Our Trip to Africa

I hope you all are having a good week so far.  I have not been home very long from our amazing African vacation, but it already seems like ages ago.  We took tons of pictures, but I wanted to just share a few with you.

We decided to do a worldwide trip around parts of southern Africa, which included Victoria Falls, lots of animal wildlife viewing, camping in the bush, exploring Capetown, and enjoying wine country of South Africa.

 

 

 

We flew to Zambia to see one of the natural wonders of the world, Victoria Falls.  The falls are right on the border, so we decided to walk arcross the bridge, obtain a visa for Zimbabwe, and see the falls on that side as well.The falls were very powerful, and this was considered the high time so they were filled with water.  We were soaked from the mist, and you could really feel the power of these massive falls.

 

   The walk over the bridge from Zambia to Zimbabwe is known for skydiving.  It was crazy.  You couldn’t pay me enough money to sky dive off this bridge.  However, the fear factor didn’t stop people from taking the plunge.

From Zambia we flew to South Africa and rented a car to go to Kruger, one of their national parks.  Think Yellowstone, but with tons of African wildlife.

 

 

The whole park is huge and fenced in. Within a few minutes of being inside, we saw rhinos and elephants.  We did some self drives around the park and also some guided drives.

 

 

This lion was two feet from our car one morning when we decided to do our own drive.  At one point he just stopped and starred us down.  It was intimidating.

 

 

The guided drives were amazing because we were on the lookout for a variety of wildlife.  We did see the “Big 5” (elephants, rhinos, water buffalo, leopards, and lions) at this national park.  We even had the opportunity to be in the right place at the right time to see a lion kill.  It was pretty gross, but I guess it is the fact of life.  After all, it is the survival of the fittest.

 

 

After spending time in Krueger, we flew to Namibia to explore another park.  Namibia is known to more people now because it is the country where Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie had their twins.  If you have been a reader for  a while, you know that Mr. Spring and I love to camp, so we thought we would give it a try for a couple days in Namibia.

 

 

This camping trip was different for us because our tent was on the top of our truck.  We used a ladder to get up there.   It is a great concept and it was fun to try it out.  We said we felt as if we were in a reversed zoo because we were the ones fenced in. We watched the animals at some of the watering holes and at night we could hear them on the other side of the fence.  We cooked out, and our little camper kitchen was equipped with everything we needed, including a tablecloth.

 

 

Here you can see how beautiful it was to see the zebras coming to the hole to get their evening drink.  It is amazing how the different types of animals timed their drinking sessions.  They were always on the look-out for the lions.  What a stressful life!

 

 

 

Our vacation ended with some time in Capetown. (Sorry but those pictures are on another computer, and I am on the road this week).  Capetown is a beautiful,  fabulous city, and the scenery is spectacular.  I’ll write another post to share the deets on that part of our trip with you later.

It was a great time, and I was so happy to see giraffes and zebras in the wild.  What animal would you want to see?

 

Cheers!