SAFARI: A PERSONAL WILDLIFE ENCOUNTER

TRIVIA ANSWER:  Which two animal species are able to actually alter their habitat?  Humans and elephants.  Elephants tend to tear off branches of trees, and pull trees apart and kill them, partially to eat the leaves at the top and partially to rub against them to rub off ticks and other parasites.  Consequently, we sawq lots of areas that have only little dead tree stumps, devastated by the elephants.

Forgot to tell about the personal wildlife encounter we had in our room last night before dinner.  In one somewhat dark corner of the room there was a open corner unit with hangers for clothes and a couple of slat shelves.  After returning from the afternoon game drive, we were told that we had a whole hour of free time to do whatever we wanted then we had to be in the dining room for dinner by 7:30.  So my sister and I decided to take showers – I went first.  As I came out of the shower and began to towel off, I saw her standing naked about 3 feet away from the corner unit and pointing her camera at it.  She had just hung up a shirt and saw big, wiggly, hairy spider legs creeping up from the back of the unit.  She told me she was trying to take a picture of the spider that was there so she could figure out what to do about it, but she was too afraid to get close enough for the camera to get a good shot, and besides, the flash might startle the spider and who knows what it might do.  Well, both of us are not very good about spiders – we’ll do almost anything to avoid dealing with them.  I tried to take a look from a distance but didn’t see anything and was not about to get any closer, especially naked.

We were in a dilemma.  My sister needed to take a shower because we only had 30 more minutes before dinner and we were not about to leave for dinner without the spider being dispatched because who knows where the spider might go when we were gone and it could crawl just anywhere, like into our luggage.  So in a situation like this, vanity and bravery rapidly jump out the window and I had no problem calling the front desk to ask them to send someone to dispatch the spider (I didn’t care how much they laughed).  So they said they would send someone.  Now all of a sudden, I needed to throw on some clothes and my sister still had to take a shower (our dinner deadline was rapidly approaching).  20 minutes later and still no hotel person had arrived and we were really in a dilemma.  So once again I picked up the phone and called Lisa, our guide.  I was quite honest about the situation and explained that I definitely understood how this might look and how wimpy we were but we didn’t care.  I even said that we were perfectly fine if she told stories about us to every tour group she led after this.  We were willing to pay any price, pride was just not a factor.  Luckily she is a very forgiving type of person and graciously agreed to come over immediately.

So Lisa showed up, flashlight in hand, and asked were the spider was.  She walked over to the corner unit as my sister and I backed off to the farthest corner of the room (my sister still wet from her shower but clothed at least).  Meanwhile, I was reminding Lisa that we were quite aware of how silly this might look to her but that we were willing to live with the wimpy reputation if that is what it took to get rid of the spider.  After a few seconds of carefully looking around, Lisa all of a sudden said “I think I’ve found the spider.  Is this it?” and she pulled out a thing with long, hairy, wiggly spider legs and started to wiggle it.  Both of us could barely stand to look and then we burst out laughing.  Apparently a part of an ostrich-feather duster had gotten caught in the back of the shelf and broken off and when my sister hung up her shirt it stirred the air enough for the feathers to wiggle in the breeze, and looked for the all the world like a spider.  So Lisa grandly handed over the “spider” and we went to dinner.

But the story doesn’t end there.  Knowing how silly the whole situation looked, my sister brought the “spider” to dinner (pressed between the pages of her journal) and we told the story on ourselves with Lisa as the heroine.  We had everyone in suspense as my sister slowly pulled the “spider” from the pages of her book and started wiggling it and everyone had a really good laugh.

But the story doesn’t end there.  The next day, Lisa found the most perfect postcard, which everyone signed on the back, and we were most ceremoniously presented with the postcard.  The card has a drawing of a couple camping in the bush, sitting on a log in front of a campfire with a tent off to one side.  The woman is sitting in the man’s lap clutching him in terror, both of their eyes are bugging out in fear as they are focused on a big hairy spider on the ground of front of them.  Unknown to them, in back of them, is a large pride of lions focused on the humans.  Just helps to put it all in perspective, African style.

SAFARI – DAY 7 (Chobe National Park, Botswana; Chobe Safari Lodge)

The hippos are frolicking this morning and very vocal (what a perfect opening sentence for a novel).  Watching a herd of impala come down to the water to drink in the early morning.  Watching the sun come up and turn the trunks of the trees orange.  Because of some bush fires, the sun is a vivid red as it rises and sets and is absolutely beautiful (but my camera cannot capture it so I only have mental photos of it).

