I am just days from starting yet another adventure.  This time to the last continent on my list, namely Africa.  As usual, and as my friends kid me about, this trip is yet again more like a “military assault” rather than a vacation – really though, I am just trying to be relatively efficient in terms of area covered yet timing the local conditions… so many places to see, and I am mindful that very few of us know how much time we truly have to see it in. 

Its going to be a multi-country tour, kicking off the trip is a week in Prague, Czech Republic, then onto safaris in Kenya’s Masai Mara for the “Great Migration”, and Tanzania’s Northern Circuit. From there its a jump up to Turkey for a few weeks, a week scuba diving in the Red Sea on a live-aboard, a tour through Nile in Egypt, including Aswan, Luxor and Cairo as well as Alexandria, and finally a few days in Frankfurt, Germany before heading home.

My main pre-trip research had been to critically analyze all the Gary Larson, Farside cartoons that involve safaris… looking for the inevitable deep insight into the lives and situations brave explorers as well as the indigent creatures face… for example:

Look at the valuable lessons I gleaned from just these three panels….

1) Elephants never forget how to kill you

2) Crocs are sneaky heartless bastards

3) Live by Tofu, die by Tofu

The cartoonist Larson, loved to anthropomorphize (ascribe human features, feeling, motivations to animals).  This is something I definitely do not agree with in the context of photographing and filming of animals, but cartoon animals is a genius venue to comment on our human foibles and the human condition, and Larson has a brilliant if twisted view. 

In any event, Africa is Honey Badger habitat for sure, and in fact they have been photographed at Masai Mara in Kenya, so maybe the Wandering Honeybadger will the opportunity to spot some cousins!