An Almost Empty Blue Lagoon Between Volcano Eruptions

As many of you know, I have had a goal of seeing the aurora borealis (northern lights) for a few years now.  I've been half-heartedly chasing them when conditions are supposedly right while in Washington, but even with a decent sunstorm and other favorable conditions, the lights are only visible by the camera and on the horizon in Washington most of the time.  This spring, Bruce and I came back to Washington early, and there were still enough dark skies and solar activity for us to go aurora chasing a couple of times together.  After yet another miss, Bruce mentioned that it would be cheaper to just go to Iceland to see them.  Obviously, I took that as an invitation and booked a trip soon thereafter.  I took Chrissy with me, and we set off to see Iceland.  I booked us into a multi-day tour with aurora chasing scheduled for every night of the tour, conditions allowing.  Our plan was to land in Iceland and catch the bus to the Blue Lagoon on our way to Reykjavik, and the bus for both legs, entry into the lagoon, in-water massages, and lunch at the Lava Restaurant were booked far in advance, as the Blue Lagoon is a busy place.  I was a little apprehesive because I've heard horror stories of the lagoon being so packed with people that you can barely move in it, but I like doing the iconic things, and I couldn't just skip the iconic Blue Lagoon, even if I've never seen the movie.  I mentioned not having seen the movie, and Chrissy seemed like she had never even heard of it!  I feel so old!

Anyway, as luck would have it, a volcano near Grindavik (a town close to where the Blue Lagoon is located) erupted in December.  The damage to the town has been significant, with the town being evacuated and the Blue Lagoon being temporarily closed.  As the eruption subsided, the powers that be have continually monitored the situation, deciding on almost a day-to-day basis whether to reopen.  Our flight left Seattle on January 5, and our reservations were for January 6.  The Blue Lagoon website said they were re-evaluating on January 5.  As we left for the airport, they were still re-evaluating.  A few minutes before time to board the plane, I once again refreshed the website, and they announced they were opening on January 6 with abbreviated hours and that those with reservations should modify as necessary on the website.  Our reservations were too near for the website to allow me to modify them.  I sent an email and got a response to modify on the website.  I sent another email explaining that I could not and boarded the plane, hoping everything would be okay.

When we landed, I checked with the Airport Direct busline that was supposed to take us to the Blue Lagoon and then on into Reykjavik, and they said they would honor my ticket, but the first bus out would not leave until 12:30.  The lagoon opened at 11:30.  Our reservations were for 9:00.  I had gotten another email from the Blue Lagoon telling me to modify my reservation online.  We had significant time to kill in the airport, so I started trying to find different ways to get a person instead of an auto-responder and managed to reach someone through Facebook Messenger.  She fixed our reservations for me and I took a nap on a bench while Chrissy walked around the airport, enjoying the brisk air.  When I got up, I went out and looked around.  The Keflavik airport is nice, and the sculpture outside is very pretty in the dark!  It was very icy, though, so I didn't venture very far.  My crampons were still in the suitcase.

When we got to the Blue Lagoon, we checked our luggage into storage, taking our bathing suits out for the lagoon.  From here, all pictures were taken by Chrissy, as I didn't want to expose the Lumix or the new underwater housing to the minerals in the water and Chrissy said her phone was waterproof.  I offered to let her have a clear waterproof bag for her phone if she wanted, but she didn't.  The walk from the parking lot to the lagoon, via a paved and lit path in the lava field, is beautiful.   

We got checked in, took our showers, changed, and headed out to the lagoon.  We didn't have the place to ourselves, but it certainly wasn't crowded.  Except by the bar, there was plenty of space to spread out and be away from other groups of people.  There was even plenty of room to swim!  Because they say the minerals in the water will ruin your hair and my hair won't clip up well and stay that way, I put a swim cap on, which had a bump in it that looked like a smurf's point!  The outside temperature was right around freezing, but it was quite comfortable in the water!

