at Sossusvlei, but for now, here are a few highlights from my brief stay.
I am gratefully, happily, joyfully back in Southern Africa again, and spent the past few days in Cape Town. This time, I was lucky enough to get the cable car to the top of Table Mountain (the “tablecloth” covered it almost my entire stay last time, and high winds had the cable car closed). I took the journey to Robben Island, seeing where Nelson Mandela spent his imprisonment and heard a first-hand account about what life was like in the prison, and had a lovely day trip to Franschhoek, the Cape of Good Hope and Boulders Beach (penguins!).
Honestly though, the absolute highlights of my time in Cape Town was having the opportunity to meet up with a friend I met my first trip over, and finally meeting my fabulous SA based travel agent in person.
I’ve brought along a tablet/PC hybrid to back up photos, and the editing capacity is a bit on the sluggish side, but I will do my best to get a few highlight photos posted when I can, because I can honestly say I would much rather be outside enjoying the beautiful scenery than spending too much time inside on the computer.
I’ve finally had a chance to sit down to post this one day two of my time in Namibia, depending on internet connections, I might get a chance to post some photos of the desert and animals in the next couple of days.
Seeing about 6 or 7 of our beautiful great blue herons on Tuesday reminded me that I still had a few photos of grey herons to edit. These are the last of the photos I had flagged off from my stay at Zimanga for editing.