Wednesday, April 29, 2009

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Crossing into mozambique. Going through tedious visa entry process where they even make you fill out a form about the brand of radio you have in your car. FYI: we have JVC

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

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Having a beer after a long hot day of driving around kruger. Btw the park is huge - about the size of isreal and we have really only been to one small section. You could easily spend a month here exploring.

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Saw tons of animals today - white rhinos, giraffes, hippos, elephants, boars, zebras, wildebeasts. The night safari last night was incredible too - especially because we saw a leopard. Going for one last night safari tonight - hopefully will see a lion (which is the one major animal that we haven't yet seen). Then heading to mozambique tomorrow morning.

Monday, April 27, 2009

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At campsite getting ready for night safari

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A small brush fire by the roadside

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Impalas - which are all over the place.

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Well back into south africa now after driving all the way through swaziland. Camped out in swaziland on sat night and then went white what rafting on the utusi river. Left after that and went on a beautiful drive through the mountains of northern swaziland (which btw has the highest percentage of hiv positive people of any country in the world at 39%). Then spent the night near kruger national park last night. We got into the area too late to enter the park but found a cool hotel to stay at that bordered the park. Had a huge dinner last night at a place called crocadillas which also borders the park and is surrounded by an alligator moat. We ate a ton of of food and had a ton of drinks and it's only $20 a person which is a bit expensive for s africa. This morning we entered kruger and drove at least 150km inside the park and saw imapalas, elephants, baboons, zebras, rhinos and water buffalo. There are main roads that a lot of peopel drive on but we can take the land rover on the basically empty off road trails. Now we just set up camp and are leaving soon on a guided night safari. Still looking for tigers, panthers, wild dogs, hippos, and giraffes.

Saturday, April 25, 2009

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Entering swaziland...

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Truckin along. Headed north on highway 2. Amazing landscape. Don't worry mom, pat's pretty good at african driving.

Technical update: pocket lint removal from blackberry lens was successful and has resulted much crisper pics

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Lunch by ocean (in a town called bellito) on way to campground in swaziland

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And here's the land rover with tents on the top. This thing is unreal.

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And here's the guy to greet us and give us the land rover

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Superman has landed in durban

Friday, April 24, 2009

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Tired and hungover but managed to make our 8am flight. Very rainy in capetown but we're on way to durban where it's 80 and sunny. In durban we're picking up our land cruiser and driving 5 hours to swaziland.

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We're at Pat's end of quarter party with his smart MBA friends from University of Capetown

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Made it to s africa

Thursday, April 23, 2009

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Its almost go time...

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Getting my mad chill on at regents park. Leaving for heathrow in a couple hours for second consecutive overnight flight. Next stop: capetown.

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E.R.!!!!

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Met my old friend Maria from Greece for lunch. She lives in London now. We went to school together in Belgium...11 years ago

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"There's Buckingham palace kids. That's where the queen lives and works".

"What does she do, dad?"

"She queens.....and she vacuums".

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Cara in front of millenium falcon wheel thingy

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"Hey look kids there's Big Ben and there's Parliament"

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Tally ho! London below

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Trip got off to a good start. Well at least for me (not so much for the airline as plane was about 30% full-you can see I had plenty of room). Virgin Atlantic is a very nice airline btw