I know it’s hard to be sad that we’re going back to Cape Town, but I have found my homeland in the African game reserves. Seriously. I type this from several thousand feet up in the air. I put my headphones in my backpack, which is now under the plane and thus I cannot watch the movie I just downloaded. So I guess I’ll blog all about my safari. I’ll work backwards from today, Saturday, the day before Easter. Not that I’ll be having much of a celebration tomorrow, being in South Africa and all.
This morning I got a wake up call at 0445. Sweet, I got four hours of sleep. But it was hard to be tired or angry when the though penetrated my sleepiness: I would be doing an elephant-back safari for my morning sunrise safari. This time when I say sweet I mean it without sarcasm. I quickly got dressed and was out the door by 0520 to wait for Amy to head over to the jeeps.
It was pitch black out and when we got there only the trackers were there, none of the safari guides. So we waited around until a bunch of other SAS kids showed up who also signed up for this. There were 18 of us doing it together instead of the morning game ride. Elena and Claire had done it the morning before and said it was awesome and definitely worth doing, so I was pretty pleased that I had signed up. I signed up early on the first day. It filled up quickly because everyone wanted to do it. The Lodge also offers a hot-air balloon safari, but they weren’t offering it while we were there due to bad weather.
Now this elephant-back safari cost a pretty penny. Everything at this Lodge was expensive. But we were told it was worth it by enough people. We all managed to squeeze into two of the 4 by 4 jeeps and head off into the reserve to Camp Jabulani where the elephants were located.
The ride over was about a half an hour and rather uneventful, it was still pretty dark and had started sprinkling so there wasn’t much out.
When we got there we signed our lives away on a waiver and were briefed by the man running Camp Jabulani, Ian. He told us all about the 13 year old male, Jabulani, who is the leader of the pack of elephants on their reserve. There are about 12 or so adult elephants that they have trained on this reserve. Jabulani had been found stuck in the mud by a bunch of miners after he had been deserved by his pack. That made me so sad that they just abandoned him, but what could the other elephants really do? They couldn’t call for help or simply pull him out. The miners freed him and released him to an endangered animals organization. They tried to release him into the wild but he was too used to humans by that point and the other elephants wouldn’t accept him, nor did he really want to be accepted. So they had to take him back in.
Also, in Zimbabwe there was an incident where they had too many elephants so they were taking all the abandoned, orphans and getting rid of them. They took him in at Camp Jabulani and they formed the pack that Jabulani leads. This was a little while ago, since then they have trained them for elephant-back safaris and several of the females have given birth to babies.
They train the elephants when they turn 5 years old. They teach them all sorts of commands like pick up the trainers stick if he drops it, pick up a foot, wiggle their ears. There are 80 commands in all. They treat the elephants so well, the elephants easily comply with their commands and are rewards with some type of pellets. But you can just tell they are loved. Unlike the elephants in India. The African elephants seemed bigger to me. I know that their ears are bigger and are in the shape of the continent of Africa. They are beautiful animals.
We were told that they do safaris in the morning and evening on them, but the rest of the day is spent out on the reserve. The elephants go out with the trainers and chill and eat all the trees they want. They can pretty much do as they please since the reserve is so big. During the night the animals stay in the stable.
The trainers geared them up with saddles for us to sit on while Ian gave us all this information. Jabulani came up and we were able to feed him food pellets. We placed them into the end of his trunk and he took them back into his mouth. The end of their trunks have two lips that can easily grasp things and pick things up off of the ground.
We all got up onto the platform with a friend and got ready to get onto the elephants. Amy and I got on first and ended up on Jabulani! That was really cool. This elephant is famous in these areas. Google him. We walked out and waited for everyone else. We would be leading the safari. Our elephant guide was Revesail from Zimbabwe. He would be taking us around and answering all of our questions, of which there were many.
Once everyone was ready we headed out onto the reserve. There were about 6 babies with us. They’re too young to train, but they follow their mothers and come and play along during the safaris. One of them is only 4 months old! It was so adorable, it was the smallest, cutest elephant I have ever seen. Lana, I now truly understand your love of elephants. This baby, Parissos, or something like that, was probably only 3 feet tall and didn’t know how to properly use its trunk yet. So it hung awkwardly in the way as he traipsed around.
