Travel

Slideshow of entire Entabeni portion HERE. Day 6 was fairly short — and we got to sleep in (yay!). We headed out in misty-to-rainy weather for a bush walk. We drove out to the main grassland at the foot of the big butte and spent the morning learning t …

This afternoon we drove to the Rhino Orphanage, where we learned a great deal about South Africa’s long and heartbreaking history with poaching. Through the 1960s, the numbers were going down, down, down — to roughly 370 rhinos killed in a year. But th …

Up again at 5:00 a.m. For some reason my alarm didn’t go off — but thank goodness this lodge operates on the very practical system of knocking firmly on your door until you rejoin the living. I was especially tired today. I haven’t been sleeping partic …

Morning We are eating too much and moving too little — though today, due to the colossal amount of jostling in the jeep, Mary’s smartwatch went off – with fireworks – telling her: GREAT JOB! You have completed your workout by 9:00 a.m. My smartwatch, o …

We headed out this afternoon for our first official game drive — in what I can only describe as a safari vehicle engineered by someone who thought, “What if we made a jeep… but also a small apartment building?” It’s a very (very) tall open-sided truck …

Well. Bags outside the door by 7:30, breakfast at 6:30 (“…at the buffet-a…”), wheels up (well…van wheels up) at 8:00. Safari logistics have officially entered the chat. We left Pretoria this morning and began the drive north toward Entabeni, which Abe …

As I type this, I probably should actually be sleeping — but ~24 hours’ worth of travel can do that to a girl. (And probably the Illy coffee that smelled so good about two hours before landing…which was…duh…6 p.m. local time.) I’m going to skip “waxing …

Courtesy of ChatGPT, Images tab, and the prompt: “Create a caricature of me based on everything you know about me.” P.S.: I tried – I really, really tried – to get “BASSPORT” to be “PASSPORT” and the 2nd “Compliance” gremlin’s hat to read COMPliance no …

I’m about to leave for Africa, which means my life has entered its sacred pre-trip phase:lists, sub-lists, nested lists under other lists, and a level of logistical intensity that suggests I’m either going on safari with a weight limit . . . or launchi …

Back in the day—when my husband and I were traveling regularly, usually once a year to Austria to visit his parents (and later, just his dad), plus assorted shorter and longer jaunts—I had a system. Actually, correction: H had a system. I had . . . vib …