There Are No Black Rhinos Here

Monday Afternoon

So we had breakfast, and then had to face our lodge's outdoor shower. One of the side walls came up to my shoulder, and given my Puritanical sensibilities, you can imagine how much I loved this. Both Lizzie and I were dive-bombed by bees and other insects who were fans of our shampoo and soap, and also faced voyeur birds and lizards. We're sure we're up on the lizard version of the internet now. After showering, we rested, the daylight keeping the majority of the creepy cralwers at bay. Next up was the afternoon game drive, and when we got to our jeep, everyone had left except for Veruca and her dad/manservant/juggler. They insisted on trying to find a black Rhino (we had seen plenty of white rhinos, which are apparently less interesting). James drove us to the eastern part of the park, and we saw a bunch of Water buck, Tsetsebe, the ubiquitous wildebeast, and a hornbilled bird (James pointed out that this was Zazu from the lion king, and sang a bit of "lovely bunch of coconuts" for us) and a duck or two. It was otherwise pretty uneventful, and poor James gave us a botany lesson to fill the time, teaching us about the difference between spines and thorns. We did get to see more hippos, and they made their excellent hippo noises, which sound like Jabba the Hut laughing. "Mua ha ha ha ha han solo!"

We came back by 7:30, and joined James, Veruca and her Dad/Valet/Agent for a drink as we waited for the interactive drumming portion of the evening to finish. After that was dinner, and James told us stories of his childhood, including his parents' views on guns, and how he had shot a pigeon one time, and they made him eat it. Veruca's Dad/Guru/Roadie asked us if, being Americans, we had guns under our pillows, and what we thought about gun control, and I said "we have to keep guns in case you guys come back over the pond and try to take what's ours". Which of course is true. You stereotyping Brits, why don't you go home and have a crumpet or something.

After dinner, we walked back toward the lodge, and before leaving James, he said "Ja* well, I hope you girls sleep well" (everyone here is referring to us as girls, btw) and I said "Yeah, well, as long as there are no spiders in the bed we'll all be happy." James replied, "Ja, well, it's not the spiders you have to worry about, it's the scorpions under the sheets!"

I laugh, ha ha, and am not surprised that even a level-2 certified wilderness guide and expert can't resist teasing us "girls" about scary bugs and other biting/stinging/pinching animals.

Unless of course he was talking about that Eastern European band that wrote "winds of change", which is so terrifying I don't even want to think about it.

*A note on "Ja", sometimes "ee-Ja". Every South African person we've met has this verbal tick. Lizzie and I are employing it now because we find it hilarious. After she used it, and following our raucous laughter, she said "Ja, this will never get old", to which I replied, "Ja, at least not to us".

You're Full of Rubbish, Amarullah!

Game Drive 2--Monday Morning

After a satisfying night of no sleep, as we stood in the middle of our beds ready to go biblical on any spiders, stinging velvet ants or scorpions, we were "awoken" by the darling James at five am. We had 15 minutes to gear up, that is, put on clean clothes and eye liner, grab the camera and go to meet our group for the morning game drive. The same folks were there, the two South Africans, the Welsh folks, and Veruca Salt and her Dad (We're still not 100% sure about this relationship. He could also be her husband or man servant). Everyone but we Americans referred to the jeep as a "bus", which is stupid. No, I'm not being culturally insensitive, it's a jeep.

Off into the wilderness. First we saw a warthog. YAWN. Warthogs are butt-hideous, and we didn't trek all the way to Africa to see ugly-ass animals. Bring on the cute ones! Veruca shared her in-depth knowledge about Warthogs with us (probably gleaned from the Lion King), and even the Warthog got bored and took off. Also, he may have been insulted because at first James identified him as a pregnant female, and then said "Oops, that's a male". No one likes being mistaken as pregnant, and this is doubly true for dudes.

After the warthog, we saw some elephants wandering up a hill, and then, Yay! Giraffes! I was hoping I'd see Lisa P, but she's still in "the States", which is where everyone says we're from. The giraffes were totally awesome, super cute, and we even saw some running which was hilarious, and I don't think James appreciated mine and Lizzie's peals of laughter. We learned many Giraffe fun facts, but the one I will share is this:

Because of their massive height, giraffes have a pretty wide and intense dung splatter pattern. Their dung is also small and black, in case you were wondering, and you know you were. After much enjoyable giraffing, we saw some spring buck, impalas (not the car, as Lizzie noted), wildebeasties, and then a giraffe being chased by two young male sub-adult lions. We watched them from far away, but then James kicked the Jeep into high gear, and we made it to the other side of the velde in time to see the cautious giraffe shake the lions, who grumpily crossed in front of us. We would've offered them Veruca Salt, but they said they were on a low sodium diet, and hated British food.