Apparently, we’ve been “glamping” (glamor camping).  That means camping with big tents, comfortable beds, and staff to do all the work and it definitely makes camping more fun.  The staff is tearing down the camp today because we are moving on to another park – gonna fly by bush plane.

While driving to the airstrip we saw a pygmy mongoose, a giraffe family grazing, and a leopard.  I was the only one who actually spotted it before it vanished in the tall grasses, but it was exciting.  We’ll be going to the leopard capital of Africa (in South Luangwa) in a few days.

Arrived at the airstrip and one truck had to drive to the end of the strip to chase away the impala so our two bush planes could land.  Lisa, our guide, had to bang on the door to get them to run away.  The herd was crossing the strip to get to water on the other side, but they only seem to cross one at a time at unpredictable intervals.  Very amusing.  The guide we left behind drove back down to the end of the strip when we took off to make sure it was animal free.  Wow, this stuff never happens at home!

One plane was an 8-seater (including the pilot) and one was a big 12-seat job.  The flight was about 1.5 hrs to Kasane (kah-SAA-nee)  on the Chobe and Zambezi rivers.  We flew over some bush fires and I could see the line of flames.  As we started to land, I watched a line of elephants walking alongside the airstrip.

We were greeted at the Chobe Safari Lodge (http://www.chobesafarilodge.com/) with refreshing glasses of juice.  Before being taken to our rooms, we were given strict instructions to keep our verandah doors closed at all times to keep out the monkeys and baboons – they cause havoc and poo all over if they get inside.

From our room we look across the Chobe river to Namibia.  The lodge is quite luxurious, with wonderful décor, a buffet with a huge variety (had impala lasagna for lunch), air conditioning (!!!!!) in our room, an enormous tub in addition to a lovely shower, and quite a wildlife show on the lawn in front of our room.  There are baboons and monkeys everywhere (they have a staff guy that shoos them away from the open air dining room).  We have a whole hour to rest up before going out for a 3 hr boat ride that supposedly will blow our minds.

RIVER BOAT RIDE
We sat in rather comfy chairs with a boat guide and a bartender (although for me, it is way too hot to be drinking alcohol).  We saw 30-40 elephants browsing and taking mud baths, with the cutest babies.  Also bunches of hippos on the banks grazing, and lots of cape buffalo, several big monitor lizards, really big crocodiles basking in the sun, spoonbills and kingfishers, marabou storks (magnificent but not exactly cute and cuddly looking), water buck (yet another antelope type), kudu, and warthogs.  I’ve started really liking the warthogs – they trot along with their tails up in the air and it is rather cute but they are difficult to capture on camera.

Not far up the Chobe river is a point at which the Zambezi meets the Chobe and is the point at which four countries all meet – Zimbabwe, Botswana, Zambia, and Namibia.  We’ll ride through that point in a couple of days when we go to Zambia.

Several people in the group, including me, are really tired.  This afternoon before dinner I got to take a real shower and put on clean clothes for the first time in a week.  (Well, it sounds like I didn’t change my clothes for a week – I did put on a clean shirt or undies, but not everything clean at the same time.)  Almost feel like a new person except I’m so tired.  In bed again by 9:30 PM but we have a 5:45 AM meeting time tomorrow morning.  Listened to hippos in front of our room – love it!  Their snorts just make me grin.

TRIVIA QUESTION:  Only two animal species are able to actually alter their habitat – what are they?  One is humans and the other is…?  Answer in tomorrow’s post.

SAFARI: WHAT A GAME DRIVE IS LIKE

 

TRIVIA ANSWER:  Which three animals are amble walkers?  Giraffes, hyenas, and letchwes because they are front-heavy and can’t sustain their front weight if they walk on alternate legs like horses.

First of all, a game drive is not using a vehicle to drive or herd game.  It is riding in a vehicle to look at animals.  Basically we ride around until someone spots something.  The guides occasionally get tips from other guides about exciting sightings.  They also watch out for tracks in the road and listen for alarm calls from squirrels, birds, impala and the like.  And they watch animals for alarm activity – if a herd of impala is frozen and looking in the same direction, then there is probably a predator hiding there.

