The African Queen, Part 2

Continuing my travelogue of daughter Tammy's African vacation (first part here), here are some e-mail excerpts from the middle part of the trip:

[Directed to me:] "Alive! Sky diving was absolutely amazing, I will definitely do it again if the opportunity presents itself (maybe on a future vacation). I would happily do it at home all the time if it was less expensive! If you want to go I will gladly accompany you, just let me know! I felt extremely safe the whole time - the tandem diver had 10 years of experience and over 5,000 jumps. We were clipped in together in 4 different areas and he had the main parachute and a backup as well. He said in his 5,000 jumps he's had to use his backup parachute 4 times only. I've got a DVD of it and lots of photos too."

[Later:] "Still alive, in good health, in possession of all my belongings, etc. We're having a brief stop in Rundu, a town on the Namibia/Angola border before we go to our campsite tonight. Tomorrow morning we head out for 2 days into the Okavango Delta - hopefully will not be eaten by a hippo/croc, since apparently there are plenty of those.

Mmmm let's see - guess I left off my reports in Swakopmund, which I loved. Would live there. Went skydiving and survived, and went sand boarding on some of the dunes on the outskirts of town. It was wet that morning, so the boarding was difficult but we also went down on mats and I think clocked in at about 70 km/hr.

We spent the next couple of nights in the bush with the San Bushmen, a traditional African tribe. Oh and two days in Etosha - which was amazing. We saw too many elephants, zebra, and giraffe to count, as well as 5 lions. We ALMOST saw a kill (that's the official terminology for when a lion catches and kills its dinner) - a female lion was stalking a zebra for about 20 minutes, but then a silly spring bok spotted the lion and alerted the zebra. When the lion realized that the zebra had seen her, she just stood up non-chantlantly, yawned, and walked back to the rest of her pride."

[Later still:] "We just arrived in Livingstone, and are staying at a waterfront area near victoria falls. We toured the falls today on the way in - AMAZING. No offense to Canada, but Niagara has got nothing on this - one of the most incredible things I've seen in all my travelling. Tomorrow I am going white water rafting at the bottom of the falls - in the video they showed you get flipped out of the boat frequently, so should be interesting.

So the last few days we have spent in the Okavango Delta area of Botswana, where we went out on mokoros (the little dugout canoes that a poler guides) and camped on a remote island in the middle of nowhere. Hippos were walking through our camps in the middle of the night - I heard them grunting very close to our tents! Our guides advised us: if you have to pee, just hold it or go right at the door of your tent. The polers stayed with us and put on a song and dance show at night. It was unbelievably cold those days - warm during the day in the sun, but bitterly cold at night. I have two sleeping bags ... and I slept with two pairs of a pants on, two shirts, sweater, and my rain jacket and was still freezing. Needless to say I came down with a cold, but it only lasted a couple of days and I feel fine now.

After Okavango we went to Chobe national park for 2 days - I now officially have some amazing, National Geographic-worthy photos. One of the highlights was a sunset cruise, where we saw hippos, crocs, and elephants (swimming!) up close. The scenery here is incredible, and we've seen all possible animals now with the exception of a leopard. Apparently the serengeti (which we visit towards the very end of the trip) will be even better than the parks we've been to so far."