Intimate Encounters

Thus far our most intimate encounters with wildlife have been with ticks. The dark brown, round little bugs started attentively waiting on us while hiking in Blyde River. Groups of two or three perched on the ends of the tall grass and flung themselves onto our pants as we passed. They stayed with us when we went to the first park in Swaziland as well, apparently attracted by the glow of my now-stained khaki pants.

One would think the herds of blesbok that wandered through our campsite at Malalotja in western Swaziland would have trumped the significance of the tick, but they never got in as close. When we hiked through the grass-covered mountains that were eerily similar to the tundra-covered land around Unalaska, especially when the fog rolled in, the blesbok stayed near the entrance of the park, but the ticks came with us.

Malalotja

                                              

Blesbok 

After hiking in Malaotja we hitchhiked, took a minibus, and hiked to get to Mlilwane Park. Carrying our excessively heavy bags to the hostel in the park we passed small herds of brown, deer-like inyala with thin white stripes and massive ears and placid groups of grazing zebras. We were too tired to take any photos or to notice if our constant tiny companions still accompanied us. In our tent that night we heard loud grunting, like a very angry pig, and assumed it was a dangerous hippo walking near our tent. It turns out it was just an impala. Who knew such lithe, graceful animals sounded so gruff? During our six-hour long hike the next day up Execution Mountain, we hardly saw any animals, but the ticks never failed to appear. Maybe they got a taste of the blood from the people who used to be pushed from the top of the mountain by warriors for wronging the king, but I doubt it. I think they were just opportunists looking for action.

The next day we took minibuses to Hlane National Park. After setting up camp and washing some clothes, an ostrich ambled by our tent and tried to eat our laundry soap. Personally I was glad she didn’t go for my drying underwear or the bag of plums, though, after reading all the “ostriches are dangerous” warning signs, I would have gladly sacrificed my khaki pants to her had she tried. I finally thought our intimate animal relationships were changing. While waiting for our evening game drive to begin, Jeanette decided to walk over to a small pond near the camp and quickly came to get me – three hippos and five rhinos were hanging out not far from the electric fence around the camp.  The only rhino I ever saw in Tanzania was so far away I could barely identify it. When the game drive started, the group of rhinos walked across the road. We were about 20 feet from them; close enough to see their tiny eyes and the scratches in the mud that coated their hides. That felt very up-close and personal, and we finally thought perhaps our buddy-buddy relationship with the ticks would be supplanted, until the guide stopped to teach us about local culture.

White Rhino - 50 ft

He stopped the truck and cut a small branch from the Swazi tree. He explained that during an annual ritual in December, young boys went and cut branches from these types of trees. They used the branches to dance before the king. Those whose branches were still fresh and green were said to be true virgins whereas those with wilted branches were not. Our guide said that a similar dance took place with the girls in September using reeds. No reeds grew nearby, so, to simulate, he plucked a blade of grass. Perched on the tip, waiting for us, was our good friend, the tick. It’s a shame I accidentally destroyed our bottle of bug spray.       

 We have seen other animals on this trip. Last night we saw a few elephants, but they were too obscured by trees to get any good photos. Plenty of warthogs have trotted by with their babies in tow and tails flying straight in the air. This morning we saw a few wildebeest and two giraffes, though the giraffes always seemed to be on the opposite side of the fence that divides the park into sections so we never got any good photos. Also on our list are crocodiles, a baby crocodile, waterbucks, one kudu, a bazillion impala, vultures, herons, starlings, and a mongoose. No predators yet, but soon, maybe. We’ve also met many nice people at the hostels and campsites.

Warthog

Impala

Something Something Vulture

White Rhino - 25ft

It's true what they say about doxycycline...

Things have only been on the upswing since the failed mugging attempt and the 3-week booking schedule of the huts in Limpopo.  We’ve been based out of Graskop in the Mpumalanga region for the past week staying at a great hostel.  We did day hikes our first two days then went on a 3-night backpacking trip on the Blyde River Canyon Trail, followed by a short day hike this morning and then back to the hostel in Graskop.

It feels good to get out hiking and the backpacking trip was very easy as our packs were light (we left stuff at the hostel) and it wasn’t too far in between huts.  The trail was fairly well marked, but not well maintained.  It was very overgrown and there were various intersections that were confusing.   As opposed to the huts in Limpopo you had to book three weeks in advance, we had the trail and huts entirely to ourselves (and possibly the ghost in the third hut).  Our views were wide open as we traversed open prairies with huge rock outcroppings.  The second day we slept right next to an awesome canyon complete with waterfall.  We got to the hut just before a big storm and it was nice to watch it rain from a dry locale. 

