I’ve said before that everywhere you look in Rwanda seems to present a photo opportunity. Here’s more evidence. This was taken on the way up to the national park to visit the mountain gorillas. It was our first water break. I extended it by taking my time setting up for this photo. It was a tough walk.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I’ve called this photo Safe Harbour, but that’s probably debatable. It was taken the morning after our first night camping on the Lower Zambezi. The day before, after a few hours of paddling, we’d had a taste of the upcoming rainy season. Clouds loomed and bellowed across the sky. We saw rain falling in front of us and behind. It was also raining to our left, where the storm was coming from. Debate raged, while the wind picked up, as to whether or not it was heading directly at us or would pass just behind. Our Zimbabwean guide, called CB, quelled the debate. He was a soft-spoken individual, typical of the people we’d met during our time on the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe. He told us we’d be making camp an hour earlier than planned. The storm was heading straight for us and the strong winds increased our chance of capsizing. We began to paddle a bit harder than the previously relaxed pace of the day. The landing spot pictured above came into sight and CB gestured for us to head in. At this point, we experienced just how terrifying an angry hippo can be.
“Paddle! Paddle! Paddle!”
CB was suddenly animated and we spun around in our seats to see what was happening. The second-last canoe was moving faster than I knew a canoe could. I swear it was actually on a plane, the nose rising and falling with each paddle-stroke as it ploughed through the water. About five feet behind was a hippo, surging through the water with it’s head bobbing up and down with each forward thrust. We’d find out later that, apparently, one of the people in the last canoe struck what he thought was a rock with his paddle. As you can probably guess, it was a submerged hippopotamus – the creature second in line to the mosquito for causing the most deaths per year in Africa. The chase probably spanned about 15-20 feet or so, before the hippo calmed down, but it definitely gave us a taste of what we’d gotten ourselves into.
Once we reached land and pulled our canoes ashore, the rain set in. Most of us had rain jackets. Chris and I had lightweight rain jackets that didn’t shield you from the impact of the rain, and this was rain like I’ve never experienced. It was coming in sideways and the drops must have been the size of marbles. You could feel the impact of every single one. We were better off than George though, an Aussie we’d met back in Livingstone who decided to join us. He’d left his rain jacket on a bus a few months earlier and, not having any need for one in the dry season, hadn’t replace it. Four of us stood next to each other, with our backs to the onslaught, for him to hunker down in front of us and try to stay dry. It didn’t work very well. The rain didn’t take long to pass and we set about making camp.
It quickly became evident that this would be an interesting night. We were setting up on sand, amongst dried elephant and hippo dung. As it turned out, the grassy, muddy field behind us was a popular night-time feeding place for elephants and hippos. On top of this, it was hot. Keeping the fly sheet on the tent was not an option, so we slept with nothing but a mesh tent separating us from the outdoors.
A quick wave of our flashlights revealed the startling close glint of eyes in the darkness and we settled in for the night. Just prior to falling asleep I heard the trumpet of an elephant. It sounded like it was right outside the tent. I remembered CB’s advice that we would hear animals and they would sound far closer than they really were. With this in mind, I drifted off to sleep. I woke up a few times in the night, once to the sound of hyenas, another to the sound of lions, and repeated the mantra that they could be heard form a great distance away. I drifted off comfortably each time.
However, we had at least one very close encounter. In the morning, my tent mate Chris told me he’d woken up to the unmistakable thud of elephant dung hitting the ground. We’d become accustomed to this sound on our elephant-back safari a few days earlier. He said he actually felt the vibrations of it hitting the ground. Sure enough, we found a fresh deposit just outside our tent. I only wish he’d woken me up so I could try to shine a light outside and spot one. This might be why he didn’t wake me up.
As I mentioned this photo was taken in the morning, just before the sun came up. I’ve combined 7 exposures from -3 to +3 in Photomatix and then cleaned it up in Photoshop.
