Morning
We are eating too much and moving too little — though today, due to the colossal amount of jostling in the jeep, Mary’s smartwatch went off – with fireworks – telling her:
GREAT JOB! You have completed your workout by 9:00 a.m.
My smartwatch, on the other hand, chose the exact moment we were taking photos of the VERY VERY CLOSE Cape buffalo to buzz gently and suggest:
Time for a Walk?
(Um, thanks, but NO.)
We were woken up at 5:00 a.m. for coffee and a “rusk” (think Zwieback), and then it was straight into the jeep. Mary took the middle seat, I swapped to the right side, and Janice was on the left in the back row. (We were middle row yesterday — the Great Seat Circulation continues.)
It was significantly less cold than I had anticipated, so I wound up loaning my coat and my cashmere circle scarf to Ilana (a mathematician-turned-software engineer originally from Israel; her husband is a physics professor, also originally from Israel). Safari camaraderie begins early.
We headed out and saw rhino, gazelle, gnu (gnus?), and then — new this time around — Cape buffalo (wow, they’re big) and cheetahs. We’ve actually been tracking the cheetahs for a couple of days now, and today I even got a photo of their tracks on the road.
The slideshow is HERE.
We came back up for breakfast, had an hour’s rest (which for me is basically code for cleaning up photos), and then… lunch.
Too much food, I’m telling you. Delish – but for a gal who just has a protein breakfast and then one meal around 3:00 daily – too, too much.
I think we have a pretty big gap now before the evening game drive and dinner, so I’m trying to pace myself. (Buffet, for the Win.)
Today I was particularly proud of getting a couple of shots of the hippos. They can hold their breath for around five minutes (sometimes longer), so if you miss them coming up — for example, because your camera is sitting innocently in your lap — you may find yourself staring very intently at a completely calm pond waiting for a nostril.
We had “refreshments” out at one of the small lake/pond stops, and I was able to take a photo of the jeep (and Mary). I also managed to capture the most interesting dragonfly — completely clear wings with little black squares, like nature decided to add graphic design.
The photo is a bit blurry, mainly because the dragonfly was quite small and the wings were moving… and also because I am, technically, in a bouncing vehicle half the day so there’s a bit of a “sea legs” (?Jeep legs? issue).
We are also coalescing as a group. Janice, Mary, and I already have all sorts of private jokes, and I even have one with Ilana’s husband Ari, who spent nearly the entirety of our refreshments break chasing a butterfly.
Every time he’d get close and raise his cell phone, the butterfly would flit off.
It became unbelievably funny.
“assassin beetles”
At this point, I believe the only animal we’re really missing (since leopards are basically mythical) is the elephant. We did have a giraffe suddenly run out of the side bush and across the road right next to us today — super startling.
I nearly wound up in Mary’s lap.
It’s a bit like when a cat runs across the road…
…but about a ton larger and three stories taller. 😉
I’ll make a separate blog post for the evening game drive later today
Note to future safari-ers: Bring a pair of clear glasses if you do not already wear glasses. Sunglasses aren’t particularly necessary when you’re in a jeep with a cover (neither is a sunhat, which btw gets in the way of the folks behind you); more importantly, the cover “funnels” air through so even if there isn’t a whisper of wind, you get a fairly strong “wind” blowing on your face the entire time. It dries the heck out of your eyes.
Evening: Elephants, Ecology, and a Twist at the Bar
At lunch we had a couple of women from a local university come chat with us. One is doing her PhD lab right here at Entabeni; the other is her sponsor. Her thesis involves the two types of tortoises found on the reserve: the leopard tortoise (which I photographed the other day), and the hinged tortoise — so called because it can actually pull its back opening closed like a drawbridge if attacked. Evolution doesn’t play around.
We also learned two South African conversational “sayings” from the PhD student:
- “Nah-NOW” — meaning later (not now… but emphasis on the “now,” which apparently causes endless confusion for visitors)
- “Yoh’r” (with a little flip of the tongue) — an all-purpose sound meaning um… wow… let me think… oh dear…
Armed with new vocabulary, we gathered up our things and climbed back into the towering jeep.
This time, Janice, Mary, and I were in the front seat.
