All limbs accounted for. No stowaways in any luggage. Many, many pictures taken. Success.
On the 12-hour trip back to Johannesburg I thought at length about how I was going to write about the safari, particularly without the aid of pictures. Unfortunately I can't put the pictures online at the moment due to lack of reliable speedy internet so I will try to describe parts of the experience that involved senses that are not sight.
We went to Kruger Park. It is a national park about four and a half hours east of Johannesburg (or twelve, depending on how you drive -- more on that later). It is huge, roughly the size of Israel (or New Jersey -- pick your reference point). It is famous for being so big and having plenty of animals, specifically the Big Five: lion, rhino, elephant, water buffalo, and leopard. Whether or not you know it when you enter, your goal is to see these five. It's all the guides focus on and all anyone talks about. Which of the five have you seen? What are you looking for today, what's left on your list? Can I count seeing a rhino if I didn't see its horn? A hippo is kind of shaped like a rhino, can I count that?
Yes, Mom and I saw all five. We were extremely fortunate to see a leopard on our first day, which is the one of the five that eludes most frequently and was the bane of checklists throughout our group. Due to our late arrival (see previous post), Mom and I went on a later game drive on our first day than we were originally scheduled for and it was on that drive that we saw the leopard. He was just sitting on the side of the road as if he knew he was in the spotlight. There were four or five vehicles there full of people looking at him and he just didn't care. He posed and posed and finally sauntered off into the bush when he was done basking. It was stunning and remarkable in and of itself but it became even more so as the days went by and the others in our group (none of whom went on that particular drive because they had arrived on time) continued to pine after the leopard and its elusiveness became even more apparent.
I have a great picture that I'll have to wait to put up.
The scarcity of the leopard and the infrequency of the lion and rhino had a noticeable effect on many of us and our appreciation for the more common animals. This was particularly true, I think, with the elephant. Though it is one of the big five, the abundance of the elephant rendered it downright ordinary by the end of our stay. I'm ashamed to say that this morning on our final drive I had to keep reminding myself that I am looking at an ELEPHANT and it is RIGHT THERE. I mean look at it! It uses its nose as an arm and it's tearing bark off a tree to eat like a cracker. This is not TV and I will not see this again any time soon. There's an elephant. AN ELEPHANT. I mean, I can smell it. No, really.
To be fair, Kruger has so many elephants that they will soon have to be "culled", as we were told. They are eating too many trees. And I wasn't alone. The general reaction, even before the last drive, was similar to mine. Elephant? Please. Do you have any idea how many elephants I have seen? I have plenty of pictures of Dumbo, thanks. Oh it's tap dancing? Yawn. Wake me when it's fighting a baboon.
The poor impala were even worse in terms of abundance. There are impala and their ilk (elk?) everywhere. The guide told us the impala are referred to as the McDonald's of the park: they're everywhere you look. All different sizes and patterns and horns and leaping ability, all over the place. They're like squirrels.
I did have an experience with the impala that I didn't have with any other animal, nor any other animal I have seen in my entire life.
Cured meat (jerky) is popular here and they call it biltong. I don't know what that means but they make it out of all kinds of animals. I also don't know if it's different than jerky you'd find anywhere else but since it's a local thing I wanted to try it. I bought some beef biltong in a convenience store in the park and really liked it. Another store we went to had a big variety pack: biltong of six different animals! Of course I bought it.
Kudu is a type of impala that are found in the park. They're not the most common type but we saw plenty of them. They're big and have stripes.
Kudu biltong was the first bag in my variety pack.
Jerky is tasty, bite-sized, and high in protein and calories. In other words, a perfect snack on a 4 hour drive. It's like meat granola.
So for the first time in my life I found myself chewing an animal while watching at its brethren graze right in front of me. It was a little strange but not enough to stop eating. Kudu biltong is pretty good as it turns out.
I have a new appreciation for giraffes (and no, I did not eat any). They are really, really big. I had seen them on TV of course, stretching their very long necks to eat from those very high trees. I may have even seen one in a zoo in a very tall cage. But seeing them in person not in a cage was (for some reason more) astounding. The males are on average 5.2 meters tall, which is metric for "unimaginably tall." They are the skyscrapers of the animal kingdom. And when you look at one dead-on you can see that they're bowlegged, which makes them look incredibly awkward. I learned on this trip that I often don't understand evolution.
Rhinos are bastards. They stand just the right distance from the road that they are hard to find but not so hard that you just give up all hope like you do with the leopard (or cheetah, of which we saw absolutely zero). Then, when you do find a rhino, he is positioned in such a way that his defining and magnificent feature, his horn, is hidden behind the one rock in the entire field in which he is standing. You can wait and wait and wait until the kudus come home and the rhino will not show you his horn so you can take your stupid picture and be sure that he is not a hippo. It is so very frustrating.
Hippos are equally uncooperative when it comes to appearing all at once. They also like to hide their heads behind rocks or trees when they are out of the water. When they are in the water they show only their eyes and ears. The luck of the leopard sighting worked its magic for us once with a hippo: we saw a hippo running. I don't know if you can find that on YouTube somewhere but I encourage you to make a point of seeing a hippo run, be it on video or in person. If you can imagine a watermelon running on toothpick legs you have a good idea of what it looks like.
I had real mixed feelings about the lions. I honestly didn't expect to see a lioness hunting or a lion fighting a buffalo. I have seen lions at the zoo. They sit around. They're just cats and cats just sit around.
Don't get me wrong, I love cats. I had cats growing up. I think it was the fact that many of the other animals are truly bizarre that made the lions seem normal. The elephant has a truly crazy appendage in its trunk, the rhino has its prehistoric horn, the giraffe its neck and size, the hippo its unwieldy shape and cumbersome size and its ridiculous face, the zebra and its stripes that are unlike the markings of any other animal.
The lion is a cat. A very big, very strong, very loud cat, yes. But relative to the curious and wondrous features of the other animals that are so unlike anything else I see on a regular basis, the lions were downright normal. I know: king of the jungle, etc. I'm not saying they weren't cool, but a couple of the ones we saw flopped over on their backs like they wanted their tummies scratched, for crying out loud.
Yes I got pictures of that.
I give the leopard more credit because of its beautiful and unique spots.
I have gone and done exactly what I said I wouldn't do, which is describe what I saw. I guess I can't help it. The whole experience was a visual smorgasbord.
So we are in Johannesburg until Friday when we head to Cape Town. We're in a hotel tonight and staying with friends tomorrow. Lots of moving around in the past week or so. Cape Town will be a welcome change, where we plan on getting an apartment-type place with a kitchen. Hopefully being in one place for six or seven days will give us a chance to unpack totally, have a little stability, a little routine, and generally calm down.
More regular posting forthcoming with reintroduction of consistent internet access. And maybe a couple pictures.
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