Riding in a game drive truck is definitely not a passive activity.  We don’t just go tootling down the road.  The roads are very rutted and rough, sometimes with large holes made by the elephants, and we sit high up, so we’re thrown from side to side and front to back and tossed up and down.  (Many times I felt like I was in one of those twisty roller coasters that smash you in all directions.)  Sometimes we have to drive through water that comes up to the top of the wheels.  All this with a camera and binoculars tugging at my neck and banging against me, and my “girls” bouncing up and down (not always a comfortable thing), and my head swiveling from side to side to look for wildlife.

Oh, and there is very little room between the rows of seats so my knees are jammed into the back of the seats in front.  For two or more hours at a time.  We break for tea at 10 AM (a little tea picnic out in the bush) and for cocktails (sun downers) at sunset.  Morning drives are 3-4 hours long; afternoon drives are 2-3 hours.  And climbing in and out is not easy.  

But then again, there we are slowly driving down one dirt track or another, swatting at an occasional fly, bouncing up and down and smashing side to side into each other, looking at nothing but hot, dry, flat land and mostly bare trees and we haven’t seen anything interesting for 30 minutes and then all of a sudden behind that green bush over there a head pops up and there is a huge giraffe (how could I have not seen him before?).  Oh but wait – there’s another one just behind it, and now that my eyes have adjusted for a giraffe shape I can see the legs of another two behind that bush over there, and oh, there’s a young one.  And that grey rock behind that tree just moved and it’s an elephant – oh wait, it a herd of elephants.  And then a wondrously beautiful bird, the lilac breasted roller, flies out of a tree and loops around the car to show off his beautiful colors and then flies off and a bunch of guinea fowl with their blue, blue heads dash out from under the scrub.  And the wonder of seeing the animals and the exhilaration of the discovery erases all the discomfort. 

Yes, we may be sitting, but we’re all tired and dusty when we pull back into camp.  We are usually met upon return to camp or the lodge by someone handing out cool, damp facecloths and a glass of juice.  It is heaven.

One of the interesting aspects of game drives is that it is possible to get quite close to the animals when in a big Land Rover (well, at least as long as we don’t stand up or make loud noises).  This is because the animals see the truck as one large object that does not fit the profile of their usual predators or prey.  If any of us got out of the truck then it is a different story entirely and very dangerous.  At that point, we would turn into prey if we were near a predator, and if we were near prey animals, they would assume we were predators.  We are not in a cute Disneyesque wild animal park where the animals are tame or semi-tame or not even real.  This is the real thing. 

On the other hand, throughout the entire trip, I often had a thought hovering in the back of my mind about how could what I was seeing be real?  The environment is so startlingly different from my home environment and past experiences in places like Disney’s Wild Animal Park and the San Diego Zoo tend to lull a person into thinking that a game drive in Africa is just another theme park ride.  Several times I reminded myself that “this is really Africa.”  It most definitely is a different world, almost a different planet, from my industrialized, westernized life.  So different, that to really take it all in I had to expand my reality.  In a way, a safari is a more experiential trip than a trip to Paris, for example.  Yes, I looked at the animals, much as I might look at a cathedral or a painting or a bridge, but I also think it was much less passive than simply looking – the sounds and smells and anticipation of what might happen next and just being in the same space as the animals made this feel quite different and mind-expanding.  Well, that’s enough blathering for now.

SAFARI – DAY 6 (Moremi Game Reserve, Botswana; mobile tent camp)

 

Woke up at 3 AM (well, we do go to bed at 9 PM and I can only sleep so many hours) and lay for two hours listening to the hippos and a hyena around the camp.  At 4:30 AM I smelled the staff start up the cooking fire in the camp kitchen and at 5 AM I watched a staff guy walk into our camp with a huge flashlight, chasing a hyena out of camp.  Toto, I am not in Kansas anymore.

TRIVIA ANSWER: How far do hippos typically travel in a night? 10 kilometers

We got up and dressed in the dark by the moonlight that came into the tent windows, went outside to wash up (that’s as far as we are allowed to go until the staff sets out all the lanterns and gives us the OK).  Let’s see, what should I wear today?  Hmmmm, put on some clean clothes?  But why?  My clothes from yesterday aren’t really stinky – so I’ll wear the same stuff.

By 5:45 AM we stood in the dining tent (the side facing the pond is completely open) and watched three hippos who were up on the bank grazing.  They were amazing to watch.  The guides kept a close lookout to make sure we were safe.  What a way to start the day.  By 6:30 AM we were off on a game drive – in general, we spend 6-7 hours a day on game drives.