The clouds looked a little threatening, but the weather was absolutely perfect. We were out for our sunrise safari. We walked slowly through the reserve while Revesail pointed out the different birds in the trees that we could see and hear. They were beautiful colors and patterns. One of them that he pointed out he referred to as Zazu. I’m glad we can all find common ground on the Lion King. But seriously, that reference helped a lot.
We saw some impala off in a herd, some zebras off in the distance, and giraffes. This part of the reserve was different than the other parts we’d been to already. This was more how I would have pictured a safari in Africa. We were up slightly on a rolling hill and could see for miles. There were the trees with only green and branches up top. You know what I’m talking about, they’re all over the Lion King. And if you haven’t seen that movie, you really should.
We could see a giraffe at least a mile off. It was so crazy. We saw a ton of warthogs and they were up really close. Much closer than we had seen yet on any of our game drives. We were led all over. In front of us on foot were Ian and another game leader. Ian was first and carried a gun, it looked like a rifle. It was just in case of any animal attacks or issues, since elephants can be attacked out here. Well, I guess so can humans. But especially the little baby elephants. Throughout the safari the baby elephants would wander off into the brush for awhile then come back and rejoin us. They were free to do what they wanted. They knew to come back, plus they wanted to. They were definitely treated well. Also, throughout the safari the elephants would all stop on their own when they were hungry to grab branches and uproot small trees to eat. They would continue walking while they chomped on their branch.
We all stopped at one point so the guides on foot could take pictures of us on the elephants. Very touristy, but still really cool. We continued on and asked our guide all sorts of questions. The safari went by so quickly, much quicker than the game drives. It felt like we’d only been on the elephants for a half an hour, when in reality it had been over two. As we were heading back Amy asked if we could feed Jabulani. Our guide originally said no, then agreed. But she was sitting behind me and couldn’t reach up. SO he had me feed him twice! It was so cute. He put his trunk back up on his head begging for a treat and I rewarded him.
We got back to the camp and disembarked our elephants. Then we all stood around and took pictures of them. They did a special goodbye to us since they can’t talk, as Ian told us. They picked up a stick, waved their ears at us, then made their elephant noise and sat down so the guides could get off and take off their saddles.
Since there were so many of us at Camp Jabulani out of the 4 jeeps, all the jeeps came to the Camp to pick us up. So Richard was right there with Carson, Greta, Simone, Elena, and Claire. We hopped back on and went on for a little while longer on the game drive. Such a pleasant surprise instead of being driven straight back to the Lodge. One of the boys who was supposed to go on the elephant-back safari had cancelled the night before deciding that he wouldn’t want to get up early since he would be drinking. Another guy opted out of the last game drive to sleep in because he had drank too much. Honestly, what a waste. This was why most of didn’t drink, or we had a glass of wine with dinner.
Apparently the morning game drive was really uneventful and they only saw giraffes and small impalas and things like that. That made me so glad we’d chosen this morning for our elephant-back safari. Amy and I had originally been regretting it the day before that we weren’t going with Elena and Claire. But this seemed to work out perfectly.
We drove around for about an hour looking at impala, kudu, and warthogs. Nothing too big, but all really cool stuff. We drove through different parts of the reserve that we hadn’t seen before. We saw some waterbuck and stuff like that out in the fields. Since it had been raining all night and on and off in the morning, the ground was really muddy and we kept splashing through puddles. It started to rain again. Everyone already had ponchos except for me and Amy. We didn’t really care, but they stopped the vehicle soon after and gave them to us without any mention of it. Emmanual and Richard were so awesome. I love them.
We enjoyed driving around and took in the last bits of the fresh air. I felt so connected to this area, the smell of the wet earth, fresh air, and vegetation was so great. I just loved being out of the big city ports we’ve been in. They’ve all been amazing, but this is way more my speed. There had been so much rain the night before, a river that we had driven by the day before he been filled up higher. We drove over a dam that had been a concrete slab of road. There were several inches of water on top of it and we splashed across it. We felt like Moses parting the Red Sea. We looked around at some HUGE spiders. They’re called Golden Orbs. The females, including legs, are about the size of a tennis ball. They’re black with brightly colored orange or yellow highlights. We had been seeing them all over. The males are tiny, about the size of a penny. How does that even happen? Richard got out of the jeep to break off a piece of their web to show to us. It was so strong. Apparently they’ve started using this web in surgeries and injuries involving the eye. They use it for stitches and it leaves no scar behind. That’s so crazy. We headed back across the dam spraying up more water and continued onward.
