Zambia – David J. Kent

Elephants Moremi Game Reserve, Botswana Traveling seems to be done for the year. At least mostly (there might be one short overnight trip squeezed in before New Years). Enough to look back on the year in a traveler’s life. You can see the 2023 recap and 2022 recap by clicking on the links in this sentence. For the last several years I’ve included on my list of goals to visit at least 5 new countries and territories during the year. “Country” is the official United Nations designation, while “territory” encompasses those countries that are betrothed one way or another to some archaic monarchical system (e.g., Aruba is an “island country” but also a “constituent country in the Kingdom of the Netherlands). In any case, I use an app called “Been” to decide which is which. Personally, I respect their sovereignty.

The year started off slowly, as usual, mainly because I have a lot of Abraham Lincoln-related obligations in February, March, and April. For example, on February 12, I was the keynote speaker at the official National Park Service Lincoln birthday ceremony, where after providing some context, I performed the Gettysburg Address. I also attended events at Ford’s Theatre (where Lincoln was shot) and hosted renowned Lincoln historian Harold Holzer at the annual Lincoln Group of DC/Civil War Roundtable of DC joint birthday banquet. Spaced throughout the year were other Washington, DC and/or Lincoln centric events.

My first real traveling of the year was in March, when I took two weeks for a Windstar small ship sailing cruise, roughly 130 people on a four-masted sailing yacht in the Caribbean. Starting in Panama, there were stops in Colombia, Aruba, Curacao, Bonaire (these last three commonly called the “ABC Islands”), then on to Grenada, Mayreau (part of a country called St. Vincent and Grenadines), and ending in Barbados. In addition to the relaxing onboard gourmet meals and camaraderie, there were plenty of excursions to local history and culture sites, as well as tons of fantastic snorkeling. In Grenada, I got to snorkel over an underwater sculpture garden, with statues representing everything from the bizarre to the seriousness of slavery.

April took me back on the road. Like last year, I did a road trip into New England as research for a work in progress (WIP, which I’ll mention in my annual “writer’s life” post in a week or so). That gave me a chance to visit one of my old universities, to see historic sites in New Bedford and a dozen other locations, and to chat with interesting historians and laypeople. Again, more on that in my writer’s post.

The biggest trip of the year was to Africa. I first made it to Africa in 2022 with a trip to Tanzania. In 2023, I went to Morocco. In 2024, Ru and I joined my brother and his wife on a safari centered in Botswana. Arriving first in Cape Town, South Africa, we spent a few days exploring Table Mountain and the Cape of Good Hope. We even saw penguins. Then we flew up to Maun, Botswana to start the tour, which first took us into the Okavango Delta, an amazing experience full of hundreds of new species of birds, hippos, elephants, antelope, and more. Then it was on to the Moremi Game Reserve and Chobe National Park where we saw thousands of elephants, or at least it seemed like thousands. From there we crossed the border into Zimbabwe to see the spectacular Victoria Falls. We even crossed the bridge into Zambia, which was an experience in itself. You can read more about the Botswana Experience in this post.

The fall travel was more domestic. September saw us in Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, and Connecticut (somehow, I missed Rhode Island) for more WIP research and a family wedding. November was to the annual three-day Lincoln Forum conference in Gettysburg, PA, then back up to Massachusetts for a family Thanksgiving. Interspersed were tons of meetings, calls, presentations, and daytrips.

And the year ended (well, almost; I might still do a short trip to Richmond).

And what of 2025?

As I look forward, I’m not sure I’ll make my goal of 5 new countries and territories. I should be in that many countries but not all new. The new ones, however, should be spectacular.

The beginning of the year will remain closer to home as the usual Lincoln-related obligations will always be there, plus my new project. I may get up to New York City in January for research. April will take me back to Vermont for a new Lincoln conference at Hildene, the “summer home” of Lincoln’s son Robert and his family, now a historical non-profit. The tentative plan is to tack on a road trip to upstate New York on the way there. July is tentatively a road trip around the United Kingdom as a preamble to attending a wedding at Oxford University. The hope is to start in Edinburgh, Scotland (where I had lived for three months one summer for work), then down through England with enough wiggling to drop in on Wales and my hometown’s namesake village. November will take me back to Gettysburg for the Forum.

The biggie is a trip to Ecuador and Peru in late summer. This has been on my bucket list since the phrase bucket list was invented. There will be time in Lima, Cusco, the Sacred Valley, Machu Picchu in Peru, then seven days on a small boat (16 passengers) roaming around the Galapagos Islands and snorkeling with marine iguana, something sure to stir my old marine biologist bones. Then there is time in Quito and maybe other parts of Ecuador. The trip is through Road Scholar, which is the company that we used to see much of Cuba in 2019.