On my recent trip to Africa, each of the five of us had one thing we really wanted to do. Soniko’s one thing was an elephant ride. I didn’t find it that appealing until we got to Livingstone. Then, for some reason I decided it had to be done. So, off we went, along with Chris and Shannon. When we arrived the head guide told us that all but three people would be riding tandem. A man there with his two daughters was quick to jump on the opportunity to ride solo. He was quickly followed by Chris and Soniko. My slow reactions meant I had to share with Shannon. Nothing against Shannon, but having your own elephant would have been pretty cool.
In the end, this worked out in my favor. As it turned out one of the elephants allocated for Soniko and Chris didn’t feel like going for a walk that day. They don’t force these massive animals into anything. So, Soniko and Chris ended up sharing an elephant. I have many close-ups of this situation that I don’t think I’ll release to the world. It’s hard to look good when you’re riding tandem on an elephant with another dude.
Despite this, in a way they were lucky to get their elephant. As Shannon and I trundled along at a comfortable pace we heard a crack from behind us. Chris and Soniko’s elephant had just ripped a branch off a palm and was tearing away in the wrong direction – nimbly crushing the branch with ts trunk. Our driver (no idea what you call the guy steering the elephant) told us that their elephant tended to misbehave and preferred going where it pleased. It became clear they were in for the more exciting ride. The guides had taken the head elephant, along with the solo man’s two daughters, to bring Chris and Soniko back to the herd. This never really happened and gives rise to today’s photo.
About halfway through our trip all the other elephants did as their drivers told them and we all waded through ankle-deep water. That’s elephant ankle depth. As usual, Chris and Soniko’s elephant did its own thing. She had spotted a shortcut and there was nothing that could change her mind – she was going to swim across that river. This photo captures the moment as their driver is attempting to help Chris get his foot back in the stirrup. They’d had to lift their feet as high as they could to keep them out of the range of crocodiles.
This was a tricky photo to take and process. I shot three exposures hand-held. That’s not necessarily a problem, but it became more difficult due to two factors. First, I was on the back of a lumbering elephant. Second, the elephant was facing the wrong way, placing these guys over my right shoulder. To overcome these issues I zoomed out a little further to account for the bouncing camera and set a larger aperture than I’d have liked to speed up my shutter speed. I felt like I’d turned my upper body so far that my shoulders were perpendicular to my hips. It hurt, but going home without this picture was not an option.
In processing it quickly became clear that the pictures were far from aligned. I had to put faith in Photomatix’s auto align to fix this for me. It did a pretty good job except for the island on the left. This was completely blurred out. I wish I’d noticed the issue before my last check of the picture. Masking this area out didn’t look quite right, so I started from scratch. I actually used the selective ghosting tool in Photomatix to fix this. I also used this on the trees in the background, just to be safe, and of course the moving elephants.
On day four of our canoe safari on the Lower Zambezi most of our group was enjoying a lazy afternoon snoozing in the shade or fishing. For a few of us, boredom set in and we decided that it was time to go for a swim. It may seem like a simple activity, but when you’re surrounded by hippos and crocodiles you err on the side of caution. We had a chat with our guide who said that we’d be safe in the shallows of this sand bar on the opposite side of the river. So, we piled into the canoes and made our way upstream before cutting across to the island.
It all went smoothly until we got close to the island and realized that what we thought was a rock was a hippo. A hippo that seemed to enjoy disappearing underwater and popping up in a completely new location. Our three days of canoeing experience told us that as we moved into the shallows the hippo would head for deep water. Fortunately for us this is exactly what happened and we pulled our canoes ashore.
We knew that we could swim off the sandbar. What we didn’t ask was where off the sandbar. The area where we pulled our canoes ashore was deep and we knew we couldn’t swim there. Everybody began wandering around our private island looking for shallow water and I began looking for a photo. There was this small pool of water which lent itself nicely to catching a reflection of the mountains in the background. In order to maximize the amount of reflection I set my camera up as low as I could.
If you click on the image and open up a larger version you can see our campsite in the middle of the far bank. It was a great place to spend three nights. I’ll be posting the morning view from our tent soon.
