Some pictures are included on this page, but the full set of "top 10%" pictures is available here. If you think you want to see all the photos, go here.

After leaving Maria and Sarah with my parents we flew to Atlanta. The next day we fly from Atlanta to Johannesburg and then went in a chartered plane to Kasane in the Northeast tip of Botswana. What these words fail to convey is the distances involved. With the exception of the Kerguelen Islands and Antarctica, Johannesburg is about as far from Seattle - 16,500 km - as it is possible to go without leaving the Earth's surface. Even distant Perth is 1,700 km closer.

The flight from Atlanta to Johannesburg is the longest non-stop flight in the world, at 13,600 km. It requires a special 747, and an extremely long runway to let the heavily loaded plane gain speed. The long runway at Atlanta was shut down for maintenance, so our plane had to break the trip up into segments - Atlanta to Sal Island (Cape Verde) to Cape Town to Johannesburg. Thus, our quick 18-hour jaunt across the Atlantic ended up taking 22 hours. You know it's a long flight when you watch four movies and three sitcoms and you still spend most of the flight with nothing to do.

While at Mowana we went on a boat safari and two jeep safaris. These safaris are wonderful beyond description and I can only hope that our pictures - half of our photos came from these three safaris - help convey the sense of wonder. We saw beautiful bee eater birds, weaver bird nests, impala and kudu, herds of elephants and hippos, hyenas, warthogs,
giraffes running across the savanna,
lions running, roaring
and eating (a buffalo) and so much more
We watched a herd of elephants playing in the water, a baby elephant nursing
and two eagles fighting over who got to eat a guinea fowl. Wow. More safari pictures are available here.

Unfortunately, the town outside the falls is the worst kind of tourist trap. Our hotel - the Kingdom - looked like a Las Vegas conception of Africa, complete with miniature versions of Victoria Falls and Great Zimbabwe - and the mandatory casino. Outside the hotel there were beggars and moneychangers constantly pulling at your sleeves.
The local craft market had the worst kind of mass produced repetition, and even the haggling was no fun.

We skipped the bungee jumping, went on an elephant ride, a balloon ride (for the aerial view of the falls) and had dinner at the Victoria Falls Hotel - a much more sedate and classy establishment than our hotel. I also went river rafting, and we did find some nice souvenir shops. Victoria Falls is worth visiting - the falls are an amazing site - but you can miss the other attractions there without too much worry.

It was an all day bus ride to Kariba, but I never tired of the scenery. Every few miles we would drive by a tiny African village - a few mud brick huts, with thatched roofs, a stockade made of sticks, and a storage hut up on poles. They looked perfect, beautiful, and timeless.

We got to the border crossing after it had officially closed, so we bribed the guards with eclipse viewing glasses and continued on to our hotel. In Kariba our hotel was a couple of houseboats. They were very simple, just a long hallway with tiny rooms on each side, open to the outdoors, with mosquito netting over the bed.

The next day was June 21 - eclipse day. Everyone was given eclipse viewing glasses which let us stare directly at the sun as the black disk of the moon gradually moves across it.

The nice thing about going on an eclipse tour is that the other eclipse fanatics are happy to let you use their fancy toys. A number of telescopes were setup with solar filters so that we could view the sun clearly. At high magnification there were dozens of sun spots visible, and if you watched the moon's disk near a sun spot for about twenty seconds you could see the black circle moving. You could also see, silhouetted against the sun, the slightly jagged edge of the moon - mountain ranges a quarter million miles away.

The low-tech way of viewing a solar eclipse is with a pinhole camera, and there were many setup. One person was projecting an image of the 'crescent sun' onto the side of a building. Another person had made dozens of pinhole cameras in a piece of cardboard, spelling out "Eclipse 2001 Africa" in projected crescents.
Finally, every leafy tree has hundreds of tiny gaps between leaves, and these project the image of the sun onto any flat surface below them.

The next three pictures were not taken by us. It's best to concentrate on watching the eclipse, rather than fussing with your camera.

It takes about an hour and a half from "first contact" - when the moon first takes a bite out of the sun - to "second contact", when the sun completely disappears and the total eclipse begins. During this time the sun gets more hidden, it gradually gets darker, but nothing dramatic happens. One couple used this time to get married, in a tower overlooking the Africa savanna and baobab trees.

