Leopard!

​Last evening’s game drive was pretty lame. We saw a few of the same animals we had seen before, and in pretty much the same locations.

(Photos will be added when we have sufficient internet bandwidth.)

One comical thing is the herd of impalas, that greeted us on arrival and has been hanging out in the field adjacent to the air strip, had moved over to graze virtually under the wings of the parked aircraft. It looked like a highly congested security line at the airport!

The group enjoyed a “sundowner” drink served from the tailgate, But the sun had pretty much set already by the time we stopped in a clearing in the bush, and the view of the horizon was obscured by trees.

So on the way back we were chatting away, not paying much attention to what was going on outside the truck, when our tour leader “shushed” us and whispered, “there’s a leopard in the road!”

Sure enough, a young male leopard was trotting along the road, moving in the same direction as our vehicles. He appeared to be on a mission — like he had somewhere to go.

Totally unphased by the truck headlights and the driver’s searchlight, the leopard kept trotting along. Occasionally he would glance over his shoulder at us, but he continued on for perhaps as much as 500 meters.

Eventually he turned and walked into the bush, but not like he was running away from us. Just like, “OK, this is my turn.”

Only about 15 to 20% of tourists actually get to see a leopard on one of these trips, so we felt very fortunate.

In the evening, one of these African staff of this camp offered a “dark sky” experience and most of the group went out to get a lesson on the southern sky and some of the constellations we can’t see in the northern hemisphere. He’s just a hobbyist, but he was quite knowledgeable.

This morning’s game drive took a different route than the last two. We saw buffalo, as well as our first elephant in this location (but he looked just like the elephants in Zimbabwe, surprisingly enough). There were some rare birds, and there was some zebra scat, but no zebra was seen.

Without a doubt, the leopard sighting was the most exciting thing of the last 24 hours.

Lufupa Camp

​Yesterday was a travel day. We drove (not terribly quickly due to the condition of the roads) for nearly 4 hours from Hwange National Park to the bustling metropolis of Victoria Falls.

(Photos will be added when we have better internet access.)

Along the way, we made a stop at a primary school. School is out for the Easter holiday, so this was not one of the schools that OAT supports and typically visits. But somehow our tour leader, Star, found a school where the 7th grade teacher was holding special sessions to help his students prepare for their national exams. So we were able to visit one classroom — all the others were vacant.

Instruction is in English, but most of the students were shy and reluctant to speak to us. But they were eager to see photos of our families on our phones and to hear about our pre-retirement professions. Star indicated that for many of these students in a rural community, it may have been the first time in their lives that they had had interaction with a white person, and certainly the first interaction with Americans.

Many of our fellow travelers had brought school supplies, so at the end we got to pass out pencils to everyone and deliver some other gifts for the whole school. The students appeared to be thrilled.

Our next task was crossing the border from Zimbabwe into Zambia. We had to unload everything from our bus, stand in line through passport control, drag our bags through a gate, and then reload everything onto a nearly identical bus with a different driver on the other side.

Our new bus drove us only about 10 miles from Victoria Falls to Livingstone, Zambia (named for “Dr. Livingstone, I presume” David Livingstone). Again, because of road conditions, the trip took more than half an hour. We, and our luggage, were dropped at the Livingston Airport. Although the airport is very small (it makes the Waterloo, Iowa airport look big!), we had to pass through security, nevertheless.

Our flight was on a pair of Cessna Caravans. These are single-engine turboprop planes that carry about 10 passengers. Each plane had a single pilot, and despite the captain’s stripes on their shoulders, each looked to be early 20s, right out of college.

I got to sit directly behind the pilot and watch all the action. I could read all the instruments and look out through the front windshield, as well as through my side window. Each seat is both an aisle seat AND a window seat. The flight was about a hour and a half long at roughly 8,000 feet above ground. I thought it was a great ride! Most of the rest of our group was less excited about it.

We landed at Lufupa Camp, a grass strip near the Kafue River, where trucks nearly identical to those we had at our last camp picked us up and took us on a 15 minute drive to our home for the next few days. The roads were just as bad here as in the previous camp, except that they have had more rain here and there were many more places we drove through muddy water.

After getting settled, we set out in the same trucks for our first evening game drive. It was somewhat disappointing because we saw few animals other than the same herd of antelope that had greeted us on arrival, in a field next to the runway.

