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  • 20 easy ways to find time to learn photography (or anything else!)

    20 easy ways to find time to learn photography (or anything else!)

    I often hear the complaint of “I don’t have time to learn how to take better pictures of my product or service”

    Of course we live in a busy world where there are lots to things to grab our attention and pull us this way and that.
    I’m no different.
    It’s easy to be distracted by the emails, texts, people, facebook, twitter, I can go on and on.
    It much easier to do something that is going to give instant gratification than work on something that doesn’t give you that instant hit of achievement
    So over the years I’ve learned several techniques which allow me the time to do what I need and should do.
    I’ll share them with you today:

    1. Develop a ritual:

    I have a plan mapped out every day of the week that begins when I awake and finishes when I go to sleep.

    For instance, I stretch for 10 minutes at 5.50AM then exercise at 6.00AM. The exercise varies according to the day for example Mondays and Wednesdays are days I go for a run.

    From 2.30 – 3.15PM I make at least 10 phone calls that are likely to lead to promotion or sales of my business

    1. Establishing the best use of your time.

    Ask yourself on a regular basis, even hourly:
    “is what I’m doing now the best use of my time”
    “Is this going to lead to me achieving my goals”.

    1. Establish yearly goals

    Most of us have a to do list. A to do list are your mini goals for the day and more often than not we over estimate what we can get done in a day.

    What we also do is underestimate is what we can do in a year.

    Start first with your goals for the year and then work backwards.
    Then you can define what you should be doing on a daily basis and set up your ritual (see no 1)

    1. Turn off all notifications

    There are notifications everywhere these days, on your phone, your PC or Mac, your tablet, watch etc.
    Turn off any notifications that tell you that have mail, text, messenger, skype etc.

    There are always notifications you need like calendar and maybe reminders for your next client phone call. But in the main the rest can be turned off.

    Start by putting your phone on silent for half an hour at first, then an hour, then as long as you your business will allow. You’ll actually be surprised that no one missed you.

    1. To do lists

    There’s a theory that’s gaining momentum about the little old to do list.
    Basically you shouldn’t use a daily list but have a continual list. Having a daily to do list just exerts extra pressure and the reality is that most of us never tick off everything on there. So items you didn’t get around to, roll over to the next day and then the next day and the next day and so on.

    Better to have permanent list that gets added and subtracted to and then schedule time to do this in your calendar.

    1. Calendar scheduling

    Speaking of scheduling there’s a saying what doesn’t get scheduled gets doesn’t get done. You could turn that around and say whatever get scheduled gets done. But you get the point. Whichever calendar you use whether it be Google, Outlook or Apple you can easily schedule time to do certain tasks, if not all of them and add reminders.

    1. Unsubscribe, do, delete or delegate

    We spend so much time in our inbox these days. There are countless apps and theories on how to manage your inbox. Trouble is working them out is almost as much work as it to actually process your inbox.

    It’s easier to either unsubscribe, delete, delegate or just do it.

    In getting things done by David Allen, he advocates only acting on an email if it it’s going to take a small amount of time

    Anything more and if you’ve decided it still needs action by you, then decide when.

    1. Use a Voice Recorder or Smartphone App to take notes on the go

    Inspiration often comes from outside the workplace, so make a habit of recording your ideas whenever they pop into your head.

    I use a voice recorder and a note-taking app on my phone, and carry around a notepad

    1. Research on your Phone during downtime

    Use your smartphone to research when you find yourself waiting around.

    That might be waiting in shopping lines, riding public transport, or anywhere else you find yourself waiting

    1. Audiobooks and Podcasts

    Audiobooks and podcasts that help your business and your professional development are great to listen to whilst travelling.

    Extra tip: Try speeding it up to 1.3-1.5. Our brains are capable of handling speech at faster speed than normal speed.

    1. The 80/20 Principle

    Also known as the Pareto Principle, the 80/20 principle is the idea that 80% of your output will come from 20% of your effort. Start by eliminating or delegating non-essential tasks that don’t impact results.

    The more you focus on things that will affect your business, the more you’ll get done with less effort.

    1. Delegate

    If someone else can do a task 80% as well as you can, and you don’t have time to do it yourself, consider handing it off to another team member.

    1. Hiring Help

    Don’t have time to do everything yourself? Consider hiring freelance help if you can.

    1. The Pomodoro Technique

    Try using the Pomodoro technique throughout your workday.

    It’s a productivity method where you work in 25-minute bursts, separated by 5-minute break periods.

    There’s a free app available called, surprisingly, “Pomodoro”

    1. Don’t multitasking

    Studies show you’ll get much more done, faster if you focus on one task at a time rather than try to multi-task.

    1. Checklists

    Create task checklists to keep yourself on track for your projects. Checklists are an effective tool for getting things done. And it feels good to check them off as done.

    1. Never start a meeting without an agenda

    Meetings are a pet hate of mine! Plan your meetings and set timers. Never go into a meeting without an agenda or a goal that the meeting is going to help achieve.

    1. Only Use Tools That Show Real Benefits

    With the many tools and software services that are available, we often end up with non-productive tools. Get rid of them! That saves time and money all in one fell swoop.

    1. Take On Your Toughest Task First Thing In The Morning

    Do your most IMPORTANT task first thing in the morning, to free up mental space to take on the rest of your day.

    1. Sleep

      Asleep on the job
      Asleep on the job

    Get a good night’s sleep. Some say 7-8 hours per night. The more you get the more you’ll get done and with less effort, if you’re well rested. Working when you are tired leads to less energy as the day progresses.

    There’s many more but I’d really like to hear from you any additional tips or tricks that you have.

    You may be using some of the above but have adapted it for your own use. Great! Please share what you do.

    So please leave your comments in the box below.

    While you are at it why not subscribe for future updates here.
    You’ll get my free guide “Eleven easy ways to improve your marketing photography”.

  • African shoestrings – Zimbabwe Day Ninety-Two Hwange

    The restaurant at Main Camp, run down or not was excellent value for money. Waiters in white tuxedos with gleaming teeth and pens poised ready to take orders were at our beck and call. This was not five star but it had the sort of character that only Africa has. A sort of colonial outdoor setting with smells of fresh cooking, candlelit tables and a quiet hubbub of guests enjoying the experience. Occasionally we would here the roar of a lion or the laugh of a hyena. This was so good that we could forgive the preoccupation black African waiters have with whisking your empty plate away almost at the same time as the cutlery hits the empty porcelain. The one thing the Europeans must have instilled in these guys was to ensure that nobody sat at a restaurant table with an empty plate or cup in front of them. “Never mind carrying out maintenance on rail carriages, lodges, roads or even vehicles just make sure there’s no empties left on the table!”

    Trouble is this obsession is starting to spread. Even in Australia young waiters are doing the same thing. What happened to being allowed to leisurely play with your spoon in an empty cup or at least wait until other diners at your table had finished?

    Sinamatella camp is 120 kilometres away, two thirds of which is a sealed road but at least a third of that is the usual tar between the potholes. In fact the unsealed section was a lot better than the majority of the sealed section. We decided to take our time and maybe have a game drive at the same time. Initially the animals seemed to be their usual shy selves; then at a waterhole we spotted two leopards, a male and female. The female was nervous and disappeared pretty smartly. The male on the other hand was totally unfazed and nonchalantly crossed the road in front of us, even having the gall to stop and look at us before disappearing into the scrub. At the next waterhole we spotted six elephants in convoys of three. From then on we seemed to see something new at every waterhole. The next 50 kilometres was spent concentrating on avoiding the potholes, so for all we knew there could have been a pride of lions nearby and we wouldn’t have known.

