KipCarson
Well-known member
First let me apologize for not updating. I tried, I really did. But the hunt talk firewall thought I was some Mozambican trying to spam yall with the perfect herbal ED remedy pills or free bitcoin mining apps and wouldn’t let me on. This is what you see when trying to get in from overseas btw.
But now I’m back, and over the next week or two I’ll try to log in the details of the most amazing adventure of my life!
For starters I must say a 16 hour flight stuck by the window in cattle class ain’t for sissies! As I boarded the plane in ATL headed for JoBerg there was a South African dude who begged me to swap seats with him so he could be closer to his wife and little kids. Trying to be nice I gave up the aisle and went to the window. Which brought to mind the old adage “No good deed goes unpunished” Anyway, the most physically difficult part of the trip was the trip over there so at least I got that out of the way first!
Towards the end up the flight with only about and hour and a half left I woke from a fitful doze and realized the flight tracker showed we were finally over the Atlantic and over African soil. The lights had been out in the plane and all the window shades closed so I raised my shade to take a peek. My first glimpse of Africa was the Kalahari Desert. It was a cloudless evening and the red sandy brush country stretched out far as you could see in the waning evening light. Call me overly emotional or whatever, but a tear came to my eye just realizing I was about to be in Africa! Dreams do come true! The sun was setting to the west over the right wing of the plane casting an orange glow across the landscape that just seemed magical.
It was the one and only time I was actually grateful for that hated claustrophobic window seat.
About to land in Johannesburg.
Getting through the O.R.Tambo airport was a breeze, there was some confusion as to whether we needed to collect our baggage and recheck the next day but after clearing that up we made our way to the exit where we were met by the rep from the Africa Sky Hotel. Africa Sky was great decision. The accommodations, the food, and the pickup and drop off assistance from the airport were wonderful.
This was just outside the dining room at the Africa Sky. Should this hunt go well, I may need to see if I can find the floor space for one of these bad boys in my living room!
Upon returning to the airport they warned me to check and make sure my luggage had been checked in with South Africa Airlink. I’m glad I checked because in fact they hadn’t. It appeared that only 2 pieces of the luggage were transferred and my bow case had not been. The start of my worst fear surrounding this trip was beginning. We were bounced from person to person all through the airport and no one could seem to locate my bow. My apple AirTag showed that it had made it to Tambo but its exact locale was uncertain. The final conclusion was it must be in the bowels of the police station being investigated because it “appeared it had bullets in the case”. I had no choice but to run to my connecting flight and hope they got it sorted out in time. The Airlink flight itself was great, fingers crossed.
When the SA Airlink flight landed in Beira Mozambique it did so without my bow case, or the main piece of luggage with a lot of our gear. Fear #1 for this trip had now come to full fruition.
Thankfully Dad‘s bow case did make it. And we had packed changes of clothes to hunt in in our backpacks and carry-ons so we would be set for the first couple of days no matter what happened.
My expectations were not high for Beira, but I think the reality was lower than whatever they were. I learned a long time ago, not to travel from America and expect things to measure up to American standards, whether it be food or facilities. So I’ll just say it was an eye opening cultural experience. Comparing this place to what I had seen in South Africa was night and day difference. Being an international airport it was definitely not putting its best foot forward to represent the rest of the country. The customs process was as backward and unorganized as it could be, but we did get our visas and were able to make a claim on the missing luggage. Despite the issues at hand I was finally in Mozambique with only one more short trip to my final destination. I will mention here that I am glad that I always keep a roll of toilet paper in my backpack, because there did not seem to be any in the entire airport and my dad was almost in a bind! Welcome to Africa!
Things were about to get better! We met up with our pilot for our charter flight out to the Zambezi Delta Safari camp. I had expected that we were being taken out in a chopper, but all of the helicopters were tied up on other projects that day so we would be taken out in an old four seat bush plane.
The airplane could get us there in a little bit better time than the helicopters could anyway. And after 20 minutes in the air in the copilot seat, looking at all the gauges, and asking questions the pilot said. “Do you wanna to fly this thing?” What a stupid question, of course I wanted to fly it! It had been a long time since high school ROTC, and the basic flight simulators we played with then were kinda boring. But this was the real thing! He gave me a couple of instructions and turned over the controls to me, and for a portion of the rest of the flight I got to play around a little bit. Nothing crazy, just minor altitude and direction changes but I had a blast nonetheless.
The pilot took my phone and got some pictures for me as I flew, he made a fun trip even better. When we got close to the marromeu complex I told him I wanted him to take over so I could take in the scenery and look for wildlife. We dropped down from 1,650 feet to a little lower altitude and it wasn’t long until I started seeing animals. It was like an imaginary line was crossed once we got over the Coutadas. Most of the openings in the forest had some sort of animals in them that I could see from the plane, and they became more dense the closer we got to the camp. This looked promising! After a few more minutes I saw the long rectangle of the airstrip cut into the forest below and we banked down to the left and came in low for the landing. We bounced and bumped along the runway slowed to a stop and then turned back toward the hangar shed. As we pulled up and cut the engines I heard a drum beating and looked over to see a line of camp staff standing to greet us with a proper Mozambican welcome! Bredger, our PH, greeted us as we got out of the plane and the staff gave us hot wash clothes for our faces and cool drinks for refreshments. For being out on the backside of nowhere Zambeze Delta Safaris certainly does things first class!
