Tuesday, July 12, 2016

July 12, 2016

July 12, 2016

Last night we went to a restaurant called the Boma.  It was so much fun!  They had people doing African dancing and singing and music as we walked in.  The food was buffet style and like nothing you get at home!     I am a super picky eater but I am pretty proud of myself at the things that I tried....  Crocodile, Impala, and warthog.  Yes I am eating meat here....  Most of you know I won't eat commercially produced meat at home because of the way the animals are raised and the things that are fed to them.  As well as the age that they are slaughtered due to them being fed such an unnatural diet.  The conditions for the humans and the sanitation in processing facilities is horrendous.  But I will eat locally produced and processed meat at home.  Everything here is what we consider grass fed, free range, or organic.  And you can taste the difference... It has a taste.  But don't worry, as soon as I come home I will not be eating US meat!  They also taught us how to play the bongo drums and all I kept thinking was the episode of Big Bang Theory when Sheldon can't get a haircut and he starts playing the bongos in the middle of the night because the world is going crazy!  We had a great time at dinner!

In Victoria Falls they actually had tourist police specifically to protect the tourists.  

Today I went on a safari in Chobe National Park in Botswana.  The park is not fenced in so the animals can come and go and move as they please.  We saw so many animals!  Hippos, crocodiles, elephants, buffalo, Impala, kudu, puka, waterbuck, giraffes, water monitors, warthogs, zebras, so many species of birds.  I think I need to buy a book to name all the bird species I saw!!  I am so overwhelmed with the information the guides give us on all the animals and the names!  The animals were all so beautiful!  It is the dry season so in the middle of the river is an island that the animals can get to so they all go down to the water and a lot cross to the island during the day and they go back across to the main land for the night.   The water was so blue.  The buffalo are my favorite.  I still can't get over that they are the most dangerous animal in Africa.  There were a lot of baby hippos and baby elephants and we even saw a baby zebra and a fairly young giraffe!!  Sorry you will all have to wait until I get home for pictures of today because I was so afraid of either dropping my phone off the boat or out of the safari vehicle so they are all on my camera.  And it will probably take me a while to go through all of them because I'm pretty sure there are close to 1000 pics just from today!  I hope the pictures that I took can do the landscape justice...  The sun shining off the water and all the animals grazing and drinking everything was so peaceful.  

So far I have seen three of the big five in the wild and if you count the leopards and lions at chipangali I have seen all of them! 

Tomorrow morning we will leave early for the bus trip back to Bulawayo and Chipangali- hopefully it will be uneventful!  

2 comments:

  1. Taryn, I would love to see pictures, but your description is beautiful!

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  2. I have limited access to wifi so I am trying to stay off Facebook and avoid posting pics. A lot of them are on my camera as well so everyone has to wait!!

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