When it came time for the massage, we made our way to the back of the lagoon, where we were each told to slather lots of a special conditioner on our hair.  He said I could put the cap back on if I wanted, but I left it off.  We were each  laid on our backs on a floating mat that looked like a yoga mat, not a pool float, and covered with a blanket before being told to take our tops down so the masseuses would have smooth access to our backs.  From that point on, it was ecstasy!  It wasn't a full body massage, but he did a relaxing massage of my back, neck, head, both arms and hands, and feet and lower legs.  Periodically, he would grab the blanket, and push my body back down into the water to make sure I stayed warm.  This was an amazing experience, and if you have the opportunity to have an in-water massage in thermal mineral-filled waters, I would strongly suggest not skipping it!  There are no pictures in this area, though, so you'll just have to use your imagination to visualize.

After the massages, we spent a little more time in the lagoon before heading back in, where we showered again and changed back into our street clothes before going to the Lava Restaurant overlooking a section of the lagoon and lava rocks for dinner.  We each shared the cod and lamb, which were both scrumptous!

Before leaving, I went to the counter to make sure about our bus to Reykjavik.  I wasn't sure about the bus stop we needed for our hotel, and I knew the time on our tickets wasn't right.  The guy at the counter issued me new tickets for the correct time and told me he wasn't sure which stop we needed, as he didn't know where our hotel was.  He said we would take the large bus to a central place in town and would change there to a smaller minibus.  He said to confirm with the driver of the minibus which stop to use.  Being Twelvth Night and the last night of Christmas, there were fireworks everywhere as we got closer to Reykjavik!  It was a nice show driving through!

When we changed busses, I tried to ask the driver of the bus we got on, but he looked at me like I had three heads and didn't answer.  I pulled up Google Maps and watched as we got closer to the hotel.  When we got stopped at a stop that sounded familiar and was close, I indicated we should get off.  Chrissy was adamant that we were supposed to get off at another stop, so we stayed on.  As the bus kept driving, we started getting farther away from our destination.  At the next stop (which was the one on our tickets), I took my phone to the driver, showing where our hotel was.  Since I was standing in the aisle beside him, he had to pay attention to me.  He took my phone and looked at it a while, finally telling me that we had missed our stop and would have to find another way to get there because he was going to the other side of town and then ending his shift.  So, we got out and learned that we were now a 15-minute walk from our hotel.  Not bad.  I've been further with more bags to schlep!  Since we were only going to Iceland for a week, I had a lot less medication to carry!  This time, though, we were schlepping our bags through snow and ice, which made it a little more difficult!  It wasn't too bad, though.  We found the swans, which were lovely, and with fireworks lighting our way, we walked to our hotel.  

I didn't fall until we got to the parking lot of the hotel, and even then, it was a slow-motion fall, not really going all the way down.  We put our bathing suits out to dry after tracking snow and water all over our room.  With a plan for meeting our tour bus in the morning, I took another shower (that's three for the day) and went to sleep.  The conditioner at the lagoon did a great job keeping my hair from drying out!  Now that I'm home and started laundry, the minerals left white patches on my black bathing suit.  I hope they come out in the wash - kinda.  If they don't, it'll be another unusual souvenir!

How Do You Tell A Cheetah From A Leopard?

 The original plan for today was to sleep until I woke up and spend the day at my leisure walking around the falls on both sides.  I was going to walk across the Victoria Falls Bridge and watch some people bungee jump and see the falls from the bottom, even though it's the dry season.  I did part of that.  I slept until I woke up and I spent the day at my leisure.  Both feet were throbbing and no amount of physical therapy techniques or additional meds were going to do anything about it.  I didn't want to spend the day in the AirBNB, though.  So, I decided there was a beautiful pool at the Rainbow Hotel, and I had been invited to come swim in the pool anytime I wanted.  That sounded like a plan.  I put on my bathing suit and got ready for a day at the pool.  I WhatsApped the taxi guy, who had a good laugh, but did come pick me up to drive me the 400 meters (a quarter of a mile) to the hotel.  I mean, if I'm going to be miserable, I might as well enjoy myself!  So, I spent the day poolside or swimming in the pool.  Being in the water actually helped the pain, so I did spend significant time actually being wet.  I had downloaded some shows on Netflix and a couple of books on my phone, so I had plenty of entertainment.  The pool wasn't a very busy place during the day.  I pretty much had it to myself.  Most people were out sightseeing.