Our tents are very similar to those at the previous camp, except that now we have mosquito netting over the beds. Our tent is only feet from the river bank, and the bugs are abundant. We’re very glad that we are taking anti-malaria pills!

After breakfast this morning our game drive was not in the trucks, but on the river in pontoon boats — a much smoother ride. We saw many birds, including an African Fishing Eagle, only one crocodile, and along the river bank, a few more antelope.

But the highlight was a group of about a half-dozen hippos, submerged in the river with only their heads occasionally above the water. Our drivers landed our pontoons on the river bank and we had coffee and tea. We watched the hippos, and the hippos intently watched us.

Village Life

​Last evening’s game drive featured a lot of elephants. Bull elephants are loners, grazing by themselves. But with an estimated 50,000 elephants in this national park, we had no shortage of sightings. As long as we stay in the jeeps, they tend to ignore us.

(Photos will be added when we have better internet connections.)

We stopped near a river gorge to get a good look at the sunset. Our drivers came prepared with wine and snacks for us to enjoy off the tailgate as we watched.

As we returned to camp in pitch dark, we heard an elephant trumpet, which they generally don’t do. Later we learned that the other jeep from our group, behind us, had startled a bull on the road with its headlights, and was charging their jeep. A bit of excitement for them, and an explanation for the sound we had heard.

This morning we left camp early once again to exit the park for the day. We were almost getting bored with bull elephants, so I hadn’t gotten my camera ready. But as it happened, we came upon a herd of elephants — females and their young.

A baby elephant, perhaps a year old, was nursing from its mother. But by the time I was camera ready, the baby had quit nursing and was edging around behind mom to get away from the strange, noisy animal (jeep) that had approached. Mom and the baby’s big sister (probably about 4 or 5) were unperturbed.

Later, we encountered a large troop of baboons. They were not willing to let us get nearly as close, and fled into the bush.

The day’s main event was visiting a village outside the park. Once again we had to navigate through the enormous open-pit mines that are destroying the landscape. We later learned that most of the men in the village work for the Chinese in the mines. Though wages are low and working conditions are very poor, it is the only employment available. And with the unemployment rate in Zimbabwe at nearly 80% (NOT a typo!) they feel fortunate to have the jobs at all.

We stopped at a roadside “shopping mall” much like the one where we had met Clive a couple days ago. Our trip leader gave us shopping lists in the native language along with cash and sent us in groups to shop for the village. Fortunately, the shopkeepers knew the drill and helped us fulfill our orders — corn meal, millet, cooking oil, sugar, soap, etc. With the remaining change we bought candy for the village kids who are off school for Easter holiday.

This village is unique in that the “head man” of the village is actually a woman — quite rare in this culture. She greeted us in perfect English and welcomed us to explore any and all buildings, to take any photos we wished, and to ask questions of anyone we met.

The children were shy, but crowded around when the candy was distributed. Mary discovered that the adults were just as eager for the sweets.

Boys in the village were playing soccer with a homemade ball of plastic bags. They were overjoyed when one man in our group gifted them with a brand new soccer ball — a real one, along with a hand pump and pin to blow it up.

The women prepared tea and a traditional lunch consisting of a millet paste with a side sauce of ocra. The sauce was pretty tasty, but the millet might better have been used as wallpaper paste. It was also very difficult to get the orca sauce to stick to the millet, which we shaped into bite sized balls with our fingers. No silverware available. We ate politely, nevertheless.

Lunch was followed with an open discussion with the village women and just a few men who were either elderly or not working today. The questions from both sides were largely about marriage practices and gender roles.

We learned that the women here walk 5 kilometers (about 3 miles) to the river and carry 3 or 4 gallons another 5km home for drinking and washing. This village is progressive in that some of the men will sometimes cook or even change a diaper if their wife is not feeling well. Otherwise, all domestic chores fall to the women.

When our discussion ended, we unloaded the gifts we had brought from the “shopping mall” and other items that people had brought from home. The villagers showed their appreciation by singing and dancing, many with bags of meal or bottles of oil balanced on their heads. If the gifts were unappreciated, the villagers certainly did not show it.

