Africa » Traverse Earth

Upper Zambezi Sunset

Africa, Travel, Zambia, Zimbabwe 7 Responses »

Feb 062012

Jollyboys Hostel menu of activities includes a combo price for white water rafting and a booze cruise. It sounds like a fantastic idea and it really is. What’s not such a good idea is indulging in the booze cruise the night before the rafting. Although, taking category 5 rapids head on is probably the best hangover cure in the world, unless you’re Cameron.

There are a lot of booze cruises going on in Bermuda and they’re great. But this one was a completely different concept all together. First of all, we were on a river. Second of all the water was chock full of hippos and crocodiles. On shore, you can see elephants and warthogs. It really is an incredible experience. The open bar doesn’t hurt. We paused to watch the sun dip below the horizon before heading back to dock, and I snapped this photo. It’s a pretty basic sunset shot, which I wouldn’t normally take, but I thought the clouds were particularly interesting. I used my 14mm lens to compress the sky into the image.

Victoria Falls

Africa, Travel, Victoria Falls, Waterfall, Zambia, Zimbabwe 3 Responses »

Feb 052012

This is where the hike to the Devil’s Pool at the top of the Victoria Falls becomes a swim. The pool is located just on the other side of this waterfall. To get there, you have to swim up-stream against the current and then across. There’s a rope strung across in case anyone should succumb to the force of the water. Fortunately, it’s not actually a particularly difficult swim.

Lower Zambezi Sunrise

Africa, Travel, Zambia, Zimbabwe 1 Response »

Feb 032012

It’s hard to leave Water Horse Safari’s Fly Camp on the Zambezi river after 3 nights there. It’s got the best showers in the world. You stand there with a chest height wall around you and solar warmed river water pouring over you. At the same time you’re spotting wildlife running past in the clearing ahead of you. They’ve got toilets, welcome after a night in the bush. They’ve got a table under a canopy and they have two-men mesh tents with comfy single beds in them. Square meals were prepared nightly and wine, poured from a bag, was available. Perfect.

Each morning we woke up to the sounds of grunting hippos and this view across to Zimbabwe. It doesn’t get much better than that.

Boulders Beach Boulders

Africa, Cape Town, South Africa, Travel No Responses »

Feb 012012

Without a doubt, the main attraction at Boulders Beach is the penguins, which, with a little effort, you can get very close to. Also, If you’re willing to brave the cold water (5 people who’d just completed two overnight flights were not), you can actually swim with the penguins here. Searching for penguins is great fun. However, the beach itself would likely be an attraction in its own right.

The beach is walking distance from the Simon’s Town train station and it’s called Boulders Beach for a reason. It is comprised of inlets in amongst these piles of granite boulders. I’m not sure how these boulders formed, but it makes for an interesting scene – added to by the fact that the tides have created stripes on the boulders. The water is crystal clear and with a bit of luck penguins can be seen swimming about. It’s worth spending some time lounging around here.

I had spotted the interesting clouds in the background of today’s photo coming across the sky and set about finding something to put in front of them. A lot of my photos, particularly in places I know well, like Bermuda, are the result of seeing something developing in the sky and finding a location to act as my foreground. If I’m heading out in Bermuda I’ll often look at the sky and make a split decision on where to head rather than thinking of what I want to photograph. The approach may be a little backwards, but it works when you’ve got options in all directions, within 15 minutes drive. I wonder how many more photographers regularly let the sky dictate the location they choose to shoot. Feel free to let me know what you think about this in the comments.

Cheetah Outreach

Africa, Animals, South Africa, Travel 3 Responses »

Jan 302012

I’ve uploaded photos from our day of wine tasting around Stellenbosch before. This photo is from the same day. Before heading to our first tasting, we stopped off at Cheetah Outreach on the Spier estate. Quoting their website, they are “an education and community-based programme created to raise awareness of the plight of the cheetah and to campaign for its survival. Founder Annie Beckhelling launched the project in January 1997 with just one hectare of land provided by Spier Wine Estate and two cheetahs.”

We arrived just as they opened and were the first group of people through the gates. We were split into two groups for our encounters. My first stop was with the two adolescent cheetahs below. They had a lot of energy. The handlers were keeping them entertained with balls on the end of ropes. They’d swing the balls around them, and the two cheetahs would chase them around and around. During the brief moments they’d calm down, we were able to pet them and listen to them purr. Following this, we set out to go in the enclosure of an adult cheetah. This proved difficult – like the young ones they all had a lot of energy too and were pacing their enclosures. We couldn’t go into the enclosures when they were in this mood so we had to wait. We kept getting ushered from one enclosure to the other as word was received that this cheetah and that cheetah was lying down. But, they’d always hop up again by the time we got there.

Then, finally one stayed calm long enough for us to enter. It’s a weird feeling petting a full-grown cheetah. It purred as well and you could feel it rumbling through it’s whole body.

For this shot I set my shutter speed good and fast and took a ton of photos. All the time I concentrated to keep the cheetah’s eyes in focus. I then created an HDR image from a single raw by adjusting the exposure levels and then combining the resulting three images in Photomatix.

