South Africa Month 5-The Big Push!

South Africa Month 5-The Big Push!
In this episode, I...
-get nearly trampled by a herd of wild elephants
-tries to photograph Namibian border guards doing something illegal
-get some in-your-face time in the wild with a full-maned Kalahari Lion and throws up on a Great White Shark (3 days apart).
This month was a big one. I’m just warning you now.
Work was the same as before, but I finally got to use most of my leave and use it I did to hit-up some South African wonders.
KRUGER NATIONAL PARK
First up, Kruger National Park. South Africa’s most famous national park (and possibly one of the most famous on the continent) and with good reason. This park is one of the best places in the world to view wildlife and I would go so far as to say it might rank up there as the best (I can’t think of a strong other competitor). Why? Let me put it this way...
In Canada, if you go to a national park (and we have many fantastic ones), you’re lucky if you spend a week there and see one deer (this is considered cause for celebration). In Kruger, we saw hundreds of deer (“antelope” technically) and many of various different species. Impala are so common (not the Chevrolet kind, but I’m sure there were a few of those too), that if you see a car stopped to look at Impala, it’s assumed they are Kruger newbies.
Nevermind that though, the antelope are really the side attractions. This is Big-5 country (the Big-5 being the five most difficult and dangerous animals to hunt in Africa: elephants, rhinos, buffaloes, lions, and leopards, although we just stuck to photo-hunting). The Big 5 is only the icing on the cake though, as you can also find (and we did) giraffes, zebras, hippopotamuses, crocodiles, hyenas, monitor lizards, leopard turtles, fish eagles, ground hornbills, regular hornbills, wildebeast and more. Basically all those zoo animals you learned how to pronounce when you were five years old—and a few you didn’t—they’re all here, but in their wild non-caged (unless you count the massive fence that surrounds Kruger, which I don’t as the park is the size of Wales or Israel).
Elephants, for one, were almost ridiculously easy to find (we saw one eating a tree within 5 mins of getting into the park). In fact, Kruger is facing an overpopulation of elephants (they used to cull them, but this practice was controversial and it has since ceased, although there have been calls, often by the rangers themselves, to reinstate it less the elephants eat everything else out of house and home). At least for the time being though, the result is that we saw more elephants than antelope (and considering how many antelope we saw, that’s saying a lot) on our first day, and throughout the trip saw such wondrous sights as elephants drinking from the river like quiet monoliths, elephants hiding behind bushes (which like my Dad’s old joke suggested, they can do fairly well), for us wide-eyed Canadians and Europeans that was an unbelievable experience.
I went the first weekend with Henrik and Kristina, driving in their awesome 4X4 Safari machine. We camped the first night beside Blyde River Canyon (the world’s largest green canyon, and third largest overall) which is an amazing sight and not for the faint of heart (or for those scared of heights like me). Henrik and Kristina were more daring, dangling their feet over the edge and trying to sneak off the trail to alternative lookout points, but I wasn’t having any of that. That said, I did have my usual close encounters with wildlife (and we hadn’t even entered Kruger properly) when a troop of baboons invaded the campground. They may be considered pests by many South Africans, but this was my first encounter with these ape-like monkeys, and my interest in creatures, human biology and ancestry, and adventure; caused me to draw closer. Watching a group of them interact was amazing. Just like the similarities between African Wild Dogs and your pooch back home (or a Cheetah and your household cat), there were obvious similarities in behaviour between humans and baboons: the way a mother cradles her young, the use of facial expressions (and similar facial expressions) to convey emotions, and their penchant for mischief.
The baboons were not in the campground by accident. They had clearly hoped to gain access to someone’s vehicle or camper, left improperly sealed. I followed them through various empty camps, watching them as they tried locked door knobs and pulled on bars. At one point, I came with a few feet of a female baboon cradling her young, who gave me a stern worried look (while baboons aren’t small, humans are the tallest primates and we dwarf them in height). That said, baboons are much stronger than humans, like the apes, so I didn’t want to aggravate her and I backed away. Baboons are also quite clever creatures, capable of opening doors, throwing leopards off of cliffs (leopards hunt them), and telling the difference between tourists (which often feed them though they shouldn’t) and uniformed rangers (which often have to shoot them because of tourists that feed them).