I had grilled warthog for lunch.  It was delicious, and the BBQ sauce wasn't bad.  And a touch of Cheeky Chili's peri peri sauce added a bit of zing to it!

There are so many more things I wanted to do while here.  There is a meerkat safari where the meerkats are habituated to humans. (It would have given me the interaction with Timon, leaving only Rafiki on the Lion King characters!)  There's a speedboat that goes under the falls, similar to the boat I had in Argentina on Gran Aventura.  There were more animal parks in Victoria Falls that I wanted to explore, mainly with walking safaris with "hides" where you could sit and wait for animals that would normally be shy around people.  And of course, there is the falls themselves.  I had planned to do all of those things, most of it being arranged when I got here.  But, I guess I'll just have to come back!  I mean, I do still need to get the wildebeest migration to round out the Ugly 5!  And, it's not fair to compare Victoria Falls in the dry season to Iguazu Falls with record rainfall, so there's that, too.  The guys at the Rainbow Hotel tell me that April is a really good time to see the falls with full water and the temperature is still warm enough to enjoy them (though you may not want to do the infinity pools that time of year).  But, I had a pleasant day and grabbed a taxi back to my AirBNB, still less than a quarter of a mile away.

When I got up the next morning, my feet were feeling better, though the right one was still difficult to bear weight, so I was still limping.  Great.  Today was walking with cheetahs.  That's going to be interesting.  They brought out two juvenile, not-quite-adult cheetahs - Zuma in a black harness and Niki in a pink harness.  As the cheetahs were walking us, (Yes, the cheetahs chose where to go.  I just held the leash and petted them.) the handlers explained a lot about the animals to us.  

Cheetahs are highly endangered, especially in Zimbabwe where fewer than 200 remain in the wild.  This breeding program has been going on for some time, and when the animals reach adulthood and are deemed likely to survive in the wild, they are just released into the park.  Until they reach adulthood, they are kept inside or on a leash because they are so vulnerable to attack.  Cheetahs are the world's fastest land animal, but that is their only means of defense from their multiple predators.  Their claws are not retractable, so they are usually worn down and dull, useless in a fight.  Because of that, they are vulnerable to most of the carnivorous predators, such as lions, leopards, and hyenas.  Sometimes even a warthog will take a cheetah cub, though they usually only take smaller mammals when they go for meat.  The cubs don't even begin to start running until they're around six months of age, though, and then they have to learn to build their speed.  Niki and Zuma are learning that in a controlled environment.  They are also learning to hunt and are not put in situations where they associate people with food, only with walks.  Cheetahs are the only large cats that purr, and my how loud that motor runs!  Just listen to him go!  He's loving his rubs!

Cheetahs and leopards look very similar, but there are some key differences.  Cheetahs are taller and sleeker than leopards.  Cheetahs have rings on their tails instead of spots.  And cheetahs have lines on their cheeks that leopards don't have.  The spot patterns on both, however, are unique and have been compared to fingerprints on humans.  

Eventually, they and I got comfortable around each other!

Niki liked to sit up and have her ears scratched.  She would really lean into it!  I was terrified I was going to step on her tail because sometimes she leaned so much she pushed me off balance!

