African Adventure Installment SIX

As mentioned at the end of Installment FIVE, Ryan and I didn't have a sense for what to expect from our game drive. I had visions of Indiana Jones-like adventures and scenes from National Geographic films in my head...the kind where you see a baby elephant being chased by a pack of lions with foam at their mouths....the baby elephant about to be tackled when a herd of mama elephants storms to the rescue, lions scattering and roaring with mouths wide open.

I was pretty far off base, especially since there has been a drought in Hluhluwe Umfolozi
which has driven many of the animals to "greener pastures"....the deep ravines where the tasty food grows. That's where the elephants were, and I was really hoping that one or two of them would get bored and make their way to the dry ground where we were driving.

It turned out that our game drive companions, the two mysterious fellows in the back of our vehicle were, rather interesting characters. One was an Italian man on a self-guided tour of the world and the other a British man who was keenly interested in birds. Keenly interested indeed.

To set the stage, I should mention that when we were walking into town for dinner the night before our game drive, we passed a very safari-prepared man on the side of the road. Safari hat, safari shirt and pants, hiking shoes and a backpack. We said hello but he didn't respond, he only kept walking. We decided he was an odd bird. He was actually an odd bird lover who turned out to be one of the men in the back of the vehicle. His name was Nathan and he was definitely the silent type.

Nathan was sharing a seat (all of the seats were bench style) with the Italian- the two of them were clearly strangers forced to sit together simply because they were the first to be picked up. The Italian was somewhat of a caricature of what you might think of as "anItalian stereotype", he was definitely nice, but did fit some of the jovial stereotypes Americans have seen in films and cartoons.

Back to the game drive....

Now, it's hard to imagine what it's like to be on a game drive, unless of course you've actually been on one, or perhaps if you've had the experience of hunting in the woods. Even then, hunting is much different for obvious and not-so obvious reasons.

There were a few rules to follow on our game drive:

1) be nice to the driver; do what he says and take his advice
2) stay in the car unless it is time for a tea break
3) stay quiet unless you see an animal, and then you should whisper the animal type and location
4) you can shoot the animals...but only with a camera (no guns allowed)
5)keep your big knife in your backpack

Now, for most people, these rules are pretty easy to follow. And for most of us on the trip, these rules were quite simple. Sure, we strayed from the list here and there, but for the most part it was simple and fun. The most difficult rule to follow on a reqular basis was part 2 of rule number one. It was easy to be nice to Jeff, our guide - he was terrific. However, it was not always easy for people to do what he said or take his advice. What he said to do was LOOK for animals.

Up front we mostly saw birds .... which you may have trouble finding in the dead-center of this photo below. There is a hawk (I think...I really can't remember) perched in a tree without leaves.

I imagine this was a moment of joy for Nathan - he whipped out his notebook and began recording endless amounts of information. The rest of us looked with our binoculars at the bird and with few words, we collectively agreed it was a nice bird and time to move on. Nathan continued throughout the trip to scrawl notes in his journal.

Looking for animals was an interesting task for me as I was mid-course in a Neuroscience class in my program at HGSE where we often talked about the various ways in which the brain helps the body thrive and survive. For example a human will often recognize something in the brush and using parallell processing, quickly determine whether or not that "something" is a rock or a rhino. We often talked about looking for inconsistencies and seeing beyond what the mind WANTS to see to what is REALLY there.

So, when Jeff told me to LOOK for animals, I started looking for animals as well as "inconsistencies" in the brush. It totally paid off. I think it is safe and fair to say that I spotted more than my share of the animals on this drive. Some might even say that I was a game-spotting machine.

After a while I got so tired of saying "zebra 3 o'clock" or "warthog 4 o'clock" that I just resorted to loosely gesturing off to the right-hand side of the vehicle. You see, the places you're assigned to look for animals depends on which side of the vehicle you are seated. I was on the right-hand side so I covered 12 o'clock to 4 o'clock. No sense in worring about 5 or 6 o'clock...that was stuff in our past and far behind us on the road. The goal is to point out animals so that everyone can have a look. But, after a bit of time it seemed that perhaps some were just enjoying the ride and that maybe I was one of the few who was REALLY looking with my full concentration. (I'm sure that there are three people who will vehemently disagree....but that's fine. Bring it on)

Sure, I spotted a "rock-o-saurus" and a "stump-o-saurus" a couple of times, but I also spotted many treasures as well. Including rhinos, as photographed below.

It's important to clarify that when you see the animals in the photos, they weren't always just ambling along the road, waiting to be spotted for their 15 seconds of fame. Sometimes they were, but sometimes they weren't.

