travel – Page 13 – Awesome wonder

Tires and avos

When you’re travelling, not everything always goes according to plan. So we had a flat tire, and what we do best in such a case is look helpless…

Luckily, we were in an area with many plantations and farms.

The workers and manager of one of these farms helped us a lot, providing us with a jack, filling up the spare tire and fitting it on our car. Unfortunately, the spare tire did not fit our car (don’t know how that is even possible…). In a complex switch, the manager gave us two of his tires to fit on our car, so that we could continue our travels. So good to meet kind strangers!

The farm was an avocado plantation.

We were invited to visit the harvest.

The avocados are harvested once a week, from February to November. This day the manager had hired about 100 extra workers to help out.

When we arrived they had just finished. The workers were heading off. They walked to the office, where they would receive their pay.

And the boxes with avocados were lifted into a waiting truck. According to the manager, the avocados are then sorted according to size – large, medium and small. Apparently, people in Germany only want large avocados, in the UK they prefer medium, and in China small is popular. Spain takes any size. Learnt some great new things, and we were given some avocados to take home with us – what an experience!

On the road again

Driving through the beautiful, changing scenery of southern Africa feels extraordinary – I still, after more than five years feel I need to pinch myself to check that I’m not dreaming, that it’s really me driving here…

My favorite

Of all the animals one might encounter on a safari, I think the leopard is my favorite. It’s strong and graceful, cat-like enough to seem cuddly, and threatening at the same time. Look at this one, glaring at me while still appearing so relaxed!

Photo taken at the National Zoological Gardens in Pretoria, South Africa

Happy baby elephants

In Southern Africa, elephants regularly fall victim to poaching or to conflicts about living space with farmers and villagers. Sometimes baby elephants are left orphaned when their mother is killed – elephants drink their mother’s milk until they are three years old. In Zambia, Game Rangers International rescues, rehabilitates, and releases orphaned elephants back into the wild. The youngest elephants are cared for at the elephant nursery in Lilayi, close to Lusaka. There they receive bottles of milk every three hours and are taken into the bush to learn to vend for themselves. Everyday between 11.30 and 13.00 hrs visitors can watch how the babies are fed – a lovely sight, as you can see in this photograph. When they are a little older, the elephants are taken to Kafue National Park to join other older orphaned elephants, to work towards reintegration with elephants in the wild.

Winter is coming

The sun shines brightly, but in the mornings and evenings it gets chilly. No wonder that Zambians are stocking up on their winter’s clothes. In this roadside stall the main item for sale are gloves. Who would have thought that there is a thriving market for gloves in Zambia?

Dream tree

When we had just moved to Zambia, people often asked us: What is it that you miss most? The presumed answer – I guess – was ‘my family’ or ‘that the power stays on’ or ‘pindakaas’. What I used to answer, however, was trees. I missed the trees I grew up with. Trees here, they have another shape. Their leaves are just not right. Their bark is different. Maybe that’s why I like to play around with my photographs of trees: to highlight the sense of not-belonging that they give me.

Road works

Road maintenance in Zambia happens less frequently than one might wish for. Especially the road from Lusaka to Livingstone has spectacularly bad stretches. In an attempt to let the users of the road pay for their maintenance a system of tolls has been implemented. Let’s hope that the revenues find their way to the potholes!

Happy Mother’s Day!

A female waterbuck and her calf.

Photo taken in Pilanesberg National Park, South Africa

Otherworld

What would it be like to live in another world? A world with different laws of nature, or different moral codes? I’ve always been fascinated by books that explore this question – fantasy, science fiction, utopias and dystopias. I think these books have prepared me, maybe more than anything else, to live and settle in a different culture.

Photo taken somewhere between Kafue and Mazabuka, Zambia