    The pièce de résistance came at Modava dam 14 kilometres from Sinamatella. There were three or four hippo standing out of the water, which is rare to see especially during the middle of the day, followed shortly after by two white rhino coming down to the water for a drink. A South African couple in the hide told us these two had apparently only just been released into Hwange from Matobo. This retired South African couple were driving around Southern Africa having a great time with their Landcruiser and camping gear. What a way to spend your retirement!

    Sinamatella itself is a lot smaller than main camp and is spectacularly sited on top of an outcrop or mesa (flat topped hill) with 180 degree views for as far as you can see. The restaurant and chalets all back onto a great view of the lower flats and the Sinamatella River where from time to time a distant elephant or giraffe would stop and chew the low thorny scrub. It was a lot drier here so there was fewer waterholes and pans for the animals, making game harder to spot.

    As at main camp they conduct guided walks. This time we were the only takers and Ndlovu, our guide, set up a good pace as we set off down the face of the hill. Ndlovu was short on words in comparison to Douglas but there was no doubting his eyes. He spotted a baby giraffe close by and took us as close as he could to an elephant that, as always, was munching away. Elephants spend most of their waking time munching and are also the vandals of the African wildlife social chain. Everywhere they go they leave a trail of destruction as they tear of branches and knock down trees with their powerful trunks and tusks.

    The restaurant at Sinamatella was called the Elephant and Dassie and was equally as good as the Waterbuck at Main camp. Here though we had quite a number of uninvited guests looking for a free feed, honey badgers. Honey badgers are small mammals that resemble the badger in size, shape, and habits, but apparently are a lot more aggressive and like eating honey as well as bees and animal flesh. These things scurry around the restaurant looking for scraps and then up and over the lodges at night as the pitter patter of their feet awoke us from time to time.

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    Elephants in Hwange NP in Zimbabwe
    Elephants in Hwange NP in Zimbabwe

     

  • The essential feature to have on your camera

    The essential feature to have on your camera

    This follows on from my previous post Why selecting a new camera is like selecting a new date (or TV).

    Over the next few weeks I’m going to suggest some essential features you need to consider having when you are in the market for a new camera or even mobile phone with a camera.

    At the end of each feature I’ll give a rating out of 10 – 10 being must have.

    At the end of the series if you haven’t had time to read them all then you can scroll to the bottom of the last in the series and get all four in a PDF.

    When we were in the market for a new TV, we discussed all the different features and benefits with retailers and become absolutely confused by salespeople in different shops telling us something different about the same TV.

    For example, one would say this TV doesn’t have Freeview plus whilst another would say that it does.

    In the end I researched on each manufacturers website and even rang them to ensure that the information I had gathered was accurate.

    After doing that we went and bought the TV we wanted.

    So what about the features and benefits of a new camera?
    Well compared to TV’s I think there way more things to think about and personally I believe that there are too many features that are just not needed!

    So over the next few weeks I’m going to suggest some essential features you need to consider having when you are in the market for a new camera or even mobile phone.

    At the end of each feature I’ll give a rating out of 10 – 10 being must have.

    At the end of the series a free cheat sheet for will be available for you to have on hand when you need it.

    So let’s start with absolute must!!

    Mechanical Exposure controls
    Usually on most cameras there are a P, A, S and M modes.

    However, on small compacts there usually is only a P mode and on smartphone cameras, even the best ones, they don’t yet have the option to adjust the exposure the “old fashioned way”.

    So what’s with the “old fashioned way”? Well without going into a great deal of details on how a camera works, I’ll explain:

    All cameras have an aperture and a shutter. Both allow light into the sensor but differently. The aperture allows in light by changing the size of its hole, the shutter allows in light by the speed of its movement.

    Having the option of being able to control both or at least one of these is one of the keys to getting great photography.

    So what do all these letters mean?

    P stands for program and is basically a slightly more sophisticated way of shooting in auto.
    The camera decides which aperture and shutter speed to use but you can also weigh in by using what’s called in the industry “shift”.

    A stands for aperture priority and S stands for shutter priority.
    In both these modes you control one whilst the other one is controlled by the camera. Most pro photographers depending on their specialisation will shoot in aperture priority.

    M is where you have complete control you set both the aperture and the shutter speed and is not something a beginner would dabble in until they have goCamera_0216_017t some experience with the other modes.

    Confused?

    Let’s simplify. Basically if you want to take a photo of a product with all the background blurred than you would need to adjust the aperture.

    If on the other hand you want to take a photo of movement, say one of your dance students practicing or performing then you would more than likely want to adjust the shutter to capture the type of movement you want.

    So It’s really handy to have that degree of control.

    What’s that you say?

    You’re only beginning so you just need auto.

    That’s fine however I would suggest that if you really want to create images that represent your brand then at some time in the future you will need a greater degree of control.

    One additional control that goes hand in hand with exposure is ISO adjustment.

    In fact the aperture, shutter speed and ISO are called the exposure triangle.

    That is to say that adjustment of one affects the other two.

    With each camera manufacturer trying to outdo each other, the ISO on a top end DSLR can now be adjusted to over 400,000 which is crazy, as now the camera can take pictures in the dark!

    When you change your ISO setting, you’re adjusting your camera’s sensitivity to light.

    ISO settings are normally anywhere from 100 to 10,000 (or higher), and these numbers have a direct relationship with the device’s sensitivity and therefore the aperture and shutter speed, so a lower setting means you need more light whilst a high setting needs less.

    Rating: A or S is 10/10

    So did you understand all that? I’m happy to clarify anything you’re not sure of.
    Just post in the comments section below. Don’t be shy.
    While you are at it why not subscribe for future updates here.
    You’ll get my free guide “Eleven easy ways to improve your marketing photography”.

  • African shoestrings – Zimbabwe Day Ninety-One Hwange

    Main camp is’ as the name suggests’ the centre of Hwange. It has most of the facilities, accommodation and the National Park office. It was here that we had to check in and try and organise our spare night.

    The female official was not exactly helpful. “Yus we cun give you anuther lodge for dat night” After establishing that meant we had to change lodge I asked whether we could stay in the same lodge instead of changing. “Noo. Thaat is noot possible” There was no point in pursuing the issue further she wasn’t going to be any more helpful and that was that. She wouldn’t even give us the key to our first lodge until 2 pm. ‘Rules are rules’ in African government.

    We consoled ourselves with a beer in the rather tired Waterbucks head and then attempted to find a picnic spot.

    The road we took was so bad that we gave up after a while but then came face to face with a herd of elephants that came perilous close to the car. Hwange has one of the largest populations of elephants in the world at around 30,000 and most of them seem to be crossing the road right in front of us.

    You know sometimes I can’t help myself, I just had to get a little bit closer to get that ‘great’ shot. It began to occur to me that we might be a little too close when one of the elephants turned and looked us rather menacingly and made to charge us. That was it, I was in reverse and began to move backwards so fast that the elephant was impressed enough to change his mind and went back to his herd. These guys are to be taken very seriously!

    The lodge was quite comfortable if somewhat (like everything else) rundown. It was completely self contained with a bedroom, kitchen, bathroom and lounge. It even had a braai and a shady veranda. Better still we had a cleaner who came in to make the beds and do the dishes. But the best thing was that it was so cheap. US$4 per night! At that price rundown or not it was a bargain.

