Reflections from JFK

Blogging from JFK during a five-hour layover, glad to be on American soil after a most successful African odyssey, but a longhaul flight overnight from Jo'burg, South Africa non-stop to New York. We're beat and can't wait to see TIA and then our 50-min. drive home from the airport.

It's strange to be sitting at a table at Terminal 5 blogging to holiday music filling the airport, as a 20-foot Christmas trees sends gate-goers on a minor detour to catch their flights this Wednesday morning, the last of November. We are at a nice charging station in the middle of the airport, charging the laptop, my iPhone and Tom's tablet. We would be charging my Nook Color, but I left it on the plane from Victoria Falls to Jo'burg and it is long gone.

It was only yesterday morning we were seven time zones awat, stalking the big cats in the Timbavati Private Game Reserve that is part of the Greater Kruger National Park. That morning an elephant had destroyed the lodge sign on the dirt road and tore down a tree, leaving it across the road for us to go around. Maybe he had seen one too many tourists that week. We made a timely exit, perhaps.

I post here some additional shots from Kruger that you may enjoy. I have about 6,000 pix to plow through when I get home. We land at 5 p.m. today. The buffalo are cape buffalo (not to be confused with water buffalo in Asia); the zebra is a Burchill's, noted by the shadow stripe; the little green guy is a chameleon we found in the middle of the path; the wonderful antelope is a kudu (delicious -- really! We also dined on zebra, warthog, ostrich and springbok, and no, I'm not kidding. At first I thought it was really weird, but then I bought into the fact that after all is said and done, we are carnivores); and the monkey is of the vervet variety.