South Africa: Day Two

April 1- MY 21ST BIRTHDAY!!!

This was an early morning and a long, long day in the best possible way. I had to wake up at 4AM to meet my group and leave for the safari. 4AM is early, but SAFARI!!!

We took a bus to the airport for a two-hour flight from Cape Town to Johannesburg. Up until this point I hadn’t been able to find anyone who was on my safari (to the Motswari Private Reserve) and had been a little worried, but it ended up working out perfectly. The group was small, 21 people in all and about 15 students. I hung out with Saahil, Austin and Bri (my safari roommate) most of the time. There was a lot of confusion at the airport, but eventually we caught our flight. We landed in Joburg (that’s what they call it in South Africa) and hopped on a chartered plane to some place that starts with an H. I have the ticket stub, but I can’t remember the name right now. The group of safari-goers in Cape Town was big, and then we dropped one group in Joburg. By the time we got to H… we still had about three safaris worth of people (the Krueger group was HUGE).

We were coasting down the runway after landing and glanced out the window to see TWO CHEETAHS sitting on the side of the runway!!! Welcome to your safari. Eager to see wild animals? Okay, here are a few CHEETAHS! We later found out that they were actually trained cheetahs… Not quite as exciting. There’s an organization that takes in abandon baby cheetahs and raises/trains them to keep impala, springboks and sable off the runway. Still pretty cool.

This was where our groups divided. We had a couple vans waiting for us, as did the Kruger group. The third group, on the other hand, had four big, open landrovers come crashing out of the bush to pick them up. Holy dramatic/awesome entrance. We were all a little jealous.

Our drivers took us about an hour away to the Motswari Reserve. Along the way we spotted cape buffalo (one of the big five) and one giraffe. It was a pretty sweet start. One of the unexpected details we picked up along the way was that the cape buffalo are actually among the most dangerous animals in Africa. They kill tons of people every year, especially hunters because they’re strong, smart, organized and don’t run away from a fight. You have one shot and if you fail to kill the buffalo, you’re in BIG trouble.

The lodgings at the reserve were gorgeous. Each “room” was a separate, circular hut named after an animal. Bri and I were in “sable.” They were big, open rooms with two white beds pushed together in the middle and covered by a mosquito net canopy, which actually looked beautiful. There was no bathroom door in ours, just a curved wall that hid a giant tub (equipped with bath salts), stone shower and toilet. We weren’t allowed to leave our rooms alone at night because animals wander through the camp; the guide said he’d seen everything except hippos and rhinos come through at one time or another. We were also told to keep our windows shut when we went out because baboons would come in and make a mess/steal our stuff.

We’d only been there ten or twenty minutes when they took us on our first game drive. Saahil, Austin and I claimed the back/highest seat in one of the three landrovers. Our driver was Palence and our tracker/the dude who sat on the chair protruding from the front of the rover was Difference. The Motswari Reserve has hundreds of unmarked, twisting dirt roads and our guys knew them like the back of their hands. It was incredible. Palence asked us what we wanted to see and we said elephants, so he chose a road and we were off to find some elephants.

Right off the bat we saw the yellow beak hornbill, or “Zazu” and then several herds of impala. The impala all have a black “M” on their butts, which has prompted the joke that they are the McDonalds of Africa; everyone eats them. We also got to see a few hippos. During the day, they almost never leave the water, but even their heads that are barely poking above the water are HUGE. We saw a baby hippo half climbing on its mom to keep its head up.

Then we found the elephants. To accurately describe these awesome (in both sense of the word) creatures would take more time than I can spend right now, so let’s just say that they were enormous, gray, generally passive creatures whose ears were shaped like Africa. Since this was our first drive, I wasn’t accustomed to how ridiculously close we were getting to these wild animals. It was super exciting at first, but suffice it to say that by the time the teenage bull elephant started charging us, I was ready to get out of there.

Charging elephants!?!? Wait, what? Yes. He was a teenager trying to show us how tough he was. This is not what I thought it looked like; it definitely looked more to me like he was about to kill us. Our guide revved right back at him. This bull was running alongside out landrover, smashing small trees to show his strength and trumpeting at us. Every minute or so he would kinda lunge at us like he was going to charge. I have cool videos of it, but it scared me a little.

We hung out around the elephants for a while and slowly got closer and closer until Big Mamma elephant decided that it was time for us to go. The guide ignored the teenage elephant, but the second momma elephant started slowly walking us back, we gave them some space. She wasn’t as obviously intimidating, but she had a cute little baby elephant on her heels and that made all the difference. If we hadn’t backed away, she could have done some damage. When we gave them enough space, they relaxed and started using their trunks to throw dirt on themselves. We watched for a while and then we left.

After the elephants, we drove to an open area for watch the sun as it set over the gorgeous African landscape. The guides set up a little table and put out a selection of beer, wine, pop and beef jerky for us to munch on as it got dark. The three land rovers were on completely separate adventures (save the leopard and lion experience on day two) so it was just us, nine people in total, out in the bush. It was quite and wonderful. Plus, it was still my 21st. It was getting pretty dark and we were toasting my birthday when all of the sudden, someone was like, “wait, there’s something over there!” Difference flipped on the spotlight and we saw a single hyena skulking across the open space about thirty yards away. It stared at us, eyes glowing in the light and then disappeared into the bush.

The guides packed up the table and we headed back to camp in the dark with Difference in the front sweeping the spotlight back and forth looking for animals. We didn’t see anything big, but out of nowhere we stopped and he focused the light at a small bush. I don’t know how he did it, but at night, that man using only a spotlight, managed to spot a chameleon that was blending into the bushes as we drove pretty quickly down a bumpy dirt path. We couldn’t even see it until he hopped down and pointed it out to us. Haha

We got back to camp and were taken back to our rooms by the guides. My roommate and I stayed up talking for a while, but then crashed pretty hard because it had been a long day and we had an early game drive.

End of South Africa, Day Two AKA THE BEST BIRTHDAY EVER!