After the lions, we saw baby warthogs (still ugly) hanging out in a field of crows. One crow jumped on one baby's back, knocking him over, then the other. Oh, nature.

We passed some zebra (pronounced with a short "e") and I got a shot of one majestically kicking its feet into the air, but then James had to ruin it by saying they did this to help move the gas caused by their multi-chambered digestive process. So I got a majestic shot of a majestically farting zebra. Rad.

And now, Amarullah. We were driving back toward the lodge for breakfast (oh god who gets up this early?) and ran into a back up of jeeps and a few private vehicles. James pulled us up to the front, next to a family in a white mini-van, and there ahead of us was Amarullah, the musting elephant, dripping testosterone willy nilly (if you will). So James said "Amarullah! You're full of rubbish." At first we thought he meant crap, because we'd seen our share of that, but no, he meant that Amarullah was being a bit of a trouble maker, as the elephant was lumbering in the middle of the narrow road, flaring his ears. James kept backing us up to put distance between us and the rubbish-filled elephant, but then the mini-van got in our way, so Amarullah charged us. James drove us off the road and around the van, which, to our collective disappointment, was not severely tusked. The stink was unbelievable, though, that of the musting elephant, but hey, after nearly killing us, he felt better and got out of our way so we could eat. Yeah.

N.B. The staff here delights in coming up with inventive names for the critters. We didn't ask about Amarullah, but they have another overly aggressive bull elephant named Steroid, and when one of their black Rhino males beat up a female, they named him Ike. Aww, how sweet.

Praise Jesus and the Killing Shoe

Late Sunday Night

We’re staying at a five star hotel in this Game Reserve. We have our own little bungalow, complete with “romantic” green mosquito netting. Sure, there’s a giant cricket in our bathroom, but hey, she’s a lady cricket, and it makes it a little less uncomfortable. Maybe not. In any case, after the magnificent game drive, we had dinner with our jeep mates and James. Lizzie was at the old folks end of the table, including a South African General, his wife, and a retired British Airforce Engineer, the father/uncle/partner of Veruca Salt, who was sitting on my side, and who now is our arch nemesis, as she will be with us on our next two drives. Also on my side was James at the head of the table, and to his right and left a Welsh couple. Wales! How cute is that? Ol’ Veruca Salt is a lovely young British lady, probably around our age, but she is “sweet on” James, who, admittedly, is adorable, and she showcases this crush by talking about ALL THE AMAZING PLACES SHE’S BEEN! OH MY GOD! I’VE BEEN TO AUSTRALIA! ISN’T THAT WACKY? THEY HAVE THE MOST POISONOUS SPIDERS AND SNAKES AND BLAH BLAH BLAH LOVE ME.” Anyway, compare this to James’ story about the ear-spider, which I will tell you now. Stop reading if you are squeamish (Lisa P), and pick up here ** I wish someone had given this option to me, because I’m never going to sleep again.

So the adorable James is training to be a ranger for Krueger National Park, which is the big one in South Africa. He was playing cricket with a couple of the other fellas he’s training with, and suddenly a spider bit him on the ear. (I couldn’t tell exactly what kind of spider it was. With his South African accent, it sounded like “sex spider”, and we know that can’t be right). Not only did the sex spider bite his ear, the jerk also laid eggs in it. Utterly Rude. So since he was in the bush, he didn’t have immediate access to medical attention, and using a mirror had to cut the spider eggs out of his own ear with a swiss army knife. SICK. There was also spontaneous pus ejection when another cricket ball hit him in the ear later on that day. James, you are looking less cute by the moment. He had some other pretty disgusting stories, which leads me to the following.

**We get back to our room, after hearing about the various biting ants, poisonous spiders and scorpions which live where we are going to sleep. Immediately I kill a big ant, and then spots THE WORLD’S BIGGEST SPIDER on Lizzie’s pillow. We panic for a minute, screaming like the sissies we are (note, James said about fifty times that Africa is not for sissies. Thanks. We’re sissies.) Obviously we’ll never sleep if the spider lives, so we try to kill it, and it zips under Lizzie’s sheets. GREAT! We throw back the sheets ala Maria Von Trap in the Sound of Music, but the damn thing scuttles out of view. Finally, I spot it on the side of the bed, and hit it with the complementary bible four or five times, which stuns it, and Lizzie finishes the job.

Praise Jesus.

