MW Mobile Blog

For friends, family and the random search engine visitor. This blog started as an experiment in mobile blogging from my Palm TREO 600, 700, Prē, HTC Evo, Samsung 5, Pixel 3, Pixel 6 Pro. Now it serves as a simple repository of favorite activities. Expect bad golf, good fishing, great sailing, eating, drinking, adventure travel, occasional politics and anything else I find interesting along the way including, but not limited to, any of the labels listed here...

Saturday, September 23, 1995

Africa Journal - Chokamella Lodge


Saturday, September 23, 1995


Ray, could you bring me another Zambezi Beer, and make sure it is cold this time?

We fly to Hwange, and are greeted at the Chokamella lodge by Rob Clifford and his wife Shirley who manage the lodge. We heard many good things about Rob from guides in Victoria Falls and were very pleased to meet him.


We also meet Ray, who will be our guide for the game drives. I don't know if you can see it in these pictures, but Ray bears an uncanny resemblance to the CEO of a $5 billion dollar database software company we all know and love (If you need more hints, press here). Ray could be his little brother, it is really quite remarkable. I am sure he wonders why I keep asking him to do menial tasks and then start chuckling.

Eye-Eye, An African Eagle Owl

We take an afternoon game drive with Ray, and after dinner a night drive with Rob. On the night drive we park near a waterhole and turn off all lights. It is a moonless night and very dark. We hear a crashing in the wood behind the jeep. The sound gets progressively louder and continues for about a minute. Suddenly a big bull elephant walks out of the woods and passes within 10 feet of the jeep on the way to the waterhole.


We shine him with the spotlight as he drinks in the waterhole and Sigrid gets some great shots. A few minutes later, a hyena makes an appearance. We can smell the hyena before we see it.

Hyena & Elephant in the Spotlight

I am getting behind on the journal, just having too much fun.

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NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: This is a back-post / cross-post from my first on-line journal/blogging effort - a journal of our Southern Africa Tour in 1995. Originally posted to an abandoned domain (NetSnake.com), the term "blog" had not yet entered the parlance. I am migrating the original posts to this blog. Links to the original journal Date Index or Africa Tour Home Page will likely eventually disappear. The images from the original post were graphics and screen caps from video which I am leaving in it's low-rez glory for historical integrity. My intent is to also add some of Sigrid's higher quality scanned photos to these blog back-posts.  The difference in images should be obvious.

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