Stuck in SA

We started the day hunting a male lion who we could hear roaring – very, very cool. Unfortunately we did not find him, but I think we were close a couple of times. We did, however, see two male cheetahs chilling on top of a termite mound. They are so beautiful, and it’s totally different to see them in the wild than on a cheetah reserve. We didn’t ever see any leopards but we saw four out of the big five and honestly for me just seeing what we saw of the lions would have been enough. Guess I should have been born a Leo!

The rest of the day was pretty well a complete disaster – our tour operator showed up 45 minutes late to get us, then apparently didn’t know what time our flight was so took us on the scenic route including a very long stop for a lousy “fast food.” End result – we got to the airport 42 minutes before our flight left, and our seats had already been given away to standby passengers.

So most of the group was rebooked on a flight that gets in about 24 hours after originally scheduled, but I have to be at work much sooner than that so I’m getting on a flight to New York and figuring out a way to get back to Boston from there. Also maybe I’ll somehow figure out how to shower and get some appropriate clothing for the work dinner I have that evening – somehow I don’t think my Maties pullover (my official favorite piece of clothing, aside from the Maties logo not being big enough) is going to work for that particular crowd.

My boss is literally going to kill me. At least Rebecca won’t, barring continued misfortune.

So we’re staying at this guest house that is probably the most disgusting hotel I’ve ever stayed in. Mary and I had to be moved to a room where the shower and sheets were actually clean. After wolfing down some food and a Castle at the buffet dinner we all shared the internet connection off the cell phone network before crashing into bed – what a cranky group we get when we’re going to be 24 hours late getting home and all our plans are shot to heck. When I was talking about how much I wanted to stay here longer I was thinking more of Stellenbosch than Johannesburg but tomorrow may bring its own adventure, hopefully a better one than today’s!

Just reflecting a bit on the trip – it’s so funny how some things just don’t turn out at all how you intended sometimes. I remember having a moment of panic the Sunday night before the first week teaching wondering what I had gotten myself into, but by the end of the process everything turned out so well both for me and for the learners. I have so many memories of teaching, of the learners, of things we’ve done and most of all some of the people I’ve met that I’ll take with me forever. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a place where I felt so immediately at home and comfortable, despite all the obvious differences, but I do know I will be back here, and hopefully soon (assuming I survive the next couple of days!). After all, I have some unfinished business!

And maybe next time someone will explain cricket to me. All my visits to London and no one would explain it either. Whatever, I know it can’t hold a candle to American football!

Today we saw a 3,000-year-old tree

Also more giraffes – aside from the cats, for which I have a particular affinity, I think the giraffes are my favorite. We were calling them dinosaurs – such crazy-looking things but very beautiful and so graceful when they move.

The morning’s excitement was that one of the rangers from another lodge had spotted the pride of lions – we first thought it was twelve, then we heard eighteen. D was so funny he turned around the vehicle with the explanation that “it’s really something to see a pride of twelve lions” and we were joking about how he felt the need to justify going to look for the lions. I was actually the one from our group to spot the pride – I was just looking out into the bush trying to see lions and all of a sudden I saw four faces looking back at me. The picture I uploaded is about as good of a shot of what I saw as I have – I think I zoomed in a little but that was very cool for me. I spent the whole safari looking for cats so I would usually miss the big things up ahead because I was so busy looking for smaller things by the side of the vehicle, but for once my cat-searching paid off!

So the pride walked literally just behind our vehicle, then we drove around a bit more and they walked in front of us. Once they had all passed we drove further on to another road they were likely to cross and cross they did – I got some pretty good pictures of adult females, a sub-adult male, and a little baby. The baby was so cute! After that we lost the lions but saw some baboons (whee…).

At lunch Rayshawn spotted an elephant just near camp (literally 15 meters off the path) so we went to check it out. D came with us and let us get within about 10 meters of it which was probably quite unsafe but it wasn’t THAT far to run for shelter (of course an elephant is pretty fast). When I first got there he had his ears out which means that he was pretty agitated but we stood still and he soon calmed down even when D went a little closer to see if he could get him to do something more interesting than what he was doing. But the elephant was too busy eating to bother charging at us, so we went and ate our lunches as well.

In the afternoon one of the other rangers had spotted a rhino, so we went to check that out. What an odd-looking thing! At one point it looked about to charge but it didn’t, which is most likely for the best although some of us thought it might be fun to be charged by at least one wild animal.

We also saw a family of hippos, one large hippo that moved faster in water than I’ve ever seen anything move, two warthogs, more zebras and water buffalo, the aforementioned 3,000-year-old-tree, and had a sundowner in a beautiful spot by a dry river bed. Following that, we saw the same male lion from the previous night – this time he got up, yawned, stretched, and moved locations so we got to see something a little more interesting than last night (although he did stretch and roll over last night which was very cute). This guy is just HUGE – the pictures really don’t do him justice but seeing this guy maybe 15 meters away is really spectacular.

