Day 3 of the safari

I have an overwhelming desire to watch the Lion King.  It might be because I keep seeing Zazou flying all over Kruger (the yellow-horn bill bird) and I keep saying Zazou ever time I see one.  I’m sure the honeymooners are tired of me shouting out Zazou, but I’m tired of the groom bagging on America so whatever  Zazou, Zazou, Zazou!!!!

Another early morning wake up call so that we could be one of the first out of the gates at 5:30 a.m.  The camps at Kruger are all gated and the gates open at 5:30 a.m. and close at 6:00 p.m. and you better be in the camp come 6.  The theory of being the first out of the gate is that you have a better chance of seeing a lion sleeping on the road before any other cars disturb it.  Today was a slow day for game viewing though. It started out promising when we were greeted by a hippo’s grande derriere when our hungry, hungry hippo was walking down the road.  Unfortunately, it was too dark to snap a picture.   Hippos only come out at night or on overcast days because their skin is so sensitive to the sun (why am I thinking of the maneater song right now by Hall and Oats…you know the one I’m thinking of, don’t deny it!.  Sing it avec moi, “she only comes out at night, the lean and hungry type…oh oh, here she comes…watch out boy, she’ll chew you up”).  We later saw a mommy hippo and her tiny baby at the watering hole.  It was adorbs.  It was pretty slow the rest of the day save for some zebras, giraffes, and the ever present impalas.  We were only like half a mile from the Mozambique border and about 10 miles from the actual road that takes you over to the Mozambique side of the park, I wanted us to go all Thelma & Louise and gun it for the border, but sadly we stayed in Kruger.

I was so tired today that while we were out driving in the bush, I would doze off  for like 10 seconds at a time.  I was awake, but not really.  I was at full attention though when we saw a buffalo up close.  Of course, as soon as we went to take his picture, he sat down.  We went a little off road to get his picture (a bit of a no-no in Kruger, unless you’re at one of the private concessions in Kruger, which cater to the uber well off foreign tourists).  We also got close to some baboons (they’re generally scardy cats and will run as soon as they see a camera pointed at them, but this one was totally a camera whore and enjoyed hogging the spotlight). 

However, the ultimate highlights of the day included seeing a herd of elephants up close (they passed right by our car…I could’ve reached out and touched them, if I were so stupid as to do that).  The UBER coolest thing of the day was seeing two lionesses walking down the road about 10 minutes before the camp gates were closed.  What was even cooler about it was that we were the car who spotted the lions as opposed to piggybacking on someone else’s spotting.

We had a game night drive tonight.  Neil stayed behind and cooked us this delicious chicken stew, which we didn’t eat until after 9:30.  I was so tired that all I really wanted to do was to climb into bed.  The feeling must’ve been a feeling shared by all because we didn’t even crack open the second nightly bottle of wine.  The night drive was kinda crap.  Our Kruger guide sucked and we had overzealous Japanese tourists who kept spotting spring hares and African wild cats (looks like a tabby cat) every five seconds.  He would shout out “STOP,” with such enthusiasm, you would’ve thought that he had spotted a lion killing its prey.  We saw some hippos, porcupines, waterbuck, owls, crocs and a few other things, but it was generally a snoozer, but that’s the thing about game drives…you win some, you lose some and over all I think we’ve been pretty darn lucky!  

Day two of the Safari

We woke up at 4:30 a.m. and had a quick breakfast of coffee/tea and “rusks,” which according to wikipedia is a “rectangular, hard, dry biscuit or twice-baked bread (zwieback),” which we dipped into our hot morning beverage of choice.  They were delicious!  In a way, it has the consistency of biscotti and it tastes sweet.  After that we loaded up our gear and headed off to the Letaba camp, which is north of Skukuza, the camp we stayed at after our first night.  I was tired, but energized by the thought of the day ahead of us.  