They are shedding their baby fur right now as they're growing into adulthood.  I asked if I could keep it, and the heandlers thought I was joking!!  Imagine!  Me joking about keeping cheetah fur!!  Just so you know, it is now safely ensconsed behind the glass in my shadow box, right under my echidna quills from Sydney and above my bison fur from North Dakota (both of which came off of the animal without any assistance by me, unlike my cheetah fur)!  There are rumors that this place releases animals into hunting lodges.  However, it is illegal to hunt cheetahs in Zimbabwe and they release their cheetahs into the park that borders them.  The rumors may or may not be true with their other animals, but it definitely is not with the cheetahs.  Personally, if trophy hunting is going to be allowed, I would rather there be farmed animals for hunting instead of depleting the wild population.  Farming was a major contributor in saving the American Alligator and it could help some of these other majestic creatures that are being hunted into extinction.

After spending time with the Niki and Zuma, I went back to my AirBNB, rested, and got ready to head home.  I already had made arrangements for the same taxi that picked me up from the airport to take me back.  The difference was that this time, I could barely walk.  When I checked in, the airport staff didn't try to tell me I couldn't take my medical equipment.  Instead, when I told them I could not do stairs, they made me prove I could walk to the bathroom on the plane on my own.  For the most part, I had a pleasant set of flights home, even though they had to bring the truck to retrieve me from the plane in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia because I couldn't walk down the stairs to the tarmac bus.  Chrissy retrieved me from the airport in Seattle, took me to dinner, and deposited me and my stuff in my condo.  She brought me my walker and a nightgown, and I don't really remember her leaving, because I was already out by then!  It was an amazing trip, and I am finally recouperating and preparing for the next adventure!

An Awesome Day in Botswana!

I woke up today feeling better.  Foot still hurts – strike that – both feet hurt today, but not as badly, so I took an extra pill again.  I was able to sleep longer than I anticipated.  I got a WhatsApp from the people doing today's tour yesterday telling me they didn't get the minimum number.  But, for an additional $30, they could switch me to the full day, which includes the drive I booked plus lunch and a cruise on the Chobe River.  I thought that was a pretty good deal, and since there would be very little walking, jumped on it!  Got dressed and got everything ready to go.  The driver pulled up right on time and took me to pick up the rest of our Zimbabwe crew at their hotel.  They were a couple from Tulsa, Oklahoma.  As we were heading toward the Botswana border (through one of the Zimbabwean parks), we came across a herd of elephants crossing the road.  There were a couple of babies in the herd.  

As one of them came and crossed, our driver started talking about how elephants have a gland between their eye and ear, and when that gland secretes fluids, it is a sign that the animal is stressed.  This lady was apparently already stressed, as you can see the fluid running down the side of her face.  As he is helping us find that gland, she starts fanning her ears at us.  We ignored her.  Suddenly, she charged at us.  I initially thought it would be a fake charge like the guy did in Uganda.  Nope.  She kept coming.  She chased us about 500 feet down the road!  They can book!  Our driver pretty much floored it to get away!  This is what an elephant looks like when she charges!

Once we got to the Botswana border, we picked up the other two members of our group – a couple from South Africa, and off we headed to Chobe National Park.  We saw lots of things, and had we seen a wildebeest, I would have rounded out the Ugly 5, too, but I didn't book the wildebeest migration.  The Ugly 5 are the warthog, marabou stork, wildebeest, vulture, and hyena.  I got a little irritated at our driver.  He would get me into a good position and I would ask him to stop, and he would keep moving and ruin my shot.  This happened far too often.  He drove fast down the park, I'm sure missing many things, but maybe he needed to do that so we could see the high points in the time we had.  But I was really irritated at all of the shots he ruined for me when he could have just paused for two seconds!  Everybody else was thrilled with him, though, so I didn't say anything.  The park, itself, is amazing, and I would love to do a full day just in Chobe with a slower driver!

Marabou Stork

Water Monitor

Tsessebe

Impala

Kudu

Giraffe

Greater Blue-Eared Starling

Red-Billed Hornbill (Think Zazu from the Lion King)

Leopard

She had just recently taken down an impala and had it stored in her den.  She'll apparently eat on this for a few days.