As the last of the sun sneaks behind the moon, the special effects that are only available with a total solar eclipse begin. It got as dark as twilight and Jupiter and Sirius appeared. As the last fragment of sun shone through a deep lunar canyon, the intense point of light together with the coronal ring looks like a brilliant diamond ring, shining in the sky. When the last diamond disappears the corona becomes visible - wispy streamers of light spreading out far beyond the sun. A couple of pinpoints of red light were visible with the naked eye - they were solar prominences - huge jets of plasma, faintly visible with the naked eye.
An annotated version of this picture by Olivier Staiger can be seen here.
A good explanation of what happens and what you see during a total eclipse - including the wonderful "diamond ring effect" can be found here.

The first thing we learned about our canoeing trip is that the Zambezi is home to hippos. A lot of hippos. Thousands of hippos. In fact, canoeing on the Zambezi is all about dodging hippos.
The Zambezi also has lots of crocodiles - we saw hundreds - but they're not much of a danger unless you try swimming. How many crocs can you see in this picture?

As Canadians with a good classical education Helen and I are, of course, expert canoeists. However, five of the other tourists had never been in a canoe, and two of them didn't know how to swim. They took a pretty circuitous path down the river that first day, but they had a pretty strong incentive to quickly master the art of steering.

The first morning out one of the canoes got wedged in a small waterfall and filled with water (oddly enough, it was the guides canoe!) so we had to stop in shallow water in the middle of the river while the guide retrieved the items that had floated away. When he returned he decided that lunch would be served where we were - on a sandbar that was six inches under water. It turns out that once you put out your folding table, and table cloth, it makes for a magical lunch location.

Beautiful locations were definitely part of the canoeing experience. Virtually every stop was on an idyllic sand bar, with no sign of any other humans.

One lunch stop was on a slightly muddier shore and we discovered imprints in the mud from where four crocodiles had recently been dozing - no surprise since we frequently saw them sliding into the water when we got too close. One of the imprints was a healthy ten feet long.

Part of the North American camping ritual is sitting around a campfire and telling ghost stories. Afterwards you lie in your tent trying to remind yourself that the stories aren't true and that there's nothing to be afraid of.

The African camping ritual is similar. You sit around your candle (no campfires in the national park) while the guide tells stories about tourists being eaten by lions and crocodiles or getting mauled by hippos. Then you lie in your tent reminding yourself that the stories are true and that going outside to answer nature's call might not be such a bright idea.

We were very impressed with the professionalism of the guides and the park rangers. They took excellent care of the park.

After four days of canoeing, followed by a few hours of driving through Tsetse fly infested territory, we flew to Cape Town, South Africa.

We took a catamaran ride out to Robben Island for a tour that included "interaction with an ex-political prisoner." That sounded pretty cheesy, but in fact it was a very powerful experience. Our guide had spent 18 years at Robben Island as a political prisoner, and his lack of bitterness and belief in the importance of not blaming his former jailers was amazing. He talked a lot about the education that the prisoners gave each other, and the guards, while in the prison. We got the sense that the beliefs and principles that were forged in this prison were mainly responsible for South Africa's success so far in dealing with the end of apartheid. The main worry is that economic problems may yet derail the fragile peace.

You can't visit Cape Town without going up Table Mountain and I managed to convince Helen to climb it. We went right up the middle of the side that faces Cape Town, and when I look at our pictures now I have no idea how we made it up - it looks like a vertical cliff face. It was a steep climb, but there wasn't actually any rock climbing involved.
The top was covered in clouds, but whenever the cleared for a few seconds there were glorious views down the coast.

There are six plant kingdoms in the whole world, and one of them is the Cape Town area - it's a very unique ecosystem. Look for the unusual plant pictures on our full gallery page.

Two of the tourists from our canoe trip were from Cape Town, and one of them (thanks Ed) offered to be our tour guide for a day. He drove us to markets and wineries, and
then out to a penguin nesting area on False Bay. After that we went to the Cape of Good Hope.

The Cape of Good Hope is, quite simply, spectacular. It's a famous cape (although not the Southern most tip of Africa) that arguably separates the Atlantic from the Indian oceans, and that should be enough, but it is a cape of superlatives.
The cape is a ridiculously skinny spit of land that rises vertically out of the water from crashing surf and occasional perfect beaches. Whoever designed the Cape of Good Hope clearly overdid it, and it's wonderful.

We felt very safe the whole time we were in Africa - despite media reports of problems in Zimbabwe. The only problem we had the whole time was when three young ladies in Cape Town did a little magic trick - they made our bank card disappear. We realized what had happened almost immediately, but it only took them three minutes to run to the next machine and take out our daily limit. We cancelled the card, and our bank covered the losses, so we're only out our pride.

This map of Southern Africa should help you visualize where we were - I've labeled the important places.

Then we flew back. It was another long flight. It was worth it.

Still here? Still want more? There's more of our vacation snaps available here.