My recent journey to Kruger National Park was nothing short of living in The Lion King. It was during this time that I finally figured out what everyone means when they tell me that as an international student I need to be “patient” (not my strong suit as you all know) and understand that: “This is Africa”.
After a night out at our favorite Jazz club downtown called Zula, I more or less woke up on an airplane, already in Joberg, with my neck at a 90 degree angle, and the remnants of dribble on my chin. For the record, going out and catching a 5:45 am flight are not a successful combination. Or maybe it was a very successful combination. I think it is all about how you look at it. Either way, I digress.
I disembarked the plane, immediately found a bakery and proceeded to stuff my face full of quiches and croissants. I had a couple hours to wait until the representative from my “Adventure Camp and Tree House Lodge” was scheduled to pick me up from the airport. Later, after much confusion about the pick-up point, coupled with the fact that my friends and I looked very obviously American (ie: North Face backpacks, sorority t-shirts, and Ray Bans) a kind police officer took pity on us and showed us exactly where “pick-up/long term shuttle by the permit office” was (because that description makes a whole lot of sense when there are about 50 pick-up/long term shuttle stops). We hopped in our mini tour bus and were greeted by Ronald, our temporary driver. We briefly met the other people in our bus not realizing that we would be spending an unprecedented amount of time with them over the coming days. After briefly picking up a few other passengers within Joberg, we were off to Kruger!
We stopped at a small town to have lunch at “The Poacher” a sub-par grill-type restaurant that won some points in my book for having outdoor seating and a playground for little kids (I assume you all know that I am a food snob). Due to the fact that I immediately passed out on the bus ride, my friends and I took the opportunity during lunch to meet the people along with us. There were 2 young Turkish couples, who now live in Canada, one of which works for an NGO on UCT’s campus. Not too much older than us, but way cooler, we instantly knew that we’d be hanging out with them. (This was made apparently clear to me, when on the later portion of the bus ride one of the guys began to sing along with the Lion King soundtrack that was playing in the background, and at one point recited the entire first monologue in V for Vendetta. He's the third dude from the right. His gf is the trendy looking girl with the coy smile standing in front of him). There was another French Canadian couple. Although I’m not sure you could call them a “couple” as they did not introduce themselves as such, and could have easily been brother and sister. This hot debate: “Are David and Gabrielle together?” continued throughout the duration of our tip. Check them out--he's the first guy on the left, and she's in the green jacket next to him.
Lastly, there was a group of two Moms, with one teenage boy who appeared at first glance to be 25. They were odd people, and luckily they stayed at a different lodge so we didn’t have to interact with them again. I was happy about this because I inadvertently made fun of the boy for having two earrings (A whole other side story. I more or less stated that it wasn’t cool for boys to wear earrings while in his presence).
After lunch we met Isaac, our permanent driver and trusted guide. He would soon become a member of our small Safari family. We arrived at our “Tree Lodge” after our 7 hour trek through the barren African countryside to a whirlwind of confusion. One of our reservations hadn’t been placed—luckily we were smart enough to make copies of our receipts. After much confusion, miscommunication, and waiting (this theme would continue throughout the trip) one of my friends was placed in a cabin with 4 beds by herself. It was the best that we could do.
Excited to see our “tree house” my friend Clare and I immediately ran over to our room to check it out. Unfortunately, we were immediately let-down as our “tree house” was essentially a hut raised a couple feet off the ground. Let’s just say that there was quite an amount of deceptive advertising that went on via Marc’s Camps brochures.
Either way we were starving and it was dinner time. Surrounded by a warm campfire, we were told that dinner would be “veggie soup”. Thinking that I had to sustain myself on soup alone, I gobbled down two huge bowls along with 4 pieces of bread only to realize that a 4 course meal was being served. Soup was merely a starter. Not to worry, I ate all 4 courses in addition to an ice cream for dessert. If I come back fat, I’ll know why.
After our delicious, traditionally South African meal, we went on a night game drive. We had many problems with our spot light, and it was quite cold. But on our first game drive alone, we saw buffalo, rhinos, giraffes, and impalas! And we weren’t even in Kruger yet! We spent a lot of time looking for a leopard as they typically feed at night. Our Turkish friend (the same one who sang along to Lion King) said it best: “Finding a leopard is like trying to find the g-spot. So elusive.”