Last night we were at Old Miners’ Hut, and again had it to ourselves.  We got there early in the afternoon and had a leisurely afternoon reading about Swaziland and Namibia (trying to plan ahead).  We went to bed early and were awoken sometime in the night by a massive thunder and lightning storm very close by.  The hut we were in had quite a few other rooms and the wind from the storm kept slamming the doors; that sound combined with the loud thunder and eerie brightness of the lightning strikes through the windows made for the perfect situation to lie awake and let your imagination take hold with thoughts of ghosts or other guests were didn’t know about.

This morning we did a short day hike into part of the canyon.  The trail was steep and slippery after all the rain last night so we opted not to go all the way to the bottom.  We got back to the hostel in Graskop before the rains hit again, and tonight we splurged on a room instead of camping, and I’m happy for it as it hasn’t stopped raining since we got here.

The weather overall has been quite nice with lots of sunshine.  In fact, I’d go so far as to say it’s been downright HOT.  Luckily this area is high and seems to have a relatively constant cool breeze.  We started our days here in short sleeve t-shirts to accommodate the heat, but our bodies are not coping well with the sun.  Doxycycline (malaria meds) can have many, many side effects, the first of note being increased sensitivity to the sun.  I got an immediate bad burn to the back of my neck; possibly I’m still not accustomed to my short hair.  We both got burns on our arms.  While on a 4-hour day hike we applied sun screen before leaving and then twice more on the hike and still ended up with burns on our arms and hands.  We left for the backpacking trip worried enough to switch to long sleeve shirts despite the heat. (Anne’s side note: Yeah, I wore full-fledged khaki shirt and pants and looked like a moron to keep the sun off and I still had horrible side effects. Of course, it could have been my body rejecting the khaki…) On the second day my bottom lip was sunburned and swollen.  I was getting weird, severe headaches for days at a time.  We were both drinking a decent amount of water, yet were hardly peeing (and anyone who’s been on a road trip with me knows this means there is something awry).   Back at the hostel we googled side effects of doxycycline and sure enough, we have them all.  This kind of sucks since we have a year’s supply each...  I may give it another week and go from there.

We left for our day hike around 7:30 this morning and on the way to the trail we saw about 10 different baboons ranging in size from big male to tiny baby.  It was awesome!!!!  Then we saw some vervet monkeys later in the day.  My first wildlife beyond lots of frogs, lizards, one snake, and a mongoose.  Also we saw a blue tailed swallow, which is a rare and quite lovely bird. (And should qualify us as highly skilled birders.)

Tomorrow we head to Swaziland!  Unless the minibus connections don’t really work out and then who knows!

It got better.

Well, we wrote a decent length post about how things got better and we did some lovely hiking and even posted a photo of Debengi Falls, but somehow posting via Picassa didn't actually work and we lost the post. Suffice it to say, life got better, traveling is more fun, we've been hiking near Blyde Canyon for a day now and traveling here via minibus was very easy due to helpful people. Now we're deciding how long we want to hike here, if it would be easier to do an organized tour of hard to reach places in Namibia and Botswana, where to go in Swaziland, etc.... Hmmm....

Trees are nice.

Look, we really are here together! 

View from the Graskop day hike.

Tall trees rock.

Forest Falls near Glaskop.

Well, that was stupid.

We open this entry with an apology to our worry-wart parents, siblings, and friends. We’re fine, just dumb.

South Africa is turning out to be different than we expected, mostly due to a series of poor decisions on our part, and the fact that prices went up during the 2010 World Cup and never went down. We arrived on Wednesday evening and decided to get a SIM card for our phone at the airport to make coordinating logistics easier.  In some ways not getting one there was smart – the guy was charging us 100 times the actual price. But the reason we didn’t is that a Dutch Harbor SIM phone does not work with a South African phone. Ooops. Got cheap phone and card the next day, but now stuck with other phone, too….

Our hostel the first night in Johannesburg was skeezy and the only other occupants seemed to be a drunk couple that we never met having loud sex and a grumpy traveling sales man.  We decided to relocate to Soweto. In route we spent hours trying to understand apartheid at the city’s exceptional museum. (Though the museum was inexplicably attached to an amusement park/casino…)

Soweto is a black township created outside of Jo-burg during apartheid and is actually safer than Jo-burg itself. We camped two nights at what was touted as one of the best hostels in South Africa. Turns out the “campsite” is a patch of dirt under a very bright light next to rooms full of loud Germans and around the corner from the loud party music and bonfire. Are we getting too old for the backpacker scene??

