Bill had a trip to Africa scheduled for 2014 with his best friend since high school and university, Jim. BUT a few weeks before the adventure was to begin Jim had a stroke, then died within a few days. That put the trip on hold. Bill still wanted to go, but I wasn’t letting him fly off to Africa by himself. I asked Ron Marino who has the Canadian horse, Pax, at Winsong Farm if he would like to go. He didn’t miss a beat, “YES” was his reply. So, the two men planned, packed and took off on the trip of a lifetime!

September 30, 2015: Here is the FIRST email from Ron Marino about details of the trip to Africa (September 20 – October 13). The previous communication was September 21 when Ron and Bill were preparing to board the last flight of the day to Zimbabwe. So, after a nine day drought, we get some news!

Greetings all!

I thought I should check in to let you know that both Bill and I are still alive and relatively healthy and our adventure charges on. Our steady steed..AKA…Toyota Land Cruiser…has been a beast and has been pretty abused on some of the roads/trails we had to take. Only damage (so far) has been one flat tire which occurred overnight at Kanga Camp (they happily installed the spare for us) and we got the flat repaired already. And after a 35km washboard bumpy road that shook both of us and the truck like crazy!!…we double checked under the hood…the battery tie down had come loose..no problem, just tightened it up and the coolant reservoir had fallen off its mount and almost into the belts of the engine…just popped it back into place and we were on our way…:)

So far, here is what has transpired:

Bill and I successfully completed the animal count last weekend. Talk about getting close to wild animals!! Elephants walking by in camp within 2 meters of us…keeping quiet and still is an understatement making sure not to upset or scare them in any way. Hippos coming into camp in the middle of the night literally just outside our camping tent. Lions roaring in the distance and armed rangers making sure they stayed out of camp. Baboons and monkeys trying to steal food and supplies. No one was allowed to exit their tents once we have gone to bed. There have been cases of people getting up in the middle of the night to pee and getting mauled by lions or even hyenas. We then went to Kanga Camp…it was amazing and got lots of pics of animals right up close to us as the dining lounge was right next to a watering hole (huge pond). From Kanga Camp we went to Wart Hogs camp for just an over night stay. Not much to say about Wart Hogs. We just arrived at Changa Safari camp. We came by boat. It’s gorgeous!! And we are here till Friday, then we go to the next place Victoria Falls. We have tons of pics to show you.

Hope all is good back home.

Will check in again once we get to Victoria Falls.

Ron

When I read the words “relatively healthy” my heart almost stopped. I emailed Ron and asked for specifics. Here’s his response: Relatively Healthy = Eating like Kings…so feeling GREAT!!….just not totally sure all this awesome food and drinks are good for us…:)