2002 Overseas Vacation pictures

Test image of my messy apartment before the trip.

The incredibly small elevator of the Hotel des Arts in Paris.

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France's grave of the unknown soldier, a bit more understated than ours. "The other soldiers that died for France." [Med] [Large]

We're not the only country with rush hour problems... [Med] [Large]

Tried to capture a bird with this one. I think it's an European crow. [Med] [Large]

So that's what the Tropic of Capricorn looks like... [Med] [Large]

South Africans have great respect for their monuments

A village near Kruger Park with the round "Zulu huts".

Lookee! An elephant! (None of these wildlife photos come anywhere close to actually being there.)

More pics of the elephant

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Our viewing site at Kruger. The authorities assured us lions are deathly afraid of white and red tape, so we have nothing to be worried about.

Leading up to the eclipse... Notice the clouds obscuring the sky. They only rolled in between 3:00 and 4:00 that morning, before then it'd been clear or mostly clear since I'd arrived, so my expectations for good viewing were high. There was even some worry about crop failure due to drought. Fortunately, these clouds presaged the on and off rains that would start a few days hence.

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Me and my rental car. Unfortunately, the guy who took this photo for me also accidently pressed the button that makes the camera use half-scaled images to save film and I didn't notice until I downloaded them all, so there's no more full-size pictures.

There he is! That's him right there! No, really, they were very kind, giving me a solar filter for the camera and letting me use a pair of their solar glasses, in place of the defective ones I'd gotten from the concierge of the Holiday Inn Pretoria.

Some more before-eclipse action

Moon takes a bite out of the sun, viewed through their makeshift solar telescope.

Direct view of the sun through a break in the clouds and a solar filter.

Another look at the sun through the hole in the clouds as totality approaches...

Me risking the CCD in my camera to photo the sun through the clouds

And through the solar filter when the sun's in clear sky again

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"I'm shrinking!"

Again with the filter...

And the clouds...

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It's getting eerily dark, though that doesn't show up in the pictures well.

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Shortly before the big T...

Totality

And just after

Another photographer

As the sun slowly brightens...

More shots through the clouds

An odd-looking millipede

South Africa is hard on the news media, but they carry on.

Giraffe

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Windmill well makes an artificial watering hole

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Shots of buffalo and super-close-ups of my finger

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Another elephant

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And another

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Yet another

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Mixed messages

80 km/hr on this road? It's a cruel joke.

Very interesting lizard. It rocked backwards and forwards repeatedly as it slowly walked.

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An interesting ladybug, barely visible in the photo...

A coal-rich hill, in the process of being mined into oblivion

Images of the Drakensberg, near Cathedral Peak

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A snail

Images of the Drakensberg, with some hard-to-make-out monkeys

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A butterfly

More images from the hike

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More pics of the Berg

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Waterfall

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Another waterfall

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Zulu dancers

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Crocs at PheZulu

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And Mambas

I think this is a chameleon

Some wildlife

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It's difficult to tell, but the creatures near the upturned tree are lions. They were much more impressive through the binoculars (no telephoto, sorry). These here were the only cats I saw on the trip. [Med] / [Med]

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More wildlife

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Giraffe up close

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Bushbucks

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Zebra

Another bushbuck

Better shot of a zebra

More shots of zebra and bushbuck

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More antelope

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A larger antelope, possibly a nyala

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Herd of antelope

Warthog

More antelope

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Another warthog

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More zebra and antelope

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A turtle

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Some buffalo

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