Date: Mon, 14 Jun 1999 05:20:05 -0700 (PDT) From: "Alek O. Komarnitsky" Subject: 6th Alek & Wendy African Safari Email: Heading Home! ;-) This should be the last Email from Africa. We are currently in the Wilderness Safari Office in Johannesburg, South Africa for a few hours while while Wendy meets with her main supplier. Meanwhile, Alek (no surprise! ;-) is tap-tapping away! ;-) BTW, we hear from Salt Lake that the Dirkster is doing fine and that he took his first steps and is starting to say "Daddy" ; so we were sad when we read this because we missed it. I tell Wendy each morning that when Dirk wakes up he thinks that will be the day that Mommy & Daddy are there for him ... that's fast approaching now ... be interesting to see his reaction when he sees us ... my Mother tells me that as kids, we were "mad" at them when they left us for an extended time. Our last Email was as we left Victoria Falls. After rafting the Zambizee below the Falls, we canoe'd em above the Falls. One couple had a guide paddling their boat ... while Wendy had Alek doing the paddling for her! Was quite peaceful drifting by one elephant and crusing around two hippo's at sunset - note that later can be quite dangerous and love to eat canoes. The first place we stayed at one night had HUGE accomodations; must have been 2,000+ square feet and more permanent construction. Even had air-conditioning and electric blankets - the later were nice as the overnight lows dropped near freezing. But I kinda liked the previous rustic facilities where there was no "mains" for power and mostly lanterns for light. Clientelle also changed a bit too - one lady got QUITE dressed up for the game safari ... and another women was wearing platform shoes that must have been at least 8" high! The next two places were more "rustic" and we enjoyed those more. By now, we have seen a LOT of the animals ... so we were getting more pickier about stuff (plus I was running low on digital film capacity and batteries! ;-) We had two "run-ins" with Cape Buffalo ... these can be QUITE dangerous ... a local had been killed in Victoria Falls the day before we arrived. So we're walking back on the dirt path from the bridge to the town ... and there is a Japanese tourist (complete with camera of course) looking exicitely toward the brush ... and a security cop next to him. All of a sudden, the cop turns and runs. We decide it is a good idea not to take that path ... the tourist ambles back after a bit! The other run-in was on the way back to our tent one night; it was RIGHT on the path in the way. At this place, we are escorted by a "guard" who carries a spear ... for some reason, I don't think this would work too well against a 2,000 pound buffalo. So we again beat a retreat and waited for him to leave. We saw an awesome sunset with several hundred elephants at a water pan ... I'm excited about these pictures as we had a really good angle and the screen shots on the digital camera look quite cool. Another highlight was being in the Honeymoon tent at the edge of camp, and sipping champagne in our outdoor tub as several Sable walked on by. We DID see a pack of 9 wild dogs ... these are rarer than Rhino (which we never did see) and it was a treat seeing these endangered doggies munching on a warthog for dinner. Remember that we came across lions/hyena's eating warthog also a week earlier; doesn't sound like a good animal to be! BTW, we found this kill because EVERY animal around was totally "wired" and looking around in a frozen stance ... we knew something was up! We saw two ACTUAL kills (rather than coming across stuff that was allready toast). First was a funnel web spider grabbing a grasshopper ... and the 2nd was a bunch of ants raiding a termite mound! Sorry, that's the best we did! ;-) All the good eating (and limited chances for exercise) caught up with Alek as I popped a button on my shorts! Fortunately, the camp staff were able to mend it ... even though I feel like I've put on 10 pounds in two weeks. Unfortunately, I caught something on Thursday (Wendy is pretty sure it is Giardia) and so I've been losing that weight pretty quickly! :-( BTW, if anyone back home has a few anti-giardia pills (Cipro) that could give me, pls let me know! Other than that, we have had good health and I'm not doing all that bad. We left the camp at 9:00AM yesterday and arrived at Jo'burg around 3:00PM. After an overnight stay and the day at the Wilderness office, our flight leaves tonight at 5:40PM; we should be back home by 2:00PM Tuesday ... combined with the 8 hour time difference, this means it will take us 28 hours to make it back ... not including those initial 6 from the camp back to civilization!!! BTW, it is actually kinda strange walking/seeing a city after spending two weeks in the bush. So ... there should be one more African Safari Email; when I have gone through the ~200 digital pictures and about the same number of "normal" ones that Wendy shot and upload the best ones to the web site ... so you can see what you have read about. I expect this to take a couple of weeks. Alek & Wendy P.S. BTW, in Kris' Email about us missing Dirk's first steps; he wrote a PS that he was just kidding ... TOTALLY had us going! ;-)