The day started out slow, we didn’t see much to begin with, but we finally started seeing impala (basically a type of antelope that I’ve termed the “rabbits of the bush,” because there are so many of them).  We saw more wildebeests, buffalo, hippos, water monitors, waterbuck, kudu, zebras (including babies), giraffes (also including babies), elephants, and a whole bunch of birds.  We saw one lone old man elephant who was near death.  Apparently, elephants get 5 sets of molars and once their 5th set of molars starts to get too worn out the elephant will die of malnutrition.  It’s sad and they are such incredible creatures, one of my favorites!  I went to the elephant museum in Kruger and I read that elephants are known to bury the dead…they will cover up other dead elephants, hunters, and other animals with leaves once they die.   

We also saw hyenas up close and personal!  Talk about scary looking animals.  One hyena was like 2 feet from my car window.  You want to talk about being freaked out!  But the piece de resistance was seeing 5 male lions hanging out at the side of the road with one female lioness.  They were mostly sleeping and just chillaxing.  Apparently, it’s rarer to see male lions because they just sleep 20 hours a day and wait for the lionesses to bring them their food.  Typical!  However, one of the male lions got up and started walking towards the car in front of us.  I wish my camera was quick enough to catch it!  I got some great pictures of the lions and pray they turn out!   Evidently, lions and hyenas are arch enemies, which naturally made me think of the Lion King.  According to my boy Neil, if a lion kills a hyena, it will refuse to eat it and vice versa.  On another note, we were told there we leopards in the area, but we didn’t see any and leopards would be one of the only Big Five that we didn’t see.

As far as my fellow safari companions, I’ve decided that Neil is like the cool camping South African uncle I’ve never had, even though he’s old enough to be my father.  He speaks English, Afrikaans, Xhosa (the clicking language), and Zulu and greets people in their native tongue.  I love the English chick, but her “everything is better in Britain” husband grates on my nerves.

I’m so in awe with nature right now, well in a civilized, not sleeping in a tent kinda way.  I’m now dreading going back to New York and wondering if I could hack it as a safari camp guide on a private reserve.  Then again I must remind myself that I’m not living real life right now and that I’ve felt like packing all my worldly belongings in 2 suitcases and saying sayonara to New York at some point during the last 5 trips I’ve taken (with the exception of my trip to the Middle East).  Nevertheless, right now I’m loving Mother Africa!

After my first day in Kruger, I can now confidently answer the question of who I would want to most meet that is either living or dead.  It’s not the Dalai Lama, or Ghandi, or my boy Senor Jesus (I’ll see him again one day anyway), it’s Hemingway.  I’ve always been fascinated by that little lush and his adventures (fighting in the war in Spain, liberating the Ritz in Paris, what’s not to love).  Lately and for obvious reasons, I’ve been drawn to his writings on Africa.  Here’s my African tale:

Day One of the Safari:

I met my guide, Neil, at my hotel, which was in a posh section of Johburg and another English couple in their 30s who happened to be on their honeymoon.  When I heard that I said, “funny, so am I,” and I told them my solo honeymoon idea, but I digress.  Neil was amazing.  He knows everything about everything and was a great guide to have.  On our way up to Kruger, we went for a drive through the Drakensburg mountain range and stopped off in Neilspruit, one of the closest town to Kruger, where we did a massive amount of grocery shopping for our daily braai’s (South African term for BBQ).  Neil planned out amazing meals for us, which he would cook us every night.  After a quick picnic lunch we were on our way to Kruger.

After waiting a lifetime to be here, I couldn’t believe I was actually in Kruger Park and was largely in disbelief.  At first I was skeptical that we would see much game because it’s the rainy season and the bush is thick and because water is plentiful, the animals aren’t forced to visit the watering holes.  20 minutes in and we weren’t seeing much even though we were in rhino territory.  Rhinos, along with buffalos, lions, elephants, and leopards are part of the “Big Five” (they were named that because during my boy Hemingway’s time they were the hardest to hunt).  However, we started spotting the ever popular impala, followed by elephants and zebras (btw, I think we pronounce zebra incorrectly and that the Brits say it right…we say zeebra, but they say zeb-rah like the way “Debra” is pronounced).  We started to get into the grove and spotted a few white rhinos.  We later saw some rhinos hanging out with some wildebeests (huge animals) and warthogs and we would later see them with baboons.  We saw kudu, springbok, steenbok, vultures, and some rando birds.  I didn’t really give a flying hoot for the birds, but the Brits were into them.

