still in cape town

Robin & I took the cable car yesterday up to Table Mountain, the flat mountain in the photo here:

Lots of people hike up. We did not. We had cappuccinos on the waterfront, took the cable car up & down, and then had calamari for lunch in a lovely restaurant. And spent out the rest of our rand (the South African currency). Other people have adventurous stories to tell of hiking up the mountain, but we liked our way very much … We chatted about life & friendship & students (we think the ship might be much lovelier without them!) up on a mountaintop fronting the ocean. Pretty darn enjoyable.

Back to the safari. I’ve uploaded more photos to flickr at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/-erin/sets/72157594578482167 Go there. The safari was at Mthethomusha Game Reserve and the lodge was called Bongani Mountain Lodge (http://www.bongani.co.za/). I highly recommend this place if you are planning a safari! It was much much smaller than Kruger and so they don’t have the animals in quantity that Kruger has. The folks who went to Kruger saw animals in herds, we only ever saw a handful at a time. But, it was much more personal and the accommodations were much lovelier. We were in open 4x4’s, for example, while the Kruger folks were in buses or minivans. We went off-road and all over the reserve in our cool little vehicles:

We learned how to track footprints in the dirt. We spent nearly one whole morning stalking an elephant – you wouldn’t believe how well elephants hide even though they are so big. And another morning stalking the leopard, which we never found. Here’s a lion print:

You can also stalk animals by following their dung, but I thought I’d spare you pictures. But, I now know what elephant dung looks like and what giraffe poop looks like. I also know that when you see antelopes running or when you don’t see zebras or giraffes where they are supposed to be or when you hear monkeys screaming, all those are signs that a lion is probably nearby. It was also really interesting to watch the ranger behavior. We had a ranger (Simeon), who drove and taught us things, and a tracker (Elliott) who sat on a funny jump-seat at the front of the vehicle & scanned the surroundings. At night, he had a huge flashlight that Dad would be so envious of. He used it, among things like protecting us from leopards & lions, to point out the stars in the sky. Often, vehicles would stop for the ranger to point out something. One day, we were driving through and there were two vehicles stopped in front of us. Simeon & Elliott got out and joined the other rangers/trackers on the road. They were looking at the prints in the dirt. They came back and Simeon said that there were lion tracks & pointed them out to us. And then he said it wasn’t “their” lion, it was a Kruger lion ... as if the prints had a giant K branded in the middle of them! But, Simeon said this lion wasn’t on the same part of the mountain where their lions hang out and that there were no zebras or leopards around and so they knew that the Kruger lion had come over and scared them all away. On our last day, on our way down to the bus, we saw the Kruger lion. It was immediately apparent upon looking at him that he wasn’t the same as “our” lions. He had different coloring and he was larger. When we stopped behind the other two vehicles, it was clear to all of us from the men’s behavior that this wasn’t a stop to point out something cool. This was a stop of some concern.

There was no time when I felt we were in any real danger. Simeon carried a gun and he & Elliott would always check out an area before they let us down from the vehicle. The rules were: no standing in the vehicle and no saying “pssst” or “hey, kitty kitty” to get the animals to turn for a photo (!). It was really hard to avoid doing that – you really want them to look at you! They say that when we’re all seated in the vehicle the animals are used to the jeeps and just think we are a large animal. As soon as we stand up, they realize we are human. So, no standing, even for a photo. You’d think the animals could smell us as humans. The lodge also had security folks who would escort us back to our chalets after dark. No walking alone. They had a leopard kill recently and so they were very strict about this. The security guys had giant flashlights but no guns. I asked one of my escorts what happens if we see something, since they are unarmed. He told me they call others and then they’ll scare the animal away. Well, ok ... The need for escorts after dark (along with the 5 am wakeup calls) definitely helped keep students from doing things that students might otherwise do in the late evening! It worked for me as trip leader ...

The other time of interest was a small encounter with a rhino. Several of us went on a trip to see rock art painted on caves – from about 1500 years ago. The shelter where the drawings were is millions of years old and the wall on which they were painted probably hasn’t seen water in that long as well. Which has allowed the paintings to survive. Here are a few photos, but they didn’t come all terribly well. You can see buffalo:

Coming down from the shelter (a short hike down), there was a rhino between us & the jeep. The ranger told us to stand there silently while he (with his dog & his gun) walked forward. He instructed us if he said “move”, we should all move quickly (without running) behind the nearest tree he pointed to. Somehow it didn’t seem like a little tree would protect us from a big giant rhino, but sure … In the end, he had us just walk past the rhino. No incidents ensued, though a few of us were longing for a slightly more adventurous tale. When I told this story back on the ship, several people commented that you don't need to all be behind the tree, you just need to be sure to beat at least one other person there!

The other side trip we went on was to the township where most of the lodge staff live. Our ranger showed us his home and we went to a school where tons of children wanted their photos taken:

They want us to take their pictures and then show them off from the screen on our digital cameras. Photo … photo … photo … I find this exercise interesting (it happens all over) because they know they don’t get to take the photos with them, they just want to see themselves on our screens. They don’t otherwise see photos of themselves. The kids were very cute and very friendly. Notably, most of the over-eager kids were boys. I had to seek out girls to take their pictures. We talked to the principal for a bit. The school has some permanent buildings, some trailers, and some mud huts. They have a media center with 2 computers and some books, but the principal said that building had been very poorly graded and it gets flooded. They have a termite problem that has eaten into the shelves and into the books. He said that the government is bringing IT people to set up more computers for the kids, but computer education is tricky because the community is so poor that it is not at all clear what kids would use computers for. There’s no clear educational or career path for which computer use would be immediately apparent or even useful. There was a women’s craft cooperative that was also very interesting and we all bought some stuff. I bought carved wooden crocodiles. We also didn’t see crocodiles, by the way, except from a very far distance (too small for me even with the binoculars). We did see hippos. They didn’t come out of the water, apparently they only do so at night, but we saw them lounging with their heads just above the water line. There are photos in the flickr set.

Speaking of lounging, did you know the male lion does pretty much nothing? He hangs out on a rock and looks over his universe. His job, technically, is to make sure no other lions trespass on his territory. Male lions will have at it for territorial control and, if the trespassing lion wins, he’ll mate with the female and take over the kingdom. But, mostly the male lion we saw just slept. The female lion was hunting & caring for her cubs and basically doing all the work. We all had the The Lion King music running through our heads throughout the safari, but especially when we were atop a beautiful rock overlooking the reserve watching the sleeping papa lion.

And the cubs were unbearably cute. I so wanted to go over & cuddle:

We’re still in Cape Town. We stayed in port last night due to high winds. We moved about 6:00 am this morning to a bunker to refuel. That was supposed to take 6 hours but here we continue to sit. They say we can make up the lost time on the way to Mauritius but we’ll have to use all engines which is very expensive in regards to fuel. We will no longer be considered fuel efficient. Tomorrow is a no-class day. The library will be open for most of the day, but we are looking forward to sleeping late!

Go check out my safari photos.