Ryan's Journal

Today was obviously not going to improve upon yesterday’s airborne sharks, so I told Audrey to sleep in while I did a quick walk along the coast searching for whales. Breakfast at our B&B provided a reminder that no matter how similar a foreign country seems to home, there are tiny differences – our pancakes were served topped with apple (not particularly unusual) and sour cream (yowza). After checking out of the sour creamery we did a loop through town looking for whales, encountering the Hermanus “whale crier” who stood on a point with a vuvuzela that he blew whenever he sighted a whale – even with the vuvuzela, his was a job that I coveted.

Our drive to Swellendam was through very pretty farmland and included flocks of huge blue cranes, and the town of Swellendam turned out to have a tremendously nice place for us to stay at Gaikou Lodge, and incredible food hosted by a very pleasant Scottish man at the Powell House. The afternoon activity was a visit to Bontebok National Park, a place we targeted mostly because we noticed that it was along our route, but that provided more than enough animals to keep us entertained for several hours.

Tomorrow we’re heading in the direction of the town of Oudtshoorn, aka “the ostrich capital of the world”. This portion of the trip continues to be unplanned, with a nightly perusal of the map giving us a general idea for where we go the next day, subject to detours for any interesting distraction we might discover en route.

For those wondering if we had better luck with sharks today, twice a great white leaped out of the water and destroyed the dummy seal we were towing, so it was an all right day, to say the least. The first shark was totally airborne – tail completely out of the water – while a photo of the second is posted below in order to ensure you never go in the water again.

The cage diving was again slow – the other two boats both got good looks, but the sharks were ignoring our boat for some reason. We actually had the opportunity to get in the cage this time, and we got a couple of passes from big sharks, but there weren’t enough sharks staying around for everyone in the boat to get a chance to sit in a flimsy cage in freezing water with a massive predator swimming a few feet away. GoPro video will have to follow in a future post as I haven’t had time to look and see what I got, much less edit it down to just include the parts with a massively scary shark in them.

After a morning of watching sharks fly through the air we headed east and spent the night in Hermanus, a seaside town known for having a huge concentration of right whales viewable from its shores. That said, as I write this at sunrise from the B&B’s balcony overlooking the sea, the whales are being shy, although I’m told they also swim into the old harbor so we’ll give that a look after breakfast before we meander further along the coast to see what we find.

We were told that taking the cableway to the top of Table Mountain was a “must do” in Cape Town, so this morning we drove the scenic route along the coast and to the base of the flat-topped mountain that dominates the region, and then boarded a contraption with a rotating floor that holds 65 people and travels along a flimsy cable slung from the top of the mountain. We emerged impressed and alive at the top, where extraordinary views of the entire peninsula awaited – this one lived up to its “must do” billing.

After a lunch at the cafe on top of Table Mountain that consisted of ostrich stew (which set us back a mere $8) we were back down the cableway and off to the national botanical gardens. Audrey was most impressed by South Africa’s national flower, the protea, while I was a fan of the “Boomslang Canopy Walk”, a walkway that sat on thirty-foot tall metal supports and led through the tree canopy, and that we were forewarned was designed to sway disconcertingly in the wind (it definitely did). Our final activity of the day was a return to the Cape of Good Hope, where we again saw ostriches and a new antelope for me – the bontebok – and Audrey got to do her first driving on the left side of the road.

Tomorrow it’s back to shark diving in the morning. Heavy wind at sunset had me fearing I would need a barf bag for our five hours on the water, but the marine forecast is still calling for calm seas, so hopefully the sharks will be playful, the sea gods will be gentle, and my breakfast will stay where it’s supposed to.

For anyone hoping for shark videos: we saw lots of shark attacks from above the water, but the big fish weren’t feeling playful and never came near the cage today; of the three boats at Seal Island today, only one got a shark, and he didn’t even stay long enough for everyone on the boat to get a chance in the cage. We have another trip scheduled for Wednesday, so hopefully we’ll get a chance to jump in a flimsy metal cage with the ocean’s most powerful predator then.

