Articles in Category: Travel

Denver Colorado to Gabarone Botswana

Denver Colorado to Gabarone Botswana

Well this is my first shot at blogging........ I'll do my best however I look forward to your coments, suggestions and sarcastic remarks.

  I took a red eye out of Denver on Friday night, Feb. 6, 2015. My first lay over was in New York, a lovely 5 hours in an international termanalwith no seats. Next stop fourteen and a half hours later........... Johannesburg South Africa, another 5 hour lay over then I was offto Gaborone, Botswana. All and all it was a relativly painless trip except for the extra baggage fee I was charged by South Africa Air. The flight was booked through Jet Blue and when I went on line their web site said the extra bag fee was $50.00 as long as the bag was under 50 lbs. That sounded kinda cheap so I called Jet Blue to make sure I was not mistaken, they assured me that was the fee. Upon arriving at the air port I was informed by the counter agent that that was their fee but they did not have an agreement with South Africa Air and I would need to pay an additional $300.00, a total of $350.00 for one 43 lb. bag. Oh well......

Birds

When I decided to commit to the position with AFS one of the first tasks on my prep list was to get a bird ID book for southern Africa. Thanks to Amazon Prime I had it in two days. It was somewhat of a sober yet psychedelic experience, flipping through page after page of radically colored and shaped birds a lot of which I had never even heard of. Gotta love that immediate gratification!
Not only am I passionate about watching, trapping and flying raptors but I also love checking out the beautiful birds that they eat!
What I hope to do is post a "bird slideshow" every 3-4 weeks for those of you who also enjoy checking out birds. I will also try and list the birds in the same order they appear in the slide show.
This is the first, hope you enjoy it!

PLEASE NOTE!!
I am not a "wildlife photographer" I'm just a guy with a camera (Nikon 610 with a Nikkor 70-300 lens). Although the occasional photo may be in focus or have aesthetically pleasing composition please understand I'm an armature at this.
I sincerely appreciate all the photographic help and counsel provided by;

Ron Taniwaki - Nikon Technical
David Keegan - Photographer/ naturalist
Michael Cassidy- Fine Artist
John Russell - photographer
God - Model Services