ZIMBABWE TO LOS ANGELES: THE END OF OUR GREAT SOUTHERN AFRICA ADVENTURE

Well, all good things must come to an end, and after three weeks, we were ready to go home. We met our driver at 7:00 AM and got on the road. 

It was 4℃ or about 39℉, which doesn't seem THAT cold--unless you are riding in an open air vehicle. I was lucky to sit next to our driver and benefit from the heater and windshield. I still used one of the camp's ponchos, however. Bob was on the first of the three passenger rows and wore not just the poncho, but wrapped a wool blanket around himself as well. (See his reflection in the mirror.)

We saw a few animals along the way, including a steenbok, a small antelope we had never seen before:

Photo by Bob

A little later we saw a beautiful saddle-billed stork standing on a tiny island in the middle of a pond. The water was completely still and made a perfect mirror for the stork, the grass and the tree:

Just to mess with your mind, here is a flipped version of part of the photo above:

Bob took this much closer-up photo of the stork and its fabulous mirror image twin:

SOUTH AFRICA: A QUICK LAYOVER IN JOHANNESBURG

There is no direct flight from Windhoek, Namibia, to Maun, Botswana, and so we had to book a connecting flight through Johannesburg. We had a late afternoon flight out of Windhoek to Johannesburg, and the second leg from there to Maun wasn't until the following morning, so of course we couldn't just sit in our hotel in a city we had never been to before. Bob had arranged a trip to Carnivore restaurant through our tour company, which provided the airport transfer to our hotel and the driver to the restaurant.

When we disembarked in Johannesburg, there was actually a man from our tour company waiting AT THE GATE and holding a sign with Bob's name on it. He was the only travel agent there. All the others were outside the boarding areas where we usually see them. Such a personal greeting could never happen in the United States. He walked us through immigration, helped us get our bags, and delivered us to a woman, who in turn delivered us to our driver, who took us to our hotel. Talk about getting the royal treatment! We felt like celebrities.  Thank you, Ker & Downey!

Southern Sun O.R. Tambo Hotel (photo from hotel website)

We checked into our hotel, took our bags up to our rooms and freshened up, and then came back down to have our driver take us to Carnivore Restaurant, which was 45 minutes away in light traffic. Our driver was friendly and knowledgeable, and we got him talking a lot about the corruption so endemic in African politics, a topic we were interested in. It was enlightening to get the perspective of a local.

We had eaten at the original Carnivore Restaurant in Nairobi about four years ago, but I was recovering from a bout of food poisoning then and ate only rice, so I was looking forward to this meal. We got there rather late in the evening, and it was nice that it wasn't very crowded.