Vacation Pics

Sorry for not posting the past few days.  As I said in the previous post, we were on vacation in Livingstone.  It was a nice break to get out of Lusaka and just spend time with family.  The first day of our trip, we visited Victoria Falls (also called Mosi-O-Tunia in the local language meaning "The Smoke that Thunders."  And as you will see by some of the pictures, we couldn't see the entire falls due to the massive amounts of mist (the smoke) that the falls created.  What we could see, though, was truly amazing.  

After visiting the falls, we headed over to Mosi-O-Tunia national park for a drive yourself Safari.  As we were driving into the park, a herd of elephants walked right out in front of our car.  They had just swam across the Zambezi river.  The park, though small, was packed with wildlife and was a good warm up to the safari we would be going on the next day.  Here are some of the pictures from our first day:

On the second day of the trip, we had arranged for a safari in Botswana at Chobe Lodge and National Park.  So, we got up early in the morning to take a taxi to the border.  At the border, we had to be shuttled over to Botswana by boat, because the two countries are separated by river.  Everything went fairly smoothly and we were at the park by 10:00 am.  The first part of the safari was a boat safari on the Chobe river.  We saw everything from hippos, to crocs, to lions, to African buffalo, to elephants.  In fact, on three separate occasions, a herd of elephants swam across the river right in front of our boat.  Chobe has one of the largest elephant populations in all Africa, topping 100,000.  So, as you will see by our pictures, we saw tons of elephants.  After the boat the safari, we ate lunch at the lodge and then headed out on a land safari.  On this tour, we saw wart hogs, giraffe, lions, more elephants and other various African game.  After finishing up at the park, we headed back to the border and back to Zambia.  Here are some pictures from our day in Chobe:

There was one interesting thing that happened at the end of our trip.  When we arrived at the Zambian border, our taxi driver, who promised to be there waiting for us was no where to be found.  So, we had to quickly find another taxi before sunset.  Everything went ok though and we made it back safely to our lodge that evening.  It definitely was a fun trip!

Picture of the day...

While we were visiting Victoria Falls, I took a picture of Mimi sitting down on some steps.  What I didn't realize, at the time, was that there was a sign on the ground behind her.  The sign read, "Baboon Sanctuary."  We all got a laugh out of this one.