    Hwange covers 14,600 square kilometres of hot, dry and dusty scrub interspersed with clumps of umbrella acacia trees and dotted with a few waterholes. It’s at these waterholes that most of the wildlife congregate, so most of us just drive from waterhole to waterhole looking for the most exciting wildlife we can find.
    It’s sort of strange how we can become blasé so quickly about the wildlife that we do see. Everyone wants to see the big cats and rhinos.
    At Nyamandhlovu (Nya to its visitors) Pan there is a platform where visitors get out of their car and sit for a while. Here we saw almost everything we had seen before wildebeest, kudu, giraffe and even elephants and still we wanted more.

    We visited this spot again the next day but had to return back to camp when I noticed a nail in one of the tyres. Repairing and replacing tyres was a big enough business in Hwange to justify having a permanent workshop there, so getting it fixed was not a problem.
    In the afternoon we returned to Nya and after an hour or so we got back into the car, turned the key and got nothing but a click. Now picture the scene we’re in the middle of an African wildlife park where the only time you can get out of the car is to quickly climb onto the platform and we’ve broken down. My first reaction was to get out of the car to have lift the bonnet. My second reaction when Sue pointed out that I could be risking my life in doing this was panic and then I got out of the car and lifted the bonnet but with my attention very much on the landscape around me rather than the slumbering piece of metal below me.

    Fortunately there was an armed guard who we hadn’t seen nearby and he made his presence known by coming over and without a word just stood guard close to the car. The problem was the battery lead had come loose from the terminal connection and with my limited tool kit and my great versatility as a mechanic, I had it up and running in no time.

    Back at main camp we washed down a ‘coldie’. Actually it wasn’t a beer but a gin and tonic. Gin was so cheap at US$1.00 for half a bottle that we thought we could save a little bit of money. Trouble was a gin and tonic without ice was like having a warm beer, it just wasn’t the same so that idea was abandoned after while and we went back to beer which at least we could have cold and was still only around US$0.80 each.

    That afternoon we went on a guided walk to the nearby Sedina Pan and back. Douglas our guide had good sense of humour and led us through the bush to the pan where we sat and watched in the hide for a while. Whilst peering through slot in the hide Douglas pointed towards one end of the pan. “What dooo yoou see my friend?”

    “What should I be seeing?’ I replied thinking that there was a lion or something equally as interesting.

    “Oh I don’t know. My eyes are not sooo goood”

    What was the point in having a guide whose “eyes are not so good”? We were relying on him to spot those animals that us mere tourists never spot!

    The other two other couples on the walk were from France and USA. I’ve come to the conclusion that yanks who go overseas must all have training before they leave because they all seem act the same way. Once again they wore the obligatory designer label safari gear, were loud and this time had a video camera that they talked to. That was irritating. We would be watching quietly for some wildlife when behind me would come the murmur “heere we ‘re watching quietly for some anemals in Seedona Paan” I’m sure whoever watched that video was bored shitless! I shushed him and neither of them spoke to us again until the end of the walk.
    Later we saw both couples having dinner together in the Waterbuck restaurant ignoring us as we walked past. Some people are just so petty!

    As it turned out Douglas didn’t actually need his eyes. On the way back we walked across a grassy plain full of zebra, wildebeest, jackals, baboon, giraffe and incredibly two kudu having a scrap within a couple of metres of us.

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    Two elephants mixing it up at a Hwange NP waterhole in Zimbabwe
    Two elephants mixing it up at a Hwange NP waterhole in Zimbabwe

     

  • African shoestrings – Zimbabwe Day Ninety Bulawayo

    Cecil Rhodes is buried at a spot he called the “view of the world” but is also called Malindidzimu (dwelling place of the benevolent spirits). So taken was he with what could be seen at the top of this granite mountain that he nominated this place as his last resting place. It’s an eerie place, as the huge boulders that mark the spot appear to be positioned by Rhodes himself. He was a powerful man but somehow his power did not stretch that far.

    On the way back to Bulawayo we stopped off at Tshabalala Wildlife Sanctuary. Admission is free if you paid to see Matobo on the same day.

    Its an excellent park as there are no predators and we could get out of the car and just stroll around the many giraffes, impala and zebra to name just three. Our only fear was of being accidentally kicked by a giraffe due to their inability to see us beneath its torso and we being such a long distance away from their head. They are soooo tall!

    The following day just the two of us (Mark and Nicky left for Harare via the overnight train the previous evening) visited the Khami ruins.

    Zimbabwe has several ruins dotted around the southwest and central parts of the country, the origins of which are often shrouded in mystery and varying theories. I can honestly say that Khami ruins did not leave me with lasting memory of mystique or intrigue. It’s a rather neglected and run down and the trail guide written and published by The National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe was ten years old and ventured very little on the taxing subject of who built this mini city. Like the Lonely Planet, it suggests that the Torwa people inhabited it until ousted by the much more powerful Rozwi who attempted to destroy Khami and from the looks of it needn’t have bothered as recent neglect seems to have done a much better job. The most recent theory given to us by Burkes Louise was the possibility that Indians from the Asian sub-continent might have been the original builders and architects.

    The ruins are divided into two different areas, the hill complex and the southern area. The most notable thing about the latter was its proximity to a really smelly reservoir. The hill complex on the other hand is not as spread out and had a concentration of stone walls and terracing surrounding it on quite a prominent mount. On the hill itself are tiers of huts or at least the remains of them. This apparently was the home of Mambo king of the Torwa; where he lived with his entourage. I guess it was interesting but not enough to keep us there too long.

    Across town in the opposite direction and around 24 kilometres from Bulawayo is Chipangali Animal Orphanage. This centre for injured, sick and ‘homeless’ animals was on our list of must see’s. It looks more like a zoo than a wildlife sanctuary. There were lots of cages and enclosures housing the various animals like lions, leopards, rhino, hyenas, and even crocs and snakes to name a few. Lots of these animals are perfectly fit but could not survive if returned to the wild. For instance, once a lion has had close contact with humans it loses its fear of man and becomes a risk to both man and itself. Chipangali also has breeding programs for cheetahs and rhino, so there were large enclosures for both of these animals. What always amazes me is how these places keep going. Obviously under resourced and running out of space somehow they seem to just soldier on and make the best of a bad thing. If I had one criticism it was there was very little info on why individual animals were there. Something like: “Petra (the lioness) was shot by a poacher and rescued by Tarzan, who traveled for three days carrying her to safety. She now has made a full recovery but has developed this habit for pounding her chest with her front paws and hence cannot be released back into the wild.”

    We goofed! As I said earlier we passed Hwange National Park by train to get to Bulawayo just because we wanted to travel in a train and we were under the delusion that hire cars were cheaper in Bulawayo than Vic Falls. As we now know, the train ride was a disappointment and hire cars cost pretty much the same. So now we had to back track 330 kilometres each way. It’s a long drive too, three and half hours to be exact to arrive at Main camp.

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    Giraffe at the "on foot" Tshabalala NP in Zimbabwe
    Giraffe at the “on foot” Tshabalala NP in Zimbabwe

     

  • African shoestrings – Zimbabwe Day Eighty Nine Bulawayo

    We had some neighbours in a tent at Burkes, Mark and Nicky. Mark was Irish and Nicky was Welsh a powerful combination. As we got to know each other Sue and I started to discuss our home, Perth and I noticed that both of them had gone into a sort of trance and their eyes began to moisten. Were they on drugs I wondered or maybe mentally ill. No, nothing so sinister. Apparently they had met each other in Perth and had such a great time during their six month stay there that us prattling on about how good it was just brought tears to their eyes.

