Oh, the Places We'll Go

After a week in Cape Town we headed to the eastern side of the country to see some big animals.  We spent a few nights at the Pondoro Lodge in part of the greater Kruger National Park.  Pondoro is an incredible spot and my parents were treated with quite an array of beasts.  Highlights included a pride of 9 lions lying together under a tree; a gigantic elephant saying hello while crossing the road; and dozens of hippos chilling in the river.  We enjoyed our nightly sundowners; Lar dug sitting shotgun with the safari guide and we all loved the amazing dinners including ostrich filet (which tastes like steak, not chicken) and impala pie!

HELLO!

Larry in shotgun

Sundowners in the bush

Giraffe

We had an incredible couple of weeks with Sal and Lar and we can’t thank them enough for making it all the way over to South Africa, and spoiling us to boot!

Never seen a warning like this before:

Beyond the excitement of Table Mountain, we did a lot of other activities that were not-so-life-threatening. One highlight was driving along the coast and to the Cape of Good Hope, a peninsula that juts out into the Atlantic Ocean south of the city. We’d stop when we felt like it to check out a cool beach or watch the fishermen bring in their catch. African wildlife viewing began here – we saw the adorable African penguins at Boulders Beach, as well as ostrich, antelope and zebras on the Cape Peninsula.

Muizenberg Beach, False Bay

Cape Peninsula

Cape Point

Lots of penguins!

We spent a morning at Robben Island which is where Nelson Mandela was held as a political prisoner for 27 years. The tours are led by former political prisoners of Robben Island which made the experience so much more authentic, and it was a stark reminder of how recently apartheid ended (1991!).

Mandela's cell, Robben Island

Robben Island

Ferry back from Robben Island

And no good trip would be complete without excellent eating. One of our favorite meals was the hilariously named Cod Father restaurant. It was highly recommended by our lodge and it was certainly a unique eating experience. There are no menus at the Cod Father – you waiter simply brings you to the display cases and shows you exactly what fresh catches the restaurant has available. As a group of four, we got an amazing assortment of different things – from crawfish (like lobster) to butterfish to prawns. It all came steaming hot to the table with overshadowed sides of fries and vegetables. We all supped to sufficiency and finished every single thing put in front of us. In honor of our memorable meal, Lar now has a Cod Father hat to add to his amazingly expansive collection that I imagine I’ll see him wearing while BBQing up north this summer.

Cod Father dinner choices

Massive seafood feast!

Everyone knows that a group of lions is called a pride and a group of wolves is called a pack.  But did you know that…

• A group of zebra is called a dazzle
• A group of warthogs is called a sounder
• A group of giraffes standing still is called a tower but a group of giraffes in motion is called a jenny
• And my personal favorite – a group of mongoose is called is a business

Hilarious

After all this talk about safaris, it’s about time we share some animal photos.  For a detailed look at all of our favorites, check out our African Mega-Fauna photo album.  A few highlights are below.

African Wild Dog

Leopard

Elephant

Cape Buffalo

Male Lion

Cheetah

Rhino

We had the opportunity to spend the holidays in the Botswana bush this year.  Not surprisingly, we were reminded that what makes the holidays the holidays are the traditions and build-up associated with the big day, as well as the people you spend it with.  To us it didn’t feel much like Christmas as we were in Christmas carole withdrawal, we didn’t step foot in a mall, the weather was hot and dry and our families and friends were thousands of miles away.

However, our hosts at Savuti Camp in Botswana did a helluva job of celebrating Christmas and we were thankful to spending both Christmas Eve and Christmas with such entertaining people.

Christmas Party!

Our Christmas Party Hosts

For Christmas Eve, all the guests and all the staff dined together in the outdoor gathering area – the boma.  It was fun to sit outside under the stars and meet folks from all other the world.  The camps are so remote that staff work for 3 months straight and then have one month off so even though some were in their home country, they too were hundreds of miles away from family.  However unlike at home, we learned that moments before we arrived for dinner the staff had had to shew away a hyena that had helped himself to the small candies on the table!

On Christmas we kicked off the day with an early morning game drive.  Normally Christmas morning is spent nursing a mild hangover and opening our stockings, but this year we were hanging with elephants and giraffes and ostriches.  The group devised an animal-focused version of 12 Days of Christmas, based on our sightings that day.

Christmas Elephants

Christmas dinner was delicious with many of the fixins’ we get at home – turkey, mashed potatoes, veggies, rolls.  Oh, and champagne – lots of it.  The Savuti staff had a little Christmas tree (more like a dead branch) that they had decorated with lights.  One of our tour group members had given us all flashing necklaces (thanks Carolyn!) and we were spoiled with little wrapped presents both in our room as well as on the table at dinner.

Christmas on safari!

Though absolutely nothing like Christmas as we know it, we had an absolutely wonderful couple of days and we are sure to remember Christmas 2010 for the rest of our lives.