So it turns out the mosquito netting isn’t just for ambiance. We killed three more ginormous spiders with my shoe, which we hereby dub “the killing shoe”. I’m sure we’ll sleep just fine tonight. Yes. Just fine…

Game Drive 1

Sunday Evening--Pilanesberg

So we went out to the front at 4pm for high tea (but really for cookies) and then met our guide, James, who would be driving our jeep and educating us about the animals. There were 9 people aboard, and no seatbelts. We moved from the lodge onto a red dusty path, which took us into the wilderness. Normally I hate the wilderness, but we had a guide who had a rifle, so it was okay. The first thing we saw was a Rhino, a Drunk Rhino who had been tranquilized earlier that day to have her ears tagged, so the other occupants of the jeep reported. At this point, Lizzie and I realized that everyone on our jeep except us had been together for a day, at least, so we were the newcomers and ostracized immediately. And that’s how we like it. We saw a bunch of Zebras, bush bucks, more (sober) rhinos, and a lovely leopard who was showing off her camo by hiding in some bushes. At first it felt like the Emperor’s new clothes. First one person saw her, and then another, and I was like “FOOLS! THERE IS NO LEOPARD!” but then I saw her, and even got a picture as she bemusedly stared at us, and moved on. The next stop was the watering hole, and yes my friends, HIPPOS! AWESOME! They gaped and grunted at us, and I got a great picture of a yawning hippo. Inside his mouth was marbles, I swear. Lots of them!

The highlight of the drive was around 8ish. It was dark, and the Western Pride of Lions, including 18 Lionesses, were totally trying to take down a Wildebeast. Everyone except for Lizzie and I were excitedly waiting for the crunch of bones, but unfortunately or fortunately, depending on whether you’re the predator or the prey, the Wildebeast escaped, and there were no death throes in the wild that night, at least that we heard. The lowlight was being smacked in the face by oodles of bugs as we drove at 100kph (I don’t know how fast that is in miles. Stupid metric system) to see the lions. James said the worst was when a dung beetle flew into your face. I would agree. (Also, during the drive, James stopped to show us a Mozambique cobra, and then a Red Toad, but then accidentally ran over the toad and felt really really bad. Like excessively bad.)

Now, for facts we learned about animals that we didn’t want to know:

Brown Hyenas mark territory with something called “anal paste”, which starts off as one color, and is used as a timing device. The longer it’s sitting on something (branches, bushes, Paris Hilton) the darker it gets.

When a male elephant is ready to mate (that is, in must), testosterone drips from his trunk. Not the one on his face.

Ivory Tree Game Lodge

Ivory Tree Game Lodge.

Sunday Afternoon

We were welcomed by a champagne glass full of guava juice. Please note at this point, we were still in our traveling clothes, dirty, smelly, yes, those traveling clothes from Friday. Our bags were delivered to our room, and we were sent to the buffet to eat lunch. Aw hell yeah. It’s amazing here—we have our very own pet cricket, Otumbo, who lives on the bathroom door. Above is a picture of her next to the lucky Half-Dollar Erin gave me. Thanks Erin! I assume he will act as our conscience, and if we try to make Elephant leg footstools, he’ll sing us a song about not poaching. There’s a decorative pond with a crocodile in it. For reals. I thought it was fake, and then when we came back, it had moved. It says to say hi to the Alligator gang back in Mass. There’s also another tree full of African weaver birds, which is pretty rad. We went to our room, excitedly reunited with our bags, and our joy was immediately tempered by the pile of soggy socks and underwear. I was not intending to wear my candy corn socks on the game drive, but now I has no choice. Lizzie bought a pair at the gift shop, but they only have men’s sizes, so they go up to her armpits. Hot!

Oh yes, I had packed bug spray, but my soggy bag no longer contains bug spray. Why would you take that? Seriously. In any case, there was some in our room, but I immediately dropped it, and broke the nozzle. Lizzie had already sprayed up, and I tried to jury rig it, but immediately after covering myself in a sputtering spray, a bug flew into my face.

Delicious!

Next stop—high tea and the game drive.

Bowls and John

Sunday—En Route to Pilanesberg

So we wandered around the grounds of our hotel while we waited for our transport to take us from Jo-burg to the airport where we’d hopefully be reunited with our luggage, and then off to Pilanesberg, where we’ll meet the hippos. On one of our spins, we saw a bunch of old people dressed in white playing Bowls. Boy, does that look like fun. It seems like bocci to me—that is, you throw out a little ball, and then throw bigger balls (ha ha) and try to get the closest to it. The best part was the one player (see photo) who grabbed a big hand full of butt long enough for me to take a picture and then some. The other best part was that there was an attendant cat, who just sat watching the game being played. I have a picture of him, too, in case anyone is interested.

