Eric's World Travels: May 2009

Well, it's been a while since my last post, but hopefully I've earned enough to pay for the current leg of my trip to Southern(mostly South) Africa. I actually got into Johannesburg ten days ago, but we've been away from decent internet for a while and I haven't gotten a good chance to post. Johannesburg was not quite as intimidating as I had been lead to believe. All of the "Armed Response" signs and barbed wire surrounding anything nice make you think that it must be the most secure city on Earth, but they tell me that's not the case. We stayed off the streets for the most part, only venturing out of the hostel to go for food and sightseeing(at secure locations). The Apartheid Museum is staggering. The determination of the Afrikaaners to maintain their way of life despite the enormous suffering it engendered is simply dumbfounding. It makes segregation in the U.S. look more like aloofness. We still haven't seen a lot of mixing between blacks and whites here beyond white owner/black staff, but I'm sure that it's not uncommon.

Our second day in Johannesburg we drove a bit out of the city to visit The Lion Park which is a kind of small wildlife park meant to simulate the game park experience for people who don't have a chance to leave the metro area. We wanted to make sure we actually saw some animals, lions especially. It was fun in a hokey kind of way. We got to pet some lion cubs, but they mostly just wanted to sleep. It felt a bit like an amusement park so we didn't take things qutie as seriously as we should have. In the lion enclosure, one of the lions--who are very habituated to people and cars--walked right up to our car. I could see it's pupil, which was cool. It then proceeded to open the passenger-side door using its mouth and tongue, which suddenly made the whole thing a bit more serious. Luckily Sharada was able to keep it from opening the door all the way and we drove out of the enclosure. The guard said "You must be careful, those lions are so playful sometimes."

After that we headed up north towards Kruger National Park for some time in a real game preserve. On the way we stopped in Makhado/Louis Trichardt(they change the name back and forth). We ended up staying at a B&B with a nice Afrikaner couple that was a bit out of our usual price range, but we had run out of other options in the guidebook. They were very helpful, going over the itinerary of our trip with a fine toothed comb. We went on a beautiful hike in the hills and saw some tropical forest and baboons. Their son and his family were visiting from Nelspruit, where we headed in a few days, and he has offered to let us stay for a while, which is where we are currently.

We moved on to the park, where we spent three days on a wilderness trail. We spent the nights in fenced in camp, to prevent the more dangerous wildlife from getting in. We weren't allowed outside the fence without one of our guides, who were very friendly and cheerful. They offered us the option to see beautiful scenery and somewhat less wildlife on a much harder hike, and since the guide, and other experienced park goers were for it, we went along as well. We still saw what seemed like quite a bit of game to me on the trail: a giraffe, two kinds of eagles, four kinds of antelope, dossies(which are somewhere between a cat and guinea pig but illegal to keep as pets) and probably something I'm forgetting. On the drive to the camp and the start of the hike we also saw hundreds of buffalo, dozens of zebra, several elephants, many more antelope, warthogs, bushbabies, monkies, baboons, and any number of birds.

One of our fellow trailgoers worked at a private game reserve/animal rehabilitation center on the road to Nelspruit, and he recommended we stay there, so we did. The guide book gave us horrible directions and we got quite lost and didn't get there until hours after dark, discovered that 'self-catered' meant 'bring your own pots and pans and can-opener', had some bread and cheese and went to bed. Our friend surprised us early the next morning saying he wanted to show us something, so we piled half-dressed into the jeep and he drove us into the reserve. We walked a bit through the bush and then he told to be very quite and pointed out a group of rhinos behind a nearby tree. We stayed still for what felt like hours because I am not used to crouching in a steathy manner and my legs were dying. Finally it stepped out of the trees, not more than fifteen feet away and he said "Take pictures." We did and then he yelled at it and waved his arms and the rhino scurried(if anything so large can scurry) into the bush again. "Don't they ever charge?" "Sometimes," and that was all he had to say about that.

Just then the clouds began to clear revealing what we hadn't been able to see the previous night--the spectacular mouth of the Blyde River Canyon. According to the guide book it is the third largest canyon in the word, after the Grand Canyon and another one in Namibia. It looks a bit like the Grand Canyon, vistas off to the horizon and preciptous cliffs, but the rocks are a bit different, more granite than sandstone and the area is much less arid so the side and floor of the canyon is covered in a dense semi-tropical forest. The other difference being that you can drive right in to the bottom of the canyon, which did, and the following day we drove along the rim down to Nelspruit, where Emile and Elane have been so kind as to put us up for a day or two until we head to Mozambique.