Henrik and Kristina had to drop me off for a wilderness hike I managed to get myself on. Being without a car I was looking for options to enjoy Kruger without one, and the hugely popular Wilderness trails seemed like a likely candidate. These trips are so popular they book up a year in advance, and I only managed to luck into being one person (and hitting on a cancellation).
We hiked deep into the Kruger bushlands, near the Olifants river, close to the Mozambican border and far from civilization. With no electricity, it was just us and the Kruger wilderness, although we did have a nice fenced chalet site overlooking the river (filled to the brim with crocs and hippos which you could hear all night, no to mention the lions, leopards, and impalas). During the day we hiked on foot through the park led by our two armed guards Steve and Sambuca (a local Shangane guide).
Steve spoke better English than Sambuco, so he dealt with us while Sambuco tried to scout ahead for game. Both were very good at following tracks (recognizing not only the animal, but the gender, age, age of the track, and direction went, and probable destination) and while we were surrounded by lions moaning at one point, we didn’t actually see any (which goes to show you, that the scariest animal in the bush is usually you). We did see some animals (namely giraffe, impala, a leopard turtle, and of course, hippos and crocs), and the scenery was wild and amazing (all bushwacking in the heat, which meant by the end of the mornings, I was pretty beat, but the old farts were still going strong). We didn’t much in the way of animals as compared to driving (apparently, when you’re outside of a car, the animals can smell and sense you more and therefore are more afraid of you. While inside a car, they can still tell you’re there, but the car confuses them, and in Kruger is a familiar sight, and since people don’t normally hunt from cars, the animals have learned not to fear cars as much as a person on foot). Steve said the decline in sightings was due to poaching in the area, but I also think one particularly noisy woman (who didn’t understand indoor voices and loudly proclaimed any noise) may have scared more than a couple creatures off.
After the tour, we went back to Letaba. While they told me I could get out of the park without a car, this turned out to be false, and I ended up stranded in Letaba. Steve took pity on me, and I ended up accompanying him on a sorta “take your kids to work day.” I got to seethe other side of the Kruger ranger life-style including buying lunch at the Phalaborwa KFC, filing papers, and stacking wood (“look out for scorpions”). Since there was only bus from Phalaborwa (the nearest town) to Joburg, and it had already left early that morning, I had to crash at Steve’s place in the staff village that night and we had a braai with a couple of his fellow rangers, including rookie ranger Rianna, who was keeping wild genets in her house (she had apparently rescued them and was rehabilitating them for the wild). Not sure I even heard of a genet prior to this evening, I soon had a close encounter with them. Small ferrit-like carnivores, they are quite timid but playful once you get them used to you, and you could even get them to pounce on toys much like a pet cat. She had two different species of genet which had to be kept separate in the two rooms of her apartment, the kitchen and the bedroom. At one point, one of the genets got comfortable enough to perch himself on my head where it promptly marked its territory. They’re quite lovely creatures, very energetic and playful, but one look at Rianna’s hands (covered in scratch marks) told you that these were wild animals and not domestic pets. The genets have since been released back into the wild and are apparently doing well.
The next day, as Steve was driving me to the bus pickup at dawn, we encountered possibly the best sighting of my entire park experience; a leopard stalking across the road after some impala. We were able to watch for quite some time as the leopard, a female apparently, crawled carefully towards the impala hidden in the bush. Fortunately, for the impala, they sensed something was up, and eventually the leopard was spotted, leaving the impalas to give out a strange growl-like hiss bleat. Realizing her operation was blown, the leopardess glared back at us as if we screwed up her hunt (which we may have, as the impala may have wondered why we stopped) but Steve argued with her, claiming that she should have been in the bushes long before we got there. The leopardess shrugged and went off into the bush, probably to make another attack from a different angle.
