Submitted by SafariADV on Fri, 2018-10-19
Unbelievable! Tomorrow finally we leave!!!
We have been studying this journey for months, preparing for it, buying things and going through maps and books, but most of all it is months that we daydream of returning to our beloved Africa and our Dr. Livingstone, our car!
Finally the time to go back has come!
Tomorrow evening we take our Ethiopian Airlines flight that will get us to Johannesburg, with a stopover in Addis Ababa.
This year our itinerary includes the Eastern part of South Africa and Swaziland, a small sovereign state wedged between South Africa and Mozambique; we will mainly do safaris, with some cultural visits.
Today we packed, this year we are more loaded than usual because we have some items, that we bought for our car, to take with us.
Furthermore, during the trip, we will have to dress up in layers as usual; during the day there will be between 22 and 28 degrees, while the lower temperature drops to 15 degrees in some destinations, while in others it will also reach 7 or 8 degrees; so it is essential to have light t-shirts, tank tops and shorts, as well as fleece, sweatshirts and long trousers, as well as comfortable walking shoes also to spend several hours in the car during the safaris.
An important part of our baggage is actually made of tech and photography items: we will take with us our two ever-present SLR cameras, my Cleopatra, a Canon 7D Mark II, and Cleo, a Canon 7D, to which we add the objectives: two 100-400 mm, 18-200 mm and 50 mm.
To these are added the two Go Pros with all the accessories and the new arrival, the Panasonic Lumix FZ 1000, that we especially bought to take videos, but also to take pictures more instant than those we take with the SLR cameras; we will take photos and shoot videos also with our smartphones, using the steadycam we bought to improve the quality of our shots.
In addition to this we will bring with us my Mac, hard drives to save photographs and videos, binoculars to observe animals and also to help us in sightings, books for the identification of mammals, birds, plants, insects and arachnids, in addition to the South Africa guide and the paper map of Tracks4Africa.
We must also bring with us some food that we know we will not find in Johannesburg and finally our favorite wine by Casa Montini, our favorite winery, that is located in the Oltrepò Pavese; in South Africa there are good local wines, but we prefer to go on the safe side and take our wine to accompany our barbeques or for a toast at sunset.
We are really loaded: as hold baggage we have a large suitcase, a duffle bag, two smaller soft suitcases, while as hand luggage we have two camera bags and two trolleys; thank goodness we have a business class ticket and with Ethiopian Airlines we do not have big problems with baggage, we could, if we wish, also send the whole house :)
It was not so easy to put everything in the baggage, but we did it, a final check on documents and reservations and we are ready; we just have to wait for tomorrow ... we are really looking forward!