This young lion was definitely not concerned about the humans and vehicles around!

Nor was this lady, who was busy grooming herself.

This one had a regal profile!

We also passed an elephant carcass.  Our guide said it had been there for about two weeks.  Apparently, it takes only a couple of days for the vultures to pick the carcass clean.  The elephant died of old age/natural causes, just collapsing in this spot.  The vultures will not eat the skin or bones, and it will take time for the animals of detritus to help the skin decay.  The bones will bleach and lay for a long time.

Peek-a-boo!

After a nice buffet lunch and lively and friendly round discussing world politics, the five of us boarded a boat and headed down the Chobe River.  The Chobe River is also the Zambezi River until you cross the Zimbabwe/Botswana border.  Just like Zambia is on the other side of the river from Zimbabwe, Namibia is on the other side from Botswana.  As far as I know, we did not cross into Namibia.  Our driver promised to take us to the place where all of the borders meet, but then said he couldn't when we were on our way back to Zimbabwe.  There is an island between Botswana and Namibia on the Chobe River, and the two countries had to go to the Hague to determine who the island belonged to.  The international courts decided that because the river was very shallow between the island and the mainland of Botswana, but deep between the island and Namibia, and the land animals (like buffalo) can transit between the island and Botswana but not the island and Namibia, that the island is actually just part of the Botswana mainland and not an island at all.  Therefore, it belongs to Botswana and not Namibia.

There were a lot more crocodiles in these waters than in the Nile cruises.

And our driver wasn't afraid to get reallllly close to them!

In fact, this guy had a little trouble getting away from us and back into the water where he felt safe because our boat was in his way.

And we got waaayy too close to this buffalo.  I held the shutter button down to get a burst, and this is the sequence of when he decided to charge us!  This is when he's just doing his own thing.

He has noticed we're getting a little close.

He's getting a little distressed.

You could feel the difference in the tension in the air when he decided to charge!  The next shots were mostly blurs, including things being covered by the egret's wings as he quickly departed the area!  Our boat driver revved our motor and steered so the noise of the motor went toward the buffalo, which scared the buffalo and caused him to turn away.

White-Crowned Lapwing

A hippo on land grazing.

Look at that sharp tooth!  These guys are considered the most dangerous animals, not only because they are so big and strong or that they have such sharp teeth coupled with the bite force, but because they apparently give no warning when they attack.  We got a little too close to some in the water and they grunted and lunged at us, but fortunately, our driver didn't get too close to this guy.

It was a very nice day and a really good set of game drives.  I guess being charged by two large wild animals can make for a good day when you get away, not to mention very vivid memories!  My feet were still throbbing, but having been off of them and even able to elevate them at several points throughout the day, they weren't nearly as bad as they were yesterday after just a few hours with the lions and hyenas.  A nice shower, some more leftovers from the potjie dinner, and some ramen noodles, and I was ready for bed.

The Feast of Beasts!

Today is the Feast of Beasts - the day I'll get to hide and watch the lions race for food - and my foot hurts!  I can barely walk, but I'm gonna soldier through.  Maybe I'll convince my foot that it's okay before long.  I'll sure give it the ol' college try!  My driver was on time (maybe a few minutes early).  He's got jokes!  He told me he was concerned about me because the tour operator called and asked if he could hurry me there because the lions were hungry!  We got there, and I met Liki (the operator) and Angela (a photography intern from Alberta, Canada.  I'm going to have to look into this program!).  He put us in a caged truck because the lions are wild animals, and though they are well fed and likely wouldn't make any moves toward us, he didn't want to take that chance.  Imagine getting in and out of that contraption when you're having difficulty walking and lots of pain!  But it was worth every second!

The lion enclosure is huge, double fenced and reinforced to prevent the wild elephants from the national park damaging it.  There are five lions in the main enclosure, four females and a male.  The male is 20 years old, which is six years past his normal life expectancy.  You can definitely see that he is in the final portion of his life.  

