Jumped head first into South Africa

I left South Africa this morning (scheduled for last night), and am now on my way to Mauritius! The fog was too bad last night to leave the port, so the captain decided to wait until this morning to leave, and we’re now traveling around 23 knots (a little faster than normal) to make up lost time! My apologies ahead of time if this update is a little long…I have so much to share, as I absolutely fell in love with South Africa!

The first morning, I woke up at 4:45am to watch the ship pull into port and get my first glimpse of Africa. Although it didn’t get light enough to see my hand in front of me until around 6am, it was well worth the early waking! I stood staring at the southern coastline of Africa in absolute disbelief that we were actually about to set foot in Africa. As soon as the ship had cleared customs, we raced off the ship to the V&A Waterfront. One of my friends realized that we needed khaki pants for our safari, so we looked for some in a mall at the port. We ate lunch at a fish and chips place outside where we spent a majority of the meal people watching!

That afternoon I had a township visit, organized through SAS. I’m not sure my description of this experience will do it any justice, but I’ll do my best. On our 30-minute bus ride to the township, I was amazed by the niceness, cleanliness, and beauty of the homes, shops, and land. As if we hit a brick wall, the drastic change from rich to poor, new to old, well maintained to run down, and white to black (note that this is factual, not racist) overwhelmed me. The houses, no bigger than what I think of as a normal size bathroom, were crammed together, row after row and we learned that 1.2 million people lived in this township. The shacks were made of cardboard, wood scraps, or pieces of rusted metal and most had fragments of tin weighted down by cement blocks or bricks for their roof. Barefoot children wandered around aimlessly and many stopped and stared as our coach bus passed through. We first stopped at a school, where children flocked us for money, food, or to have their picture taken. I willingly offered the last option, and spent nearly an hour taking children’s pictures just so they could see themselves in my digital camera…such simple pleasures. We then stopped at a weaving center and Vicky’s Bed and Breakfast (literally a bedroom that visitors can rent out for $5 per night) to meet the people. We visited another B&B where the owner had prepared tea and biscuits for all 30 of us. The people were all very welcoming, ready to share their stories, and wanting us to understand the effects of the Apartheid in South Africa. As we were leaving and passing the endless rows of these torn apart shacks, I couldn’t help but realize that I’m not even capable of imagining what life is like for people who live here – it’s beyond my scope of understanding.

At 3:15am, it was time to leave the ship for our Safari adventure. After a 2 hour flight and a 6 hour bus ride, we finally arrived at Kruger National Park around 3pm. On our way to our campsite, we saw a group of around 10 elephants and then a family of giraffe – what a start! We arrived at our campsite of 30 2-person tents and got ourselves situated in the tents. Our first game drive was from 4-6:30 that night, so we quickly piled into 9-person open aired jeeps to begin our true safari adventures. On the first drive, we saw hundreds of impala, 2 huge groups of elephants, zebra, giraffe, and most impressively a black rhino. Our tour guide said he has been doing game drives like this for just over 3 years, and this was only his third time to see a black rhino! Our group was the only jeep to spot it, so we were obviously excited to have had such good luck right off the bat. Once the sun set, we went back to our camp site for the most delicious dinner ever (plus we hadn’t eaten anything since about 10am). We had all campfire cooked food…chicken kabobs, creamed corn in squash, salad, and baked potatoes with some type of butter or cream sauce. When dinner was over at 8pm, it was already dark our and no one had any idea what to do! Some people had brought cards, so we played a few games of spades until our favorite guide Johnny came and taught us some of his favorite card tricks…be prepared for my return – I’m becoming quite the card player! Haha.

After sleeping/dripping sweat all night long, we were awoken at 4am for our morning game drive. We left at sunrise, but were stopped quickly when we had to wait for a herd of elephants to cross the path directly in front of our jeep. For some reason, upon seeing them so close up and realizing how social of animals they are, I fell in love with elephants at this moment! Throughout the rest of the safari, seeing elephants became “routine” to most people, but I got really excited every single time! At this point, we had only seen 3 of the big 5 (elephants and rhino) and were determined to find the other 3 (buffalo, leopard, and lion). We quickly found a single water buffalo and learned that he must have been an old male, outcast from the group, because water buffalo typically travel in groups of around 100. Poor buffalo! Right after finding this buffalo, Johnny got a radio call that sounded urgent and he sped off with an obvious purpose. Since the guides spoke a language we couldn’t understand, we were all really excited to find out what we were chasing! We finally got there and learned that there was a female lion that had been spotted sleeping in the grass (lion’s are really hard to find because they are the same color as the grass and sleep all day long lying down). All of the jeeps waited for about 30 minutes and then most groups left, but ours was determined to get a better look at the lion! About 5 minutes later, it slowly stood up and started walking backwards. Then, out of nowhere, a whole family – two females, a male, and a baby crept out from behind the trees and walked away from us. They were shorter than the long grass, so they were still difficult to see, but the excitement in our jeep upon seeing them was unbelievable!

