Technology and the African Safari

First, I planned and booked our whole African adventure online. I used Travelocity to book flights and then keyword searches to find safari operators in South Africa & Namibia

Don't underestimate Africa. Everywhere we went people had smartphones. As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, Blackberry has an African special $50 rand a month (=5 US $) with unlimited text, data, and phone.

While on safari in Kruger our guide was part of a coalition of guides who shared information about animal sightings. Each would text the location of rare sightings (lions, leopard, cheetah, wild dogs and rhinos) to the group so that everyone could benefit. That kind of technology based cooperation really helped us see a lot of wildlife.

I bought a new Wi-Fi enabled camera that was small enough to fit in my money pouch out if sight, unfortunately the Wi-Fi required drivers be loaded thus did not work effectively. I didn't need the Wi-Fi feature at home where I have a computer and fire wire, but I really needed it at a free, public Wi-Fi and it didn’t work.  I would recommend not buying a Wi-Fi camera until the technology improves. 

                                                          Photo Credit: Micah Costello

The iPod touch 5 was invaluable. When traveling with a child you must have a second camera, and my son used it a lot. We tried to take pictures on the camera and the iPod at each location and animal sighting. I had forgotten about the video option, but Micah remembered and we were able to record several animal events. A child with a camera does require some deletion time each evening though, as many, many pictures are taken at each sighting, and of the ground, the sky, funny faces and the back of the mother’s head.

                                                            Video Credit: Micah Costello

The blog was intended to give my family piece of mind while we were away. I needed a simple blog application, and Blogger by Google was perfect. We downloaded the Blogger App onto the iPod Touch, and were able to communicate throughout the whole trip. It was difficult to type blog posts on such a small screen, and auto correct and African words added to the challenge.

The PicStitch App allowed me to make collages of photos and crop pictures of faraway animals. This was important when I wanted a visual of several items, but didn’t want to clog the blog with images. 

Communication with family was extremely important as there were many concerns about me taking my eight-year-old son to Africa. I checked with my cell phone carrier before my trip to see if my phone would work either in Europe or Southern Africa, and it would not so I had planned to buy a phone when I landed in South Africa. However, before our departure I downloaded the TextNow  App hoping that might save me from having to buy a phone. TextNow proved to be invaluable!  At every leg of the trip I was able to text my sister who then conveyed to the rest if the family that we were safe and at out next destination. The TextNow calling  feature even worked in Africa. The call I made to my mother had audio issues but I merely texted my sister who gave my mother my TextNow number and in 2 minutes she called us and we were talking via the Outlook Lodge’s Wi-Fi system and our iPod Touch.

Finally, Dropbox also proved priceless. Whenever, we had Wi-Fi access, the pictures would automatically load to the Dropbox. However, the free Dropbox account does not hold all 2281 African Adventure photos so I did have to clean up the Dropbox, and re-upload the best of the pictures after we returned.