Sadly we got back to the Lodge around 0930. We quickly went to the gift shop. I bought a little book on Kapama and all the animals on the reserve. I thought it would be cool to have to remember all the animals with these spectacular pictures. Plus there’s all this great information about them in there. Then we all headed off to our rooms to finish packing up and gather our stuff up before going to breakfast. Our room was completely made up. Luckily I’d packed the night before, unsure of how much time we’d have when we got back in the morning after our safari. I managed to fit everything back into my two bags. Then we met up and all went over to check-out and pay our room charges.
Checking out was somewhat of a nightmare. We had all charged drinks from our meals to the room, the elephant-back safaris, stuff from the gift shop, etc. to the rooms. Unfortunately they expect you to pay with one method, aka not splitting it between two people. Well, we weren’t here with family, or boyfriends or girlfriends, or even sharing a room with a good friend. We’d all been paired up alphabetically so we weren’t about to pay for someone else’s expenses in addition to our own. We had to go through and pick out stuff individually what was ours then pay with credit card. It took a little while. Finally we could get some breakfast,
By this point it was almost 1000 and we’d all been up for 5 hours. The breakfast buffet was amazing. Again. Toast, croissants, bacon, cheese, orange juice, and tea. So perfect. The four of us filled up and talked about how we didn’t want to leave here. We didn’t even want to go back to Cape Town, which we loved.
We had to meet at the jeeps with all our stuff at 1015. Somehow we were the only ones there until about 1040. We waited around and took some great pictures on the jeep and with our guide and tracker and basically fooled around until almost 1100. Then we headed off to the Hoedspruit airport about 20 minutes away from the Lodge. Everyone was relatively quiet taking in the last bits of the fresh air and quiet. It was so beautiful. I really could have stayed there forever.
We sped along the dirt road through the reserve and left the gates. We crossed a legitimate road and entered the East Gate Airport. It was only a small stone building. It looked more like a museum than an airport. Our safari group along with some people who worked there were the only people around. Not your typical bustling airport that we all dread. This was surrounded by grass and trees. When we had arrived we had been picked up by jeep on the runway and hadn’t even seen an airport. We weren’t sure there even was one.
The guides all talked for a few minutes in Africans. Then Richard got out of our jeep and unattached the trailer with the bags in it. He told us we had about 40 minutes to do one more game drive since our plane wasn’t here and neither were the other SAS groups traveling back on the plane with us. That’s the great part about having a chartered plane, it doesn’t leave without the group.
We had all been so sad leaving Kapama and begging to stay. We could not have been happier. We left the airport and crossed back over into the reserve. Each of the four jeeps went off into a different direction and Richard led us along. We realized that we didn’t have our tracker, Emmanuel, with us since we had only been planning on going to the airport. We’d have to spot animals on our own.
We didn’t see a whole lot, just some waterbuck and warthogs. This final drive was more about us enjoying the reserve one last time since we’d all become so attached to it. We weren’t as adventurous in our off-roading. Richard didn’t want us to get stuck in the new mud because we didn’t have Emmanuel/any other guy to help if we got stuck, and we had a plane to get back to and catch.
When it ended we really did say goodbye this time. At the airport everyone had already arrived and was all over. We checked out the little souvenir shop that they had, but didn’t find much there. After a few minutes we headed back to our vehicles and were driven out along the runway to our plane. There was no security or anything. The entire plane was, again, all SAS. We were all given tickets for the flight, which was kind of useless. They were the exact same tickets we had been given two days earlier for our flight there. They said April 1, at 0900. But this made little difference, they weren’t checking tickets or anything like that.
We said our goodbyes to our guides. I was so upset to leave Richard. He was the best and had really taken a liking to us girls even though we were chatty and, at times, annoying.
We would be flying to Johannesburg to wait for our connecting flight to Cape Town. Seating was a free for all and I took the first seat I found in the second row with Carson and Simone. The overhead compartments were already full so I had to squish everything under my seat and hold one bag on my lap, which apparently is unacceptable even though it’s a purse.
We got up in the air within minutes and were served a boxed breakfast, if you can even call it that. It was tropical juice (apple, grape, and berries), a cheese and carmelized onion sandwich (SO GOOD), and a plain muffin (DELICIOUS). Almost as soon as they’d finished serving they came back to collect the trash because we were already descending. It was only about a 40 minute flight. I napped for the descent for about 10 minutes. Not enough to make up for all the lost sleep. We were in by 1330.
