Back to Africa -- 2/14-2/18

 I flew to Johannesburg on 2/14, enduring a 3 hour layover PLUS a 3 hour delay when our plane had issues and we got a replacement. Johannesburg is 8 hours ahead of us and we arrived at the hotel around 11:30 pm on 2/15. Fortunately, I flew a day early so I had time to recover before the folks who took the pretrip got here. 

I am rooming with my friend Sandy, and her friend Janice is on the trip too. We flew to Victoria Falls the next day and settled into the Shearwater Explorers Village, where we stay the next 4 nights. It was a busy day that ended with a Sunset Cruise on the Zambesi river. There were birds, hippos, and elephants to watch as we cruised and ate dinner, which included a small appetizer of crocodile (tastes sort of like chicken....).

Zambesi Sunset

Island of birds

Three hippo photos

The next day, we were off early to Victoria Falls. Jim and I visited here on our 2016 trip, but that was in the winter. It's summer here and the volume of water was higher and the mist was so dense that it created rain so that sometimes it seemed we were in the middle of a rainstorm. My shoes, socks, pants (up to me thighs despite a long raincoat) were all soaked, but the falls were spectacular.

In the afternoon, we went to a humane tour of elephants. We each had  a chance to get up close and personal by dropping food pellets into its trunk. It was kind of fun, but I haven't got the pictures of me from Sandy yet. The elephants also knew commands like high 5. It definitely felt like the exploitation level was pretty low.

Today we visited a local village and school. At the village, we saw one household (95 in total), got to see the interior spaces.

A welcoming ritual by the headman. He dropped
some herb (ground pepper) into the gourd and 
poured it onto the small 3 pronged (dead?) 
tree (stump?).

We followed that with a talk with the headmaster and women, asking them about their lives and they asking us about ours. Mary, one of the other travelers, was an Iowa farmer and described her farming practices with corn, which they also raise. They were shocked to hear that 80 acres of corn could be planted in 3 hours and harvested in 1 day. 

From left: translator, headman (who had pretty good
English) and several of the household ladies.

They made us sadza (a thick porridge of cornmeal, and has the consistency (and taste) of heavy mashed potatoes) and a yummy mixture of pumpkin leaves and peanut butter sauce. I was iffy about both so I tried very small servings, which were actually good. 

Then we headed to the Chidobe Primary School. We gave them school supplies from their request list and then were each assigned a student guide or two, The studutns provided a full tour of the school rooms and grounds. I don't have many photos here, but Sandy let her two escorts take pictures with her camera --and got 200 interesting photos! My guide was a charming 11 year old girl who looked more like 8. 

My guide is on the left.

We got home around 3 and I vegetated a while before doing the blog. I hope to source additional photos from the other photographers to show more of our experiences. Tomorrow we leave early for game viewing in Zambia.