Saturday, July 27, 2013 – Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe – Elephant Ride

mahouts waiting on their elephants for the new set of tourists


Janet Shi and Marian Moran
get settled on their elephant

shadow of Arthur and Martha and mahout Taurai Mahlayeya on their elephant, Tusker

Janet Shi and Marian Moran on their elephant

we're off on the elephant trail ride

Arthur and Martha and mahout Taurai Mahlayeya on their elephant, Tusker


another set of tourists on their elephant

dismounting can be tricky

ong-tailed magpie shrike?

warthog tribe at the animal reserve

Arthur sits on Tusker's knee while mahout Taurai Mahlayeya looks on

Arthur feeds Tusker a yummy, while mahout Taurai Mahlayeya looks on

Martha feeds Tusker a yummy, while mahout Taurai Mahlayeya looks on

Taurai Mahlayeya shows us Tusker's mouth with its grinding teeth

Martha stretches up to pet Tusker
Saturday, July 27, 2013 – Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe – Walk With The Lions

our guide, Paul, tells us what to expect and what safety precautions to observe

below are the four stages expected of the Lion Project, but to date they haven't been able to transition a lion to stage 3, much less stage 4

stage 1

stage 3

stage 2

stage 4

Janet Shi pets the lions

17-month-old lioness

Martha pets the lions



we're up walking


we're back to lazying

lion cub with Marian Moran

lion cub with Janet Shi

lion cub with Martha

now this lion cub was delighted to get tummy-tickled by two of the tourists

Saturday, July 27, 2013 – Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe – Helicopter Flight Over The Falls

our helicopter


the paths we flew over and around the falls

map of the rain forest walks along the falls
which we took the next morning

Victoria Falls seen from the International Space Station. Original image courtesy of the Image Analysis Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center

here we are flying over the Zambezi River to the brink of the falls

the falls can be seen at left from the spume they send up in the air

approaching the lip!


and now we are just going over the falls

the outflow from the falls cuts its way into another canyon

amazing carved canyons due to the Zambezi

rainbow in the mists over the falls
Over at least 100,000 years, the falls have been receding upstream through the Batoka Gorges, eroding the sandstone-filled cracks to form the gorges. The river's course in the current vicinity of the falls is north to south, so it opens up the large east-west cracks across its full width, then it cuts back through a short north-south crack to the next east-west one. The river has fallen in different eras into different chasms which now form a series of sharply zig-zagging gorges downstream from the falls.
Apart from some dry sections, the Second to Fifth and the Songwe Gorges each represents a past site of the falls at a time when they fell into one long straight chasm as they do now. Their sizes indicate that we are not living in the age of the widest-ever falls.
The falls have already started cutting back the next major gorge, at the dip in one side of the "Devil's Cataract" (also known as "Leaping Waters") section of the falls. This is not actually a north-south crack, but a large east-northeast line of weakness across the river, where the next full-width falls will eventually form

the old bridge we walked across yesterday -- you can see the zip lines across the canyon, and people also bungee jump off the bridge!

astonishing rainbow the length of the falls

another view of the falls


the shadow of our helicopter as we come in for a landing
Saturday, July 27, 2013 – Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe – Sunset Cruise on the Zambezi

Abi Nyoni, Lauren Nyoni, and Leo Nyoni

dancers at the cruise dock

4-year-old Leo Nyoni

map of this part of the Zambezi River

our bartender with his Zimbabwe flag concoction

Laura and Ken Westray with Monica Shephard in back

Janet Shi

Arthur Luehrmann

hippos

crocodile

malachite kingfisher?

Lala palms on the Zambezi

ducks?

another crocodile -- I don't think I want to swim in these waters

a little boat crosses the molten lava of the sunset

another cruise boat

Loren and Leo Nyoni

Loren and Leo Nyoni