Part III: Dillon Family Christmas Vacation

On Boxing Day (Sunday, December 26th) we piled into Lemmy and made the ~4 hour drive back to Swaziland. Along the way, we stopped for a late lunch at Forester's Arms, as they have quite a unique spread and serve pretty yummy food (it's all relative).

After a quiet night of showing my Dad around town, unpacking, and playing cards (Euchre) we turned in early in order to get some rest for our big day planned on Monday.

My Dad and I ran around hilly Mbabane (so that my complaining about the route could be put into perspective) and then we had a tee-time at 10:30am at The Royal Swazi in Ezulwini Valley. Before we began the round we had to rent clubs (gasp) and organize our caddies and extra balls and tees. I thought that we should purchase 6 balls, but my Dad pushed for us to buy a dozen. Let the record show, we lost 10 or 11 balls throughout the course of the 18 holes, so, my Dad was right. As far as scores go, they weren't too shabby. My Dad killed us all, my Mom beat me by 2 strokes and Doug came in fourth (I'm laughing right now remembering him hacking it up. I love you, really!).

Club House

The course is truly beautiful. It is super hilly (no surprise) and quite a challenge, but the vistas are worth it.

You can analyze each of our swings

Views from the course

Then, on Tuesday the 28th, Doug had to go back to work (boo) and my Mom, Dad and I climbed up Sibebe in Pine Valley. It was quite an adventure as the route that I thought that we were taking was not the route that we ended-up taking, but everyone made it to the top and enjoyed the glorious views. Never a bad way to spend the morning.

At the start

Hiking up on the cow trails

View of the valley, on the way up

Side view of the dome

On the plateau

On Tuesday night, we met our friends Keri and Eric and Keri's parents (also from Michigan) for dinner at Mantenga Lodge. The patio of the restaurant overlooks Executioner's Rock; therefore, we took a couple of sunset pictures before sitting down to dinner.

My parent's last full day in Swaziland was Wednesday; and we reserved it for souvenir shopping. So, we ventured to Ngwenya Glass Factory, Swazi Candles and Gone Rural so that my Dad could see some of the products made by the rural women and so that my Mom could buy them...

We had lunch at Sambane Restaurant in the midst of the spending spree.

On Thursday morning, I took my parents to brunch before taking them to the airport and we tried a new restaurant in Mbabane called, Ramblas. Here are my parents on the patio on their final day of vacation (sniffle, sniffle).

Appendix I: Flowers of Southern Africa

I didn't feel like trying to name these flowers or trying to match them with the location in which they were taken, so I'm pasting them all here as an 'Appendix.' My Mom is really into plants and flowers (she's a member of a 'Garden Club'); therefore, she took lots of pictures of flowers! And, while I'm too lazy to do anything else with them, I thought that they were pretty enough to include, here:

Part II: Dillon Family Christmas Vacation

I'm just going to pick-up, right where we left off!

On Wednesday morning (the 22nd) we were picked-up by a driver from our hotel in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe and taken to a new hotel in Kasane, Botswana. With a quick trip through the border, we were settled-in and ready for lunch by about 1:00pm.

Our new hotel was called, The Chobe Marina Safari Lodge, and it was located directly on the Chobe River and about 5 km from the Chobe National Park. While the Marina Lodge was not as 'boutique-y' as the Victoria Falls Safari Lodge, it had perfect amenities and a zillion activities on offer, every day.

The patio

More patio

Pool

We had a two-bedroom suite with an adjoining family room/mini-bar

Hand-painted sinks in the bathrooms

At first glance at the 'activity calendar' I thought that we might pick one or two safaris to participate in per day, but no, I was wrong and we went on 8-9 hours of safari/day. It just didn't get old seeing hundreds of elephants or lions stalking a buffalo or herds upon herds of antelope.

So, our daily schedule was as follows:

• 6:00-9:00am Game Drive
• 9:00-9:30am Breakfast
• 9:30-12:30pm Boat Safari
• 12:30-3:30pm Lunch/Nap/Swim/Read/etc.
• 3:30-6:30pm Either Game Drive or Boat Safari (choose your own adventure)
• 7:00pm Dinner

Now that you know the schedule, I'll just go ahead and tell the rest in pictures!

The Chobe River

Safari boat

Afternoon boat safari

Being on the river was really cool because all of the animals would come down to the water to drink and cool down. Chobe is known for its elephants. Huge herds of 'em!

In the distance

Breeding herd coming to the water's edge

Elephant getting a drink

Crossing the river to the marsh

Grazing on the marsh

Strutting his stuff and making himself look all big and fierce

Staring down Doug (this gives a little perspective in regards to how close we got to the animals via the boat!)

Rolling in the mud

Rough-housing

Baby!!!

In addition to the elephants, there are also lots and lots of enormous crocodiles and hippos

Lurking

Beaching it

Hippo posse in the water

On land

Close-up

Fighting

Probably the climax of our boating safari adventures came when Doug and I were the only two people on the boat (ironically). We saw four lions stalking an injured buffalo. There's lots of people in our circle of friends who have seen many an animal, kill, be killed, mate, give birth, etc. I'm hear to tell you, we are not those people. So, this was VERY exciting. So exciting, in fact, that we paid our guide to take us straight back to the hotel to pick-up my parents so that they could join us on the safari. By the time we got back to the scene, the number of lions had doubled and there was a head-on confrontation between them and the buffalo.

Here's where it all turned a bit sad. The buffalo was badly injured in his hind leg and couldn't put up much of a fight, so after some taunting by the lions and a couple of charges, he succumbed and laid down. Then, the lions ate him alive. Literally. It was really sad, but it was nature taking its course...so, here's the flip-book of photos.

Laying in wait...

Getting up to check things out

Circling

Getting ready to attack

Taking the buffalo down. The lions attacked from behind because the buffalo's horns are his greatest defense and with his injured leg he couldn't kick

Eating the buffalo

Sad (and kind of gross...check out their bloody chops!)

A little drink to wash down the buffalo

Then, it was the vulture's turn

In the land safari vehicle

Lots of creatures, big and small and in-between...

Fish eagle

Taking flight

Herd of impala

Single, male impala

Vervet monkey's with baby

Mongoose

Baboon

Water monitor

Lilac-breasted roller

Vultures

Giraffe

Herd of buffalo

Sable antelope

Warthogs

Blue heron, flying over the lily pads

Zebras

On one of our evening game drives we came across the family of lions in the meadow. This was a rare sighting because the lions are usually lying in the shade under trees and bushes and obscured from view, in some way

Male lion and two lionesses

One of the lionesses got up to chase a jackal

This picture is a little hard to see, but two lionesses were laying down when the third jumped on top of them. So, you can see the one sideways across the pile and then one backing out from underneath the playful lioness

Done playing, now it is time to be serious

Dinners at the Marina Lodge

On Christmas morning, after one last game drive, we were picked-up by our driver and taken back across the border to the Victoria Falls Airport. We flew from Zimbabwe back to Johannesburg, South Africa and stayed at one of my friend's houses for the evening. We had trouble finding anywhere (anywhere) that was serving dinner on Christmas Day; therefore, we made our own dinner at my friend's (she was with her family in Cape Town). It was a perfect place with a beautiful garden.

Mom and I roasted a chicken and vegetables and Dad and Doug watched David Attenborough videos until the both fell asleep!

Our Christmas dinner

And that concludes Part II of our trip! The final portion of our trip will be told in Part III!