Our guides and teachers told us to go off and eat and shop in the airport before our flight to Cape Town and that we’d be meeting outside the departures gate at 1630. We had a long layover. So we took buses over to the airport from the plane and the four of us went off. We did a little shopping, bought some World Cup stuff and other things like postcards and little souvenirs. This might be the only chance we get in South Africa to shop since we were going to be back in Cape Town late and tomorrow’s our last day AND it’s Easter. So things probably won’t be open.
We spent about an hour and a half shopping and running into other SAS people. Eventually we decided we wanted to get some food before our flight and get a few drinks since we had the time. It was only 1500. We went to Keg and Aviator’s Irish Pub. There were a bunch of other SASers in there. We ordered some Hunter’s cider and food. Claire and I split a chicken finger, French fry, onion rings platter. It was so good. We all relaxed and joked around in the bar. Austin came and joined us a little while later to drink some more before the flights.
At 1600 we’d finished up and all of a sudden two of the teachers on the ship came running in and told us we had to leave right now for our flight. We started freaking out, thinking we’d somehow heard the wrong time or messed up somehow. Nope. The flight had been moved up. Strange. They told us most of the people were already there and that all the groups were leaving. We had to find our waitress and frantically pay. We were out within minutes and told to run to the ticket counter. They printed out new boarding passes for us and told us to run through security and to our gate. Some of the other teachers were standing around trying to find everyone. They hadn’t been able to locate everyone and they weren’t allowed to make an announcement over the intercom system to page us all.
We rushed through, jumped over the railings and through security. Somehow I got behind a slow moving young man. He stopped to ask every security person questions. Then he proceeded to take out every electronic item in his bag and take off ANYTHING that was metal on his body. The security guys had no patience for his and pushed him through. I just jumped through the check and grabbed all my stuff out of the x-ray machine, just waiting to be stopped for all of this. If I had done any of this in the US I would have been arrested. Then we bolted down to our gate. Everyone was in a huge line boarding. Thank God we made it. We waited about 5 minutes in line to get on. They took all our bags…I was a little skeptical. They were already out of overhead space. Sick. I love how the sorority chicks all travel with HUGE BACK PACKING MOUNTAIN CLIMBING BACKPACKS. Legitimately we were gone for 3 days and 2 nights. My small North Face backpack wasn’t even full. I had only brought a second smaller bag so I could carry it along with me during the days. I really don’t understand. I have only regretted not having one of those bags twice. When we backpacked around Japan for a few days and needed lots of winter clothes, and then in China when we were away for a week in Xi’an and Beijing. They’re just unnecessary and take up way too much space. But great, I’m glad you were able to bring your hair straightener along with you on safari to look good for cheetahs.
They had left a few people behind, giving up on waiting for them. This was a little much in my opinion. They were the ones who fucked up the timing. Yea, the flight didn’t get bumped up, they fucked up the timing. Luckily the last three people came running in a few minutes later. So what would they have done? Paid out of pocket for the next flight back to Cape Town to be back in time for the ship to leave tomorrow evening? You know that the administration would fuck them up the ass with dock time and punishments for a mistake that their staff had made.
While I waited for the plane to take off to use my computer I pulled out the magazine in the backseat pocket. Since I’ve literally been on 12 flights since the New Year (I counted this while waiting for the plane to take off), I’ve come to learn the schedules of planes from the major cities are listed in the backs of all of these magazines including the times and lengths. I look ours up, Saturdays Johannesburg to Cape Town 1640. Our flight boarded at 1610. Just like it said on the ticket. Our flight was always supposed to leave at 1640, just like it does every Saturday. Sick. And what time were we cruising down the runway? 1645.
The two women who had come and gotten us from the pub seemed annoyed that we were even in there and that we were late. I’m sorry, I feel no remorse. So yea, I’m not sorry. We did nothing wrong.
The flight back was uneventful. The girl next to me on the plane was making a list of all the girls on the ship who were in her sorority. ….I’m going to refrain from making any further comments.