Drove back to the impala first thing.  The impala was not there but tracks showed that hyenas ate some of it and then dragged the rest off to the reeds, where we saw a huge crocodile, which probably ate the rest.  New sightings for today:  hyena, crocodile, really large storks (6’ wing span), and finally, a lioness.  We’ve decided to do a dung montage, so my sister is taking dung photos.  We starting to get a good collection, too.  Had a tea break in the bush at 10 AM (tea, coffee, and cookies served on the hood of the Land Rover).  Learned how giraffes mate and how they give birth (I asked because I was trying to figure out the physics of how they handle the heavy front end of the males on top of the relatively light-weight hind end of the females).  It turns out that the male practically stands upright on his hind feet and only lightly rests his front legs on the female.  And when giving birth, the amniotic sack does not break until the baby is dropped on the ground – it helps to cushion the fall.

Interestingly enough, the hyena we spied resting in the grass looked kind of cute and fluffy.  She was alone and just sitting in the dry grass and had a gash under one eye.  She eventually just laid down and instantly became invisible.

On the afternoon game drive, we finally saw zebra and saw some kudu really up close.  Had to drive through some deeply flooded roads – water up to the floor boards.  Luckily these vehicles are built for this with an air intake like a snorkel that is mounted on the corner of the windshield.

In general, this tour group is a very good group of people – there are 16 of us.  No complainers, no whiners, no constantly-late people.  There are a few birders, so they tend to flock together in one game truck and the rest of us mammal people tend to herd together in the other truck.  The birders reading this are probably sighing with dismay when they see stuff like “a whole bunch of birds.”  We are encouraged to move around between the trucks and to sit in different seats on each drive so I actually sat in the birder truck a few times.  Very different focus when looking at wildlife, but interesting.  On one game drive we stopped near an elephant with a baby and the birders were all excited about some birds on the other side of the truck.  So they spent the time busily looking in their bird books and looking at the birds, while I gazed at the elephant.  Talk about ignoring the elephant in the room!  At least there was plenty to look at for everyone.

DUST!  Everywhere.  A fine dust finds its way into places I never knew could get dusty.  Really everywhere – all over my camera, in my ears, up my nose, covering my shoes, embedded in my clothes – you get the idea.  I’ve given up being clean or unsticky – between the heat, the sunscreen, and the insect repellent, I just always feel sticky.  On the other hand, although I get sweaty, the sweat and my clothes dry so fast that they don’t seem to get stinky.  So we are wearing the same clothes for two and three days at a time – most everyone is doing the same.  I should’ve packed fewer clothes.

TRIVIA QUESTION:  Which three animals are amble walkers (they move both left legs and then move both right legs, unlike horses and cows)?  I’ll give you a clue: animals that are significantly heavier in the front are amble walkers.  Answer in tomorrow’s post.

SAFARI – DAY 5 (Moremi Game Reserve, Botswana; mobile tent camp)

Went to sleep listening to the hippos (my they can get vocal, who knew?)  Woke up every couple of hours because of the hippos, and chuckled every time. 

At 4:30 AM I can smell the fire being started in the kitchen area, then a staff member starts our campfire and uses that to light lanterns. At 5 AM the staff puts a lantern in front of each tent. At 6 AM a staff person stands in front of our tent saying “ko ko”, which is the African version of knock-knock. He fills two canvas basins outside our tent with warm water. So I stand outside the tent in the near dark washing my face and brushing my teeth (using bottled water). The hippos are honking away and the birds are quite vocal as the sun starts to rise. The sun is bright red because of all the dust and smoke in the air (there are several large bush fires in the distance and everyone cooks over open fires).

By 6:30 AM we are eating breakfast and watching six hippos poke their heads up and down in the water, honking.  It is an amazing sight and sound show!   By 7 AM we board the trucks and are off on a four-hour game drive.  

TRIVIA ANSWER:How much does the average elephant poop in a day?100 kilograms (about 220 pounds)

New animals sighted (I’m not going to name every animal on every game drive – just the new ones): impala, kudu, tsessere (another kind of antelope), a cheetah (well, just the head), one giraffe, warthogs, plus lots of birds – an amazing variety, including a hammerkop which is not classified in any bird group but is considered to be the closest living bird relative to dinosaurs.  It is not a large bird but builds enormous nests.