After the drive, I headed back to my room to shower and go to bed. Exhaustion had set in hours before. I went to take a shower, only to realize that a small froggy was perched upon my cold water nozzle! Slightly more rustic than I had initially imagined, and afraid that the froggy would jump onto my naked body, I proceeded with great caution. Luckily, the froggy enjoyed the moisture and didn’t move a muscle. I was happy.
The next morning we got up bright and early (breakfast was always at 7 am) and headed out to enjoy the animals at Kruger. The Park was roughly an hour away from our game reserve, so we always got a quick nap in before the real fun started. On our first day in the park, we saw all of the “Big 5”.
These are basically the cool animals, which include lions, leopards, buffalo, rhinos, and elephants. We even saw the most poisonous snake within all of Africa! At one point, we got caught in the middle of a baby elephant crossing, and the Momma elephant nearly charged our truck. She had the whole “ears puffed out, trunk swinging, making loud and scary elephant noises” thing going on. It was the only point during my 3-day safari that I actually thought we might get attacked. So that was good. I guess. Additionally, we got a tip from one man who had driven by us that there had been a zebra kill earlier, and that lions were feeding. We immediately set off in search of the kill. Although the man gave us copious directions, our hunt went on way past lunch-time and to no avail.
We stopped for lunch at one the park-run rest-stops at 3 (recall that I had breakfast at 7) and was forced to eat at quite possibly the worst restaurant on my travels thus far. I ordered a burger, thinking that those are not too hard to mess up, and was severely disappointed to find sweet chili sauce smeared all over it. (Sweet chili sauce is this disgusting marinade type spread that they put on nearly everything here. Very similar to the tangy mayo situation in Peru.) I then went through this really awful internal evaluation process in which I weighted the pros and cons of eating said disgusting burger. Obviously hunger won out. I completely get why shipwrecked individuals end up eating each other. That’s how hungry I was. Just saying. The rest of our day consisted of searching for cool animals, finding them, idling in our car, taking lots of pictures, and admiring their grace and beauty.
That night, Clare and I came back to a frightening situation. We walked into our room, and it had been ransacked. All of our clothes had been taken out of our backpacks and off our chairs and flung across the room. Our bedside table was over-turned the lamp was on the floor. We began to find pieces of our phones scattered about—a battery here, a sim card there…pieces of ripped up wrappers and toilet paper were sprinkled like confetti all about. We frantically began to search for our valuables. Passports, credit cards, extra money, all there. Ipods, check. Nothing had been stolen, and nothing seemed to be missing. And that’s when we noticed the disappearance of a roll of mentos, one granola bar, and a bottle of malaria medicine. Was the ransacking a way of covering up the theft of malaria pills? That was the conclusion we came to. Unhappy and not pleased with the fact that our room had been broken into, we went up the hotel manager and asked what could be done about the situation. Much to our surprise the manager merely remarked: “Oh, yes! I forgot to tell you. Monkeys got into your room today.” I stared at her in disbelief and was absolutely dumbstruck as I realized that dirty little monkey opposable thumbs touched and flung my clothes about my room. That’s when my trip got a little too rustic.
The next morning we woke up to discover the little rascal monkeys perched on top of our hut, most likely waiting to make another entrance. They stole our food at breakfast, and we were not surprised when we came home that night to find our room ransacked yet again. Damn monkeys. Hate it when that happens.
As our trip came to a close, we realized that a large miscommunication error had occurred, as we had booked our flights the day after we were to be returning to Joberg. This set off a chain of events that included attempting to call the airline from the one phone at the hotel that we had to get special permission to use. Not having the customer service line for the airline proved to be another set-back, and all-in-all our ineptitude coupled with the fact that we were in Africa culminated in being the third wheel with David and Gabrielle, the French-Canadian not-couple at a hostel in Joberg. Fun times. Fun times.
Luckily, we made it back to Cape Town in one piece, with unforgettable memories and tons of pictures of really cool animals. I really did spend 4 days living in The Lion King. As I type this, I’m downloading it from iTunes so I can watch it tonight. Still a child at heart? I’d say so.