Anywho. We got through to the Cape Town airport and waited for our bus to arrive. There were at least 3 or 4 other safari groups on our flight, so there were a lot of us heading back to the ship. It took about a half hour to get back to the ship. We got back first so we didn’t have to wait too long for them to go through all of our stuff to get back onto the ship. The line behind us was hugeee. It was almost 2000 by the time we were back on the ship. Everyone was getting ready quickly to head out for the night. I was going to go out with Elena, Amy, and Claire. I ran into a bunch of people and decided to go out with Becca, Victor, Bea, Holly, and Kelly. A ton of people got in trouble that day on the ship. There had been a Manchester United Chelsea game on tv and a bunch of people had watched it at the bars. We actually watched part of it at the airport bar over drinks. Anyways, a lot of people got wasted and came back to the ship. They were reported and the nurses and doctor went to their rooms to find them. They’re all awaiting hearings. They weren’t allowed off the ship that night or the next day. They’re so ridiculous.
A few of the teachers had surrounded one of the boys when they saw how drunk he was and started telling him how much trouble he was in and he flipped out. Have they never dealt with a drunk person before? Telling them that they’re in huge trouble and trying to get their story from them while they’re drunk is not the thing to do. Wait to have that conversation when they’re sober the next day. This kid wasn’t sick and he was just drunk. He needed to go to his room and sleep it off. If they were so worried they could keep checking on him. They took his room key away and made him stay out of his room. Real nice, assholes. I really wonder what thoughts go through their heads to conclude that this is a good idea. He would only respond and talk to other students. A few of the students even asked if they could help him out and take care of him until the next day. They said no.
This is a reason why so many people ended up getting mugged in Cape Town. People got too drunk, yes, their own fault, but then didn’t feel comfortable coming to the ship and getting in trouble. So they stayed out and got mugged. This was the general consensus of the students. No one wanted to deal with getting in trouble. If I recall, there’s a policy in Needham, as well as a lot of other towns about getting medical attention. If you take someone to the hospital for drinking-related problems, they don’t call the cops for them or you. This was because so many people were dying and having serious issues because they were so afraid of getting in trouble. Apparently Semester at Sea hasn’t taken that to heart yet. It’ll take a few more students dying for that to really hit home. One of my good friends was wasted the first night and got all her stuff taken from her, she didn’t feel comfortable going back to the ship and stayed in a cheap, sketchy hotel because she didn’t want to deal with the ship all up in her business. So Semester at Sea, I hope you’re happy with the rules and regulations you’ve put into effect. That’s enough for my rant for now. No one’s too pleased with the administration.
Anyways, we went out to meet people at Ivy League. We got there pretty early and there weren’t too many people there yet. All the bars are on Long Street. It’s actually really awesome. Most cities we’ve gone to so far have had one giant street of bars and clubs. This was one of the better ones. There were a ton of locals there and a few other SASers. Apparently one of the best DJs around was playing. We did a few shots. We found out if you paid cover, which was a little over $4, you could drink as much as you wanted until 2200. So obviously we did that and hung out on the balcony for awhile. A bunch of other SASers came throughout the night and we all hung out outside.
After awhile we decided to move on to another bar. We were supposed to be going to Devliners or something like that down the street. But we got distracted by other people and ended up going to Abuntu, a local bar for backpackers. It was so much fun. We had run into a few people who had said that it wasn’t worth going to the other bar because it was all SAS people and it was packed. Not ideal. It’s more fun to not spend time at a bar with all SAS people. We’re out at sea with them all the time.
Abuntu was awesome. We met a few girls there. They heard us cheersing our shots in Spanish. They asked us to teach it to them. It’s the one we always do with Fede and Nick. They taught us theirs in Africans. They were so nice, they were 21 and 22 and talked to us for awhile about Cape Town. I wish we had more time there, because we definitely would have hung out more with them.
We didn’t stay at this bar too long. It was absolutely packed, but not with SASers. We were getting hungry so we wandered down Long Street until we came to restaurant that was open late with beer and burgers and sandwiches. We went in there at 0100 or so and it was full. You would have thought it was 2000. We ran into a few people from the ship. By now we’d collected a few people. It was me, Becca, Bea, Vanessa, Alexander, Amanda, Victor, and Kareem. We sat around for awhile talking and eating. We spent like 2 hours there. Then we caught cabs back. We didn’t want to stay out too late, we all wanted to get up early the next day to do stuff. Bea, Victor, and I were planning on climbing Table Mountain then shopping on Long Street if Abel’s shark FDP got cancelled, which was a distinct possibility.
We split two cabs back and ran back to the ship. It was freezing out. Not the ideal weather for wearing a little dress and flip flops. I got to wear my black dress that I bought in Hong Kong again. It was actually perfect for these bars.
So I got back around 0300 and got all my stuff ready for the next day since we’d be waking up and leaving by 0830.
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