• 5:00 a.m. – You are woken up in your luxury tent by a personal wake-up knock from your guide.  A pot of hot water is provided to you, in case you need coffee upon rolling out of bed
• 5:30 a.m. – You are provided with way too much food for 5 in the morning, but you eat it and love it
• 

  Leopard

  6:00 a.m. – Morning game drive!  You bounce around in the back of an open-air converted Land Cruiser and look for animals.  Sometimes you don’t see a whole lot, sometimes you round a corner and see zebra, giraffe and wildebeest all hanging out together.  Sometimes your guide identifies an impossible to see leopard and you are in awe.

• 9:00 a.m. – Morning tea in the bush.  Coffee, tea and biscuits (cookies) are served en route.  If you need to use the bathroom, the guide has to go check to make sure that your desired location is free from wild animals.
• 11:00 a.m. – Return from game drive and time for morning brunch.  Even more delicious food is provided and once again you eat more than you mean to.
• Noon – 3:30 p.m. – Downtime.  The animals are most active in the morning and evening and kind of lay low during the hottest time of the day.  So we do too.  Ted and I spent most of our downtime napping but we also motivated to do some exercises (push-ups and sit-ups) because safari-ing requires a lot of eating and sitting!
• 3:30 p.m. – Afternoon tea.  No, I’m not kidding – they feed you again.  Afternoon “tea” would be anything from mini pizzas, to samosas, to cupcakes.  Too much good food.
• 4:00 p.m. – Afternoon game drive.  More driving around and more animal encounters.  Always exciting to come across something new.
• 

  Botho, our guide, preparing the sundowners

  6:30 p.m. – Sundowners.  We love this term as it essentially means cocktail time while the sun goes down.  We would park in some incredibly scenic spot sipping on gin and tonics and munching on snacks if your stomach had any room for them.

• 8:00 p.m. – Return from game drive and time for dinner and more drinks.  Dinner was always delicious and it was fun to meet other groups on safari from all over the world and to chat up the staff at the lodges.  Everyone has a story.
• 9:30 p.m. – Bedtime for us wild and crazy kids.  Five in the morning comes way to early!

In summary – Eat-drive-eat-sleep-eat-drive-eat-sleep.  And that doesn’t include snacks on the drives!

Remember your first furry little pet, that cute guinea pig?

In Peru and Ecuador, they double as a delicacy, a food for special occasions.  We gave them a try – not much meat on them, kinda fatty, not all that great.  But the locals sure do love them!

Our next trip research assignment for Adventures Within Reach took us to the jungle. We flew from Lima to Iquitos, Peru which is the largest city in the world that can not be accessed by road! There are over 500,000 people in this place and you can only get there by boat (on the Amazon) or by flying. Immediately after we landed we were sweating. This place is hot! I mean, damn hot! Not only is the temperature high (in the 90s), but the humidity was the main challenge as we had gotten used to the dryness of being at altitude.

Taking our transport into the city, I kept getting the feeling we were near the beach – everyone is driving around on mopeds and wearing skirts. The bars are advertising tropical drinks and the weather is hot and sunny. However, though there is no beach nearby, there is plenty of water, and that water is the Amazon River.

We took a boat for over two hours up river before transferring to a smaller boat and continuing up a tributary for another half hour before reaching Muyana Lodge. Muyana is perched on stilts in the middle of the rain forest, hours away from anything. We were visiting towards the end of the dry season so the water level was quite low, but during the wet season the river comes up all the way to the stilts and rooms are essentially islands connected by the boardwalk pathway.

Both our room and the main lodge/eating area were entirely screened in, which did a fantastic job of preventing bugs from finding their way to us. Though overall the Muyana Lodge was quite nice, the fact that it is in the middle of nowhere means that electricity is a luxury. There is no electricity in the rooms (they provide you with a couple oil lamps each evening) and there is limited electricity in the eating area, depending on the time of day. No electricity means no air-conditioning (which we obviously weren’t expecting), but it also means no ceiling fans or any kind of relief from the heat. We would have paid good money for a breeze could such a thing be purchased!

Once we kinda adjusted to sweating all the time, we were happily distracted by our guide Moises (pronounced Moses) who was born and raised in the jungle. Our activities included:

• A boat trip up the river looking for birds (herons and macaws) and wildlife (several kinds of monkeys and a sloth!), that culminated in a beautiful jungle sunset.
• A hike through the rainforest with Moises who was amazingly adept at making a variety of bird and animal sounds as well as pointing out incredibly scary insects hiding in tree trunks, underground, etc.
• Fishing for piranhas and other fish. I caught nothing but Ted snagged a couple piranhas and we then ate them for dinner!
• A nighttime boat excursion where a different guide literally got out of the boat and caught a caimen (an alligator-type creature) with his bare hands!
• Seeing pink-bellied dolphins and swimming in the Amazon!

I was pretty unsure about swimming in the Amazon after fishing for piranhas only the day before, however, after nearly 3 straight days of being uncomfortably hot, I couldn’t help but see any other alternative. Our guide led the way followed by Ted and another woman in our group. We all lived to tell about it and it certainly was worth the dip!

Ted and I loved our time in the jungle. It was an incredibly unique experience that we are happy to have had. That being said, we have decided that we are NOT jungle people and if it wasn’t for those cold-water only showers that we utilized at least three times a day, we might not have made it out without melting first!