Wednesday, December 1, 2010

The Dark Continent - Part I


For all the exploring I've done recently and in my lifetime, one continent I still had not set foot on was Africa.  I look at traveling the same way college courses are structured:

101 = Most travel within the US, Canada and some Caribbean.
201 = European travel, Australia (mostly English speaking or understanding, passport req'd and currency exchange.
301 = Much of Asia, parts of South America (not as much English, not as developed as US cities, shots req'd)
401 = Africa, Iraq, Antarctica (high risk and danger from nature, people or both).

While I felt going in that South Africa was my first foray into a 401 locale, in retrospect I'd put it solidly at 301 with a splash of 401.  The scenery was breathtaking, animals as you'd imagine them and the people were lovely, warm and a lot of fun.

As with Amalfi, the reason I went there in the first place was for the wedding of Andrew, the little brother of my best buddy, John.  I had become more friendly with Andrew since high school thanks to my job taking me to London every 3 months for 4 years.  On this occasion he was marrying a beautiful South African, Michelene.


That's Andrew and I posing like idiots on the edge of a gorge.  

The wedding was to take place in a town called Hazyview, about 4 hours northeast of Johannesburg. I think it's map time:



Hazyview is too small to be visible on most maps but it is slightly north of Nelspruit on this map and conveniently next to famous Kruger National Park.  While it was difficult to get to, esp for Americans, it was a fabulous place to get married because the guests had ample opportunities to go on "Game Drives" or vehicular excursions into Kruger.  I decided that my internal clock was so messed up from the ride down (it's about 15 hours) and the 4 hour subsequent car drive that a game drive at 530am the following morning made sense.  I had dinner, went to bed early, + woke up at 230am the next morning and could not get back to sleep because of my excitement.

Two other wedding guests were nuts enough to accompany me at that hour.  As it turns out they were Ransom (my high school) alumni so we all rose before sunrise and met our malcontented South African guide.  He knew his stuff, but seemed to have a chip on his shoulder for the 7 hours we were with him which made things more entertaining than usual.  

We learned that the goal of any game drive in Kruger or most other places in Africa is to see the Big Five.  


This beautiful pencil drawing hung in our hotel + I had trouble taking my eyes off of it.  It illustrates the Big 5, but in case you are tired, blind, grew up in an urban environment your whole life or some combo of these, they are elephant, buffalo, lion, rhino and leopard.  We were told the toughest of these to see is the leopard due to it's solitary nature and the fact that they are just as likely to be found in a tree as on the ground.  Lions were 2nd most difficult + our guide said that 4 out of 5 is considered a success for a game drive.  

While we were still getting the cobwebs out of our heads at 6am, luck intervened and we stumbled upon this:


This pride of lions woke us all up.  They were all just lazing around, a lion with his 4 lionesses (and potentially two lesbian lionesses in the foreground).  Everyone fantasizes about being reincarnated as a lion (or maybe that's just me) but viewing this scene made that sentiment even stronger.  Basically most prides function like this one with a single (or sometimes 2) lions taking care of multiple lionesses.  Furthermore, the lionesses do a lot of the dirty work with respect to finding and killing food so all the lion really has to do is stop other lions from infringing on his territory.  He might get involved in a kill if they go after something larger where his body weight is needed but otherwise he gets to relax and look stately.  Not a bad gig if you can get it + we were extremely fortunate to watch them for 20 minutes like this as these were the only lions we or anyone else in our group saw on the entire trip!

Lying not far from the pride was this guy:

 
He's not part of the Big 5 and you can't see them, but his friends were nearby.  That's a hyena + they were tracking a recent kill our lions had made.  Hyenas rarely kill food themselves, preferring to wait for another animal to make a kill and move in as a pack.  They are pretty formidable themselves and apparently have the strongest jaw of any animal in Kruger but are lazy and like to mooch off the kills of others.  There were only 3 in this case vs. the 5 lions so they were playing the waiting game here, but it's not unheard of hyenas to attack an equal numbered pride and take over a fresh kill the lions have just made.  

As we continued our driven safari we encountered a plethora of other fantastic creatures.  They say pictures speak louder than words (or wait that's actions), pictures are worth 1000 words so I wonder how many actions a picture is worth....anyway, less talk more pictures:


This Rhino got unusually close to our truck + was breathtaking to see such a powerful animal up close.  I had heard from the movie "The Gods must be Crazy" that rhinos like to stamp out fires when they see them but our driver, after laughing at me, would not confirm that.  



Probably my favorite animal by the end of the trip.  These pics along with the first one were a lot of fun and at times, nerve wracking to get.  Elephants look thoughtful to me in the same way horses do and they move in such a majestic manner.  


One of my worse pictures, but that's a buffalo back there.  
Good thing this zebra wasn't as invisible as he thought he was or we'd have hit him.  



Awesome!



This ridiculous scene happened the morning of the wedding when I drove in with the groom and his dad.  We stopped to watch the hippos (they look like rocks on the left) and a bull elephant came out of the forest to grab a drink and roll around in the mud.  The hippos grunted and were not impressed. 


This lioness was alone and looked pretty disoriented that she almost ran into our truck.  She was pretty beaten up so hopefully she found her pride and got some rest.  




Sleeping bats and a monkey tree.  


Last but certainly not least, we found the elusive leopard.  


This one had just made a kill on the ground and climbed into the tree for a nap.  I will never look at all the leopard items (and I have lots...don't ask) in my apartment the same again.  Beautiful but scary animal.  


One of the cooler sightings of the entire time happened on a night game drive where we were fortunate to stumble upon 3 hyenas eating a freshly killed impala.  As stated above, hyenas rarely kill for themselves so we took flashlights to the surrounding area and miraculously found another leopard who was not at all happy that someone else was eating his dinner.  He walked around the perimeter for a while but there was nothing he could do, but wait for them to leave.  

At many points during the drive it felt like we were watching an episode of national geographic except it was live and therefore better than HD...The scenes were spectacular and worth the trouble of getting down there.  Oh and by the way, a wedding did take place and it was a good one:


Men acting silly


Women acting mature and looking beautiful.


The groom and bride looking happy and relieved.  


Who doesn't like bubbles.

Thus concludes part I of my South Africa trip.  As extraordinary as part I was, Part II might be even better so stay tuned for the final act. 

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