Jun 18, 2011

The Annual Migration in the Masai Mara is without a doubt one of the main reasons to opt for a safari holiday, but Acacia Africa has uncovered some less well-known migratory extravaganzas, with opportunities to view some spectacular wildlife including, celebrity sharks, dragonflies, and literally, millions of sardines. Dubbed “the greatest shoal on earth,”

Africa’s national parks differ a lot from country to country and they are run in very different ways, so I never know what to expect next. In South Africa and Namibia, the parks are over-organized operations with gates, curfews and strict rules, though I found them somewhat bendable despite constant ranger patrols. In bureaucratic Botswana, the seemingly

I am far from a nun, extremely comfortable with my body, and if you describe me as “shy” in front of anybody who even remotely knows me – they’d laugh in your face. That said, I would like to think I’m all about respect. Respecting other cultures and their degrees of modesty are highly important during the sort of travel I enjoy most.

I hate to leave Namibia – it has been so good to me. But my last days here weren’t without memorable adventures. I wondered if the day would come when Columbus would drown in the thick mud it often has to go through. And that day nearly came. Mamili National Park was going to be the last on my list in this country. It was almost completely flooded

Nov 18, 2008

On the little stretch of Caprivi, where the colonial politics of the past have arbitrarily divided the land into Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, and Angola, wildlife knows no borders. The river here serves as the divide, and its name changes every hundred miles or so. Birds here are as colorful as I’ve ever seen. Carmine bee-eaters sunbathe on low branches, and

Namibia differs from Botswana like day from night, except for Namibia’s Caprivi Strip. On a map, it looks like the neck of a guitar, and stretches for over three hundred kilometers west to east, although it’s only thirty to seventy kilometers wide. Along its seldom used roads are scattered tiny mud-huts and skinny livestock. Most of the structures

Africa is a chameleon. I am only a day’s drive away from Etosha – my most recent never-ending fountain of wildlife, and it’s like I’ve landed on a different planet with its own magnificent and diverse population of birds and antelopes. Reminding me of my South American darling, the jabiru, saddlebill storks rummage through the reeds with

She lay in wait and so did I. How famished she must have been, if only watching her hunt I’ve become so hungry I’ve risked getting out of the car, fetching my gasoline camping stove, and cooking up a hearty meal right there in the back seat of my double-cab truck. What torture it must have been, to see the springbok inch towards her hiding place near

“Ask her what her favorite thing to do is,” I said. Jaco asked, and the little fifteen year-old Himba replied that it was cooking. She looked so precious, healthy, happy, but then also so alien to me. She was naked from the waist up, except for a few strings of beads and a thick collar on her neck indicating she was still unwed. At 16 she would

I’ve been lucky recently with good guides. It is especially pleasant when you don’t want or need one, but they are being forced on you by regulations of the place you are visiting, like in Namibia’s Brandberg — home to some of the world’s most famous rock art dating as far back as two thousand years. Gwen, a local Damara girl and

I feel caged in big cities sometimes, so I was more than happy to get back to Nature, even though it meant climbing down into the musty and stinky Arnhem Caves of Namibia in search of bats. Ankle-deep in guano, we searched in the darkness for flying creatures with big teeth or funny horseshoe-shaped noses, disturbing their sleep. As long as we used red light,

Sossusvlei has waited for me long enough. Seeing it in the first light of dawn made me want to run along the crest of the nearest dune and not stop until I reach the sun. However, scaling the sand dunes is hard work. Eventually, I took off my shoes and, packing more and more red grains of sand into the thick woven fabric of my hiking socks, dug my feet into the

If you ever scratched behind a cat’s ear and heard it purr, you know how hypnotizing and sweet this faint tractor-like sound is. Now keeping that in mind, try to imagine what a purring cheetah sounds like. Namibian farmers’ rights are far better protected then Namibia’s cheetahs. Many are killed when a farmer’s physical and/or financial