But now I’m back, and over the next week or two I’ll try to log in the details of the most amazing adventure of my life!
For starters I must say a 16 hour flight stuck by the window in cattle class ain’t for sissies! As I boarded the plane in ATL headed for JoBerg there was a South African dude who begged me to swap seats with him so he could be closer to his wife and little kids. Trying to be nice I gave up the aisle and went to the window. Which brought to mind the old adage “No good deed goes unpunished” Anyway, the most physically difficult part of the trip was the trip over there so at least I got that out of the way first!
Towards the end up the flight with only about and hour and a half left I woke from a fitful doze and realized the flight tracker showed we were finally over the Atlantic and over African soil. The lights had been out in the plane and all the window shades closed so I raised my shade to take a peek. My first glimpse of Africa was the Kalahari Desert. It was a cloudless evening and the red sandy brush country stretched out far as you could see in the waning evening light. Call me overly emotional or whatever, but a tear came to my eye just realizing I was about to be in Africa! Dreams do come true! The sun was setting to the west over the right wing of the plane casting an orange glow across the landscape that just seemed magical.
It was the one and only time I was actually grateful for that hated claustrophobic window seat.
About to land in Johannesburg.
Getting through the O.R.Tambo airport was a breeze, there was some confusion as to whether we needed to collect our baggage and recheck the next day but after clearing that up we made our way to the exit where we were met by the rep from the Africa Sky Hotel. Africa Sky was great decision. The accommodations, the food, and the pickup and drop off assistance from the airport were wonderful.
This was just outside the dining room at the Africa Sky. Should this hunt go well, I may need to see if I can find the floor space for one of these bad boys in my living room!
Upon returning to the airport they warned me to check and make sure my luggage had been checked in with South Africa Airlink. I’m glad I checked because in fact they hadn’t. It appeared that only 2 pieces of the luggage were transferred and my bow case had not been. The start of my worst fear surrounding this trip was beginning. We were bounced from person to person all through the airport and no one could seem to locate my bow. My apple AirTag showed that it had made it to Tambo but its exact locale was uncertain. The final conclusion was it must be in the bowels of the police station being investigated because it “appeared it had bullets in the case”. I had no choice but to run to my connecting flight and hope they got it sorted out in time. The Airlink flight itself was great, fingers crossed.
When the SA Airlink flight landed in Beira Mozambique it did so without my bow case, or the main piece of luggage with a lot of our gear. Fear #1 for this trip had now come to full fruition.
Thankfully Dad‘s bow case did make it. And we had packed changes of clothes to hunt in in our backpacks and carry-ons so we would be set for the first couple of days no matter what happened.My expectations were not high for Beira, but I think the reality was lower than whatever they were. I learned a long time ago, not to travel from America and expect things to measure up to American standards, whether it be food or facilities. So I’ll just say it was an eye opening cultural experience. Comparing this place to what I had seen in South Africa was night and day difference. Being an international airport it was definitely not putting its best foot forward to represent the rest of the country. The customs process was as backward and unorganized as it could be, but we did get our visas and were able to make a claim on the missing luggage. Despite the issues at hand I was finally in Mozambique with only one more short trip to my final destination. I will mention here that I am glad that I always keep a roll of toilet paper in my backpack, because there did not seem to be any in the entire airport and my dad was almost in a bind! Welcome to Africa!
Things were about to get better! We met up with our pilot for our charter flight out to the Zambezi Delta Safari camp. I had expected that we were being taken out in a chopper, but all of the helicopters were tied up on other projects that day so we would be taken out in an old four seat bush plane.
The airplane could get us there in a little bit better time than the helicopters could anyway. And after 20 minutes in the air in the copilot seat, looking at all the gauges, and asking questions the pilot said. “Do you wanna to fly this thing?” What a stupid question, of course I wanted to fly it! It had been a long time since high school ROTC, and the basic flight simulators we played with then were kinda boring. But this was the real thing! He gave me a couple of instructions and turned over the controls to me, and for a portion of the rest of the flight I got to play around a little bit. Nothing crazy, just minor altitude and direction changes but I had a blast nonetheless.The pilot took my phone and got some pictures for me as I flew, he made a fun trip even better. When we got close to the marromeu complex I told him I wanted him to take over so I could take in the scenery and look for wildlife. We dropped down from 1,650 feet to a little lower altitude and it wasn’t long until I started seeing animals. It was like an imaginary line was crossed once we got over the Coutadas. Most of the openings in the forest had some sort of animals in them that I could see from the plane, and they became more dense the closer we got to the camp. This looked promising! After a few more minutes I saw the long rectangle of the airstrip cut into the forest below and we banked down to the left and came in low for the landing. We bounced and bumped along the runway slowed to a stop and then turned back toward the hangar shed. As we pulled up and cut the engines I heard a drum beating and looked over to see a line of camp staff standing to greet us with a proper Mozambican welcome! Bredger, our PH, greeted us as we got out of the plane and the staff gave us hot wash clothes for our faces and cool drinks for refreshments. For being out on the backside of nowhere Zambeze Delta Safaris certainly does things first class!