We had a little group session when we got back, to present the professor with a gift for all of her amazing work on this trip, including acting as surrogate mother to eight students, and to reflect on the trip and bond a little bit. Dinner was again amazing, but I did not stay up too long afterwards because the internet was working again (it hadn’t been for over a day due to the heavy cloud cover). The moon and clouds were amazing that night – never seen a sky quite like that.

"I just became the coolest person I know"

- Rayshawn

Well, I am not entirely sure what expectations I had for safari. I think in terms of landscape I was expecting something a bit more savannah-like; as you can see from the pictures there are actually quite a lot of trees and shrubs. I do think it’s fair to say though that today exceeded whatever expectations I might have had. I swear sometimes I think luck follows me – I have a habit of being in the right place, at the right time.

We had two drives today – one that went from about 6:30am until 11am, and another from 3:30pm until about 6:45pm. Today on our morning drive we started off by seeing (other than the various antelope-like creatures which are quite common) a giraffe which was right up next to the road. They are amazingly graceful creatures, and also very unique-looking. Charismatic megafauna indeed – D was saying that most people do not eat giraffe because the animal is too well-liked. Same with zebra, but apparently zebra doesn’t taste very nice, either.

Next, Alice spotted a herd of water buffalo, which we looked at for a good 20 minutes. These creatures are apparently quite aggressive; a lot of them were staring at us, but none of them charged us or anything. I had never seen wild water-buffalo before, just the domesticated ones in Cambodia and Vietnam.

Next up were two elephants, also literally right next to the road. Luckily for me I was on the same side of the vehicle as both the giraffe and elephants – I was maybe 3 meters away from one of the elephants. It is so neat watching them eat. They are apparently quite destructive, what with eating like 21 hours a day or something. We saw one literally kick a tree down and then eat parts of it.

After this Alice continued her mad spotting streak by seeing a cheetah. I’m not at all sure how she did it – I saw it after she spotted it but it was very well blended into the grass and just bounded away when we got too close.

Next up was the thrill of the day, if not the entire safari: we saw a pride of lions hunting water buffalo. Our spotter Mpho had been working five years and this was the first time he actually saw lions hunting. Apparently seeing a pride is relatively common, but some people can go their whole lives without seeing a hunt. We were told at the time that we would never see this again, so this experience did not go unappreciated. D was definitely very excited as well, and it was amazing to see something like this up close and in person. Just breathtaking, really, and all the credit goes to our spotter and the spotters from another camp that tracked the pride much of the morning.

After the lions disappeared into the bush we headed back for lunch and a quick respite. Some monkey tried to steal our food and after D left I had to chase it away twice (I was closest). In totally separate news I looked at a map today and yes, where we went shark diving is nowhere near the Eastern Cape. Maybe I will get there at some point.

Anyway – the afternoon drive was also spectacular. It’s funny how this safari goes – you go from driving along just looking at the scenery and madly trying to spot animals to stopping and staring some crazy things right in the face. In the afternoon we saw more antelope creatures (kudu, which I know is very tasty, waterbok (sp?), and impala which is my favorite to look at), more hippos, wildebeest, zebras, jackals, and, following an awesome sundowner by a large lake, a male lion. He wasn’t doing much besides sleeping but he was huge and so beautiful.

In case you can’t tell I’m a bit behind in writing these up and I need to go to bed now, so postings for the last few days will come when I get home most likely. But stay tuned because there is more to come, I promise!

Going on safari....

Today was a travel day – we had a maybe 5 ½ hour drive from Johannesburg to our safari which is on the Manyeleti Reserve, just outside Kruger National Park. We arrived around 3:30pm, and were promptly served lunch, complete with white wine from, you guessed it, Stellenbosch. I think it is fair to say that everyone was pleasantly surprised that the safari is inclusive of alcohol as well as food – oh and the food is just fabulous. We were told that Manyeleti is a more authentic safari experience than Kruger – apparently in Kruger the roads you drive on are paved, and you can pretty much see the big five (lion, water buffalo, leopard, rhino, and elephant) every day because years ago people would kill impala and put them out as food for the predators so that they got used to seeing humans. So Manyeleti is the actual habitat for these animals. Apparently also during the days of apartheid Manyeleti was where the blacks went on safari, since they were not allowed into Kruger.

After settling in for a bit we went out for a quick drive with our guide Dries who goes by the name D. It happened to be both his birthday and the Fourth of July, and since it was getting dark and, later, was raining a little bit our ride mostly consisted of a sundowner by a pool with some hippos. We did learn that on a night safari the spotter flashes the light to look for the eyes of animals – diurnal animals have yellow or green eyes, and nocturnal animals have red eyes. We saw neither, however.

Dinner back at the lodge was fabulous – I had the oxtail pie. I really must start cooking this at home, I bet it would be pretty cheap from the place where we get our meat CSA.

After dinner we drank some more in celebration of D’s birthday, including tequila shots (since that is his drink of choice). As they say here, “tonight we drink for tomorrow we ride.” I went to bed relatively early though, in preparation for the 6am wakeup call.