Last mission – leopards. We learned that Kruger National Park is 20,000 square kilometers and there are only around 200 – 300 leopards in the entire park (as opposed to 13,000 elephants), so we shouldn’t get our hopes up. We ventured on looking at elephants, giraffe, zebra, etc until finally our guide halted to a stop. He had spotted a leopard sleeping in the grass far off the road…so we can at least say we saw a leopard. It’s definitely our most iffy spotting, but a sleeping animal in the grass is better than no animal at all! After our lunch and attempted nap time (failed due to excessive heat and sweating), we were ready for our afternoon game drive. Our wonderful guide Johnny took us around, and we saw a lot of the same animals that we had seen the afternoon before, plus some cool birds, a turtle crossing the road, and a dying snake that wrapped himself around his neck to end his misery (very bizarre to watch). Johnny made a deal with the 9 of us in his jeep for the next morning. If we left right at 5am, he would take us to a spot with hippos and crocs that no one else in our group would get to see (it would take about 4 hours total and our morning drives are only supposed to be 2 ½ hours). We all excitedly agreed and couldn’t wait for the next morning! That night, we played some more cards and then found some other SAS kids staying in bungalows right near our campsite. Since they had air conditioning and I had not stopped sweating for the past 2 days, 5 of us went over there to hang out for a few hours before bed – it was a much needed relief from the heat! On my way back to my tent (in the pitch black), I fell into a huge hole and bruised up my shin pretty badly, but that’s what I get for only bringing a tiny flashlight with me on a safari J

The next morning, our game drive was incredible. We drove an hour and a half to a water hole where we saw hippos and crocs – just as promised! We only saw the tops of the hippos heads because we were told that the intense sun cracks their skin, but at least we could say we saw them! On the long drive back to our camp, most people slept, but I was too fascinated by the beautiful scenery to fall asleep. I realized something that sounds very strange – I knew I was in Africa by the trees. Yes, the animals were a pretty good giveaway, but what really struck me was the tangled, twisted, and sun beaten trees. It was like a scene out of the Lion King or a postcard of Africa. I’ll have to send you all a picture sometime for this to really make sense, but the trees were so different than trees I’ve ever seen before. Upon our return to the campsite, it was time to pack up and leave for the airport!

We learned an odd lesson about international travel –they do things really differently from the US. The flight was overbooked, so they randomly selected people to be bumped instead of asking for volunteers…luckily I wasn’t bumped, but the friends I was traveling were! Regardless, we all got home late at night (they got a flight an hour after mine), and crashed right away from exhaustion! Despite complete exhaustion from the safari, we woke up early to climb Table Mountain the next day. Most people decided to take a cable car up, but 5 of us were determined to hike it – how hard could it really be? Ha – joke’s on us – it was really really hard! 3 hours later, we all made it to the top, covered in sweat, hardly able to stand, and near tears, yet we all were so proud of ourselves for making it. If there had been an escape route at any point, I probably would have taken it, but thank goodness there wasn’t because I was forced to make it up on my own! We opted to take the cable car down, and got a beautiful view of the entire city of Cape Town. Up until this point, I wasn’t convinced that Cape Town ranked amongst the top most beautiful cities in the world, but from this incredible view – my mind was instantly changed.

That afternoon, we tried to go to Robben Island to see Nelson Mandela’s jail cell, but the fairies were all shut down due to “rough sees” and we could not get tickets for the next morning. We did get to see the museum, which provided lots of good historical information, but I was certainly bummed to miss out of something I had really been looking forwards to! Instead, we looked around the craft market, where I bought some really exciting things including a beautiful elephant canvas painting (I’m collecting art from every port and since I fell in love with elephants on the safari – this was too hard to pass up). Earlier in the day, I had made reservations at a restaurant called “Moyo,” which was supposed to be a traditional South African restaurant in a tree house. When we got there, we didn’t see the tree house at all, but rather an open air, tented restaurant and were disappointed. Somehow, when I gave my name for the reservation, they led us down a small path to the back, up 2 flights of stairs, and onto a small landing in a tree with a table set for 10. Don’t ask me how we got such a special table, but it turned out to be such a great night. We got our faces painted, saw drum performances, enjoyed a complementary wine tasting, ate at a beautiful buffet, and left 4 hours later – satisfied as could be! I met some local South Africans at the restaurant who said there is a new place on Long Street (the main strip) that attracts all the students of the University of Cape Town, and he said we should go there to get a better flavor of college life in SA. We were definitely the only Americans there, but all felt completely welcomed and comfortable. I met several really nice college students, and wished we could stay in Cape Town to hang out with them more!

The next day, I spent a majority of the day in bed sick, so I’ll refrain from recounting the details there! But, so many of my friends have said to me “Lindsey, how are you so unlucky to get sick after ever port?” I usually just say “Oh, it’s no big deal,” but I’m tempted to answer….”Unlucky? What part of me is unlucky? A better question is how am I so LUCKY to get to go to all these ports and have the most incredible experiences while I’m there?”