DAY 46: Shoot video like a Pro!

Habari! How are you? Although we spent the whole day on the road again, we reached an important milestone – 10000 km’s! We are very thankful to have covered such a great distance without any major problems. The Hyena is extremely comfortable and reliable and we look forward to spending at least another 5000 km’s in her before we reach Pretoria.

It rained for most of last night and was still coming down this morning when we woke up. We decided not to risk driving the shorter gravel road to Iringa in the fear of getting stuck or taking unnecessarily long. So we opted for the much longer tar road via Morogoro, a town we had stayed in before we visited Selous nearly a month ago! Yep, times flies!! We were on the road from 07:45 until 17:00 so needless to say, there are two very tired bodies sitting in our campsite tonight. Speaking of which – we’re staying at a lovely little place near Iringa called The Old Farm House on Kisolanza Farm. A few people recommended it to us. Our campsite is small, simple and very neat. We have a table, lawn and little thatch lapa with a braai area. Not that we’re gonna use it, because we’ve decided to eat a farm supper tonight. Let’s hope it’s as good as it sounds right now! We haven’t eaten much today… (and let's hope it includes vegetables!)

Our lovely little campsite for tonight

When we are driving long distances like today, Ji and I use the GoPro Hero HD video camera a lot, so I thought I’d tell you a little bit more about this incredible little machine: The GoPro Hero is about the size of two match boxes. It takes HD quality movies, as well as photographs and you can fit it to nearly anything imaginable. As you may recall, we’ve fastened it to a cap (“hoedkam”) and a fishing rod (“stokkam”) on this trip, as well as the Hyena, of course. Here are a few pros and cons of the GoPro Hero: 

Ji holding the GoPro Hero HD video camera

The advantages include: 

1) The unit is very compact, making it extremely easy to carry around with you. It’s very light and takes up very little space. 

2) The quality of the HD video is phenomenal for such a small video camera, and so is that of the photographs. It’s great to be able to switch between photo and video with the press of a button. 

3) The GoPro Hero has an incredible variety of brackets that allow you to fasten a water- and wind-proof casing to virtually anything! We’ve used it on a helmet whilst river rafting on the Zambezi, fastened it to the Hyena whilst driving through the mud and rain, and even dived into the Kapisha Hotsprings with it! 

4) The battery life of the GoPro is very good and once it runs out you can easily charge it with a laptop using a USB-cable. 

5) Last, but not least – we love the different video settings, especially the wide-angle view! 

The disadvantages are few, but include: 

1) It’s sometimes a bit of a mission to take the unit in and out of its waterproof casing. It would have been great if the unit itself were waterproof. 

2) The GoPro doesn’t have an LCD screen to view the photos you’ve taken. As a result you sometimes end up with skew horizons. 

3) The unit’s small size can sometimes be frustrating simply because it’s difficult to hold something so small. 

We’d like to thank GoPro South Africa again for sponsoring a GoPro Hero unit for the Serengeti Trip 2011! Go check out their website www.goprocamerasa.co.za - it’s worth it! 

The GoPro's wide-angle view is incredible!

You can take photos and video with a GoPro no matter where you are!!!

Tomorrow we head for Tanzania's largest National Park - Ruaha! Apparently it's also one of the wildest so watch this space for some more incredible sightings.

Bye for now!

Villiers

Highlight of the day:

Villiers: The super clean bathrooms at The Old Farm House!

Ji: NOT watching South Africa lose against England in the Cricket World Cup!!

Lowlight of the day:

Villiers: Not having a proper breakfast

Ji: To hear that's Talita's lovebird, Bollie, flew away