South Africa Photo Safari – Day 1
My wife and I are spending a week in South Africa on a photo safari. The internet is good enough to do a blog post and get my email, but that is about it.
How did we get here?
My wife and I left Los Angeles on Ethiopian Airlines to Dublin (10+ hour flight), spent on hour there getting fuel and provisions, then flew to Addis Ababa (7+ hour flight) on very nice Boeing 787 in business class (it pays to have a son with a lot of airline miles). We switched planes in Addis Ababa to a Airbus A350 (also a nice plane) for a six hour flight to Johannesburg and finally a Boeing 737 for an hour flight to Durban on Mango Air.
We spent a couple of days driving around (according to them they drive on the right side of the road) and finally met our guide Kurt at the Richards Bay airport along with the two other couples that would join use for the safari. It is a small world in that both couples were from Washington state with one couple from Yakima.
It was about a two hour drive to the preserve (about 65,000 acres) and it was more than a couple of minutes before we saw two giraffes. Along the way we saw some impalas (like our deer there is a lot of them) and some other wildlife. Suddenly Kurt said we have to go and off we went driving about 60 miles an hour on dirt roads up and down hills until we crested the final hill and came to a stop. On the side of the road were four lion cubs just sitting there playing with each other totally ignoring us. When there are cubs, there must be a mom somewhere and after a few minutes, she finally showed up. We could tell she was on the hunt and down the hill to the draw she went where her four cubs joined her (one of the cubs swatted her mom’s tail). We finally lost sight of them and headed toward the lodge.
Just before we got there, we stopped for a herd of impalas which was joined by five more giraffes and several zebras. We sat for a few minutes watching them when suddenly someone said Cheetahs. There was a mama cheetah and her two cubs about 25 feet behind our vehicle and mama cheetah was ready to pounce on an impala. We saw her slowing going through the grass when her two cubs decided to get into action and started chasing the zebras. This ended up being not a good idea since all chance of a kill was gone. We finally had to leave due to darkness and went to our lodge.
Our guide indicated this was only the third sighting of a cheetah in the last month and as my wife said later that night “Best Day Ever”.
I do not have enough internet to upload pictures. I will do that when I get back and will do more posts from the trip.
The next few posts from me won’t likely have much a tax flavor, but I hope you can enjoy them as much as I am enjoying the trip.
Paul Neiffer is a certified public accountant and business advisor specializing in income taxation, accounting services, and succession planning for farmers and agribusiness processors. Paul is a principal with CliftonLarsonAllen in Walla Walla, Washington, as well as a regular speaker at national conferences and contributor at agweb.com. Raised on a farm in central Washington, he has been immersed in the ag industry his entire life, including the last 30 years professionally. Paul and his wife purchase an 180 acre ranch in 2016 and enjoy keeping it full of animals.
If you are on this Safari with Walt and Karen Trolson, he is a lifelong friend of mine and they live in Edmonds. I know they are also doing a Safari where you are about this same time. Sounds like a wonderful first day. Enjoy!