    Perth was one of the many places that they had been, South America, the Himalayas and India to name but three, all of which we had targeted sometime in the future. These guys were getting around on the smell of old guidebook. Their budget made ours look like the national account of a small country. Somehow they managed to spend only US$1000 per month between the two of them. We were by then exceeding our original budget of A$100.00 (US$60.00) a day by the handsome tune of 25% almost double the amount Mark and Nicky were spending and we thought we were doing well! The fact is that they actually missed out on a few things simply because they didn’t want to spend the money. They wouldn’t for example hire a car, so unless an attraction was accessible by public transport, which a lot of sights in Southern Africa are not, or a budget tour then they missed out. Similarly, if the entry fee was high then they would not go or only one would go. They also carried their own tent and managed to camp pretty much everywhere and like us eat out of supermarkets. Personally I think that we are often in these places possibly only once in our lives and to miss experiencing or seeing something simply because of mere money is missing the point. But that’s their decision. They did contribute to the cost of our hire car for a day so that they could come with us to see Matobo National Park.

    Matobo is around 34 kilometres south of Bulawayo and is one of Zimbabwe’s great Parks. Matobo means ‘bald heads’ and was so named by Mzilikazi, king of the Matabele who with his people arrived in the early nineteenth century, fleeing the ruthless Zulu king Shaka. Mzilikazi was referring to the impressive granite peaks that dominate the majority of the park. Some of these peaks are sacred to the African people and supposedly even just to point to them brings bad luck.

    Of course like so many places in Southern Africa the San people were there first. There are hundreds of caves dotted all around the park that house ancient rock paintings.

    The white man also has left some history. Cecil Rhodes is buried in a grave hewn out of rock at the summit of one of the granite peaks. Baden-Powell was inspired during a visit to this area to form the Boy Scout movement and its national training grounds are located in Matobo.

    But we were there to see animals. The largest part of Matobo is taken up by the Whovi Game Park and it’s here that mainly white and some black rhino have been reintroduced and are thriving thanks mainly to armed guards that deter poachers. Of course there are lots of other game including the elusive leopard and the ever present variations of antelope. In fact, it’s meant to have the largest concentration of leopards and also black eagles in the world. Needless to say we didn’t see either. What we did see were a family of white rhino (mum, dad and two little ones) lumbering along the road side by side just in front of us as we turned a bend and applied the brakes to bring us to a jarring halt. Not that we hadn’t been jarred through to the bones up until now; the road was a typically bitumen or dust between the potholes track that we now almost routinely encounter.

    Rhino are such ugly and at the same time beautiful beasts. They move with an ease that contradicts their size but look patently dumb! Of course the latter may because they can’t see, they rely on sound and smell to keep them on their guard against any unfriendlys. It is possible to tell the difference between a black and a white rhino. The white rhino has a wide mouth, somehow over the years the word ‘wide’ has been became white, and stands around 2 metres tall, weighs around 1.5 tonnes and is quite docile. The black rhino has a vertical mouth with a triangular shaped lip, stands around 1.5 metres tall, weighs around 1 tonne and is the most aggressive of the two. A Kruger ranger once told us that a white rhino is a grazer and the black is a browser. Why I remember this has nothing to do with the subject but more to do with the way that this Afrikaans speaking guy pronounced his ‘R’s. They seemed to roll around in his mouth, dig down into his throat come back up through his nose, back into his mouth and sound like a cross between a cat’s purr and a lion’s roar. But I digress. For those of you who haven’t worked it out yet a grazer chomps at the vegetation at ground or low bush level and browser, not wanting to hurt their back, intelligently chomps at the vegetation at head height, i.e. larger bushes and small trees.

    Despite these white rhino being quite docile we decided to stay a safe distance away. It did occur to me whilst slowly following them down the road that had they turned around and decided to charge, I would not have the luxury of being able to do a three point turn. Reversing at high speed along this minefield of a road was probably more dangerous than standing our ground. Of course the rhino weren’t the least bit interested in us they were quite happy going for a family walk along the road until I think even they got fed up with the potholes and disappeared into the thick bush. We saw more rhino towards the end of the day but not before seeing hippos and crocs hanging out at the Mpopoma dam and a few giraffes from the distance. In this area of the park there are two viewing platforms and picnic spot where you can get out of the car. The view from one of these platforms is as typical of the African Savannah as you will find. A grassy plain dotted with clumps of umbrella acacia trees, single umbrella acacia trees stood away from these groups as if exiled, spread before us. In the distance we could see a couple of giraffes that were casually wondering across towards their lunch whilst we ate ours and watched Africa play out its life.

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    Rhino rolling in the dirt in Matobo NP Zimbabwe
    Rhino in Matobo NP Zimbabwe

     

  • African shoestrings – Zimbabwe Day Eighty Eight Bulawayo

    Our actual room was part of a block of four away from the house and quite tidy although as in most things in this country a bit run down. We made ourselves comfy and then getting a lift from Louise headed out to the centre of town to hunt down a cheap hire car and book our accommodation at our next destination, Hwange National Park. To book this accommodation (which by the way is almost mandatory) we had to go to the National Parks Booking Agency in Bulawayo. The main booking office is in Harare and they are not connected by any sort of technology except an unreliable fax. Consequently, we had to request certain dates and places and come back the next day to see if we had won lotto after they faxed head office to check availability.

    We almost got what we asked for……………. There are two camps in Hwange, Main Camp and Sinamatella and we asked for two nights at Main and one at Sinamatella. What we got was one at each with a night’s gap between the two. We weren’t particularly worried as we had heard that there are lots of no-shows (no deposit is required with the booking) so we had good chance of plugging that gap.

    The hire car we managed to get was a Nissan Sunny that had seen better days. A few chips on the paintwork, a couple of small dents, an interior of heavily worn upholstery and a windscreen with a huge crack across the passenger side gave this car ‘character’ and it was also the best of a bad bunch at the price we wanted to pay. We hired it for ten days to travel around Zimbabwe and drop it back in Harare.

    We were rapidly getting the idea that maintenance was a dirty word in Zimbabwe everything seemed in need of repair or simple maintenance. Apparently its been a slow almost unnoticeable deterioration that has been going on since 1980 the year of independence, even though for a time in the eighties Zimbabwe enjoyed a prosperity unequalled at that time on the African continent. So we were sort of hoping that this car had been maintained sometime in its long life.

    The centre of Bulawayo wasn’t quite as run down as other parts but didn’t particularly excite us. It’s just a functional town, its wide streets built around a grid system full of unexciting functional buildings. Even the museum didn’t enthuse us. It just seemed a well ordered assembly of rooms that housed hundreds of stuffed animals.

    What Bulawayo did have was Haefelis!……… Located on Fife Street, Haefelis was a little gem of a café that served cakes, fresh bread, rolls, coffee and pizza. This was the local trendy hangout and a good place to wile away some time, people watching. This was the place of the new Africa or certainly the one the world would like to see if not necessarily some of the African politicians. Young well-dressed Black and White Africans mingled with each other, laughing and joking, putting the world to rights and obviously enjoying each other’s company. Of course in modern day Zimbabwe whites make up less than 1% of the population so their influence should be minimal but still important.

    The bigger racial conflict over the years has been the two dominant tribes, the Shona (75%) and the Ndebele (18%). At the end of the ‘bush war’ that lead to independence in the seventies these two groups came close to starting a civil war and now live side by side in an often uneasy atmosphere. As a tourist there is no real evidence of this except the odd incident that gets a mention in the national or local newspapers. Local Europeans who, as in South Africa, tend to dominate the tourism industry and probably have a slightly different perspective than some of the Shona or Ndebele, fed us our information.
    We heard quite a few times how simple the majority of the population were and how difficult it was for the farmers or other local employers to get consistent productive work from their employees. If that’s true then as more whites and consequently valuable skills leave the country then the bigger the hole Zimbabwe will find itself in unless it takes steps to educate and teach its population the skills necessary to prosper.
    Now don’t get me wrong I’m not in favour of turning all these African countries into western societies and I’m fully aware that everybody was doing just fine until Europeans came along and tried to ‘civilise’ the various African tribes. But the damage is done and the clock only goes in one direction so westernisation is all we have got until someone comes up with something better, which I might add there must be, after all a society that’s produced McDonalds, Emnem, bell bottoms and Ronald Reagan can only be improved on.

