I can’t believe it’s already 2019. My how time does fly. I
was recently reminded by a friend that 2019 will be the ten year anniversary of
the study abroad program we did in Niger – which was my very first trip to
Africa. That program in Niger was a turning point for me, and kicked off my
career in ways I am still benefiting from today, especially as here I am, once
again, back in Africa.
However, unlike every other time I have lived in Africa, I
was FINALLY able to get my parents to come visit! No small feat I might add…
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| They arrived! |
I feel so lucky to have had my parents over the holidays.
This trip was very, very special for a number of reasons: 1)
this was the first time I’ve been able to share my passion for Africa with my
family directly through mutual experience; 2) this was my Dad’s very first trip
to Africa (and he didn’t swear off coming back, I might add); and 3) my mother
was able to come back to South Africa for the first time after living here as a
teenager some 40 odd years ago, which was pretty meaningful for me to hear more
in-depth about that experience.
We had a jam packed itinerary for the 10 days the spent
here, spanning Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Kruger. And it’s a brutal journey
to get here, so credit where credit is due – mom and dad were not dead on
arrival, and seemed to adjust pretty quickly to the time zone, despite one
sleepy episode on the bus in Soweto. But that’s understandable.
It would take too much time and space to recount the whole,
amazing trip – but I wanted to share some highlights from each of the three
locations we visited. First, Johannesburg.
Johannesburg
You may recall in an earlier entry, I talked about the
Monkey and Elephant Sanctuary located about an hour North of Johannesburg.
Well, the last time I visited the sanctuary, I only took part in the organized
activities with the elephants, which, I’ll say, was just as fun the second time
around. Even though my mom stole all of the elephant kisses.
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| Posing with the elephant |
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| Matching elephant snot prints |
But the real highlight for me this time was participating in
the monkey tour the sanctuary had to offer – which was both interesting and
hilarious. The sanctuary gets monkeys mostly from private individuals who
thought it would be fun to have a pet monkey, only to realize that monkeys are
clever, high-maintenance, and capable of significant damage – both to property
and to humans. As a result, the sanctuary has a hodge-podge mix of primates,
most of the which are not native to Africa, like the capuchin, which is found
mostly in Central and South America. But, the sanctuary does have a few lemurs,
which came to them because of habitat destruction in Madagascar.
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| Lemur... likes to move it move it |
These clever little monkeys have these tours figured out
though, and are not shy at all about crawling all over participants, looking
for buried treasure in backpacks and pockets, or searching through hair to find
tasty treats. One unlucky participant on our tour even had a monkey crawl down
the back of his shirt to check out those back pockets, just to be extra sure
that he didn’t miss anything of interest.
And while that was funny, my Dad’s reaction to the monkeys
was even funnier. You can just tell how much he’s enjoying it…
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| Dad <3 monkey |
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| Mom getting pick-pocketed |
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| This poor kid... |
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| Mom being groomed |
Another highlight from the Johannesburg portion of our trip was
the tour we took of Soweto, which I had not done before. Soweto, which is an
abbreviation for South Western Townships, is an urban area in Johannesburg
created in the 1930’s when the white government first started separating
residents by race. Black South Africans were forcibly moved out of other areas
of the city and relocated to Soweto, and were only allowed to come into
downtown Johannesburg for work, which had to be proved with registration
papers.
Soweto is infused with South African history, as it was the
backdrop for numerous violent conflicts during apartheid, and served as the
base camp for the anti-apartheid movement. Nelson Mandela and many other
freedom fighters lived in Soweto, and many died there as well. It’s a sobering experience
to visit a place with such a relatively recent history of struggle and
violence, and many of the remnants can still be seen – including bullet holes.
The tour touched on the history of Soweto, and took us to
many of the historical landmarks. One of the most interesting was the Freedom
Charter memorial – which displays the 10 core principles of the Freedom Charter
carved in stone. The Charter was created by the African National Congress
during the anti-apartheid movement to codify the freedoms the people were
demanding of the government, many of which were integrated into the constitution
of South Africa after apartheid ended. While not all of the Freedom Charter
principles have been met in modern South Africa, the memorial serves as a
reminder for what the people were fighting for, and should continue striving to
uphold.
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| The freedom charter |
A more sobering experience on the tour was the visit to the
Hector Pieterson museum, which sits diagonally across the street from where
Hector Pieterson, a 14 year old student at a nearby school, was murdered by the
police during the 1976 Soweto Uprising, while waiting for his sister to leave
school so they could walk home together. A photo taken a of fellow Soweto teenager
carrying Hector’s lifeless body down the street was published around the world,
and sparked international outrage that led to increased pressure and sanctions against
the apartheid government, demonstrating the power of and the need to protect
journalists… a lesson still very much relevant today…
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| Hector Pieterson memorial |
Cape Town
I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of this city. It’s just so
beautiful. So while I’d already been here twice, I did not mind going again.
(And will still not mind going a fourth time when I get my second round of
visitors next week…)
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| View of Table Mountain from our balcony |
We did the Cape Peninsula tour – on an incredibly beautiful
day – covering the Cape of Good Hope, Cape Point, and the penguins at Boulder
beach – but the new part of the tour for me was a harbor cruise to Seal Island,
which as the name suggests, is overrun with seals. And when I say overrun, I mean
an absolute infestation to the point of barely any surface area of this spit of
land not being covered by seals. They are on all the rocks and in the
surrounding waters, and I have no idea how our boat did not run them over, but
somehow we didn’t.