KALAHARI
Wanting to stop somewhere interesting on my way to Cape Town, I got my heart set on the Kalahari, namely the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park (basically in that little piece of South Africa that juts up between the borders of Namibia and Botswana). It was fairly expensive getting a tour there (more expensive that I thought it was going to be, and more difficult as well), but it is gorgeous country.
It’s not really a desert per-se, but a semi-desert (the Namib desert is the nearest true desert, but that’s in its namesake country Namibia). While there are hills upon hills of sand dunes, most of the sand dunes are actually grass-covered, which explains the profusion of wildlife (they have to eat something, and they can’t just eat sand). This was a much more rough and ready wilderness experience than Kruger, the roads were not only not paved but mostly washboard gravel (every 2/3 comments in the guest book was on how crappy the roads were) and you weren’t getting anywhere without a 4WD. There are basically only two main roads in the park, both in the South Africa portion, and one of which was closed.
Interestingly the gates to the park are all also border crossings, with Botswana and South Africa sharing a mutual gate and park office (the mens room is in Botswana, the womens in South Africa) and roads leading to both sides of the border (at one point there are two roads, one on either side, running parallel). We actually ended up camping on the Botswana side the first night (much less developed than the South African side). The first night was a bit of a rough one for me. Despite being the only person on the tour, they gave me a very uncomfortable cot in my tent that I could barely fit in. It was so uncomfortable that I considered sleeping on the ground (couldn’t it was cement) or in the car (it was locked). Sleeping outside was out of the question as this was nasty scorpion and snake country (shake out your boot before you step in), not to mention it was bloody cold (at least cold enough to form ice bergs floating in the left over coke bottles, which made for a refreshing late night snack). While it can get up to +40 in summer in the Kalahari, I was there in winter, and the desert soil just doesn’t retain the heat.
Also, compared to Kruger, the park is mostly savannah like grasslands, which means great wildlife viewing, but also strong winds.
The next day we drove to Mata Mata on the Namibian border, along the route we saw plenty of gemsbok (pronounced hemsbok), springbok, wildebeest, hartebeest, and other creatures, although Iw as half asleep from a poor nights rest. (They usually do night tours, but for dubious reasons they didn’t, so I didn’t get to do one) We did however have a hyena come pay us a visit (attracted by the smell of braais) although a fence separated us, you could still get a very close view of the spotted hyena (a jackal came by at one point too, but he made sure the hyena was already gone).
While I was the only one on the tour, my guide was sadly not quite up to the same calibre as Steve. While he knew a fair amount about the wildlife, he took some prodding to get going (on the first day, he wanted to do nothing, and I said that wasn’t cool and on the second I had to get him out of bed) and had a habit of spouting Afrikaan redneck opinions including starting far too many sentences with “I’m not a racist, but...” and a bizarre perspective derived from watching some very Afrikaans history channel. He would proudly boast that South Africa never lost a war, claiming that the last Boer War was a victory for the Boers (I asked him to clarify this, as my history books had clearly suggested it had been a British victory, but his big argument was “well is South Africa a republic now or what” to which I would respond, yes, but it became a republic 50 years after the end of the war and had more to do with British Post-WW2 decolonization than anything else). He also believed the first World War was fought against Napoleon (I’m not kidding) and that Namibia didn’t win its independence, South Africa’s apartheid just gave them independence as a “gift” but the South African Apartheid government was so noble and generous of course. Needless to say this was the type of guy who couldn’t understand that just because Queen Elisabeth was the Queen of both Canada and Britain, didn’t mean Canada was part of Britain. At first, I just tried to ignore his diatribes, but being stuck in a car with him, and just him, for a few days, I eventually had to give him a history lesson (I do have a degree in the subject). He also had the stereotypical South African obsession with braai, and strong unsolicited opinions about what means should be barbequed (basically any fatty meats) and what shouldn’t (lean meats and hamburger), couldn’t fathom why I couldn’t completely agree with him. He also mentioned on a couple of occasions, hinting obviously, that some American had previously given him a couple hundred dollars a tip, “but don’t worry, you don’t need to tip.” So I didn’t (the trip was expensive anyway).