A game drive truck in front of us stumbled across a leopard on top of an impala, but the leopard was scared off by the truck and went to hide in the bushes.  Unfortunately, the leopard ran off to hide before it could completely kill the impala, so the impala, with a broken neck, was laying on the ground kicking its legs and struggling.  So we parked a bit away and sat there in silence, hoping the leopard would come back.  I must say that it was not easy to watch the poor animal struggle, but then again, it did not have the same emotional impact as it would if I were watching this on a documentary at home.  Being there, in the environment where leopard kills are normal, made it easier to handle.

After a bit, a caravan of Germans in ten cars drove by and our guide said there wasn’t much chance of seeing the leopard at that point.  When we drove by three hours later, the impala was still there, alive.  Vultures were starting to gather in a tree, which alerts other predators.  This was a distressing sight but a classic African experience.

Learned a lot about termite mounds.  The really big ones can be as old as 80 years. 

For our daily entertainment, our guide got a distress call from another guide who was stuck in the mud with eight passengers.  We made our way over and all the people in the stuck truck had to climb out and wade ashore so our truck could pull out the stuck vehicle.  Great fun to watch.

Privacy is not easy to achieve in camp – the tents have mesh on all sides and if you close the flaps over the mesh it gets intolerably hot.  We both took camp showers (the staff fills the bucket of water hanging in our tent shower/toilet area, then get wet, turn water off, soap up, turn water on and rinse off quickly).  It works.  We can order hot water (which most people did) but I just asked for cold water because it felt so good in the heat.

Noon to 3 PM is the really hot time, but we had a good breeze most of the time which helped a lot.  We have some afternoon time to rest and relax – I’d love to take a nap but it is too hot in the tents so I just sit in a camp chair outside in the shade and wilt.  It got up to 96 degrees F this afternoon – very awful but at least by 5 PM it noticeably started to cool, and by 6:30 PM it was quite comfortable.

Went back to the impala in the late afternoon game drive – it was dead but still uneaten.  We’ll go back extra early tomorrow morning to see whether the leopard came back or the hyenas took over.

The food is quite good – we even have fresh salads.  Chicken curry and chocolate mousse for dinner – yum. 

New afternoon sightings:  elephant (finally!), red letchwe (a kind of impala on steroids because it has longer back legs and larger muscles in the back, which makes its back slope down a bit and when a predator comes, they run and jump into the water and hide, which is unusual for an antelope type), a giraffe family of three adults and two babies, and old bull giraffe (darker in color as they age), kudu, lots of amazing birds, distant zebra, and amazing hippo entertainment.  There are two hippo babies in our pond and they popped up and down all afternoon, occasionally walking onto the bank and then back in the water, and even gave us a couple of big yawns which aren’t really yawns but are shows of dominance.  It is something like watching boulders bobbing in the water.

When Lisa, our guide, was giving us an afternoon lecture on Botswana, four hippos surfaced near the camp, lined up facing us, and just watched us for quite a long time.  Best TV show ever.

ABOUT BOTSWANA:  It is perched on the edge of two tectonic plates that are smashing into each other. The Okavanga Delta is the largest alluvial fan delta in the world and is surrounded by large faults.  As the faults shift and change the land under the delta, the annual flood waters flood different areas.  Therefore, yes, Botswana has earthquakes but because the Kalahari sits on a bed of sand 30-100 kilometers deep, the sand absorbs the shocks.  44% of Botswana is managed land for wildlife (which is a very impressive number).  Poaching is not much of a problem because the government has a policy of shoot to kill first, ask questions later.  So it is just not worthwhile trying to poach here.  And they have a very active game park enforcement army.  Which means that Botswana is a fabulous place to come on safari!!!

At dusk, the staff puts out luminaries to mark the boundary of the camp and to guide our way to each tent.  We must be escorted by a staff member from the dining tent to our tent, even though it is less than 100 feet away.  (Good thing too, because there really are wild animals roaming around camp!!) 

9:30 PM and back in my tent looking out at the luminaries – it is lovely.  I am very tired.  Interestingly, when I first looked at the beds in the camp (they are remarkably comfortable) I scoffed at the comforter AND blanket provided.  Who could possibly need a comforter or a blanket in such hot weather.  But by 3AM, I find that I wake up and pull the comforter over me because it really does chill down a bit – which is quite delicious.