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| Hout bay in the background |
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| Penguin taunting... |
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| Driving down the coast |
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| Cape of Good Hope |
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| SO many seals |
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| Seal and seals and seals. |
Another highlight from Cape Town was Christmas dinner, which
was a lovely, gourmet three-course dinner at Groot Constantia, the oldest
winery in the Southern Hemisphere. Founded in 1685, this winery is gorgeous, situated
right behind Table Mountain, and produces many, many delicious wine. Our
waiter, who was a hoot and a half, let us split glasses of wine into three
glasses for a de facto tasting experience, as the tasting room was closed for
Christmas.
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| The beautiful vineyards |
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| Mmm..wine.. |
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| Our lovely table setting |
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| Delicious food |
Fun side bar: our waiter told us he aspires to be the South
African Eminem. So if anyone hears of a white Afrikaans rapper named Carlyle
Black, that’s our guy. He played one of his tracks for us at the table, which
he recorded himself at his home studio, and although I really know nothing
about rap and how to judge quality, it sounded kinda catchy to me. So who
knows?
Our last day in Cape Town we had poopy weather, which was a
bummer, so we were not able to go up Table Mountain as planned. But, we made the
best of the day and drove through the endless thick clouds for the fun of it,
and visited an old fort on the outskirts of the city.
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| Mom and Dad hiding in the clouds |
Kruger
Just like Cape Town, I think Kruger is a place I won’t get
tired of… its only my wallet that’s getting tired of it ;)
Both visits I’ve made to the Kruger area thus far have been
unique, in terms of lodging, animal sitings, and overall experience. The first
trip, we stayed in a lodge outside of the park – but with my parents, we stayed
in tents at a private game reserve within Kruger National Park, called Sabie
Sands. Now the main reason we stayed there was lack of availability elsewhere,
as December and January are peak season for safaris, but it was very fortuitous
that it worked out that way for a number of reasons.
First, because it was peak safari season, the public part of
Kruger would have been mobbed because they allow personal vehicles to drive
through. Even when I was there is September, there were a number of cars to
navigate around, and if animals were close to the road, sometimes we’d be stuck
five or six cars back. Because Sabie Sands is private, no public vehicles are
allowed, which meant at any given time we were one of five maximum vehicles
driving around the park.
Second, in Sabie Sands, there are no paved roads and the
safari vehicles are allowed to go off-road in certain circumstances, which
would never be allowed in Kruger. This meant we were able to get very close to a
lot of the animals we saw. Our guide even drove pretty deep into the bush to
follow the leopard we came across, allowing us to watch her scale a tree and
settle down to rest before the rains arrived. Unreal! I was able to get fairly
close to certain animals my first time in Kruger, but in Sabie Sands we got
close to pretty much everything – except for the big male rhino and elephant
that might have charged had we gotten any closer.
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| Adorable elephant baby |
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| Tracker in training.. |
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| So close! |
Leopard scaling the tree
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| Smushy baby elephant butt :) |
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| Campsite |
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| My tent |
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| So much fun |
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| Safari crew! |
The drawback, because there are always drawbacks, is that
Sabie Sands is much smaller than Kruger, meaning we had fewer animals within
the confines of where we could drive, and the animals tend to wander in and out
of Sabie Sands and the Kruger area. However, despite the smaller size, we did
see four out of the big five, missing only the lions, and we had an absolutely
AMAZING encounter with the African wild dogs, which I had never seen before and
are quite rare to come across. Our guide said he doesn’t see the dogs often and
had not seen them for about six months, as they had gone to den with new
puppies – so again, an extremely lucky find!
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| Wild dogs approaching the vehicles |
We saw the wild dogs right after they had killed and
devoured an impala, so by the time we arrived they were taking a snooze with
full, satisfied bellies. (One of them even had hiccups!) They we lying quite
close to the road, so we were able to see them up close and personal. Their
coats are beautiful – a mix of colors and spots – and they have adorable big
ears. The pack we saw was about 15 dogs, which was slightly larger than normal
because the young adult pups were still with the pack. Interestingly, it’s
actually the female dogs that will move to a new pack when they get older, rather
than the males.
We circled back to the wild dogs later in the game drive, to
find a hyena trying to sneak up on them to steal the remainder of the impala
carcass. It was incredible to watch – and the hyena ended up using the safari
vehicles for cover, first hiding behind our vehicle, and later hiding UNDER one
of the other vehicles. The wild dogs surrounded the vehicles to investigate the
hyena, and then, after I guess assessing that the hyena was not a real threat,
made a game of letting her get close to the carcass, only to push her back into
the trees. Our guide said that usually hyenas will dominate the wild dogs and
easily steal their food, but because this hyena was alone, and a bit older, the
dogs were not giving in. Interestingly, I thought hyenas would be towards the
bottom of the food chain as scavengers, but apparently they are second only to
male lions, and will intimidate and chase off lioness, leopards, and wild dogs.
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| African wild dogs |
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| Hyena patiently waiting. |
Wild dog hiccups
But after watching the wild dog and hyena interaction for a
while, a chilly rain started and we were forced to head back to camp. So we don’t
know if the poor hyena ever got her meal.
It was a fantastic trip, and a great way to close out 2018!
Thank you to my parents for making the trek, and thank you to my siblings for
sharing them over the holidays.
And to kick off 2019, in just one more week – I’ll get a new
crop of visitors! So really, I am just the luckiest.
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| Beautiful wildebeest sunset |