Kashawe

​Yesterday was a travel day, flying from Johannesburg’s O.R. Tambo International Airport to Victoria Falls International Airport in Zimbabwe on a small, 48-passenger jet. 

As we were landing, we got a glimpse of Victoria Falls from the air. We’ll return here near the end of the trip to see the Falls up close, on the ground.

From the airport we boarded a small, 20 passenger bus (even though there are only 13 of us, plus our trip leader) for a three hour ride toward Hwange National Park.

The “highway” made the worst of Iowa or Minnesota potholes look like smooth sailing. So we were not exactly traveling at highway speed.

We had one stop at a very primitive roadside area. The people were extremely friendly, and our new best friend “Clive” volunteered to take us on a tour of the place that included the butcher shop, the sports bar, grocery store (where we met his father and uncle, above) and the porridge restaurant. Porridge is a stew of beef or goat, often mixed with or served on top of mashed boabob fruit (think sour mashed potatoes). We declined the taste test, especially since we had just seen the butcher shop where the meat probably had come from.

Later, a more modern rest stop had excellent ice cream cones for 50 cents U.S. The same soft-serve would have been $3 at home.

Our route took us through a series of huge open-pit coal mines that are disrupting thousands of acres of countryside. These are being operated by Chinese and Russian companies that bypass environmental regulations by bribing the inspectors. Bribes are common here for nearly everything. We are told that a U.S. 5 dollar bill can get a person out of almost any traffic ticket or hassle with a border guard.

The mines extend right up to the border of the national park. But the elephants don’t read the signs, so we passed a small family of elephants grazing in the midst of the mines.

Just inside the park we transferred from the bus to open-sided game ride jeeps for another hour+ ride to our home for the next 4 days, Kashawe Camp, owned and operated exclusively by OAT.

These roads made the highway I described earlier look like an interstate. Imagine the worst-maintained rural gravel road in Iowa.

The camp is quite nice. Our “tent” does have a canvas roof and sides, but a wooden screen door, electricity, wi-fi (albeit slow), and full bathroom with hot and cold running water. It’s not roughing it, and is a big step up from what we had in Tanzania 16 years ago.

Food is very good, and we have a full bar where we can purchase beer, wine, and mixed drinks at quite reasonable prices.

We crashed early, still dealing with jet lag, but slept well and were ready for departure on our first game drive shortly after sunrise this morning.

It’s just after the rainy season here, so everything is very lush and green. There are also a lot more trees than we envisioned. This makes seeing the animals much more difficult.

Nevertheless, our game drive driver, Garry, has very sharp eyes, and we were able to see impalas (larger deer), hydrax (rodent-like creatures), cliff springers (small deer), and warthogs, as well as many species of birds. 

At a lake, we observed hippos and crocodiles

On the way back to camp for lunch, a large bull elephant greeted us just outside the camp, and he was kind enough to pose politely for our photos before moving on.

Joburg

​It’s a very long flight from Minneapolis-St. Paul to Johannesburg, South Africa. Luckily, on the longest leg of the trip, from Atlanta to Johannesburg, we had some empty seats around us so that we could spread out and get some sleep. Even so, arriving at our hotel about 9 p.m. local time, we crashed for a full 8 hours.

Because our OAT tour doesn’t begin until Saturday, we booked a day trip with a local tour company to have a quick overview of Johannesburg.

Unfortunately, Good Friday is a major holiday here and all of the museums and historical sites were closed. Nevertheless, we got to see Mandela Square, and to get a very good look at the sharp contrast between the “haves” and the “have nots” here.

A high wall kept us from seeing Mandela’s house, but we could read some of the hundreds of messages written on rocks that people have left outside.

Soweto (the SOuthWEstern TOwnship) is famous as the locus of the fight for racial equality in this country. We were surprised to learn of contrasts even here, where there are modern new homes next to squatter slums.

We were also a little shocked to see goats feeding on garbage and the sidewalk restaurants serving “gentlemen’s menus,” which are parts of a cow one generally would hesitate to eat.

We also got a glimpse of Desmond Tutu’s modest home (somewhat obscured by foliage), and some outdoor monuments to the anti-apartheid struggle. But the tour ended early due to the many closures. Just as well, as we join the OAT group and head to the airport very early tomorrow for our flight to Zimbabwe.