After a full game drive we had a fantastic braai at our camp and by camp I mean that we’re staying at one of the “camps” in Kruger, but that we’re staying in air conditioned rondavels with our en suite bathrooms.  The braai consisted of chicken, beef, and ostrich, baby potatoes, salad, and yummy wine.  We also snacked on Biltong (basically South African jerky) made out of many types of game meat…we had springbok, kudu, and ostrich types.  So, I can now add those to the list of random meats, I’ve eaten.  After the feast, I collapsed in my bed and slept like a baby, which was awesome since we have 4:30 a.m. wake up calls.

Wild on the Zambezi.

Forget Ibiza, forget Miami or even Rio, they’re so “been there, done that, got the body paint,” the next spring break hot spot is Zambia.  We took a sunset cruise on the “African Queen” on the “Mighty” Zambezi river (this is the Vic Fall’s River).  It was supposed to be a safari cruise, but it quickly became a booze cruise after only seeing some fickle hippos who refused to stick any part of their body out of the water for longer than 3.5 seconds and after our party of six took advantage of the open bar.  Our waiter was Alfred and every time I said his name, I wanted to say “to the bat mobile.”  (Don’t ask me why).  Alfred was amused by us after we started ordering 2 drinks at a time (Stop judging, service was slow).  He really started laughing when people starting ordering two doubles (the drinks were too weak for our group’s booze friendly palates).  One guy gave up on the doubles and just started ordering vodka on the rocks (a move that I predicted someone in the group would make).  There was a near international incident between the Americans and the Japanese tourists when we got back to the bus 4 minutes late.  After the cruise ended, we had stayed to finish our drinks and to have our picture taken with Alfred.  This Japanese lady wasn’t having any of our tardiness.  The irony was it wasn’t like she had any other place to be at 7 p.m.  It wasn’t like we were making her late for a broadway show.  There is no nightlife in Livingstone, Zambia (well aside from us).  The town is super small…the hotel is about a 15 minute drive from the hotel, you have to hire a car, and there’s no reason you’d have to go into town so our Japanese lady was basically going back to the hotel to grab some grub and watch bad tv. 

After the cruise we went to dinner at our hotel which offers an expensive buffet dinner (it wasn’t until our last night there that we discovered that there was a secret, less publicized inexpensive restaurant on the grounds).  Anyway, not all of us wanted a big dinner (after several happy time cocktails, I just wanted a “healthy” order of French fries).  Believe it or not we negotiated the price of dinner!  The guys paid full price because they wanted to pig out, while two of the ladies got the dinner for ¼ of the price.  When I tried to order the French fries, our waiter was like “Ok, $10,” which I then negotiated to $3.00 only to find out that the fry machine was broken.  It was a hysterical conversation though:

Me: Can I get just fries?

Him: Ok, $10.

Me: I wouldn’t even pay $10 at home.

Him: Ok, how much would you pay?

Me: At most $3.00.

Him: “Ok, $3.00.”

He later didn’t even charge the ladies for dinner.  However, when we were checking out we noticed a random gratuities charge of $300, needless to say that charge got 86’d.  I was thinking “um, you slip a $300 charge on our bill and you think we’re not going to notice?”  Um, it’s not like we’ve got The Donald’s bank account people!  However, all in all, I must say I loved the Zambians…they’re very lovely and very friendly!  They’re good people!

A thousand apologies for the lapse in time from my last post.  Sorting out my travel plans to what I’m terming my solo honeymoon has been more difficult than I initially anticipated, not the least of which involved the USPS nearly losing my passport en route to the Zambian embassy in DC and my near homicidal like rage over this (trust me my response wasn’t limited to a simple frustrated Seinfeldian “Newman”).  So, needless to say I was left with little time and inspiration to put pen to paper or in this case fingers to keyboard.  But on this Valentine’s Day, having furthered the cliché of what “white people” like (see http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/01/23/19-travelling/ ) I feel inspired.