That said, we did have some great sightings on the way back including a puff adder snake (highly poisonous), bat-eared foxes, a cheetah calling for its lost cubs (you could see it standing on the hill and hear its shrill cries), but the highlight by far was the Kalahari lion, which actually blocked the road so there was no way we would miss it.
We saw the bat-eared foxes at the same time as the lion, although they hadn’t seen each other. When the foxes did notice the lion, they all hunched down in the bush as if on queue, you could literally smell their fear.
He was a big male lion, but he didn’t seem too interested in the foxes, or in hunting in general, mostly just patrolling his kingdom as it were, and using the road as an easier way to get from point A to B (as it is for both humans and animals). He ignored the cars for the most part too, although they were all stopping to take a picture of him and his unique Kalahari mane (brown with a black tinge, unique to the region were the lack of bush to push through means it grows much fuller than usual). Since there were no female lions around, and he seemed like a young male in no rush to be hunting, my guess is that he was “on the prowl” for something else. At any rate, he was my first and so far only wild lion sighting, so I naturally took as many photos as I could of him up close as I could.
He headed off the road so we drove ahead of him, but then he wandered back on to the road, and I got to see his face close-up. So close in fact that my driver began to worry about me with my open window, and the car suddenly sped off (you could the shock on the lion’s face, confused as to what was just happening, as a still object was suddenly taking off at great speed). I don’t think the lion chased us, I don’t think he meant us any harm, but I suppose it was best to be on the safe side.
Afterwards we stopped at a bushman selling his crafts and then headed back to Upington where I came off the bus originally from Joburg and where I would catch my bus to Cape Town
CAPE TOWN
Arriving in CapeTown on a long uncomfortable overnight bus ride with only religious movies and comments from Focus on the Family as the “intertainment” I was a bit groggy when I arrived in foggy Cape Town. Since it was too early to check into my hostel, though, I decided to drop off my bags and make the most of my day, so I hopped a bus to Table Mountain, the famous geological landmark of the city.
Shrouded by fog initially, I perhaps didn’t fully grasp the height of the mountain, but its one impressive plateau. While there was a gondola that went to the top, I wanted to save some money and so, taking the advice of my buddy Henrik, I decided to climb it (as it turns out, he hadn’t climbed it, but its sister mountain, the smaller Lion’s Head).
Needless to say, I quickly learned I needed to get into shape, as while it didn’t seem that far from the bottom, a 2.5 hour hike can easily turn into a 4 hour one when its uphill all the way. The path (basically natural rock steps that have been cleared of vegetation) is a fairly rugged one, and zig-zagging its way up to and then through a narrow gorge. It’s popular route, and I certainly had plenty of seniors and children passing me on the way, but at least when you stop for a break the view is incredibly (the fog lifted while I was climbing the mountain, making for a spectacular sight).
Once on top of the mountain, you feel like you’re in a different world. For one, its a plateau, so the ground is actually reasonably flat on top and easy to get around, although you do have to look out for rocks and potholes that can sneak up on you. Because the plateau is at a higher altitude and separated from the land below by sheer cliffs on all sides, the vegetation forms a different ecosystem up here, and in some cases the species are found nowhere else in the world (very exotic, almost like a mini-version of Roraima in Venezuela). What’s unique about Table Mountain is that you have this majestic wilderness area (and it is considerably wild) right in the middle of a very major city. The local tourism board is campaigning to get it listed as one of the new seven natural wonders of the world, and I think they stand a pretty good shot.
Exhausted from the hike up, I did some minor exploring of the top and decided I would take the gondola down. Not a fan of cliff edges (which Table Mountain has in abundance), the thought of descending rapidly over sheer drops clinging to nothing but a tiny cable didn’t sit too well with me, but it seemed easier than walking down. The car itself, clearly sponsored by visa (which was good as I hadn’t had a chance to hit an ATM) climbs to the tallest part of the mountain and you board it as it sits precariously over the edge, the cable running near vertically to the bottom. I found myself a camping spot near the back of the gondola, where at least the ground seemed somewhat closer (not that it would matter if the cable gave way), but I soon found another unforeseen challenge for a height-fearing fellow such as myself, the cable car inexplicably had a rotating floor so I had to constantly move to keep myself in the same position and avoid getting dizzy on the way down. Great for the people to enjoy the scenery I suppose.