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    Khiami Ruins near Bulawayo in Zimbabwe
    Khiami Ruins near Bulawayo in Zimbabwe

     

  • African shoestrings – Zimbabwe Day Eighty Seven Bulawayo

    In Canada I was asked how Niagara Falls compared to Victoria Falls. I said bluntly that whilst the Zimbabweans had made a bit of a mess of the town the area around the falls was still protected and in a natural setting. Somehow the North Americans had turned the falls into a Disney meets nature theme park and built something ugly on almost every square inch of land around the falls.

    And that is the great thing about Victoria Falls. Surrounded by rainforest created from the mist that the falls generates, you can imagine that what you are seeing now is pretty similar to what David Livingstone saw when he stumbled across it in the mid 1800’s. As I explained previously last time we had been here the water level had been a lot lower. Now the falls were torrential and mist was everywhere, not enough to spoil the view as on the Zambian side but enough to get us wet again. Probably the most dramatic view is to be had from Cataract View. This requires a climb down a steep stairway into the gorge and it’s from here that we found the classic view found in all good coffee table books. There are many other view points along the path that parallels the falls. The closer ones were a waste of time but the ones further away enabled us to get a sense of scale and that’s when you realise how awesome this place is. Its as if there are billions of tiny droplets of water dropping 100 metres into the gorge, each one independent of each other and then coming together as one seething mass of water on impact at the bottom. We stood and watched this incredible creation of nature for sometime before leaving and finding somewhere to toss some fluid down into our abyss and watch the world cup cricket.

    We were a bit disappointed with our coupe on the train. We’re not sure whether it was the luck of the draw or the fact that we booked second class but we didn’t get the wood paneling, red velour upholstery and brass of a bygone era. Instead we got metal paneling and grey dull upholstery. Most trains in Zimbabwe run overnight on long journeys and run very slowly! It took ten hours to travel a distance of 439 kilometres or twice as long as it would have done by car. But we had, so we thought at the time, some good reasons to travel by train; it would save on accommodation, it was cheaper to hire a car in Bulawayo than Vic Falls and I liked trains. Whilst I’m not in the train spotter league, I find it quite comforting to sit or lie down listening to the rhythmic ‘clatter de clatter’. I was to be disappointed, just as we would nod off to the gentle swaying of the carriage the train would stop at some imaginary station in the middle of nowhere and then spent the next thirty minutes shunting. Add that to the fact that the doom and gloomers had been at us in Vic Falls, warning us to keep our windows locked to guard against straying arms that appear at stations and whip away your possessions and never to leave your coupe unattended, and you can see why we got very little sleep. To add insult to injury we discovered that hire cars cost the same in Bulawayo as they do in Vic Falls after all!

    Louise from Burkes Paradise Backpackers met us at the station at around 7 am and whisked us away to a reasonable size house on a reasonable size property away from the centre of town. Louise and her husband Colin were caretaker managers whilst the owner Alan Burke was away and whilst they were pretty helpful they were obviously new to the game. As with white South Africans white Zimbabweans were fearful for their future under the current regime. Certainly they had good reason, Zimbabwe’s economy was in tatters, inflation was out of control and there was no money to pay the souring national debt or anything else for that matter. Of course since we left the country it’s gone from very bad to chaotic with the well publicised grabs of white owned farms that have resulted in crop failures of massive proportions and therefore very little left to export. The Z$ is worth nothing outside of Zimbabwe, so those who choose to get out, leave with very little unless they were smart enough to have some investments overseas. To a lot of whites still there, Zimbabwe is their home and has been for a least a couple of generations so leaving the country is the last resort.

    Not that they’ve been there all that long. The remarkable Cecil Rhodes managed to obtain mining rights from the Ndebele tribe for his British South Africa Company as late as 1888. From then on the area that is now Zambia and Zimbabwe was settled by whites and the long running conflict between black and white that still continues today was born. Eventually after ten years of fighting between the Shona and Ndebele on one side and white settlers on the other, Southern Rhodesia started to push for self-government, which was eventually achieved in 1923. Thirty years later, along with Northern Rhodesia (present-day Zambia) and Nyasaland (present-day Malawi), it became part of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. This federation lasted a mere ten years, when the other two countries obtained independence as Zambia and Malawi. Rhodesia, as it was now called, started negotiations on their independence. But with no plan to involve black Africans, the Poms rejected this proposal. Eventually the white government led by Ian Smith got pissed off by this and declared independence anyway. It wasn’t until 1980 after a lot of bloodshed, two different governments and Britain regaining control, that free elections were held. Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) won the election easily and the rest as they say is history!

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    Victoria Falls from the Zambia side
    Victoria Falls from the Zambia side

     

     

  • African shoestrings – Zambia Day Eighty Six Victoria Falls

    Apart from the shopping and of course the many energetic activities associated with the falls itself (like bungy jumping, white water rafting, absailing etc) there is one that takes you back to a long gone era of British colonialism; afternoon tea on the terrace of the Victoria Falls hotel. This colonial style building had for years been the centre for Europeans up until independence. It was here that local white farmers, townsfolk and well off visitors would gather for spot of ‘tiffin’. Certainly it has lost none of its atmosphere even if it has its colonial clientele. Nowadays well off tourists (mostly Americans) stay in its well-appointed and stylish rooms and budget tourists like us frequent it for afternoon or morning tea and if really feeling extravagant, dinner. Of course it does have prime position overlooking the Zambezi gorge just downstream from the falls.

    I couldn’t help imagining, as we ate our cucumber and smoked salmon triangular bite sized sandwiches, men and women in hats, striped jackets and full length full dresses playing croquet or just lazing around on the expansive and immaculate back lawn. Black waiters dressed in black trousers and white dinner jackets, hovered at our beck and call and delivered the three tier silver tray full of sandwiches, scones, finger cakes and on the side the obligatory tea. It was wonderful even though I don’t like cucumber or tea and cheap at an all you can eat price of US$4 each.

    Across the other side of the hotel is the train station, another relic of the Edwardian past. We had to catch a train here to Bulawayo the next day and we thought it a good idea to book. We had wanted to book a first class coupe, which sleeps just two but had to settle for a second class that sleeps three. Not a big issue we thought at the time. The train left at 5 pm the next day so we had 24 hours left in Vic. Falls.

    Despite the number of tourists that increase as the years go by there is still plenty of wildlife in and around Vic Falls. On our last visit we twice come across wild elephants whilst walking and cycling just outside of town and had also seen a family crossing the Zambezi upstream from the falls. This time round we saw plenty of elephants on a night time game drive and then the following morning we actually rode on some as well!

    Elephant riding is an experience not to missed. The Elephant camp is in a location too remote to find ourselves, so we were picked up and taken there early in the morning and given tea (again) and biscuits just in case we couldn’t survive a couple of hours without sustenance.
    Richard our tour leader introduced us to the elephants as their riders put them through a series of exercises. Fortunately we didn’t need to follow suit! Next it was time to jump on and that’s easy. A platform has been erected just for this purpose.
    Settling in behind the rider (they very wisely team novices like us with riders who really know what they’re doing) I thought how well cushioned the saddles are. Now I always thought that elephants were big heavy brutes that destroy everything in their path as they move around.
    Well that myth was destroyed within the first five minutes of riding! Incredibly they just glide through the bush effortlessly and quietly leaving no trace behind them. Apparently it’s the muscles in their feet that move around to cope with the weight displacement. So it’s just a steady swaying movement as we followed Richard who was on foot and carrying a rifle with both hands behind his neck. The rifle is for our protection just in case a lion or leopard gets too near. Even though he’s never had to use it yet he still believes it’s better to be on the safe side and that sounded like a pretty good practice to me.

