My First Safari and Hopefully Not My Last!

After my personally moving time in Ghana getting back to ship life was hard so it was a relief to finally reach South Africa.  The best part of the sail was the several talks given by Archbishop Desmond Tutu.  He shared personal stories about growing up in South Africa during apartheid but never in anger or hate for the injustice that he faced.  Always laughing and sharing words of wisdom it was a pleasure to hear his ideas about South Africa as well as the world.

Cape Town is such a beautiful port that me and some friends decided we would get up a 4:30 am to watch us come in but of course that was wishful thinking.  I fell back asleep only to be woken up at 5 am by a loud squeaking noise outside my cabin.  I look out my porthole and HELLO there is the pilot boat.  I think they were about as surprised as me but we waved and then they took off.  It was a pretty fun way to start off the day even though I was dead tired and a little anxious about not missing my trip to the Kariega Game Reserve.  My first safari that I was so looking forward to!  We were to be the first ones off the ship and because our flight was moved up they would not wait for anyone if they were late.

Of course everything worked out great and before I knew it I was in a plane to Port Elizabeth and then in the back of a truck looking for Africa’s big 5.  But of course we had lunch in between and it was a tasty treat after eating ship food.  I tried some Ostrich meet for the first time and it was delicious, I hope we will have some on the ship.  Anyways, we went for our first game drive soon after that and met our wonderful ranger Julia from Sweden.  In no time at all we saw all sorts of animals including lost of giraffes, different kinds of antelope and birds but the most stunning were the heard of elephants we found after a little adventure on one of the more traitorous roads.  Lets just say we bit off a little more than the vehicle could chew and got stuck next to an embankment that would not have been fun to slide down.  One of the other rangers came to help us out and we eventually got out of there fine.  It was just a little added excitement and I love off-roading so I was just having a blast.  Seeing the elephants just roaming around was so cool.  Julia told us all about the herd and they were not afraid to walk right up to our vehicle.  We drove around a while more before we stopped in a safe area for drinks and a snack.  Looking out over the South African plains at sunset it sort of hit me that I was living my dream.

Then as sort of a side story, when I left the ship I was so bummed because my clean laundry had not yet arrived so all I had was my big jacket to take with me but like my grandfather always said, “don’t worry everything will work out for the best.”  As it turns out it is unexpectedly very cold at the park so I would have frozen to death without my big jacket.  In fact most people had to buy extra clothing at the store just to try to stay warm.  By the time we got back from the game drive most of us could not feel our feet so we were happy to see a nice fire burning in the fireplace.

The next morning we got up at about 5:30 am to go on a drive before breakfast.  The sunrise was just beautiful and in no time at all we found a family of rhinos grazing on the open plane.  We observed them for a while and then we found some ostriches with lots of little babies.  From there we spotted some Blesbok which I have to say are some of the coolest looking animals I have ever seen.  Then it was off to see the hippos which we did but we also found some monkeys as well as a fish eagle on the way.  It was awesome to see all of them in their natural habitat but also learn about their patterns of behavior.  The monkeys were not looked so kindly upon by the rangers because they like to run on their roofs all night and keep them awake.  We all thought they were hilarious so we stayed and watched them for a while.  Then it was back to the lodge for some of the most delicious breakfast I have ever had.  Meats, cheeses, eggs and bread, what more could I ask for.  Oh and some fruit to.  After eating all that it was time to pass out and nap for a couple hours.  Oh its lunch now, thats convenient.  We grabbed some food and went out for our afternoon game drive to find the elusive lion.

It took us a while of driving around in every which direction but we eventually found them.  At first it was just the mom and one of her older sons just napping in the protection of the trees.  After a few minutes of waiting the juvenile male stood up and the two cubs wandered out of the bush.  It was amazing!  We watched them sort of play around for a while but then we left because Julia did not trust the juvenile male lion because it had been really aggressive recently.  He had actually tried to kill the cubs recently just to show his dominance over his father.  I was kind of hoping to see them hunt or something but we were lucky to see them move at all because they sleep for about 18 hours a day.

It was going to be hard to top the lions but we still drove around for a while and saw some pretty cool birds that I will never remember the names of.  After a while we headed back for the lodge for......you guessed it....dinner.  Once we finished dinner and were just sitting around talking the staff broke out into some traditional song and dance.  It kind of caught me off guard but it was so cool.  Once they finished we moved out to the fireplace to talk about all the cool things we had seen.  No one wanted to leave because we were having such a good time.  The next morning it was raining and we didn’t have time to get breakfast but they had prepared some boxed breakfasts for us which were a disappointment compared to the breakfast we had the day before.  Then it was back on the plane to Cape Town.

The rest of my Cape Town experience and a little bit on Mauritius is coming soon.  I am now on my way to India so I will be at sea for the next 6 days.