While in Soweto we took a rather nice bicycle tour of the historic sites where the student uprisings took place, musicians’ homes, Nelson Mandela’s old digs, and other local “color.” The guide and the history were great. Lunch was pleasantly bizarre. It consisted of a slightly hollowed out chunk of bread filled with cucumber salad, chili sauce, French fries, an egg, and a slice of cheese. The other local color was visiting a shabeen, or a tin hut with benches around the edge where people sit and drink (very similar to the mud huts where people sat and drank in Tanzania). We were herded into the shack with six other tourists to “meet the locals” and drink the local beer.  The two old men in the room seemed uninterested in meeting tourists, and submitted unenthusiastically to having their photos taken. (Wouldn’t you for a free beer?) The entire encounter was so contrived that it was more embarrassing and awkward than culturally enlightening. Other than that bit of stupidity, the bike tour was nice, and we learned a good bit about the oppressiveness of apartheid.

Here’s where our own stupidity came into play. When deciding where to go next we found out about a cool trail system with huts through the mountains with a fun-sounding backpackers reasonably close by. We were completely done with the city, so this sounded ideal and our hearts were set on it. Not being sure we could get bus tickets to the region, we didn’t book huts and just focused all of our efforts on getting tickets out of the city. We were told we had to pay for them that night, so we hopped a minibus to Park Station in downtown Jo-burg. Then it started to downpour. Then we got stuck in traffic for over an hour. By the time we got to the bus station it was getting dark in a not-so-safe part of town. Oops. We got to the ticket counter safely only to find out that their computer system was down, and we could not purchase our tickets that night anyhow. Using our cell phone, since their phones were also down, they called the office elsewhere to extend our purchasing deadline. Next we went to the information counter to find out where to catch a minibus back to Soweto. Her answer was straightforward, “Don’t be stupid. You’ll get mugged. Take a taxi.” So we did. (So much for a daily budget.)

The next morning we were extremely grateful to have spent the money on a cab. While walking to the bus station from where the minibus dropped us (three blocks away), we were constantly approached by people seeing if we wanted help. One particularly insistent “helper” was with us for almost an entire block, mumbling the whole time. He was much closer to Jeanette, who was having trouble understanding him and just tried to ignore him. At one point, however, his words penetrated, and it became clear that he was saying “Give me your cell phone and wallet. I’ll shoot you. I’m telling you I’ll shoot you.” Jeanette kept replying, “We’re fine. We don’t need any help,” and pretended not to understand. Anne had no idea that this was going on, just that Jeanette grabbed on to her elbow and started walking faster. He eventually stopped following us. Thank goodness he didn’t really have a gun.   

We made it to the bus station, got tickets, and got the hell out of the city. So here we are in our lovely humid mountain backpacker getaway with no public transportation, no promised pizza oven and hiking trails (stupid free guide book), no way to contact the trail office on a Sunday, and information from another guest that the hut system is full and had to be booked three weeks ago. Ooops. Hopefully tomorrow we’ll get some good news from the trails office, otherwise we’ll day hike and head out of here soon. Limpopo region is very beautiful and we’d like to explore more, but it’s very difficult to navigate without a car. However, we’ve learned important lessons about planning ahead, and it’s still really nice to be out of the city. Also, South African vegetarian sausages are really good, which is great, since we’ve had them for three of our last four meals.    

In South Africa

We've successfully arrived in Johannesburg, South Africa after three hours of sleep to get a flight from Tampa to Atlanta, a bizarre, sugar-filled trip through the Coca-Cola Factory (what else do you do with 10 hours in Atlanta on minimal sleep?), and a 15-hour flight straight from Atlanta to Jo-berg. Needless to say, we're exhausted and probably ought to figure out what we're doing the next few days.... Well, getting here on buddy passes was half the battle. :) (Thanks, Michael!!!) We'll keep in touch. 

Highlights from the Midwest and Florida

Before the Africa part of our trip begins, here are some highlights from the Midwest and Florida part of our trip (aside from seeing wonderful family and friends):

-Experiencing my first tornado warning ever (sirens were going off and we went to the basement and everything).

-Going to the St. Louis Arch and the City Museum, a giant indoor/outdoor jungle gym of reused junk and fake caverns and many other things.

-Going to an actual denture clinic with Anne to get her flipper adjusted.

-Getting to two new states: Missouri and Iowa.

-Taking four kids under the age of 10 camping (we are NOT having children).

-Seeing the guy who played Tom Riddle in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets in an off-off-off-Broadway version of Black Swan (sadly, only Anne saw this).

-Mixing the germs from one niece and one nephew to create an awesome new superflu in my body.

-Having my sister cut my hair while hearing such expressions as “oh my goodness” and “oh Jeanette, I’m so sorry.”

-Realizing we leave tomorrow and today is our last day to get everything done.