TRIVIA QUESTION:  Hippos roam around at night to forge for food.  How far do they typically travel in a night:  1 kilometer, 5 kilometers, 10 kilometers?  Answer in tomorrow’s post.

SAFARI – DAY 4 (Moremi Game Reserve, Botswana; mobile tent camp)

This was the true beginning of the safari.  By the way, the word “safari” means journey in Swahili – much like the Australian term walkabout.

We took a 1.5 hr flight from Johannesburg to Maun, Botswana (pronounced “mound” without the “d”), which is the stepping off place for trips to the Okavanga delta.  We were met by our guide, Lisa Reed, and loaded into two safari vehicles – three rows of three seats each, each row higher than the one in front, and a canopy top to provide shade but otherwise open vehicles for maximum viewing – a big Land Rover and a big Toyota Land Cruiser.  These are 4x4 vehicles that can handle almost any condition.  You don’t step into these things – you climb up tiny steps built into the side and then squish yourself into a seat.

And off we went on a 5-hour drive to a mobile tent camp (more on that later).  The first hour was on pavement, past traditional Botswana villages – it really was not westernized or industrialized.  Round mud houses with thatched roofs and a kraal made of tree branches sticking out of the dirt (quite effective).  Goats, donkeys, and cows roam all over, including in the road.  The weather was about 90 degrees F and very dry.  Imagine riding in an open vehicle at 40 miles an hour with the hot, dusty wind sandblasting your face and arms.  Quite bracing.  I even held my hat over my face for awhile until my sister started laughing at me – but hey, I’m not much of a rugged type of person.  By the time we got to camp, my nose and eyes were stuffed with dust and my skin felt like hide.

Technically we are in the Kalahari, which is a large dry savannah.  It was once an inland sea and now all the land in Botswana is the sea bottom – which means it is just sand.  This is the middle of September and towards the end of the dry season so all the trees are bare except for the acacia trees, which are a vivid green with little yellow balls, and a few others.  Thank gawd the trucks have a canopy, but I still felt the sun creeping in on the sides.

The second hour was on fairly smooth, gravelly sand, fairly easy riding and a bit slower in speed.  And the last three hours were in the Moremi Game Reserve on a very rutted, bumpy road, sometimes driving through quite deep sand in which we sloshed our way around the curves.  The drive took forever.  Every now and then we saw an interesting animal or some tracks.

Tracks sighted on the road:  elephant, hyena, giraffe, puff adder.
Animals sighted on the drive:  giraffe, impala, steenbok (a type of antelope), and aardvark burrows.  And elephant poop everywhere in great abundance. 

The mobile tent camp is just that – it is a camp with tents that were set up the day before we got there and was taken down when we left.  There are six staff people to run the camp and take care of us, two guides, and a third person who is a ordinarily a guide but for this camp was the equipment truck driver.  The camp is located on large pond in the delta – we were grandly entertained each night by listening to the hippos snort at each other.  (They do a kind of a wheezy, grunty honk.)  And of course frogs.
We were greeted by a staff member who handed out wet face towels to wash off the dust and were given various instructions about camp life – how to use the bucket shower, how to use the portable toilets in each tent, and how not to walk around unescorted at night.  That is a very big deal – every night all the humans are put into their cages for the night so the animals can roam around without causing us any bodily harm.  The theory is that the animals see the tents as solid objects (unlike bears, which tend to rip into anything to get food, but of course, we did not have food in our tents) and do not recognize the humans inside as food.  The theory held out for the duration of the trip, for which I am grateful.

Anyway, the tents are pretty poshy as tents go – each tent has a sleeping area with two beds and a partitioned off portion of the tent to use as a toilet/shower area.  Each tent gets its own portable toilet (my goodness those things are low to the ground) and a shower which is a canvas bag that hangs on a hook with a nozzle.  The tents were arranged in a partial circle with the dining tent closing the circle and facing the pond, and a campfire and camp chairs in the center.  By this time it was dusk so we sat around the campfire in comfy camp chairs drinking our sun downers (any evening beverage, including wine, beer, and gin and tonics).  We were called into the dining tent for a lovely dinner of pork chops, vegetables, and pears poached in wine.  (The cook announced the menu before each dinner and we were quite well served.)

Had a bit of a hassle getting our portable toilet to work but our guide helped us.  I was barely sweaty even with all the heat because it is so dry.  I decided to just go to bed as is, without washing, because I was too tired (well, in my defense, I wasn’t smelly).
We are really in Africa!!!!!  The dream trip has truly begun.  Lisa tells us that any of a number of animals will come into camp and sniff around during the night.  They may even shake the tent.  All part of the fun, I guess.

