More essential is: what r u doing if someone here is into u. Even more so if u r thousands of miles apart. U need visa and really money just to see each other. A picture can tell more than a thousand words, but in my case e.g. on some pictures I look quite fair for my age but on others not so. So pics r not enough. Really hard. And maybe disappointing.
) organises a 30-minute scenic flight to Abu Camp from Maun. Air Botswana (020 7707 4575) also has daily flights to Maun, the "capital" of the Okavango Delta, from Gaborone and Johannesburg. Holland and Holland (020 7499 4411,
) has a six-day safari, including flights to and from Abu Camp, from £4,825 per person - international flights extra (about £750 London-Maun return). Elephants for Africaby Randall Moore, Christopher Munnion and Horst Klemm is published by Abu Publications, PO Box 9
After proving himself a "natural" in handling and training the animals, he took himself to college to study zoology. He had just completed his degree when he heard that both Morgan and Eloise had been killed, in separate incidents but in swift succession, by two Asian bulls in musth. He had inherited the three African elephants - Tshombe, Durga and Owalla.
"My first thought was that these magnificent creatures deserved to return to their natural habitat in Africa," he says. Easier said than done, of course, but with dogged persistence he persuaded an American television network to sponsor his project. Elephants and trainer made the long voyage to Kenya where Moore found himself riding his new charges among the large wild herds of Tsavo.
The project was going well but the Kenyan authorities became increasingly hostile for reasons Moore never understood. Finally, the elephants were deported on the grounds that they had been born in South Africa, then still under apartheid. The tragedy was compounded when Tshombe, the bull, contracted salmonella poisoning and died.
Undeterred, Moore and the two survivors returned to the US for a year's quarantine before making another long voyage back to Africa, this time to the newly established Pilanesberg game reserve near Sun City. There Moore spent a year introducing Durga and Owalla to the terrain and to a group of young elephants recently arrived from the Kruger park. Today, 20 years on, Durga and Owalla are the matriarchs of their own wild breeding herds in the Pilanesberg and both have had babies of their own. No finer tribute could be paid to one man's single-minded dedication.
Phase two of the Randall Moore story started when a South African film producer asked him to find some trained elephants to feature in a story set on the southern Cape. He returned from the US with two bulls, Benny and Abu, both Kruger orphans which had been living unhappily in safari parks in Texas, and a Ugandan-born cow, Cathy, from a Canadian wildlife reserve.
Moore's plan, once the film had been completed, was to stay on in the Knysna forest, hoping that his elephants would meet the remnant herd of wild elephants in the region. Once again he hit a bureaucratic brick wall. The then South African authorities turned down his proposal.
At that low point, he recalled the words of his old friend Peter Beard, photographer and adventurer, who once suggested around a camp fire that the finest way to enjoy a safari in the African bush would be from the back of an elephant. Moore found an enlightened government in Botswana that saw the potential benefit to tourism and backed his venture from the start.
After 10 years of much drama, Randall Moore and his elephants now have the run of a 500,000-acre concession of wilderness in the Okavango Delta. Abu Camp, centre of the safari operation, is one of the most luxurious bush camps in Africa.
The herd has expanded, with acquisitions from culling operations, translocations and young elephants which have become separated from the large Okavango herds. One of the high points at Abu Camp last year was the first successful birth of a baby elephant within the trained herd.
Moore has shown his appreciation to the Botswana government by establishing Africa's first elephant training camp. During the off-season, he deploys his elephants to the rural areas on the Okavango periphery, where they happily haul ploughs to develop fallow land for crops that the locals sell back to the safari camp.
Moore is unapologetic about the commercial success he has created from his initial altruism. "It is evident that Africa's remaining wildlife will have to pay its own way if it is to survive," he says. "My elephants have proved the point here in the Okavango, a natural and abundant environment where they are at their happiest." Elephant safari basics
U can usually search for WW2 artefacts in Germany and keep them. Different laws and regulations about ownership in the federal states. U may not look for "Kulturdenkmale".
The original title is "Mon livre d'Afrique". The elephant's name is Abu. He is one of several elephants which Randall Moore took out of a circus in the USA back to Namibia, Okavango delta.
It is often not easy within families and beloved-ones. There is murder, divorce, fighting, too. This may be a reason why a stranger can be a friend even if u don't know the person.
guadal Blog Comments (1,805)
RE: Life Moments
Would like to ask if u took the pics of the elk and snow goats urself and how far away have they been?