Palm Springs

Minnesota winters can be long, so we try to find someplace warm to go and thaw out for at least a few days. This year we booked a short, four day trip to Palm Springs, California.

We attended church on Sunday, February 8, then went to a casual brunch with friends, and then made our way to the airport for our afternoon flight, arriving in Palm Springs about dusk. A rental car “upgrade” is not always a good thing. The midsize sedan we reserved was not available, so we were stuck with a too big SUV. It got us to our motel in Palm Desert — not a fancy place, but comfortable enough.

Monday morning we were up early — two hour time change — so after breakfast at the motel, we headed to Indian Canyons. The tribe charges senior citizens like us a $7 entry fee, and we got our money’s worth by hiking a couple different trails. After driving right in on our morning arrival, on the way out we were surprised to see a long line of cars, eager to pay their entry fee and lined up for over a block to get in.

A lunch hour stop at a recommended restaurant refreshed us with cold beer. Then we made our way to the Palm Springs Visitors Center to get the low-down on locations and events. We had purchased tickets online for the late afternoon “Ride and Dine” at the Palm Springs Arial Tramway. The ride was fun, there was more hiking at the top of the mountain, and the meal was better than we anticipated. The ride down after dark gave us a panoramic view of the city lights. 

Tuesday was spent primarily in “old” Palm Springs. The city became popular with the rich and famous in the 1950s and -60s, and is filled with examples of “mid-century modern” architecture. These include the Twin Palms neighborhood, the “Ship of the Desert,” and a home supposedly occupied by Marilyn Monroe where she secretly “entertained” John F. Kennedy. The downtown area also features a number of historically registered buildings, now all filled with trendy shops.

The art museum is closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, but we visited the outdoor sculpture garden there (including a massive Marilyn Monroe statue), as well as another sculpture garden a half hour away in Palm Desert, nearer our hotel. We also wasted a great deal of time trying to find a brew pub. There aren’t any here!

Wednesday was devoted to visiting Joshua Tree National Park, It was an hour’s drive and a climbs to 4,000+ feet elevation. The visitors centers (there are four of them, and we visited two) are the worst we’ve seen in any national park. Maybe consolidate to just one good one? But we had some nice hikes, and at the first one, “Hidden Valley,” it felt like we had the place to ourselves. Things got more crowded mid-day.

Thursday, our final day in Palm Springs, started with exploring two additional neighborhoods of mid- century modern homes Then we returned to the central business district for more window shopping and another excellent Thai lunch. We drank beer at a pleasant sidewalk bar and watched people for awhile. The big “Modernism Week” festival begins today, so there were lots of interesting people to watch! Getting to the airport and returning the car were easy. The only snafu of the entire trip was getting the shuttle back to where our car was parked near the MSP airport.

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Advent 2025

Dear Friends and Family,

The cold and snow of a Minnesota December remind us that the year is once again turning from old to new. Meanwhile, we are simply turning old! We are thankful that our health remains excellent, we get to a gym nearly every day, and our activities at church and in the community are as robust as ever. Nevertheless we find ourselves spending more time in waiting rooms, getting check-ups, and thinking about Medicare coverage!

The “new” in our lives comes from our children and grandchildren.

L-R: Brandon, Sarah, “Chappy,” Mark, Harper, Clara, Matt, 
Corbin, Malcolm, Mary, Katherine, and “Timber.”

In Kansas, Sarah and Brandon continue in their federal law enforcement careers. Their daughter, Harper, is now officially a teenager at 13 and in 7th grade. Her brother, Corbin, age 11, is in his last year of elementary school and will follow his sister to middle school next fall. Malcolm, who will be 8 next month, enjoys life as a 2nd grader.

Here in the Twin Cities, Katherine and Matt also continue their careers – Matt as an engineer and Katherine as a composer and co-founder of Minnesota Winds, a professional concert band. Their daughter Clara, age 7, is in 2nd grade.

We are also thankful that we are still not too old to pursue our passion of discovering new things in the world through travel. Our ventures this year included a trip to Mexico in February, a river cruise from Budapest to the Black Sea in May, and a journey through northern Spain and Portugal in October.

We pray that you all may have a blessed celebration of the coming of the One who makes all things new! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Mark & Mary Johns