How Lucky Am I?

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…

They arrived!

 But, after months of planning, they finally arrived to spend the holidays with me in South Africa! Saving me both the money and jet lag of flying home myself, and giving me the added bonus of being able to escape winter for another year!

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.

Posing with the elephant

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.

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…

Dad <3 monkey

Mom getting pick-pocketed

This poor kid... 

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.

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…

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…)

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.

Hout bay in the background

Penguin taunting...

Driving down the coast

Cape of Good Hope

SO many seals

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.

The beautiful vineyards

Mmm..wine..

Our lovely table setting

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.

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. 

Adorable elephant baby

Tracker in training.. 

So close!

 Leopard scaling the tree

Smushy baby elephant butt :) 

And third, the Tydon Bush Camp, where we stayed, had only five tents on the property, which made for both a quiet and personalized experience, and the camp was literally in the middle of the park, so we had animals come right into our campground! Apparently a leopard had wandered through the night before we arrived, which was a bummer to miss, but while we were there, we had a few different types of antelope and some mischievous little monkeys pass by.

Campsite

My tent

So much fun

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!

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.

African wild dogs

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.  

Beautiful wildebeest sunset