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October
19, 2002
Upon arising, breakfast is waiting for you.
At
mid-day, lunch is set up and served to you. Everything is
fresh, from the bread – baked daily – to the butternut
squash soup and desserts.
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Click on
the photos below to see
the larger image
Millian spent
most of her journey in Botswana and Zimbabwe, where there are nature
preserves to protect the animals and environment.
Look closely
at this photo. At a glace it looks like a few trees. Look harder and it
comes alive with animals, camouflaged to give them an edge over predators.
Can you find the zebra?
A baby
elephant toots across the road under the watchful eye of a parent.
Whatcha doin?
This picture, taken by a guide, shows just how close a rhino came to the
Range Rover Millian (wearing hat) was riding in. The rhino turned out to be
very friendly and eventually let the group pet him before he left.
Millian’s home
away from home. The staff made up her room every day after she’d left, and
put a chocolate on the pillow. |
After a short nap, tea and
crumpets are served at 3 p.m. A little more activity and it’s the cocktail hour,
where servants meet you at the door of your vehicle with beverages and hors
d’oeuvres and guide you to a roaring fire to relax in preparation for dinner,
which commences about 8 p.m., having been prepared by a gourmet chef.
And at the end of the day,
you return to your bed, which is made with fresh linen and turned down – and
there’s a chocolate on your pillow.
If this were happening to
you, you would be:
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Dreaming.
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Heavily sedated in the
midst of a major surgical procedure.
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Staying at a hotel so
luxurious most people cannot afford to know its name.
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On safari in Africa with
Millian Toms.
“I called it First Class
Mobile Tenting,” Millian says of her 19-day trip to four different sites within
Botswana and Zimbabwe. “We were in Moremi, Matusadona, Mana Pools and the
Okavanga Delta.” The lands on which she traveled are all protected from the
threat of hunters, such as the Moremi National Reserve in Botswana, where she
stayed for part of her trip.
“The sounds,” Millian said,
when asked what she remembers most besides the pictures she took. “They’re
unbelievable. Lions roaring, elephants trumpeting. Every day we said it can’t
get any better than this, and it did.”
This indeed was the deluxe
tour of Africa.
“We were awakened every
morning at 5:30 a.m. and it was cold,” Millian said. “We had a guide and an
entire staff with us. Breakfast was a choice of rolls or porridge and we chose
the porridge. It gets cold overnight in the jungle.
“Then they piled us into the
Land Rover and we were out until noon, sight seeing. Our guide didn’t have a
gun. He said ‘you’re not part of their food chain’ and he was right. We just sat
there and watched them for hours.
“At noon we drove back to
camp, which was a series of tents, and we were greeted by staff holding trays of
cold drinks. By that time it was really heating up and you were peeling off
layers of clothing.” Millian and the rest would wash up, have lunch and while
the others napped, Millian spent the time writing in her journal. After tea and
crumpets at 3 p.m., they went back out for another look.
“You know, there was nothing
between us and them. Look at this picture of the rhino – he just came over to
make friends and put his head in the guide’s lap. The guide said they’d never
seen anything like that before.
That’s why we only went out
during the day. At night they walked right into camp and often right up to you,
but they left you alone if you left them alone.
“We would get back to camp
about 6:30 p.m., before dark. And once again, all these servants would rush out
to the Land Rover with cold drinks and hors d’oeuvres. They’d built a fire while
we were gone, set up chairs around it, and set the dinner table – and I mean set
the table. We had a tablecloth, glassware, silverware, lanterns and gourmet food
under the stars. It was incredible.”
Other than the flight to and
from Africa, which took about 38 hours each way, Millian’s troupe saw new things
every day, especially since they would come back to camp and find that it had
been moved several miles across the reserve. “We had the opportunity to see
Victoria Falls, the Seventh Wonder of the World. We went boating in the Zembezi
River and I’m telling you, I must have seen a thousand hippos. We had to bang on
the sides of our boats so they wouldn’t come up under us and get scared.”
If Millian came away with a
lesson from her journey, it probably would be a two-parter: Everything in the
jungle is recycled in some fashion would be the first part.
“And then one day, after we’d
pulled out boats out of the water and were having lunch, a huge male elephant
roared at us. Then he came closer and roared at us again. All he was doing was
saying ‘That’s close enough, that’s close enough.’ He didn’t charge, he didn’t
hurt us, and after a few minutes he walked away.
“They aren’t like humans.
They don’t kill just to kill. They only kill to eat.”
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