Many times the animals were off the side of the road and quite honestly, probably hoping their camoflouge will keep them out of sight. Spotting these two white rhinos and then watching them cross the road was pretty fortunate. I happend to be looking out my "window" (no glass...just the open air next to my head) as we slowly drove through the landscape, when I spotted portions of one rhino about 15 feet off the side of the road in the midst of some trees and brush.

As you might imagine, our guide, Jeff, had help from other guides who would radio to him with information such as "we saw two rhinos in such-and-such area approximately 30 minutes ago" which meant that we'd be on the look out for specific animals depending on our location.

When I spotted the white rhinos, we'd already driven the same loop and seen nothing in spite of claims from another guide. Then the rhino appeared between the branches and the bland color pallette that composed the park.

After some fancy driving (stepping into high gear while in reverse and doing a few swerves and turns), Jeff was able to navigate our vehicle so that the rhinos crossed the road in front of us. Silent slowly moving beasts crossing man's path and into their own land once again. It was captivating.

And had they been headed for us, moving at more than a slow lumber, I would have been freaked out. These guys were HUGE.

White rhinos are the second largest species of land mammals. Here are the basic stats:

• Weight: 4,000-6,000 lb (1,800 - 2,700 kg)
• Height: 5 - 6 ft (1.5 - 1.8 m) tall at shoulder
• Length: 12.5-15 ft (3.8-5m) length of head and body

You're right, these animals are EEENoorrmous. Needless to say, we were all very quiet when they crossed the road.

There was only person to utter a phrase and it was the Italian. What did he say? "mama mia!"

Our expedition rolled down the road. The most commonly broken rule was broken again by our Italian friend….a zebra (or ZeBB-rah as our guide would say) or impala would walk near the side of the road and as our guide would urge us to take a quick snapshot (or to forget the animal completely because we would see hundreds more through the course of the day) the common response from our Italian buddy was always "Wait! Wait! Picture! Wait…..wait….WAIT!!!!!"

Eventually Jeff just learned to drive on in spite his pleas…he knew it was too risky to spend time taking photos of the "common" animals when better things like lions might be a mile or two away.

Other game that we saw included:

wart hogs

cape buffalo in the distance

(to which the Italian man said

"Boofalo? Like the Boofalo mozzerella?")

Zebra (said with an accent it sounds like zebb not zeeb)

Wildebeest

Giraffe

Now, how about the story of the big knife? I know that's the only reason you kept reading. We pulled over for tea and rusks mid-morning at a "rest area" in the park. Jeff poured hot tea into mugs and shared the homemade rusks his wife had prepared for our trip (think biscotti but without the chocolate frosting). The Italian decided this was a perfect opportunity to make our acquaintence. After all, Nathan had wandered off to get some quiet time to himself.

The Italian asked where we were from, and of course we said "America"....he seemed to think this was an invitation to share his American adventures with us. Apparently on his self-guided tour around the world, he'd stopped in several places in America already. His favorite place had been Albequerque New Mexico. He thought it was beautiful. None of us could contradict him since we'd never been, so the Italian took the opportunity provided by our silence and polite nods to continue telling of his adventures. I'm not sure if I'm glad he did.

Seems that when he was in Albequerque waiting for a bus, a woman pulled a knife on him. His response was to pull out the gigantic bread knife he carried for slicing bread (who doesn't carry a bread knife with them at all times?) and this made her back off. He said that he found the knife somewhat comforting.

Then he chuckled about how he'd smuggled it to the top of the Empire State's Building...apparently he was a crafty packer and their security team failed to find it located (again) in his backpack.

As our game drive came to an end that day, we stopped in the town of Mtubatuba where the Italian needed to catch another bus. He dragged all of his luggage from the back of our vehicle and headed off between two buildings with rough characters idly killing time on either side. The driver remarked that he hoped the Italian would find his way to his next connection...and we all chuckled knowing that the man was likely to be just fine.

As we pulled in to St. Lucia to unwind, showers were in order, naps, and then dinner again at our new favorite restaurant, St. Pizza.

After finishing our postcards over a frilly cocktail, we gorged on a great meal and headed for the hotel, hoping that the bats were all out. As we approached our room, our neighbor came off his patio and shushed us a bit. Apparently 4 hippos had wandered up the path (see previous blog post ... the same path that Paul, Joey and I started take through the tall grass) to have a late night snack in front of our patios. Again, big animal, darkness and the sound of munching. All a bit intimidating.

Hippos are known for being rather fierce and in my opinion, scary. Hippos can weigh up to 3 and a 1/2 tons. I'm pretty sure that's WAY more than our car...or yours. Alas, you'll have to take my word on this story as I was too concerned about startling these, errr grazing beauties to take their photo. The last thing we needed was to get charged by a hippo, so the lens cap stayed on.

More updates to come folks....thanks for being patient. And remember, keep your big knife in your backpack.

PS Happy Birthday Stacy!!

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