Trip Diaries
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Bushman’s Holiday
This morning at seven, I was called to the gate to find two men and three horses waiting for me. Two of the horses were Appaloosas; one was a very pretty bay whom I was later told was a celebrity horse: he had been featured in a Taylor Swift video. I felt that the two…
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Soft Camp, Hard Landscape
After the excitement of leopards and hyenas and dead lions, I said goodbye to my friends at Splash Camp and caught a bush plane for the Makgadikgadi Salt Pans, in the middle of the Kalahari desert. I was supposed to be headed for a modest place called Camp Kalahari — about the luxury level of…
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Trip Diary: Red in Tooth and Claw
Our South African friends left us this morning, going to another camp not far from Splash Camp‘s territory. In keeping with their tendency to make a game drive out of everything, we all piled into the safari vehicle for our usual 6am start. But this time, the departing guests brought all their luggage with them.…
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Trip Diary: How to Dodge a Hippo
For the first time this trip, I have company on my game drives; fellow guests who came here for the same experience as me. I really like it. There’s certainly something that feels privileged about having the whole production to myself, but it’s lonely too. Both the Swiss couple and the South African couple (I…
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Trip Diary: Beastland
Meals at Splash Camp are timed around the game drives: breakfast at 5:30am, brunch at 11:30am when you return from the morning drive, no lunch because why bother, when you just had brunch at 11:30? Instead, tea is at 4pm, which feeds you enough to keep you going until dinner around 8:30pm after the evening…
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Trip Diary: So This Is the Delta
The difference between Old Drift and Splash Camp can best be defined in two examples. First, Old Drift has a phone in the room, with a five digit number to reach the office if you need anything at all, at any time of the day or night. Splash Camp has no phones at all, including…
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Trip Diary: Where Are All the Elephants?
The Lookout Cafe is the centerpiece of Wild Horizons’ empire of Victoria Falls tourist attractions. It’s a restaurant, but that’s a little bit like saying that Broadway-caliber dinner theater is a restaurant. At the Lookout Cafe, lunch is respectable, but it’s really all about the view.
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Trip Diary: Paying Calls
The first visit we made today was to a nearby Zimbabwean village. But it began with a stop at the supermarket in town. Some village tours in this area compensate their hosts by way of a monetary payment to the village chief. That isn’t how Old Drift does it. Instead, they first help you buy…
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Trip Diary: Tenderness in Warthogs
There’s a line in an old Robert Heinlein book, in which the main character muses about the perfections of female humans, and then adds, “No doubt a gentleman warthog feels the same way about a lady warthog. But if so, both of us are very sincere.”
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Trip Diary: Crocodiles and Rhinos
When I was very small, my father used to sing silly things to me, as many parents of small children do. One of his favorites was to sing the words “Heffalumps and Woozles,” from out of the Winnie the Pooh books, to the tune of “Politics and Poker,” from the Broadway musical “Fiorello!” I now…