After getting off the mountain, I decided to take advantage of the rare Cape Town “winter” sunlight, and headed to the Camps Bay beach where I was immediately accosted by up to six hawkers and beggars. I attempted to evade these chasers, by walking into the ocean (or at least close to the ocean), but then a wave snuck up on me and my feet got wet. It worked at least in scaring those guys away. I walked along the beach some more, played catch with someone’s dog who came out of nowhere and dropped a chewed-up tennis ball in front of me (beach was full of dog walkers), and watched some South African dudes try to surf in the wave-wet sand (I forget what they call this). Also a sand rugby game, which was pretty cool. To cap things off, on the bus ride back to the hostel, I saw a Southern Right Whale breaching in the water off of Cape Town.
The next day was not as successful. Since we had another sunny day, and forecast of bad weather was coming, I decided to take Henrik’s other major suggestion, shark cage diving. Sure enough, we drove out to a bay near Cape Agulhas (the southernmost point of Africa, and no, its not the Cape of Good Hope) and you can actually see Great Whites pretty easily, and the cage wasn’t that scary, but I still couldn’t get into it, mainly because I couldn’t stand due to sea-sickness. The southern ocean waters are some of the roughest in the world, and while I knew that, I didn’t know we were going far enough out to experience the full brunt of them. The boat started heaving mightily as soon as we left the harbour (I was at the front of it, frozen like a barnacle to the side as we bounced off of giant wave after giant wave), I was probably white at this point, and could barely walk to the back when we entered Shark Alley, a reasonably calm stretch of water between two islands, one filled with over 40 000 seals (whence why the sharks are often found here).
For reasons unknown to me, however, they drove right through shark alley and anchored the boat out in the rough stuff (and anchored in such a way that all the waves hit us broadside instead of straight on). I quickly started getting sick, and sat down at the bank in a near windward position (they had blocked the true windward position in case people got cold) and tried to summon the will not to hurl. I had really been looking forward to diving with the sharks and didn’t want to give up, but when my lunch paid three return visits out the same way in came in, I knew my gig was up. At least I saw a couple of fins from the boat and one large great white circling in the waters below me as I leaned over the boat edge to empty the ballast as it were. The buggers didn’t give me a refund mind you, and in fact wanted to charge for a taxi back to shore (which I was ultimately denied). Surprisingly they didn’t even have seasickness meds on board (a big oversight) and all they could offer me was a breath mint, the thought of which just made me feel even sicker (mint doesn’t appeal to me at the best of times). To make matters worse, I got some of the vomit on my shoes and so I tried to get them cleaned, and ended up losing them altogether, which wasn’t cool as they were custom ordered shoes designed to fit my big feet and big insoles.
The next day, I decided I wanted to stick to land (the weather was starting to get bad anyway), so I did the Cape Penisula tour (this is the tour that goes to the Cape of Good Hope, the most famous of South Africa’s capes, even if it isn’t the southernmost point). Actually, they refer to the Cape of Good Hope as the “southwestern” most point of Africa, which is one of those terms that means nothing at all (there are many points in Africa further west, ie West Africa, and Cape Agulhas is further south although its less impressive and shaped more like a potbelly). The Cape landscape however, windswept, barren, rocky, and rugged, makes you feel like you’re walking along the edge of the Earth and the scenery is just phenomenal. There’s a few points where you can climb up to get a better view, and we biked down one section (although my bike didn’t work so well, the gears jammed, so I had to walk it uphill in sections, but the downhill I got enough speed to pass people).