    Richard was one of those “boy’s own” characters that seem so commonplace in the ex British colonial Africa. A tall, solidly built, good looking young man he spoke with that sort of cultured Zimbabwean English accent that’s also very close to the accent spoken by South Africans of British ancestry. He would have been born and brought up during Zimbabwe’s war of independence and most likely, as with so many others of his generation who stayed and toughed it out, he was taught how to fire a gun before he could read.

    My elephant was called Manna and my rider was Sopi. Sopi was quite chatty and told me that they had eight elephants in all. They use them in rotation and were purchased for Z$500 from a nearby park that were about cull these beautiful beasts. Most of them are males; it seems that their temperament is more suited to this type of work than females. Elephants live for around 60 – 70 years and during this time they will wear out four sets of teeth. After having seen them eat at the end of the ride I’m not surprised, they chew as if their lives depend on it which in fact I suppose is true. It’s partially because of their feeding habits that the ride is only one and a half hour long. Apparently they get rather anxious and twitchy when they get hungry so it’s wise to keep it short and let us off before hunger gets the better of them.

    The ride actually finished at a secluded spot where we also got fed but not until we helped the riders feed them. Both Sue and I bravely put our hands into our respective elephants mouths with some special feed which was their treat for being good little steeds (the feed not our hands). It actually wasn’t the hand I feared for the most, it was suffocation; their breath is terrible! But not quite bad enough to put me off my bacon and eggs!

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    Dug out canoes at the Okavango delta in Botswana
    Dug out canoes at the Okavango delta in Botswana

     

  • African shoestrings – Zambia Day Eighty Five Victoria Falls

    We left Livingstone via the hostel shuttle that was masquerading as the back of a Ute and into Zimbabwe the next morning. The driver actually stopped at the border and took in our passports to the Zambian immigration office for stamping which was a bit disconcerting as a passport is considered the only thing that you should never let out of your possession. But he looked like a trustworthy soul and from the couple of grunts he had given us, he had this air of knowing what he was doing.

    A good thing about the backpacker hostels is their network. At each one you can usually book ahead for the next one and even further ahead. In Victoria Falls we had booked to stay at a place named with obviously a lot of thought, 357 Gibson Road. It was a quite comfortable place run and owned by a Dutch couple Hans (who else?) and Elizabeth, full of Aussie travelers and cheap, which in Vic. Falls is a rarity in this age of mass tourism. There’s always a reason why a place is cheap and 357 Gibson Road was no exception. It was 25-minute walk to the centre of town. Now if you’re staying in Rome, Paris, Sydney or even Perth that’s great. In a small town that’s a long walk.
    Fortunately Hans gave us and a couple of other Aussies, Greg and Leann, a lift via the local markets into town. Zimbabwe at that time and in fact as I write is in the process of having its currency nosedive into totally a dark void of worthlessness.
    Great if you’re a traveler from almost anywhere but not if you live there. You can almost always tell how much a country has lost confidence in its currency, the good old US$ starts to become the currency of tourism. Zambia had already made that transition, we paid for our accommodation in US$ even though we paid by credit card. As John one of the owners of Fawlty Towers put it “You just can’t rely on the Kwacha (Zambia’s currency) to be the same value tomorrow morning as it is today”. At that time 1500 Kwacha equalled one Aussie dollar or US$0.60. It cost us 8000Kwacha (US$3.00) to travel the 11 kilometre distance from the falls back to Livingstone in a taxi! So in Zimbabwe the A$ was only worth 25 Zimbabwe dollars but we still felt like millionaires in the local markets.

    Hans left us to wander around whilst he went about his normal business of purchasing his weekly supplies. These markets weren’t the usual stalls and stands but a dusty, rambling and poorly maintained open-air shopping centre.  There wasn’t a lot to look at except hairdressers. Every second shop seemed to be a hairdresser or a bitsa shop. You know one of those shops that sell a bit of this, that and anything else. It was at one of these shops that we all decided to stop and have Z$5.00 (US$0.12) cokes. We actually hadn’t planned to stop but we had to stay there until we had finished drinking so we could hand back the empties. Coke in most of these countries comes in the old coke bottles that have probably been around since it first came on the market early in the twentieth century. What worried me is whether the coke we drinking is that old as well!

    As we drank at this rather poor excuse for a milk bar, we did the usual story swapping that travelers do. It turned out Greg was from Perth and had just hitchhiked from Mozambique and somehow got caught up with a drunken driver who stopped at every bar on the 500 kilometre journey. Mozambique is apparently not the sort of place you walk away from a lift unless you have a few months to spare or worse still a gun! This story was to have a lot more relevance to us later on than we realised at the time.

    In the 4 years since we first visited Vic Falls it had changed a fair bit. Like any tourist town it always had its fair share of hotels and shops, now it had even more and a lot of them were more upmarket. It had even acquired the obligatory casino.

    One place that hadn’t been touched was an area nicknamed curio row. It’s here that you will find almost any type of African curio but in particular rhinos, hippos, African figures and any other shape considered popular, all carved from soapstone or wood. The trouble is there are so many of them that it’s hard to be convinced that guy selling them from his stall (often a just a chair in a small section of a crowded car park) actually made them himself or represents his local village. Somehow I get the impression that it all comes from a huge factory secretly hidden away in the bush. But I guess for these people all that matters is that they sell.

    And they do!…………. Tourists gobble them up and take them home and pepper them all round their home or put them aside and forget about them. In these times of globalisation you can find most of these goods in specialty shops in any big western city but usually at four or five times the price. So sometimes it’s often the price and the perception of negotiating a bargain with the seller, that attracts tourists rather than the quality or its origin. We as ‘discerning’ buyers found a small shopping centre around the back of the curio row and bought what we considered more original and quality goods (albeit at higher prices and no option to bargain) than what was on offer elsewhere.

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    Victoria Falls from the Zambia side
    Victoria Falls from the Zambia side

     

  • Why stock images are bad for business!

    Why stock images are bad for business!

    Why stock images are bad for business!

    We all use stock images but are they really good for business? In fact stock images are bad for business!

    Imagine

    You are driving down the road and you see this big billboard with a terrific image on it. You think to yourself that’s a great image and that it looks familiar. Quickly you realise it’s the one you used in a recent marketing campaign.

    Then you take a closer look and you realise that it’s advertising your competitor’s product or service.

    The fine print

    Seething, you get to your office and send a nasty email to the stock agency you used.
    Later that day you get a response that draws your attention to their terms and conditions which basically say that they have no control over how the image is used.

    In other words, as long as they get paid they don’t really care.

    Hiring your own photographer

    Now imagine that you are driving down that same road and you see the same billboard.
    It has a great image on it that’s advertising your business and no one can else can use that image without your express permission.
    Now you may be thinking that you got that image by hiring a good photographer.
    Comment-Anzac March_0411_001[mailerlite_form form_id=7]
    Not necessarily!

    When a photographer conducts a shoot for any business (or wedding or portrait session or any other third party) they keep the copyright. So what that can mean is that unless you have a watertight contract with them, that they are prepared to sign (and then the price will increase) they can resell that image to another business or alternatively a stock agency.

