As planned, and as mentioned in my first post to start this thread, my wife and I traveled to Africa on 05/09/17, where we spent the next three weeks at various locations in South Africa, Kenya, Zambia and Tanzania, before returning home on 06/04/17. Along with the normal items one would need for 3 weeks and a few days in Africa, each of us had a camera backpack with photo gear. Mine weighed 28 pounds and my wife’s weighed close to 25 pounds. We each had a Canon 7D Mark II as our primary camera with a Canon 100-400mm f/4-5.6 IS II telephoto lens. We also had a Canon 5D Mark IV as a backup camera in case we had either of our cameras malfunctioned on our trip.
We first flew to Heathrow Airport in London on 05/09/17 to catch our flight to Cape Town, South Africa where we spent the first four days of our trip. Then, over the next 3 weeks, we moved on to nine different locations, 7 of which were safari camps, where we went on morning and afternoon game drives to view and photograph the animals and scenery in that area.
The first two safari camps were in South Africa, where we spent 4 days in total before flying to Livingstone, Zambia to view and photograph Victoria Falls on the 20 of May. We then flew to Nairobi City, Kenya where, on the same day, we were able to visit both the Sheldrick Animal Orphanage, to see and photograph the orphaned baby elephants, and the Giraffe Center where we were able to get *very* close to the resident giraffes. Tanzania was up next where we viewed and photographed the wildlife in three different areas: Lake Manyara, the Ngorongoro Crater and Serengeti National Park. Our final stop was back in Kenya at the Masai Mara National Reserve.
It was an amazingly wonderful experience for us to spend so much time in Africa and have such a great opportunity to see and photograph animals and birds we’d only seen previously in a zoo or not at all. From the totals on my spreadsheet(Of *course* I made a spreadsheet...are we savages?), I determined we took 11,047 photos with our iPhones and 32,691 photos with our Canon 7D's for a grand total of 43,738 photos. My wife took 3,872 photos with her 7D and I took 28,819 with mine. At one time in our trip, when my wife mentioned to one of our guides that I was taking 10X the number of photos that she was taking, I *knew* she was exaggerating. As it turned out, it was actually *only* 7.4X her number, so…total vindication! 
Along with the many animal and bird photos we took in Africa, I have quite a few iPhone photos I took of my wife when we were on a game drive. I *never* needed to ask her to smile because whenever she turned around in response to hearing me call her because she always had a big smile on her face. After we spent almost a month in Italy in 2007, she always referred to it as, “The trip of a lifetime”. High praise. So I was surprised, but pleased, that when we were on our flight home from Africa she said, “That was a *second* trip of a lifetime”.
This was our trip itinerary:
SOUTH AFRICA
1. 05/11/17 to 05/14/17(4 nights) - Cape Town, South Africa - FLEW to Hoedspruit Airport, Kenya for #2 & #3
KENYA
2. 05/15/17 to 05/16/17(2 nights) - Tanda Tula Tented Camp - Timbavati PG Reserve, Kruger Park, SA - DRIVEN to Kapama Karula
3. 05/17/17 to 05/18/17(2 nights) - Kapama Karula - Kapama PG Reserve, Kruger Park, SA - FLEW to Livingston, Zambia
ZAMBIA
4. 05/19/17 to 05/20/17(2 nights) - Avani Victoria Falls Resort - Livingstone, Zambia - FLEW to Nairobi City, Kenya for #5 & #6
KENYA
5. 05/21/17 to 05/22/17(2 nights) - Fairmont Norfolk Hotel - Nairobi City, Kenya - DRIVEN to Amboseli Serena Lodge, Kenya
6. 05/23/17 to 05/24/17(2 nights) - Amboseli Serena Lodge - 250 kilometers from Nairobi City, Kenya - DRIVEN to Lake Manyara Serena Lodge
TANZANIA
7. 05/25/17 to 05/26/17(1 night) - Lake Manyara Serena Lodge - Lake Manyara National Park, Tanzania - DRIVEN to Ngorongoro Serena Lodge
8. 05/27/17 to 05/14/17(3 nights) - Ngorongoro Serena Lodge - Ngorongoro Crater Conservancy, Tanzania
9. 05/28/17 to 05/30/17(3 nights) - Serengeti Serena Lodge - Serengeti National Park, Tanzania - FLEW to Masai Mara, Kenya
KENYA
10. 05/31/17 to 06/03/17(3 nights) - Mara Serena Lodge - Masai Mara National Reserve, Kenya - FLEW to Nairobi City, Kenya
11. 06/04/17 - FLEW to London Heathrow and then home
It obviously takes time to go through 28,000+ photos but, for those who may be interested, I’ve so far posted 118 images to my Flickr album, “Africa - 2017”: https://www.flickr.com …/albums/72157683333546932
My thanks again to RhodyPhotos and CyberDyneSystems for replying to my original post.
Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS II USM Lens, Canon 100-400mm 4.5/5.6 L IS II, Canon 400mm F5.6L, Canon 50mm f/1.4, Canon 17-40 f/4 L, Canon 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM, Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8 L, Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM, Set of Kenko Extension Tubes, Canon 580EX
Galleries at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/ronfredrick/