So our driver came at 10:00 to “collect us”, as the receptionist said, and he was an older white South African guy who had clearly spent too much time in the sun. His name was John, and he whisked us away to Jo-burg airport, and then walked in with us to the luggage people in case there needed to be yelling. John rules. So our luggage was in fact there, but here’s some more good news bad news: it was raining in Atlanta when we took off, and since our baggage didn’t make our flight, it sat on the tarmac for a very long time, and all of our clothes are soaked with runway water. YAY! But we didn’t find that out until we got to the Ivory Tree Game Lodge, so it was like an extra special surprise.

More about John. So John was brilliant. He answered all of our annoying touristy questions (what kind of tree is that? What kind of tree is that? How about that one? And that one?) and then went on to tell us all about the South African Power Crisis, the Zimbabwe economic disaster (turns out John is originally from Zimbabwe) and also that I (Shannon) have been pronouncing Lesotho wrong my whole life (Lu-sue-tu, for anyone who wants to know). We really wanted to ask about, you know, Apartheid and stuff, but despite our weariness (each of us did a whip-lash falling asleep turn in the car) we decided that would be socially awkward and insensitive. He also told us about the platinum mines, and we saw all of the shanty towns built up by the migrant workers, most from Swaziland and Zimbabwe. The poverty was intense, and most people are living in tin shacks. There were goats and cows free ranging, but honestly, through Jo-burg and Pretoria, the landscape looked a lot like the American South West. John told us that the free range cows cause trouble in the winter, because the tar gets hot, and they sleep on it, and cars totally run into them. Oh the car-nage. (right? Huh?) The origin of John is a mystery. He’s worked in Ethiopia, Qatar, Sudan, and a million other places, and when we asked him what he did, he made a vague reference to a transport company—perhaps a diamond smuggler? He told us all about the outdoor sports (including bowls), and also, his ride was a Benz. Perhaps he didn’t work for any company, but just seeks out interesting tourists to tell his stories too. In any case, we hope he is our driver for the return, because then we’d be friendly enough to ask about all the racism.

Breakfast Blog

Sunday Morning--Jo-burg

So it's 8ish am here. It gets super "Oh my god it must be noon and I've overslept and maybe I'll never get my luggage" bright at about 5am, and since there is no clock in our room, we had to turn on our cellphones and drunkenly do the math to figure out what time it actually was. When we asked the bellhop (who was not a giraffe) last night if there was a clock in our room, he looked at us like we were nuts. Touche, bellhop.

A few notes. One of the most important things to do in a new country is watch tv. This is double true on a new continet. There's mostly American tv down here, but their "sports" channel is hilarious. Cricket? Cycling? DARTS? I'll give you cricket and cycling as legit sports, but we all know darts is total bs. Also, they had an informercial for this magic stuff that got rid of scars and liver spots which was made from SNAIL GOO. GROSS. They kept talking about snail goo like it wasn't disgusting, and on the infomercial, happy housewives were letting these huge-ass anthropomorphized snails crawl over their hands which were then all slimy with snail snot. HOW IS THIS A GOOD SELL? In any case, we showered and brushed our teeth, which was totally awesome. As most of you know how vain I (Shannon) am, you can only imagine how difficult it is that I have no product in my hair, and have been wearing the same pair of pants since Friday. I'm sure everyone would love to see a picture, but I'm the camera woman, so screw that. In any case, I am hoping to get downstairs and take a picture of our breakfast entertainment, which consisted of the African weaver birds outside the restaurant window.

So we had the continental breakfast, and there was fruit and granola. Aw hell yeah. Delicious, life giving granola. Oh, and water! It is so arid here, and if it weren't for the potential of traveler's diarrhea (yay) we would be mainlining from the tap. Anyhow, we looked out the window, and since Shannon's Mom used to make her watch Nature shows, er, that is, since Shanon got to enjoy nature shows with her Mom, she knew that the yellow birds with the creepy red eyes weaving nests (okay, so that was a give away too) with long strands of grass were, well, weaver birds. It was pretty awesome to watch them work, and their deftness with just their beak put our manual dexterity skills to shame, as cereal to spoon to mouth was presenting problems so early in the morning.

After we leave here, we go to the airport and (hopefully) retrieve our luggage, and then it's off to Pilanesburg to see some Hippos. Let's see who gets eaten first! (Hint: It will be Shannon)