TRIVIA QUESTION:  How much does the average elephant poop in a day?   50 kilograms, 100 kilograms, or 150 kilograms?  Answer in tomorrow’s post.

SAFARI – DAY 3 (Johannesburg)

We both woke up at 3 AM again.  Tried to go back to sleep but finally gave up at 4 AM and we started talking and catching up on news.  Got up at 5:15 AM and did hand laundry and got ready for our tour to the Lesedi (lay-SAY-dee, meaning “light”) Cultural Village.  This required repacking in order to take only what we needed for the day tour, followed by another major repacking job at the end of the day to prepare for the safari tomorrow.

Our destination is about an hour drive from Johannesburg -- we had a prearranged driver.  On the way, we passed a lot of areas where houses were made up of shipping containers or just built from sheets of metal nailed together.  Very small and very sad.  Some housing developments had nice, modern-looking houses (not very big) with thatched roofs.  The last time I saw thatched roofs was in Denmark.  Lots of brick and stone houses.  Very red dirt and everything is very dry with bare trees (well, that is normal for the dry season).

Lesedi Cultural Village ( http://www.lesedi.com/cultural.htm) was fabulous.  At the village, we were met by men and women from five African tribal groups, all singing a song of welcome.  I was grinning from ear to ear the whole time.  The five groups represented are Zulu, Basotho, Pedi, Xhosa, and Ndebele.  Our guide, Miriam, was Basotho (whose tradition requires 13 cattle as a bride price – more cattle than the other tribes who usually only require 11 cattle unless the bride is the daughter of a chief). 

The village is divided into five sections, each represents village life in a different tribal tradition and includes a group of houses and a small kraal (corral) for cattle and goats.  Most of the people live here for a year or two while they work here, so this is home for them for a while.  Miriam described what everything was in each village and taught us how to greet the people in each village in their language (don’t even ask me to remember) and how to thank them. 

At the Zulu village, we had to ask the chief for permission to enter.  In general, the Zulu are the warriors and the other groups are more peaceful.  They all view cattle as wealth (today’s value for a cow is about 5000 Rand, which is about $700).  Which reminds me – if you see me, ask me to show you the traditional Zulu handshake.  I thought they were pulling my leg at first, but it was the real deal and clearly is the root of the complex greeting/handshake rituals in American gangs today.

It was a nice bit of a mind twist that they all welcomed us “home” since Africa is the cradle of mankind.  After the tour, we went into a large round building where everyone sang and danced Zulu dances.  My sister and I even joined in and had a delightful time.  Then it was time for lunch (crocodile  and ostrich were offered, along with chicken and roast beef African style which is rather tough and grisly, mashed squash, rice, steamed ground maize which is called by a variety of names of most people recognize the name “papp”, and beans).  It was very good.

I’ve started to enjoy watching rugby – we’re here during the World Cup games and it is the sole focus of most discussions and most TV channels.  It is a quite entertaining game to watch although I don’t understand why a few players don’t just get killed at each game – it looks brutal.  Watched Canada win a tense game against Tonga.

In the evening we met most of the members of our safari tour group and they seem like a good bunch of people – well-travelled with a fun sense of humor.  Learned that Botswana and Zambia will be much hotter and much colder than Johannesburg (where the weather has been quite pleasant, much like home).  We spent a good bit of time repacking, trying to meet all the airline requirements and the game drive requirements at the same time – it has been difficult.  I’ve never packed and repacked so often on a trip before.  Yuck.

ODD BITS LEARNED ABOUT SOUTH AFRICA FROM OUR DRIVER:  Our driver was a Shona from Zimbabwe but now lives in South Africa because it is easier to make a living wage there. 

·        In South Africa, Afrikaans is spoken only by whites; blacks speak Zulu.  (You probably already knew that but I wasn’t entirely clear on it.)

·        South Africans don’t tend to travel much, so they are rather insular and not very culturally flexible.  For example, if a black person does not speak Zulu, they often won’t even talk to him, even if both parties speak English.  He is expected to speak Zulu or nothing at all.

·        Marijuana is illegal, although it is also customary for tribal men to go into the hills and smoke it.

·        Polygamy is legal.

·        Traffic lights are called robots.  (Just turn right and then turn left at the third robot.)