Next trip starts next month!

Time to get ready for the next trip, back to the mighty Zambezi river. Where my love affair with Africa first started over 20 years ago.
This time I have a new travelling companion, my good friend Tracey, a primary school teaching assistant and keen camper, also from Sussex who has never been to a third-world country and is incredibly excited to be able to not only see the difference, but make a difference too.
We set off at the end of next month for Zambia (via Johannesburg), arriving in the Southern city of Livingstone, for a week of volunteering with IVHQ. We are booked to work in an orphanage, but will of course go wherever we are most needed on arrival.
It will not only be my first time in the country, but also my first time volunteering in a city - I typically go out into remote villages to work, so I'm intrigued to see how different it will be.
Livingstone is 20 minutes from the famous Victoria Falls which are known by the locals as "mosi-o-tuna" (the smoke that thunders). The Zambezi river flows over the falls and plunges into Batoka gorge where it separates Zambia on one side and Zimbabwe on the other.
I toured Zimbabwe for the first time back in 1995 for 5 weeks with a friend. We borrowed her father's car, loaded it with a portable stove, a tent and a cool-box full of beers and set off southwards - madness - but incredible (apart from the bout of malaria of course!). I returned again in 1997 for another 3 weeks but sadly have never been back. This time, almost 20 years since the last, I will once again be standing at the edge of those falls marvelling at the power, the beauty and the noise of one of this planets greatest wonders and I can't wait. The spray from the falls creates a permanent lush rainforest and bird-life to rival that of the Amazon. The view from above is simply stunning as you see the path the falls have taken over thousands of years.
For our second week we plan to cross the bridge that spans the falls and separates the gorge and will spend some time on safari watching lions and elephants in Zimbabwe.... more VISAs!

Brown Bears in Transylvania, Romania

Footage from the borrowed GoPro!

Sleeping, blogging and image-sorting

The view from top of the Liad

enjoying my 2-day old breakfast sandwiches!

So the Tupperware breakfast arrived at 9:00am and was missing a few ingredients... namely milk. Tea without milk is really not an option for me, so I donned my slippers and grabbed the room key.... if you want a job doing... do it yourself.... I headed out to the corner shop in my pjs, and returned ten minutes later with milk, chocolate, biscuits and noodles. Displeased at having paid for breakfast only to be getting it myself but equally as displeased at the prospect of drinking milk-less tea all day. I tramped back to my "suite" and made my breakfast in a huff, (immaturity can turn me into a right "Kevin" sometimes). Once the flask was filled with tea and the music channel found, I calmed down and actually looked forward to finally getting a chance to review my images from the week. A few disappointments as always, but also some surprises. The session Wednesday night in the water hide was most definitely the best and the cub eating my two-day old breakfast sandwiches had me in fits of giggles again.
I stopped for a break mid-afternoon and took a few minutes time-lapse from the roof before getting stuck in again to filling the remote HD and sorting the images into days, keepers and those suitable for this blog. It's surprising just how long that takes with the number of different gadgets we have these days to copy from, so I was thankful I had the time to do it. Returning home to the madness of work, wood and home tends to add months to these kinds of tasks.

Moldavian Cheesy Leek "Pies"

Keith had spent the day investigating the wider delights of Bucharest and the old town, meeting up with a friend of his for a more informed local tour (fine art photographer, Cristina Velina Ion).
We all met up for dinner at the Moldavian again, La Placinte, and talked photography and flowers. A lovely evening with good company and a very nice menu, that thankfully had pictures to accompany everything as well as sensible prices, the wine was not bad either. Perhaps Bucharest could grow on me over time.

It's mating season!

last session in the hide - a tad chilly

Our last session in the bear hide and since Zoltan was off on a series of birding trips in Hungary for the next 2 months, we let him go home and get packed properly, leaving Keith and I safely positioned in the main hide on our own.
After a fleeting glimpse of a young bear around 6am, we saw absolutely nothing for 3 hours. With the last session disappearing rapidly and our list of bear-activities-yet-to-see still as long as ever, I started to lose a little hope.... not to mention warmth... my fingers were like ice.
Then all of a sudden Keith spotted a stray dog trotting through the forest towards the clearing. The dog was to kick-start a frantic 30 minutes which included almost everything still on the list! I have to say bears mating in the woods has to be THE funniest thing I have ever seen whilst sat in a hide. Soon afterwards, "Goliath" turned up and we thought that a fight might break out, but the younger male simply dashed off into the trees and left Goliath to the two females. Thankfully though he was more interested in food than he was sex... not sure I could have coped with any more; trying to stifle uncontrollable giggles and take pictures at the same time is not easy you know (but I've heard growing up is even harder).

leaving Nagy's for the last time

Zoltan returned around 10am to collect us and we trekked back down to the Desag to do all our packing - what with my Tartan Welly purchase, I had no room left for the unused nappies, so I slid the bag under the bed giggling to myself at what the hotel owner or cleaner might think of this strange English girl who possibly wets the bed.
My weeks bar bill came to €18 which was a pleasant surprise, so we left Zolly a tip and headed off for a last lunch at Nagy's on the way back to Bucharest, Bean goulash again, this time with floating smoked pig rind - euw!