    Now don’t get me wrong I don’t believe that many photographers would knowingly sell an image commissioned by you to your competitor but they, like you, need to make a living.

    But it does highlight the legal minefield that is copyright.

    So what to do?

    Take control

    They only way to truly retain copyright is take the image yourself or have an employee take it. In the former you own the copyright and in the latter provided the employee takes it in the course of their employment, again you as the employer, own the copyright.

    Another good reason to take these images yourself or use a photographer (if you are prepared to pay for some control of the copyright) is creative control.

    The disadvantages of using a stock agency

    Stock agencies have thousands of images. Scrolling through that many, even with the great search engines that most of them have, is time consuming and you could end up settling for second best.

    Of course you could outsource the selection to a marketing company or even the stock agency itself by giving them a brief.

    Again you are giving away your creative control, not to mention the additional expense you will incur. And who’s to say that they will come up with a what you are looking for.

    I know that when I have submitted images along with many other photographers for a stock agency brief, often the client ends up not choosing any image.
    Which is a pain for everyone, especially me, which I why I’m very selective these days but I digress.

    Take your own Stock images

    But, I hear you cry, none of us have the expertise to take really good images.

    That can be taken care of easily, the web is awash with tutorials and tips on how to take great images.

    Off course these are aimed at the amateur photographer who could be looking for information to take great family shots right through looking to carve out a career as a photographer.

    Taking photos (and videos) for business marketing is different and similar in a lot of ways to travel photography. Not harder or easier but different.
    The eye should be looking to make your product or service as attractive as possible sometimes in an obvious way, other times in a subliminal or subtle way.

    Comment-Guadalajara_1010_169Some of the articles on this site are intended to bridge that gap. My goal is to help small business owners raise the quality of both their image and marketing by providing the information that they need to improve their photography.

    Plus I will give options on where are the best platforms are to post or use their images.

    So come and regularly visit my site nickkatin.com or subscribe below to get the latest articles into your inbox and a free guide on where to start.

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  • African shoestrings – Zambia Day Eighty Four Livingstone

    Victoria Falls (known locally as “the mist that thunders”) is one of the great natural beauties of the world. A quirk of political geography has put just over half of the falls in Zambia but three quarters of the viewing area in Zimbabwe. Consequently the views from both countries are a lot different. After having been dropped off by the Fawlty Towers shuttle; we strolled into the Mosi-oa-Tunya National Park, where the Zambian viewpoints are located, past the many curio stalls that we decided we would look at later and straight into mist!

    Let me see if can set the scene for you…………… Imagine if you can the mighty Zambezi, a wide stretch of water, sweeping down from its source in North Western Zambia some 900 kilometres away, plunging down a 103 metre high and 1600 metre wide precipice into a narrow gorge which turns at right angles on the Zambia border into an even narrower channel and out into a slightly wider gorge as if unaffected by its trauma of the last 2 kilometres of its journey. From a huge wide open river, the Zambezi hits Victoria Falls and changes its identity into a body of water flowing through a series of narrow and deep gorges. The Zambian viewpoints are all at the point of convergence of water from the Zimbabwean side meeting water from the Zambian side and then somehow squeezing into that first narrow channel. It is here that great volumes of water thunders down and then rises up in the form of mist, hence the name “The mist that thunders” and then drenches everything in sight including us! Last time we had been there the water level had been a lot lower and we managed to stay relatively dry in comparison. This time we only succeeded in keeping the camera dry as we wondered from point to point beginning to look like drowned rats.

    When the rains have been good its estimated about 5 Million cubic metres of water per minute passes over the falls and I’m sure it was all falling on top of us! There’s one particular point called appropriately Knife Edge Bridge. It’s a wooden footbridge that crosses from the mainland to a tiny island in the Zambezi. Walking across is about as close as you get to walking through the falls itself. Needless to say we could see nothing but feel plenty. In the end we gave up and found a trail that led down to the water’s edge downstream of the falls. It was called Boiling Point and it’s here that you can see a great swirling mass of water resembling a watery black hole generated by the pounding that is happening a few 100 metres upstream. It’s also here that the best view of the Zambezi Bridge is to be had. It joins the two countries and hosts two sets of customs and immigration, a continuous human chain crossing both ways and Bungy Jumping.

    Look I hope that I’m not offending too many die-hard Bungy jumpers here but why? Why would anyone of sound mind and body attach an ankle to a glorified lackey band and jump off a 100 metre plus cliff, bridge or whatever, bounce up and down upside down for fun? A friend of ours did it and said that she had such an adrenalin rush that it stayed with her for a week. Well, let me tell you that’s one experience I’m happy to bypass. I get an adrenalin rush just from looking down (mind you that’s probably actually naked fear). Well anyway from our position I have to admit the jumpers looked spectacular jumping from the bridge. Small and almost insignificant against the backdrop of the huge gorge that houses both the bridge and the Zambezi but spectacular nonetheless.

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    Victoria Falls and the Zambezi Bridge from the Zambia side
    Victoria Falls and the Zambezi Bridge from the Zambia side

     

  • African shoestrings – Zambia Day Eighty Three Livingstone

    We were now into the final day of the Audi tour and the final trip was from Kasane to Livingstone. Somehow five of us, plus Chris and our bags, managed to squeeze into an old beaten up left hand drive Nissan Sunny and drive to Kazungula where we crossed the Zambezi by ferry into Zambia. After the usual slow border control process we were met fortunately by one of Chris’s offsiders in a minibus that was able to take our bags. We mere humans continued on in the luxury Nissan along 60 kilometres of what we presumed was once upon a time a flat bitumen road surface that had now been reduced to an ‘African’ track of potholes punctuated by the odd short stretch of almost smooth bitumen.

    Our final destination was the quaintly and considering Chris was one of the owners, appropriately named Fawlty Towers backpackers in Livingstone. Actually it’s one of the better backpackers we had seen so far. It was like a mini resort without the poolside cocktail bar. A big private courtyard with a swimming pool was at the centre with most of the accommodation and functional rooms fronting it. A little of oasis of western culture in the heart of a very African town, somehow I felt that it had been designed to keep the residents away from the inquisitive locals.

    Actually Livingstone itself was quite a nice place. Its located 11 kilometres from Victoria falls itself as distinct from the Victoria Falls the town. Four years previous we had stayed a few days at Victoria Falls and had hired a couple of bikes so that we could ride across the border and see the Zambian side of the falls and visit Livingstone. We did the former but we were put off the idea of the latter by the bike hire guys. “You must make sure your wife is always in front of you and close to you otherwise those Zambians will kidnap her. Livingstone is a bad place”. Needless to say four years on, it was with some trepidation that we actually walked into the main part of town.

    We needn’t have worried! Whilst the Lonely Planet does actually mention incidents of the occasional walker being mugged between the falls and the town, there was certainly no indication of a wild town that was eyeing up every white female with a view of selling her at the local slave market. Mind you the Lonely Planet did mention the fact that due to the muggings bike hire had become popular which changed little as there were now reports of the odd cyclists being mugged. So even though the Zimbabweans probably laid it on thick there is apparently some truth to their warnings.

    Livingstone was until the 1970’s the centre for the falls but the Zimbabwean town of Victoria Falls started to become much more popular as Zambia itself struggled with its own political and economic problems. Nowadays its making a comeback for those wishing to escape the frenzied tourist activity and more recently the unsettling political and economic problems of its Zimbabwe neighbour.

