Safari, day two

the best times to spot animals is early morning and late afternoon, and night time - essentially when its not hot...) thus we were to set out at 5:30 every morning to begin the hunt. we climb aboard our rugged land rover vehicles separating into what would be our car companions for the remainder of the drives...have you ever spent 12-15 hours a day for two solid days with the same set of strangers? it is a true practice in tolerance. certainly by the last day i was losing my capacity to let bygones be bygones and i believe i remarked at one point to the thirty-something new zealander who was incessantly rattling on and on about seeing a cheetah (of which there are maybe 300? in the park and rarely seen) "you and your cheetah are going to drive me mad!" it was not my finest moment.
our guide for the day was named elvis. apparently krista and i attract remarkably named guides in our travels. we drive into the 'proper' park and almost immediately in the near distance we see our first large animals- an elephant, a rhino, and a trio of water buffalo. all hanging out in this bachelor pad off the side of the road. everyone is thrilled. the drive continues and eagle eye elvis manages to spot pretty much all the animals a person would want to see: giraffes, a leopard, rhinos, lions (one pretty close by!), herds of water buffalo (up to two hundred in one), more elephants with babies in tow, freshly birthed impalas (including a laboring one), hippos also with babes, a crocodile, vervets (winner of the all time cutest creature ever), zebras, sable antelope (a rare sight), wild dogs (also extremely rarely seen), warthogs, and baboons galore.
we noticed the guides would stop and chat with other guides comparing sightings and offering tips. k& i decided they were playing a game of sorts to see who would find all the animals in a day. we won.
also- it was an exercise in survival on the drive since somehow the temperature drops a good ten degrees on the vehicles. and it already had cooled off considerably from our first afternoon, maybe to the 60's?

safari! day one

ok so safari. i took in an immense amount of information about many many things. i will try to share the best. first things first the details of camping...we were at kruger
our safari company, bundu maybe is the name (it had many names), leases land from the mopani's (i think) who were evicted off the land in the 1960's(using apartheid laws) when kruger wanted to expand its borders. they moved just outside the fence and they still live there today... it looks like a sprawling township. in the 90's with the new government they gained the land back but instead of moving back they left it as a parkland and here's where the company i used comes in- in addition to leasing the land they also offer training and employment for the community in various disciplines including guide training. so our camp was 10 minutes inside the gate and consisted of a large wood frame tent that served as a lounge/bar/dining room, separate housing for the staff & guides, maybe 15 tents set up on wooden platforms that housed two cots for the guests, bathrooms for boys and girls (deluxe for camping some would say- concrete slab floor, 2 flush toilets, 2 showers with hot water,a sink. but it was pretty open with only tent flaps as walls. i.e. bugs and things could freely roam. i am still doing seat checks for bugs. once i found a large lizard in the sink who refused to budge, i opted out of giving him any sort of push. and i must confess i didn't experience the showers. yes that means going over a few days without bathing, but i like to think of that as getting back to nature and possibly making myself smell more like a wild animal. maybe? anyways the thought of something showering with me was more than i could take and our quarter to five wake up calls didn't give alot of time to primp either.
our arrival day was hot, enough so that we went for a swim. (yep that's right, our camp had a pool. nothing too fancy though. and filled with smallish bugs...) and that's when i discovered the single most frightening animal ever, at least for me. resting gently in the grass but not moving was the largest grasshopper i have ever seen. shiny black plated exoskeleton with some red on its head and easily as large as my hand. yipes! it was dead thank heavens. i have an unreasonable fear of crickets and slightly less of grasshoppers (which is why i choose to call it a mammoth grasshopper...even though they claim it was a king cricket. f.y.i. it's not i looked it up and i saw a dead king cricket in the hot tub. they too are large, but not so large.and not shiny black. i have yet to find a picture of this bug and maybe that's for the best.) more on him later.
that evening we took a sundowner drive though our area of the park (saw a rhino in the distance,some daikers, and lots of birds) drove up a rock and enjoyed drinks while the sun went down. on our drive back to camp after it got dark the spotlights came out. and so did the bugs who flew in swarms to the light. i had forgotten to think about any bug other than a mosquito. silly me. there are many bugs and critters in camping, even nice camping. and i don't like camping. i remembered this at that moment too. we get back to camp and find dinner is being served down the hill at the fire pit. since there is no electricity, the fire and small gas lights are our only light. which is admittedly a fair amount, but not enough to see if you are eating a large beetle or not with your pasta primavera. (again, italian.) i was starving and didn't really care if i ate extra bugs - it might have done me good protein wise. it was the proceeding walk from our tent to the bathroom where i had quite a fright. krista and i had a deal- i would check the tent for snakes (her biggest fear) and she would look for bugs. it worked well, but failed to include a plan for outside. i was leading with the 'torch', aka flashlight, when down from the tree above me, and a foot in front of me slides down a massive spider (also about the size of my hand- later inquiries lead us to believe it was a rain spider) who pauses eye level then scrambles down to the ground and scurries towards me. frozen, i refused to go forward and walk into a web. the spider was secondary to the fear of its web. somehow krista talked me though and then of course we had to come back. she in front this time with the light. at almost the same spot on the path, light reflecting off its shiny plated exoskeleton was another of the mammoth grasshoppers. this is when real fear set in, as i knew i had to go past it, but then the reality struck...i was surrounded by them. i believe i said to krista "they're everywhere." which she informed me the next day was the most afraid she had ever seen me. i have no idea how i made it back to the tent but i do remember doing my snake check. i christened that path to our tent 'the path of doom', very indiana jones i thought. looking back i was more like the blond lady he has to rescue constantly, which would make krista indiana jones? hmm...

things i learned in africa

i am back home again, where it is freezing and so delightfully new york. thank goodness for new york (in spite of the awfulness of returning to all the rules and regulations imposed on us here...flying in africa was a dream, i wasn't i.d.'d once on our flight from cape town to jo'berg-which didn't make me fearful in any way, no long lines, no massive security checks. if only all flying was that easy.) ah well such is life.
so here's some more of the random things i learned:

• at congo caves (where i learned that all caves are the same) there was this tidbit on a diagram of the evolution of earth..."early man arrives at mid-day december 31st" yep. just that, no year or anything, on a pie chart. i thoughly enjoyed the mid-day arrival.
• peacocks follow krista and i on our travels. i am considering them to be a good luck charm from now on.
• champagne champagne, champagne. our tasting/tour has througly wooed me over to champagne for everyday. i sing its praises. only the best. also i know i learned more about the actual creation of it and such but i fear it may be a sense memory and i'll only recall the information when a glass is in hand.
• and i have to add that i did also eat thai food, so not just italian....
• i need more mineral baths in my life. in the cold rain. in the mountains. in africa.
  

there's so much more that i learned too, that wasn't bullet pointed humorous as well, but i think those parts are best left in my heart where they will be cherished privately.