There may be more. While my “must see” list is getting shorter, it is by no means short.

I’ll have my annual Year in the Writer’s Life post up shortly before New Year’s.

Photo: David J. Kent, Elephants, Moremi Game Reserve, Botswana

Fire of Genius

Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America is available at booksellers nationwide.

Limited signed copies are available via this website. The book also listed on Goodreads, the database where I keep track of my reading. Click on the “Want to Read” button to put it on your reading list. Please leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon if you like the book.

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David J. Kent is President of the Lincoln Group of DC and the author of Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America and Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America.

His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

Lioness, Chobe National Park I recently returned from a 16-day trip to southern Africa. I’m still recovering from the 15-hour flight from Cape Town back to America (and the three-and-a-half-hour flight from Zimbabwe before that) but wanted to get an overview of the trip up as a preamble to more detailed future posts. The trip took us to South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, and unexpectedly, Zambia.

Photo: Lioness in Chobe National Park. She scooted her two young cubs under the nearby bush as soon as she saw us.

The first stop, and the first 15-hour flight, was to Cape Town, South Africa. Wary of arriving at the beginning of the organized tour with no buffer time, we planned a two-and-a-half-day stay in the most southwestern city of the southernmost country in Africa. Cape Town is a large, modern city most noted for its iconic football (aka, soccer) and rugby stadium and Table Mountain, the high plateau that dominates the skyline of the city. It also has Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was held for 18 of the 27 years he was a political prisoner by the apartheid white supremacist government. The day up to the mountain via cable car was anticlimactic given it was socked in pretty conclusively with clouds and drizzle, but it was memorable in its own way anyway. We also rented a car and drove (on the left side) down the Cape Peninsula to Cape Point and the Cape of Good Hope (where we saw elands and ostriches). We also drank a lot of good South African wine, added my 61st aquarium visited, and enjoyed the sunny weather of the South African winter (cold in the morning, warm in the afternoon).

Then it was back to the airport and a flight to Maun, Botswana, known as the “Tourism Capital” of Botswana, mainly because it is an entryway into some of the more attractive safari parks in the country. Here we officially started our tour. From Maun we immediately boarded a small plane (a dozen seats) to fly up the Okavango Delta. The Delta is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site because it is one of the few interior delta systems that don’t flow into an ocean. In fact, the Delta begins in the Angola highlands and the river spreads out into the Botswana flatlands. The amount of surface water area varies significantly depending on season. Rather than flow into a large sea, the water just dries up. This is partly by rapid evaporation and transpiration and partly by sinking into the Kalahari Desert, which covers about 70 percent of Botswana. There was plenty of water while we were there, and plenty of birds, almost all of which were new to us. More on that in future posts.

Video above: An elephant in Okavango Delta warns us not to get any closer.

After a couple of days in the Delta we flew back to Maun and started the trek up through the Moremi Game Reserve to see elephants, various antelopes, zebras, wildebeest, and even more kinds of birds. From there we drove further north through the Chobe National Park. Chobe is known for its vast number of elephants, about 50,000 in the park alone. There are also large numbers of lions that prey on elephants. While they mostly look for calves or juveniles, the lions have been known to take small adults. At one point we crossed over the bridge over the River Khwai, which all of us conflated with the movie of the same name (but different spelling and location). I swear I heard whistling.

The final stop was across the border into Zimbabwe for its best-known feature – Victoria Falls. I’ll have much more on this in a future post, but the Falls are a must-see experience. The massive Zambesi River crosses through several countries on its way to the Indian Ocean. On the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe it drops over 100 meters (well over 300 feet) into a narrow gorge. Measuring in at about twice the height and twice the width of the combined Niagara Falls, Victoria Falls is classified as the largest waterfall in the world. The Zimbabwe side has the best view, with a walkway wiggling in and out along the cliffside where you’re sure to get wet from the mist. The Zambian side has a narrower view of one end.

Video above: A small part of Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe

Which gets me to the unexpected visit to Zambia. The tour officially ended in Victoria Falls, the Zimbabwean town along the eponymous falls. But we were told by someone we ran into near Chobe that it was an easy walk across the bridge into Zambia, as long as you got a double-entry visa when you crossed into Zimbabwe from Botswana. Always willing to tag on another country, that’s what we did (even though the crossing, and especially the return, was not as easy as suggested).

And just like that it was time to go back home.

I plan to do additional posts on specific stops and/or events as soon as I can download and sort all the photos. Stay tuned.

[Photos by David J. Kent]

Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America is available at booksellers nationwide.

You also follow my author page on Facebook.

His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity andEdison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.