Despite not seeing them from the water, watching the sharks attack seals, with many of the seals escaping from those attacks, was pretty incredible. One of the gals on staff noted that the hunting activity was the best they’ve seen in a couple of months, and the entire crew seemed a bit baffled as to where all of the sharks had gone once they had their breakfasts.

After the morning sharks, our afternoon was filled with many penguins at Boulders Beach, followed by a drive to the Cape of Good Hope via Table Mountain National Park. We got our first two right whales of the trip just offshore, and Audrey got her first ostrich and baboon. We finished the day with a drive down to the tip of the cape and a short hike up to an overlook where we could look out at two oceans while simultaneously hoping that our car was secure from the baboons patrolling the parking lot. The view was great, the car survived, and we may be back tomorrow to see if we can find more whales and perhaps a zebra or two.

There is a scene in Planet Earth that shows a wild dog hunt, and David Attenborough notes how rare it is to be able to see these endangered animals hunting. Today was my last game drive after a month on safari, and it was spent watching wild dogs hunting. Had I seen wild dogs hunting at the beginning of the safari I would not have appreciated how special a sight it was, but after all of the experiences in Africa, finishing the journey watching such a rare event was a perfect ending to an extraordinary adventure.

“Safari” is actually a Swahili word meaning “long journey”, so after 33 wonderful days of game drives my long journey has come to its end. 33 days ago I hardly knew the names of any animals here. Today I’m leaving knowing how to recognize several birds by their calls, how to watch impala to see if a predator is nearby, and what a cheetah’s behavior will be when hunting. I’ve seen a lion defending its kill from hyenas, thousands upon thousands of migrating wildebeest, leopards prowling a few feet from the vehicle, and dozens of other mind-blowing sights. “Luck” doesn’t seem to begin to describe how fortunate I’ve been, both during the trip and to have been given the opportunity to do a trip like this one.

Tomorrow starts a new phase of the trip, and I’ll be getting up early to catch a flight to Cape Town where I’ll meet Audrey and start the next portion of the odyssey. While the game drives are over, in a couple of days there will be sharks…

Just before dinner tonight, while everyone was standing around the dinner area talking, a massive hyena ambled up to the door, looked us all over, and then moved on. Walking around outdoors after dark remains a bad idea in Africa.

Game drive #1 today was the first time I’ve hit the emergency brake on the safari vehicle (translated: I emphatically told the driver to stop) after I saw a leopard lounging behind some brush a few feet off the road. This leopard is apparently a famous resident named Rockfig, Jr., and she posed for us over several minutes, giving the best show of any leopard I’ve seen in Africa. She is a star, and clearly knows it. Following our time with the leopard we returned to the den of the wild dogs, where the puppies were less active than they were the other day, but still entertaining.

Game drive #2 started off slowly, with a couple of rhinos obscured by brush as the best find. However, after we had stopped for drinks at sunset a lion’s roar echoed across the landscape, and we were quickly back in the vehicle and off to view two big male lions by spotlight. Lions are impressive during the day, but seeing two big males scanning the horizon while illuminated only by a narrow beam of light takes things up a notch.

After nearly four weeks on safari, tomorrow morning is the last game drive of this adventure. I came to Kruger thinking it might be a letdown after the experiences further north, and have been very pleasantly surprised at just how utterly and completely wrong I was.

Shockingly great day for animal sightings: two leopards, a cevet cat, an owl, three rhinos, and my first wild dog sighting in Africa. We saw the dogs this morning at their den – if I was to see one at a pet store I wouldn’t recognize it as anything other than a domestic dog with painted fur, although these guys can take down a zebra. The four puppies ran right up to the vehicle, with the adults looking on. We stayed with them only briefly since a leopard had been sighted nearby, and then we pursued the cat off-road, crashing over bushes to get a view of it by a riverbed. At one point the tracker, seated in an open chair on the front of the vehicle, had the big cat walk only a couple of feet from him, so apparently they don’t eat people during daylight hours.

