Farewell, Africa!
Trip Start
Jun 16, 2009
1
27
Trip End
Jul 12, 2009
Victoria Falls, Zambia
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Before leaving the falls I made some last minute shopping for curios outside the entrance, and traded away my Saucony running shoes and $5 cash for a couple of stone giraffes for Mark Masters since his broke in Suzan’s luggage. I walked back to the bus barefoot, but smiling at my goodies.
I slept a few hours on the 17-hour flight from New York to Johannesburg, appreciative that the seat next to mine was empty and the entire plane probably less than half full. We stopped in Dakar but only picked up a few passengers, so the plane remained wide open and several people in the group lay out over the middle seats. We got to New York 24 hours after boarding our plane in Zambia and we still had a 4 hour layover before our United flight to LA. It was taking 40 hours from leaving the lodge in Botswana to LAX, or 42 hours to get to our house. It was probably the longest journey I’d ever taken to get home. But it had been a great trip and I had gotten many excellent photos even with intermittent problems with my camera. It was the 6th study abroad program that I had led, and I would rate it an A- overall.