You may remember that when I last left you, I was in love with “Kenneth,” my sweet talkin South African travel agent based in New York.  I am sad to report that Kenneth is dead to me now.  Word of advice guys, if you say you’re going to call a girl and you have a “special plan” that she’ll “really like” and you never call, you risk banishment, or in this case loss of a great commission. No girl likes to sit by the phone, willing it to ring Kenneth, you cheeky git!  Kenneth lost out on mucho dinero by not calling me back, a fact which became painfully obvious as I signed off on the final total with a different travel agent (who yes I did facebook stalk) before ever stepping foot en Afrique.   However, I am able to justify my expenditure by realizing that while some people choose to have offspring, I travel.  And at the same time South Africa has been my dream destination for my honeymoon.  And not to go too negativo on the fat arrow carrying baby’s holiday, but who knows when that will ever happen, sooooo I’m taking myself on my own honeymoon.  Yes, you heard me!  Hear me now and believe me later, solo honeymoons will become the new black!

I’ll be traveling solo in Zambia, Zimbabwe, and on a safari in Kruger before hanging with a friend in Cape Town.  On my solo honeymoon portion of the trip, I’m hoping I’ll meet my future husband.  See here’s how the scenario plays out in my head, I’ll be enjoying an African sunset and a cocktail at the hotel bar in Joburg as Toto’s Africa song is playing softly in the background and I’ll happen to turn my head and I’ll notice him saunter in.  He’ll, of course, be tan and have that well manicured rugged look going on, the kind that can only be manufactured in that Out of Africa movie kinda way.  He’ll saddle up next to me at the bar and order some manly drink like an 18 year old single malt Scotch neat and strike up a conversation.  We’ll realize that we’re both going on the same safari the next day.  He’ll be in the ballpark of say 34-37, his name will be something like Jackson or Forrester or Vaughn and at some point in his life, like me, he will have been educated in Europe.   He’ll be ex-peace corps a/k/a a trustifarian (I have a theory that only affluent kids can afford to spend two years post-university kicking around third world countries) and after a brief stint in the corporate world he decided to return to doing international development work and has spent the last 10 years saving Gorillas in Uganda (a little Gorillas in the Mist anyone), digging wells in Rwanda (cuz it ain’t the Hotel California, it’s Hotel Rwanda), helping refugees in Darfur (Lost Boys of the Sudan, peut-être, I think my heart just skipped a beat), and teaching people how to cultivate their own maize in the Congo (come on shake your body, baby do that Conga).  He will have managed to do this while not turning into a dirty hippie. And maybe he’ll be a widow whose photojournalist wife died English Patient style while on assignment in Sierra Leone.  The widow thing adds a tragic element to his generally privileged life and shows that he’s not a commitment phobe, thereby preempting the question that my father asks me when I tell him about a guy, which goes something like, “well, if he’s so perfect, why isn’t he married by now?”  That’s Dad’s standard question as he’s uber suspicious of any man over 30 who is still single.  When I point out that I’m still single, he tells me that’s different because I was focused on higher education until I was 27.  Gotta love dad!  To his credit dad’s instincts have been spot on!  Anyway, Peace Corps boy and I will realize that we’re in love as we’re sitting around the boma after a solid day of game drives and we will quite literally drive off into the sunset.  Don’t you just hate me at how perfect my love affair with my future husband is going to be?

And now that I’m planning my solo honeymoon, I think it’s only fair that I register for it a la Carrie Bradshaw, don’t you?  I’m not above doing it, especially at this age!  After all in light of the amount I’ve had to dole out for engagement parties, bridal showers, weddings, and baby showers, I think it’s only right.  Oh, and here’s a news bulletin for those of you single and baby free, there is now something called “push presents,” which a new mother gets just for having the baby.  What kinda scam are you married and parental people running?  By my count that’s three presents for getting married and two for having kids and you’re going to begrudge this charmingly adorable well traveled single lady a gift for her solo honeymoon.  Communists!

So, be on the look out for my registry announcement. It’s coming to a mail box near vous!