    Mind you from a tourism prospective there isn’t a great deal to see in Livingstone itself so we contented ourselves with having lunch and a few beers with John & Alison at the rather colonial Pig’s head pub. We had a developed a sort of travelers friendship with John and Alison, probably because they were a couple like us and also because they too were heading in the same direction. John, as an Englishmen, was certainly pretty patriotic and for me that was honourable but more importantly it offered a good opportunity to bait him about his country’s pathetic imitation of a cricket team.

    The food at the Pigs head was nothing special but was almost five star in comparison to the Funky Monkey restaurant where our group had our farewell dinner that night. It was awful!

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    Lilies at on the Okavango Delta In Botswana
    Lilies at on the Okavango Delta In Botswana

     

  • African shoestrings – Botswana Day Eighty Two Chobe

    Audi had arranged a local tour guide to take us on a game drive into Chobe that afternoon and then a game cruise along the Chobe River the next morning. Our new tour guide didn’t show for a while and in his absence, led by yours truly, we organised with the agents at Tebe camp, where we were staying, to swap the two tours around. After all, watching the sun go down on the water from a boat surrounded by animals sounded much more romantic than being stuck in a vehicle. Not too mention that early morning is a better time to go for a game drive.

    Andre had now left us and returned back to Ngepi. He had done all right for his first time; nothing had been too much trouble and had often bent over backwards to make us comfortable. Humble that he was he was also a nice guy with it. The poor bloke was also just a little bit emotional when he left.

    Our new guide was a different animal!

    Chris was an Ethiopian brought up in Sweden (we actually thought that he was bullshitting when he told us that but we found out much later that it was true). With his long platted Bob Marley look alike hair and a fairly relaxed and casual attitude to his job; he was also an ‘expert’. Now I know he’s meant to be an expert certainly as a tour guide but I mean he knew it all and there was no doubting that the most important thing in his life was whatever worked for Chris. Which is why he was not too happy that we had rearranged the schedule. But we held fast despite his efforts to convince us otherwise.

    The cruise was pretty bloody good!

    From the boat we could see elephants and buffalo on the shore and hippos in the water, watching us with those beady eyes that live just above the surface, not to mention the abundant bird life.

    The most impressive sight, though, was the sunset that seemed to happen just at the river edge. At home, in Perth, we get some pretty awesome sunsets over the ocean so when I say the Chobe sunset was pretty bloody good; I mean it ‘was’ pretty bloody good. I shot off a few shots after Sue had made the suggestion. One of these shots sits proudly on our dining room wall and when anyone remarks on it, Sue turns to me and says with great satisfaction “and you never wanted to take it!”

    Driving through Chobe early the next morning was a totally different affair. Safari trucks are open in the back and at 5.45 am it was bloody freezing. Obviously the animals thought so as well because none of them were anywhere to be seen. We drove around for around an hour along dusty sandy tracks with Chris barking instructions to the driver up front and scratching his head as to why we hadn’t seen anything yet. The night before despite our rearrangement of the final leg of the tour, he had promised us an abundance of wildlife and so far his promise seemed to be pretty empty. Two lionesses saved his embarrassment. They were chasing a squealing warthog 100 metres away across a water channel. We stopped and watched as the two got closer to their prey that was running at great speed first one way then another. I turned to look behind us and to my amazement saw another interested onlooker, another lioness, a mere five metres away peering around our vehicle in effort to see what her mates were up to. We had unknowingly parked right in front of her!

    After that the wildlife just kept coming! It was as if someone had sounded the wake up call because everywhere we went we saw something. A herd of buffalo chewing and nonchalantly looking at us quizzically, two hippos wondering around on the river bank, kudu and impala springing away as we neared.

    Back to the water channel and we just caught sight of two of the lionesses walking away into the bush. We drove on back towards to the park gates and our campsite and then suddenly around the next bend, as surprised as us, were all three lionesses walking across the track and within spitting distance of the truck.

    More buffalo and a crocodile were spotted near the waters edge and then reluctantly our time was up.

    Chris was crowing. “See, I said we would see lots this morning” he said in his sort of British, Swedish and African accent. My remainder that it was actually our idea to do this early morning game drive was totally ignored as he continued to crow all the way back to camp.

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    Sunset on the Chove River in Chobe National Park, Botswana
    Sunset on the Chove River in Chobe National Park, Botswana

     

  • African shoestrings – Botswana Day Eighty One Chobe

    Eventually our time was up and we had to leave this pleasant existence. We were canoed back to the village of Jao in the early hours. This time we had the opportunity to wander around this traditional village, although I think the main aim was to get us to buy hand made baskets, not wander off on a photographic shoot that yours truly did. Actually the small quantity of baskets that were for sale had enormous price tags, so business was pretty poor for them that day. What was more interesting (baskets are way down my shopping list) was the way these people lived. Jao consisted of a collection of mostly reed or bamboo huts with thatched roofs but some of them were mud and others were constructed using tin cans as bricks held together by mud or dung. Most of these homes had an enclosed yard that we sneaked a look at, used for cooking and storing chickens and donkeys. One woman took a sharp looking garden hoe to her donkey that was getting to close to comfort to her toddler. This poor animal had scars from previous encounters and probably lived a life of misery, if a donkey can have such a thing.

    The children were fascinated by these white camera-carrying tourists and posed quite happily in fact almost insistently for our cameras. Some of them had runny noses and sticky eyes which made us think their health was still a long way from being as good as children of the west.

    We got back to Ngepi camp, after having to cram into the one motor boat with all our bags, camping gear and supplies when only one boat turned up, in the late afternoon.

    That night we had a ‘treat’; the dancers of the Mbuknshu people put on a show of traditional dancing. It was boring and repetitive and was far less entertaining than watching the antics of an overlander group who had arrived at the same time as us. It’s sort of like watching Neighbours (in fact most of them were Aussies and Kiwis). There were usual ructions created by clicks, one night stands and show offs. One guy was so ‘cool’ that he sat on the edge of the table, dressed immaculately to look so casual, drinking neat bourbon straight from the bottle. Yuk!

    We had our own ruction later that night as somehow I managed to spill kero from the lantern all over the floor of the tent. Within seconds we were out of that tent with our bags and then spent the next hour erecting another in the dark. To say that Sue was not amused is probably a bit of an understatement although she has dined out on it a few billion tedious times since!

    The next day we were headed through the infamous Caprivi Strip. Infamous because over the years the five tribes that make up the inhabitants, the Caprivians, of this narrow 500 kilometre long extension of Namibia, have from time to time created unrest in their demands for autonomy. This particular time there a lull in the friction and minus Klaus, Ingrid and Anna we drove the seven hour length of the strip without any incident apart from the bone jarring badly maintained roads.

    Our destination was Kasane in Northeastern Botswana. You might well be asking why didn’t we go straight from the delta to Kasane instead of back via Namibia. The easiest answer is I don’t know and don’t care. These guys obviously knew what they were doing and I for one was quite happy to follow their plan. However a quick look at a map of Botswana and Namibia explains all. Whist it’s a relatively short distance as the crow flies from the delta to Kasane it’s a bloody long way by road. A circumnavigation of central Botswana is required to get there by road.

    Kasane actually sits close to the borders of four different countries. Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe and more importantly is the gateway to Chobe National Park, one of the gems of African Game parks. This was going to be one of the highlights of our time in Africa. We had read a fair bit about Chobe and knew that it has probably the most varied wildlife in Africa on a setting that is as varied and scenic as it inaccessible. It was the inaccessible bit that convinced us to see it with a tour operator. Heavy-duty admission fee (US25.00 per person per day), heavy duty 4WD hire meant heavy-duty money.

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    Sunset on the Chove River in Chobe National Park, Botswana
    Sunset on the Chove River in Chobe National Park, Botswana