The weather turned downright awful the next day (it wasn’t so so bad on the cape tour), and so I declared a “Museum day” and went to the Heart Transplant museum (Cape Town was apparently where the first successful human heart transplant took place, and so they explained how it happend, why it happened here, the who and the consequences). Apparently, Dr. Christian Barnard (the surgeon who performed it) was quite the celebrity back in the 60s as a result (some loved him, some thought he was evil), although his celebrity status seems to have led him to three failed marriages with younger spouses. Still though, a remarkable operation, remarkable “guts” so to speak in doing it. I was interested in this museum as a rather peculiar attraction in a city full of attractions but it turned out to be worth the visit. I was less impressed by the highly celebrated District Six museum. While the museum dedicated to a neighbourhood of mostly black and coloured residents that were forcibly removed by the Apartheid government in the 60s, 70s, and 80s does cover a historical event in Cape Town in South Africa and the displays about the neighbourhood were quite nice, it was hard as an outsider to really get a feel for the place (a lot of it seemed like information overload, and the staff weren’t terribly helpful in explaining anything, and I actually ended up walking out after 20 mins, as I’d run out of stuff to explore on my own). I did however end up wandering the neighbourhood itself (or whatever it is now) and found a great little corner shop selling these fried half moon Islamic perogies (it was an old Muslim couple running the shop) which were so delicious I started with 1 and ended up getting 3.
I wandered the city for a little bit more, and ended up walking past the old star fort Castle of Good Hope (built by the Dutch, but conquered and held by the Brits) as well stumbling into their Parliament building by taking the wrong street (a security guard was quick to redirect me). The Parliament area has a nice park section (called the Company Gardens) complete with many major art galleries, museums, schools, etc, and a statue of Cecil Rhodes which seems, in modern contexts, to be somewhat out of place. From there, I walked back to the hostel via Long Street (the party street filled with night clubs and restaurants), stopping for some Indian food. We went out a couple of nights on this street and partied it up at places called the Assembly (a techno joint), the Joburg next to Pretoria (hip-hop dives), the Waiting Room, and the Dubliners (Irish pub-style place).
On my final two days in Cape Town, I did a wine tour, where we say many of the great local wineries, my favourite being a small ma and pa operation called Boer & Brit as it was run by the great-grandchildren of both the main British and the main Boer general during the last Boer war, and enjoyed gorgeous wineland scenery and the colonial town of Stellenbosch while we got thoroughly plastered. The last day, the weather finally improved enough for me to brave the ferry out to Robben Island (which was a much shorter trip on a much larger boat, but the seas were just as rough as my shark escapade). While it was interesting from a historical perspective—Robben Island is where Nelson Mandela was incarcerated for much of his 27 years along with other political prisoners and forced to due hard labour which left him with lasting health defects—the prison itself is just an abandoned prison. The highlight for me, aside from the great views of Table Mountain and Cape Town from across the bay (although considering the roughness of the seas in-between, Robben Island feels like a very isolated place), was meeting our tour guide, a former political prisoner at Robben Island (he had been arrested for supplying the ANC armed wing with weapons) who talked at length about this life there and even admitted after the tour that he did not want to come back to live on Robben Island and work as a tour guide but was forced to by poor economic conditions (although he seemed relatively at peace with the fact that he was effectively stuck on the very island on which he was once imprisoned). Unfortunately due to camera theft, I lost my pictures from both Robben Island and the wine tour.
Through these tours and the hostel I met some interesting characters including a dude from Sea Shephard (those guys who chase after Japanese whaling ships in the Antarctic, needless to say he wasn’t impressed by seasickness episode), finnish sports journalist proudly ranked #86 in pro table hockey, his Finnish friend/colleague who didn’t say much but liked to play this classic Scandinavian board game called the Star of Africa in which you race other players around Africa trying to find lost jewels (I added a rule called “the Joburg rule” where you could steal money and jewels from other players), a know-it-all American grad student from New York who kept blathering about the Star of Africa game was politically incorrect (it didn’t stop him from playing it) and assuming I was American like him, and a couple of friendly Norweigan beauties who were often found in the pub, and then had a house party on the last night (where my camera was stolen, ironically, at a club called “Joburg”).