Not a fan.
The leg room is smaller, and there isn’t the comforting “cage” of the seat in front of you to hold onto. We rolled down into the valley basically suspended by our seatbelts, with nothing to grip except the underside of the seat and our own dignity.
We saw the usual complement of gnu, pumbas, zebras, black and white rhino… and even a tawny owl and a civet. (No photos of the last 2, but as Abe said: “Just because you didn’t capture it on film doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”)
And then: elephants.
We chased their broken branches and poo (60% undigested plant matter, used for all sorts of things, from fuel to medicine – in the theory that they eat so many plants, there’s got to be one for what ails you in there). After quite a while we found them — or rather, found three of the full group of twelve — with another jeep rather too close for comfort. Isaac (our driver) didn’t want to drive farther forward, because you are supposed to keep a respectful distance. The three elephants seemed agitated, and after a few tense moments they ran off into the forest.
We thought: well, that was it.
We drove slowly around the dense trees and brush, scanning… when I suddenly saw it:
A tusk.
“There!” I called, and Isaac stopped on a dime.
What came next was a Moment.
All the elephants came running.
The other jeep — the one that had been too close — came around the corner again, and suddenly they were really too close, with elephants surrounding them.
(A small note here: our guides were very clear afterward about how important it is to keep distance and give animals space. Elephants are magnificent, but they are also powerful, unpredictable, and absolutely not to be trifled with.)
The herd crossed the track, and a couple even ran up behind our jeep — not close enough to be dangerous, but close enough that both Abe and Isaac later gave us a serious lesson on what should have been done correctly from the beginning.
We definitely got shots. You can see them in the slideshow linked The slideshow is HERE.
Later we learned a bit of ecology too:
- Mutualism is when both species benefit — like tick birds and rhinos.
- Commensalism is when one benefits and the other doesn’t really care — like the nightjar that flies in front of the jeep, using our headlights to spot insects, while we get… nothing.
We saw our cheetahs again, some “Doublemint” twin zebras, and three male gazelles “play fighting” like guys at the gym. Two were clashing horns so hard their feet were literally off the ground, while the third looked on like:
Why am I required to be here for this?
During our refreshments break, we also did a proper group photo — the kind of thing that makes you realize we are starting to feel like a real safari unit. I’ll have one to post with Isaac, and another with Abe, which feels exactly right: the people steering this entire wild, dusty, astonishing experience.
Back at Hippo Lake, I was swapping my short lens back to the long one because the gazelle chaos had been right in front of us. No lens on and… a hippo surfaced in an enormous yawn.
Oh my goodness.
Abe got incredible photos (which you’ll see in the link), and I immediately volunteered to take his SD card and upload them to our WhatsApp photo group — and, naturally, to “borrow” the hippo shots in the meantime.
That was its own comedy. There were hundreds of photos on the card, going back to September of last year, and the reader had to process through all of them before it would deliver today’s safari treasures.
Eventually I got them downloaded, cleaned up, uploaded… then put on my headlamp and headed down to return the card while Abe was still at dinner, which I had bowed out of.
I decided I deserved a glass of wine, which turned into a small farce.
I asked for the merlot in a short glass so I didn’t have to deal with the stem (I was bringing it back to the room to work on this post). This was… confusing, but we managed.
Then the bar staff tried to figure out how to charge it to the room.
Meanwhile the bar itself is a massive slab of marble or Corian, and even with my long arms I couldn’t quite reach the glass.
They kept fussing, and finally I stretched out both hands in a beseeching manner at the end of my arms — still about 5 inches from the glass — shades of Oliver Twist:
Please? May I have some Mo’? I mean…some Wine?
They laughed, and we got there in the end.
We had returned to the lodge, as usual, about 45 minutes late, met by the lovely Zed with the equally lovely hot towels. As I mentioned, I begged out of dinner, showered, washed a few clothes, and tried to tidy up — because tomorrow we pack.
A couple more game drives, a Boma dinner (weather permitting), a walk up to the escarpment Monday morning…
…and then we are a-vanning back to Pretoria for the next leg of our adventure.
(Hopefully that will return the ear worm to your brain, like it did mine, with a vengeance!)