Safari Savvy

Everyone does it - safari I mean.

Safari means journey - originally from the Arabic
safar - and todays modern safari allows you to
photograph and view big game and other wild wildlife.

A safari conjures up visions of khaki clad game rangers -
well versed in the ways of the bush as well as its
flora and fauna.

Besides being men of great knowledge of the wild they
are also experts at mixing a mean g & t.

As the day breaks you wake up to coffee and rusk
(a traditional morning pre breakfast snack) before
wrapping up warmly and climbing on board the
game viewing vehicle.

Have you ever done a game drive and you know the
ellies are in the vicinity because you have seen
and smelt their fresh droppings - but they remain
invisible to you.

16 out of 24 hours a day is spent collecting food - so
chances are pretty good that you could hear them
before you see them.

Botswana has a lot of elephants - tens of thousands in fact.
The Chobe elephant forms part of what is thought to
be the largest surviving continuous population of
elephants.

During the dry season they will stay around the Chobe and
Linyanti rivers dispersing with the onset of the rains.

A Baines Eye View of the Falls

Its 1858 and Livingstone is viewing the awesome spectacle
that he was to name Victoria Falls.

John Thomas Baines had been appointed the artist to
Livingstone's expedition to the Zambezi.
After quarrelling with Livingstone Baines was unfairly
discharged for theft.

Its now 23 July 1862 and Baines is on another expedition
to Victoria Falls.

He has come to clear his name but Dr. Livingstone
has moved on.

However it is on this expedition that he was to paint
many of the famous scenes of the Victoria Falls and
Zambezi river.

Baines was certainly not an under-achiever.
Scenic and portrait artist, cartographer, diarist and scientific
observer of fauna and flora, he was also an explorer,
store keeper and writer.

The Thomas Baines Nature Reserve in the Eastern Cape (South Africa)
is named after the illustrious man who left invaluable
records of the diversity of fauna and flora in the region
including the now extinct guagga.

It was not only southern Africa that he explored, he headed up
an expedition to northern Australia to explore the Victoria
River.
For his contribution Mount Baines and Baines River
are named in honour of him.

The Stanley of Livingstone

Henry Morton Stanley had a job to do and that
was find Dr. Livingstone.
Livingstone was somewhere in Africa and there
was a story to be told.

But I run ahead of myself.
Stanley was not always Stanley.
Born John Rowlands in Denbigh, Wales - at the age of 18
he made his way to the United States.
He was later to take the name Stanley from a wealthy
American trader whom he had befriended.

Military service in the American Civil War was followed
by a journalism career and Stanley soon became a favourite
with James Gordon Bennett,
Bennett was the founder of the New York Herald and it was
Bennett's son who instructed Stanley to find Dr. Livingstone.

Arriving in Zanzibar where a search expedition was outfitted,
Stanley and his expedition started off on 21 March, 1871.

10 November 1871 at a small village on the shore of Lake Tanganyika,
Mr. Stanley finds an old man with a white beard.
Raising his hat he greets the Doctor with the immortal words
"Dr. Livingstone, I presume".

Livingstone today is a booming tourism town.

Vying for the tourist dollar and the real estate around the
Zambezi river are hotels, waterfront lodges, bush camps,
action and adventure safari companies.

Creating quite a stir is a new development of more hotels,
chalets and golf course in the Mosi oa Tunya National Park.

Not sure if this is the legacy Livingstone had in mind
when he said "No one can imagine the beauty of the view
from anything witnessed in England. It had never been seen
before by European eyes; but scenes so lovely must have been
gazed upon by angels in their flight".