Our evening game drive was even better. A couple on honeymoon asked if there was any chance of seeing a rhino, since that was the one animal they had not yet seen during their three days at the lodge. Thirty minutes later the guide had patched into the bush news network and found us two rhinos drinking at a waterhole, followed by a third who showed up in a field. After sunset the tracker turned on the spotlight, and the eyes of a cevet cat (something I hadn’t seen before) were one of the first things to be reflected back at us. Finally, when we were just a few hundred meters from the lodge the light picked up another set of eyes, this time belonging to a leopard that was hunting next to the road. For the next two minutes we were surrounded by darkness with a leopard in the beam of the light six feet from us. This leopard was second only to the Magic Bus leopard on my list of favorite cat sightings of the trip.

Three game drives remain at this lodge, after which my time on safari will sadly come to an end as I move on to Cape Town, find the jet-lagged Audrey at the airport, and begin the “sharks from cages” phase of the adventure. The days continue to end with a deep sense of gratitude for having a life in which I get to enjoy all of these magnificent sights and have all of these incredible experiences.

For about ten minutes today, until they wandered back into the bush, rhinos outnumbered people in my immediate vicinity by two-to-one. There was much awesomeness, and I remain a big fan of the low-traffic dirt roads in this park.

Today’s project was a big loop around the southern third of the park. There were no elephant roadblocks along the route, although the biggest herd of cape buffalo I’ve yet encountered stalled traffic for a few minutes – somehow a traffic jam caused by two hundred giant buffalo isn’t annoying like those experienced back home. Later in the day, because I’m a fan of cliches, I dug the headphones out of my bag and put Paul Simon’s Graceland album on repeat, and revelled in the joy of being alive as the music played and I waved at wildlife.

I’ve got three nights scheduled at a private reserve outside of the park starting tomorrow, but am a bit confused about how best to reach the place – while trying to plot a route from a park gate north of here Google maps indicated that one twelve mile stretch of “road” would take an hour and a half to traverse, so I’m thinking it might be prudent to avoid that route and instead try to get there from the main roads outside of the park. The plan (at the moment) is thus to do a small loop in the park, and then leave by ten in order to (hopefully) arrive at the reserve in time for an evening game drive. Wish me luck.

After the wonder of the Serengeti I was worried that Kruger would feel second-rate, but far from it – it’s a completely different experience, and I absolutely, 100% loved the day I just had. The park has both paved and unpaved roads, allowing for interesting route options when going from A to B. The benefit of the paved roads is that they are slightly smoother, and you get to see what animals others have found since people will stop their cars when they see an interesting animal. The benefit of the dirt roads is that they are in great condition, you only see a handful of cars each hour, and when you find an animal you pretty much have it to yourself. Guess which type of road I primarily drove today?

There were a huge variety of animal sightings today, but three in particular stood out. In Kenya and Tanzania the greater kudu was elusive, but the huge and incredibly impressive antelope made numerous appearances today; hopefully before I leave I’ll get a picture worth sharing. My first cats of South Africa were two cheetah that were lounging under a bush for several minutes before something sparked their interest and they went into stalking mode. Based on the lessons learned further north I moved the car approximately where they seemed headed, and after a minute or so had the sleek cats within spitting distance. Shortly thereafter they gave a half-hearted charge towards some waterbuck and I lost them in the bush. Finally, twice today elephants decided to create traffic jams, including a herd of about twenty that occupied a bridge for twenty minutes – when an elephant wants to stand in the road, you let the elephant stand in the road. Earlier in the day a mother elephant with a baby gave me the staredown, and while there might have been a tiny, tiny voice inside saying “you want a piece of me?”, the overwhelming chorus of voices called for a quick and hasty retreat, and I backed up promptly. Elephants continue to be fascinating, and I hope to see many more before leaving this country.

Kruger is a gigantic park, and with their regulations forbidding anyone from being on the roads before 6 AM or after 6 PM, as well as a 50 km/hr speed limit, it is a challenge to see all of it. In the three days that I’m in the park I’ll barely scratch the surface of the far southern region – the upper two-thirds of this 350 km long park will remain a mystery until I come back some day. For anyone considering a trip to Africa, if you don’t want to spend the money for a safari in Tanzania but still want an incredible experience, this seems like the place to go.