My Photo Safari

I spent a delightful day today. Peggy recently sent me (after a year of my begging, cajoling and teasing her about it), a collection of DVDs which contained most of the photos that she took on her trip to Africa and to Scotland last year (she visited a friend in So. Africa, then flew to Scotland to meet her family and attend the Tattoo in Edinburgh, and then back to Africa for more photo taking). I told her before she left that I would have to take the trip vicariously through her photos and today I finally made my trip to Africa.

In truth, though I've had these DVDs for awhile, I had only watched some of them. And I'm glad that I hadn't watched more. The difference in how the photos look now, post-surgery, and how they looked when I first got them is the difference of night and day. Where they were nice photos before, now many of them just pop with color, even in the fairly homogenous African landscape.

Peggy and I share a love for animals and those who have been reading this journal for awhile may remember that we first became friends through our mutual love of watching the animals through Africam. Peggy's favorites were always the zebras.

(She actually won an award in a photo contest for this one)

But I loved the elephants. When I first asked her to send me all of her photos rather than waiting to make a slide show (I'm still "going to make a slide show someday" of my pictures from Australia!), she asked "how many pictures of elephants can you see?" Well, as it turns out--I couldn't get enough of 'em. She had lots and lots of elephant encounters and I loved looking at all the photos of every single one of them.

I remembered when the two of us had gone riding camels in Australia and I wished I had been with her in Africa so we could have laughed about riding elephants.

I even posted one of her elephant videos for today's video of the day.

But there were hippos and rhinos and cheetas and giraffes and hyenas and warthogs. Heck, even the water buffalo were great. And the birds! What wonderful bird photos she managed to get!

(I can't see this photo without wanting to burst
into a chorus of "3 Little Birds...")

So I feel like I've had my own little mini photo safari to Africa today. Without the expense, the bumpy ride, the heat and the dust. And without the excitement. But taking the trip vicariously was better than not taking the trip at all.