Regional syrup-filled sponge cakes - very nice indeed

Back over the glorious Carpathian mountains and into the crawling traffic of Bucharest. A fairly tired and dilapidated city with poor roads, non-existent road signs and an over-abundance of pharmacies. We eventually found the hotel about 8pm in the commercial sector, and to be honest, it was nothing like we had imagined. What can I say.... they spent all their money on a very good marketeer perhaps?
The poor lad on reception, Mikail, was without a manager and it was his very first day on the job. The roof top terrace bar that I had been dreaming about all week and looked lovely on the website, has not been open for almost 2 years and to top it all.... the hotel DOES NOT SERVE BEER!!!! I was not a happy bunny. My wind-down weekend of blog-writing and image-sorting was in tatters and so we agreed to at least see the rooms first and make a decision as to whether or not we were staying.... well.... the "Suite" that I was in came straight out of MFI and looked to have been thrown together (some years ago) by one of Dominic Littlewood's subjects - broken furniture, ill-fitting windows, blinds that didn't shut.... However, it was late, we were tired, we were hungry and since I planned to sleep most of Saturday anyway, the speed of the wifi persuaded us to stay. Then Mikail innocently asked what time we would like our breakfast delivered,

The stunning Carpathians

"Delivered?!?!?" I asked... "what do you mean delivered?.... you mean you don't serve breakfast either???!!!" We had even paid extra to have breakfast included in our room rate.  Turns out they don't do breakfast at all.... a cleaner nips down to the corner shop in the morning, puts a bunch of ingredients into a plastic box and delivers it to your room at a pre-arranged time. I can't wait... breakfast in a "suite" stinking of open sewers every time you flush the loo - what more could a girl want? You had to laugh. So we did. Plenty.
We decided to pop out for beers and supplies at the corner shop and heat up something edible using our in-room microwaves, but after finding nothing in the local shops, we wandered further afield and found a lovely Moldavian restaurant and stuffed ourselves with beer and food in there instead. Sadly Bucharest has already made a lasting impression, for all the wrong reasons.

It's all about the birds

Beanbag and birdies

Breakfast at the hotel, Omelette, salad, yoghurt, juice and tea. Feeling so much better today, just a few sporadic pains which are still crippling but much less frequent.
Set off soon after 7am and passed through the main town in rush hour, heading South to the open plains and fish ponds of Rareș.
Paused for Warblers by the roadside, wagtails and a Little Owl atop a small dilapidated shelter.
Found and followed the remains of an otter kill by the fish ponds and on to the wetlands for early purple orchids and time-lapse of fluffy white clouds zipping across the valley.
Had a go at using the in-camera HDR function on an old hut in tall grasses overlooked by a grumpy Little Owl and surrounded by bearded tits. Seemed to work quite well given that the sky was so much brighter than the hut. The location was boggy and fairly stinking, and my boots quickly filled with brown water soaking my socks. With, "Suffer for your art Joanne" ringing in my ears I battled on, sticking my tripod in the marsh, but struggling with the camera controls and forgetting I had downloaded the camera manual to my phone. I ended up hitting the reset to get HDR working which, unbeknownst to me at the time, disabled the creation of RAW images and switched everything back to JPG. I have since learnt that if you want to create HDR images in RAW, you must bracket the shots and merge offline! oops. Another valuable lesson learnt.

We had lunch at Nagy Homorod again (becoming locals), bean goulash with the pork hooked out, bread and water, before agreeing that a return trip to the hotel was not necessary as we could get new dry socks in the local village of Martinis - a shopping trip that ended up with me being the proud owner of a pair of tartan wellies too! Nothing to stop me now.

Changing to dry socks outside the village shop

Spent the afternoon cruising dusty lanes shooting from the car on a bean bag - Winchats, Warblers, Buzzards and a Red-backed Shrike. Then went a-wandering around the larger wetlands of Sânpaul, in my new wellies, listening to the Bitterns booming and the frogs building to a crescendo of noise before quietening back down. A marsh harrier passed back and forth over the grasses whilst sandpipers and dippers took off and landed continuously around us.

Skylarks in the grass, yellow wagtails and an eagle graced the open hills and meadows alongside a herd of cattle and their stock-men and dogs. A truly magical place and could have spent many more hours there.

Wandering the wetlands in my new wellies

We checked the map and decided to go a different, more rural route back - which took us along an even less-used rocky road to a remote village in the hills called Călugăreni, where we stopped to photograph a couple and their 12 year old horse, Janos, harrowing a vegetable patch in preparation for planting. The village was over 300 years old and in places the untamed flora was winning the battle against the holey roofs and crumbling stone walls of long-since abandoned houses. A few people still around, and some kids were happily playing in the stream and damming it with rocks - no internet here to distract them.

old hut using in-camera HDR

We continued up to the top of the mountain through a high Beech forest which opened out onto an incredible view of the setting sun on the plateau. 7pm and the light was glorious, we played around at some more HDR landscape shots before heading down the other side, eyes peeled for the Ural Owl. Unfortunately the Owl eluded us, unlike the grumpy cattle-herder we passed as we reached the foothills, driving his cattle down the road in front of us in his green felt hat and half a knitted jumper - he reminded me of a stereotypical Leprechaun from Ireland.

Since it was our last night, Zoltan from the hotel served us up a lovely vegetable soup and a Romanian speciality dish eaten at Easter and Christmas, called "Sarmale" (shredded boiled meat rolled in boiled cabbage) along with a large lump of pork with an equally large amount of pork fat. Neither items would make it onto my top 1,000 things to eat, so I was grateful that dessert was apple fritters and since Keith had kindly eaten much of my Samarle (and the pork was wrapped in a napkin and reserved for the bears tomorrow) I got to eat his fritters too... that was until he belched excruciatingly loudly at the table before I had started on the last one! git.