What I did on my summer vacation.
 

So for those of you who don't ever look at me, I wandered away for a while. A sample of vacation photos will follow.

Don't lie, you spent the whole time creating the new avatar.

I hope you didn't have to sacrifice the cats up there in the woods. How many Ruskies did you take out?

Nude pictures only, if you please, Mr. Rain Man.

FAX

Hail the conquering......errr....

Is it just me, or over there on the left, does it look like someone is peeing out the window?

FAX

First off, you know it's a long trip when your airplane has to make a fuel stop partway through. They wouldn't let me off the plane, so here's my only photo of Dakar, Senegal.

I was on the second-longest commercial flight in the world - Washington DC to Johannesburg, South Africa. The flight originates in New York, and the New York-Johannesburg route is the longest flight in the world. It was 17 hours on the schedule going out, and 18 coming back due to differences in winds. About an hour is spent on the ground in Dakar refueling.

Why couldn't they refuel in midair like the Air force does.

I got up. I went downtown to look for a job. I hung out in front of the drug store.

you take the best photos, Rain Man. Is that an expensive camera?

Another exciting part about the trip was wandering to the bathroom about 12 hours into it and seeing a guy with robes and leather cords chanting next to the emergency exit. I snuck this photo and hope it's not disrespectful to do so, but it was really interesting. Someone else said he was a Hasidic Jew, but I've never seen dress like this. If you look at his arms, he had a long cord wrapped around them. Fortunately, he didn't blow up the plane or anything.

I have a longstanding tradition of breaking my camera on the first day of vacations. In this case, though, my batteries died on the plane on the way there, so this is from my phone. My extra batteries were in my checked bag.

Seriously, I've had 7 overseas vacations, and broke cameras on the first day on two of them, and in the first week on a third.

You should have taken him down, you'd be a hero just like Tony Gonzalez.

A random street scene from Durban, South Africa, on my first day. My hotel was apparently in a predominantly African American neighborhood.

Getting ready for a boat tour of Durban's harbor. In a theme to be repeated over and over, my wife and I were the only people on the boat.

Are you sure they weren't South African Americans?

The pictures will get more interesting, by the way.

Here's the Durban skyline as seen from the boat.

Another sign that you're far from home: one of your sauce options is "monkey gland". Mmmmmm, monkey gland.

Then it's to the car, to head up to Zululand. We stayed at a game lodge near Hluhluwe, which for those of you familiar with Zululand is a little north of Mtubatuba.

I wish I had known you were going over there. I have an associate thats been wanting to deposit 87 million dollars in my account.

Our "tented lodge" was rather luxurious...granite bathroom, leather couch, etc. Pretty nice digs.

Don't worry; we've been in discussions about that already. I happened to meet him while I was there.

What was the temperature?

Did he have a fish on his head?

Who's standing in the doorway?

Who are you again?

Watch out for the lawn mowers, though.

Lows in the 50s, highs in the low 70s. It was the depths of winter.

That's my wifey standing in the doorway.

I am Dr. Livingstone, I presume.

Then it was off in the open-topped Land Rover for several days of game viewing.

First up, a nyala, a type of antelope. Not the greatest picture. These guys were around everywhere.

We went through a grove of trees, and in a little clearing...

Man, what a lame vacation. I bet you were missing us in the office the whole time! :)

did your dad have a subscription to
National Geographic

Closeup, minus part of a horn.

Sounds very nice. I assume you didn't take the "Rorke's Drift Experience" package?

Usuthu!! Usuthu!!

They wandered off after a couple of minutes.

A female nyala stares me down. The females look quite different from the males, shown earlier.

I'd like to know how many people laughed at this?

LMAO

Run!

I looked it up. Does that count?

Did you get any pics of Madagascar hissing cockroaches?

Never mind. It's going around.

You'll just have to wait and see.

The zulu dancers came to perform on the first night. There was no light and lots of movement, so the pictures didn't really turn out.

Do the Zulus use Central Standard Time?

I find this thread fascinating! I never would have realized that so many African-Americans live in South Africa.

Try again on the Zulu picture.

Yeah, it was surprising. Most of our hotels were in African American neighborhoods. What are the odds of that?

Wouldn't they be called African African's?

Just curious, why do they put a tent over a permanent structure?

Because the thatch leaks when it rains.

Life at the swimming hole.

My theory was "marketing".

I never know what the proper term is.

The "Z" guys were relatively common.

Only in one situation to be described momentarily, but even that was more imagined than real, I think. For the most part, the animals didn't really pay attention to the land rovers. The only rule was to not get out of the land rover, because then the animals would see you differently.

Birdie birdie.

Were those wild zebras?

I thought the flight to New Zealand was the longest in the world. Like 20 something hours.

What's that over there in those trees?

Yeah, all of these are wild, though the ones near our cabin/tent were pretty used to humans. I wouldn't get close enough to touch those, but we still had a couple of times where they were only about ten feet from us.

Maybe that's the longest nonstop flight. I did the San Francisco to Sydney flight about ten years ago, and it was about 15 hours if I remember right. This one was 18 on the way back, but with a stop at about the halfway point.


Oh, and run! (I like this picture.)

Zebras are mean as hell. Even the "tame" ones here in the US.

This was a cool bird. Very large, probably about three feet tall.

I liked this picture, which was taken at the boundary of the reserve. The one we visited was small at about 4,500 acres, and the one across the fence was about 30,000 acres. They then connected up to a national park that was huge.

Wart hogs were really fast, so it was hard to get a good picture of one even though we saw a lot.

Wait, here we go.

This was our land rover. It was just me, my wife, and our ranger the first day or so, and then another family joined us. Since they were...interesting..., it made for good peoplewatching along with the animal watching.

Recharging the camera batteries was easy. South African to French adaptor, French to American adaptor, then add the two-prong receptacle, and since it was too heavy to stay in the wall, you then use a dairy creamer to balance the whole thing on a chair.

Herd of nyala wandering around an abandoned building.

Nice "southern engineering".

The lodge even had a seldom-used driving range, though you had to be sure to get it over the zebra.

I keep waiting for the Hilton. Where's the Hilton?

You gotta like these guys. They're way cool to watch.

Cape Buffalo about to be carried off by a bird.

That is the epitome of optimism.

We hit paydirt on the evening of the second day. These guys are really hard to find, and we saw a big one.

Unfortunately, we saw no lions or cheetahs. Our park didn't have them, so we spent one day in a nearby national park where they exist in numbers, but for some reason they were all in hiding. Nonetheless, leopards are much more difficult to see than the other big cats, so it was a victory of sorts.