Rwandan Insect Repellant

Africa, Rwanda, Travel 4 Responses »

Jan 272012

We didn’t have much of an issue with insects while in Africa, except for one member of our group with an odd fear of moths, and the men’s bathroom in Lusaka airport. It was like a horror movie. Lights flickering, bugs flying around and making the floor squirm along with the shuffling of an individual sweeping live bugs to the corners. Horrifying, but an experience none the less.

The reason I’m going on about bugs is that the flowers in this photo are farmed in Rwanda and used to make a natural insect repellent. I took this photo on our way up to see the mountain gorillas in the volcanoes national park. I’ve mentioned before that it was a tough walk. Pausing to set up for a photo is a great way of taking a rest without admitting that you need one. This is made easier by the fact that wherever you look in the Rwandan countryside you’re confronted with a beautiful view.

I’m pretty sure this is also the hillside where I left my Black Rapid camera strap. If you haven’t heard of these camera straps you should check them out. They let the camera hang comfortably at your hip or lower back and the connection system prevents the strap from twisting and getting in the way when you raise the camera to your eye. Going without it in Prague made life a little more difficult for me, I’ll be ordering a new one this weekend.

This photo is comprised of 7 images ranging from -3 to +3. I had to open up the aperture to get the flowers sharp enough. Unfortunately, I’ve traded off depth of field and the background gets a bit blurry. I’ve started experimenting with blending photos at different apertures to capture moving subjects while maintaining the depth of field only achievable with a smaller aperture. As soon as I find some success with this I’ll post an example.

Large Lunch Companions

Africa, Animals, Travel, Zambia, Zimbabwe 13 Responses »

Jan 242012

Our last day paddling our way down the meandering Lower Zambezi was an exciting one. By now, the surroundings were familiar and comfortable. Working in tandem to navigate the river was almost second nature. It even became easier to suppress the fear of crocodiles that occasionally welled up in my mind. This was despite coming closer to the eerily calm reptiles than we ever had before. As we approached midday, we spotted a group of elephants on an island. After paddling into a small inlet, and walking a very short distance, we were approximately 30 feet away. The elephants acknowledged our presence, but continued munching away and even moved closer. I was completely focused on grabbing a good photo. Once I realized that most people had already moved on to return to the canoes I turned to follow. It turned out that we weren’t departing. Our guides had prepared lunch for us, the usual beautiful fresh salad to accompany the most processed meat in the world. They were some form of Frankfurter, but were fluorescent pink on the outside and white in the middle. So, we ate and watched the elephants munch their way back across to the other side of the island. Then, they started to head to the water and we followed. They took the plunge and meandered their way down the Lower Zambezi.

The View from Lunch

Africa, Animals, Travel, Zimbabwe 31 Responses »

Jan 212012

On the first day of our canoe safari, on the Lower Zambezi, we stopped for lunch under a big shade tree on the Zimbabwe side of the river. While everyone stretched out to nap after a sandwich and a salad I started getting my camera gear out. I wanted to get a photo of a hippo yawning. Typically, the hippo let out a huge yawn as I was setting up. Then I had to wait quite a while for him to do it again. It worked out for the best though, as these elephants moved into frame just before the hippo let out a huge gaping yawn.

Get Away From my Woman

Africa, Animals, Cape Town, South Africa, Travel 1 Response »

Jan 202012

This is the second and third penguin we found. If you look in the background you can see the reason for this penguins terrifying, aggressive stance. He’s got his lady sat in the back of the nest. I’ve included a second picture to include Cameron’s National Geographic-esque attempt to get a better view. My 300mm lens prevented the need for me to get quite so close.

Hidden Penguin

Africa, Animals, Cape Town, South Africa, Travel 2 Responses »

Jan 192012

We arrived in Cape Town after two back to back overnight flights. But, it was important that we kept moving. We could have sat around our hostel all day and been bored, then fallen asleep far too early to kick our jet-lag. So, we had a plan. We left the hostel immediately for Simons Town (via KFC for the two heathens in our entourage).

We were going to Simons Town to visit Boulders Bay. This is the location of the Western Capes penguin population. The trip was worth it for the train ride there. The tracks hug the coast and you feel like the waves could break into the trains window. Along the way we saw cormorants, seals, and surfers frolicking in the surf. It was incredible.

We arrived in Simons Town without a clue how to get to Boulders Bay. It was Sunday and the tourist information centre was closed but we kept walking. Eventually, after we’d split up to seek out sources of local information we found that it was a 15 minute walk away. We’d already twenty minutes on our weary jet-lagged legs and had little confidence in our sources time estimate. But, we persevered and it was worth it.

Upon arriving at Boulder Bay we were initially disappointed. It felt like a real tourist trap. We hit a fork in the path. To the left is where all the tour bus crowd were headed. We went right. We discovered penguins huddled under the bushes, but this was not the image I was in pursuit of. Looking down we could see the beach, with a few people sunbathing, with no penguins. However, it looked like the boulders weren’t fenced off, so we decided to do some rock hopping.

Once we got there our suspicions were confirmed and we went in search of penguins. I think we saw four in total, but it was great getting to be so close to them. Climbing over and under the rocks was good fun too. I got a lot of help from my friends in getting my gear through some pretty tight spaces. The below photo is the first penguin we saw on our exploration.

Older Entries Newer Entries