There is another, younger male in a smaller (but still pretty large) pen inside the enclosure that Liki is trying to get ready to introduce to the females of the pride.  When it is time, they will take the old man out and let him retire.  Liki said the females are wearing the old man out, as they come in and out of heat, and require his services every 20 minutes or so!  At one point, the old lion decided to challenge the new young male.  The fence was between them, though, so neither of them got hurt.  Liki feels confident that if they went after each other for real, the old man would not survive.  That's why he's getting the females used to the new male and will remove the old man before letting the young male out with the pride.  Liki does expect there to be a bit of a row between the females and the new male before they accept him, but it shouldn't be so bad since they're growing used to his scent.

After seeing the lion pen, we moved on to the hyenas.  This was a welcome surprise, as the only hyena I had gotten to see was the one in Murchison Falls that was on the side of the road after dark.  Liki let us out of the cage in the hyena pen.  These guys could certainly kill us if they wanted, but they tend to be more scavengers than predators.  We got much closer than the 3-5 meters he said, especially when they decided to follow us and walk right up to us.  If it had been allowed, I could have reached out and petted one of the males that followed me.  It's sometimes hard to tell the males from the females because the females grow a false penis.  These guys are members of the cat family, but act, look, and move more like dogs.  These particular hyenas are all wild born.  There was a community in Zimbabwe where the hyenas were highly destructive to crops and livestock, and after having tried several measures to control the situation, the government finally issued a kill order, allowing community members to eradicate the species from the area.  Liki went to the community and asked for the opportunity to trap and relocate them into a fenced in area where they could not return to the community, and they gave him a few days to trap as many as he could before they started killing them off.  He managed to get a few.  We saw the tracks where the wild hyenas from the park come up to the fence and play with the ones he captured.  He says it sometimes looks like the wild hyenas have tried to get in, but he has never seen signs of his hyenas trying to get out.

After the hyenas, it was time to feed “the boys”.  We went to a cave-like area with large-guage wire fencing.  We were eye level with the ground.  When we picked our spots and said we were ready, Liki phoned up and told the caretaker to release them.  You could hear the ground thundering before any of the lions got close enough to see.  I just had my camera taking burst shot after shot.  I didn't want to miss a thing!  And I didn't!  I got some really great shots.  I think I can make my favorite one multiple different shots because it has three out of the four lions that were feeding.  The fourth wasn't interested to begin with, so he never even left his temporary enclosure, leisurely strolling down a little bit later.  The third wanted to be shy, so he grabbed his meat and took off.  The other two tore into the meat.  You could hear them growling and munching.  Soooo close to them!  You could even hear the meat tearing off the bone!  It was amazing!

This is a separate shot of the guy bringing up the rear with the dirt in his face!

After that, we went to see the ostriches.  Not a big deal to me, and my foot was really hurting.  In fact, I was starting to feel nauseous from the pain and the heat, but I just had to soldier on.  We saw the crested eagle who is blind and can't fly, the duiker, and the two vultures, one of whom has only one wing (the other isn't injured and can fly away whenever he feels like it, but he hasn't felt like it yet).

When we got back to the lodge, a large breakfast was set before me.  I just couldn't eat it.  I had a couple of bites, but thought I was going to throw it up.  I did have an apple that was delicious, some tea and pineapple juice.  Those things went down well.  I wished the protein would have.  I tried the sausage and the egg.  They were both good, but I just couldn't tolerate them.  When I finally got home, I laid down and started removing items of clothing as I felt like it between naps.  It was only 9:30.  Finally, by about noon, I felt good enough to start looking at photos and around 1:00, I was able to fix and eat a bowl of ramen noodles.

Tomorrow is another early morning.  I need to spend today working on my foot and getting things together.  It's a motorized game drive, so I need to get The Baby ready for her last foray in Africa!  Hopefully, I'll feel better in the morning with some exercises I learned in physical therapy and some extra meds!