Good Morning Sunshine

It's 6:15 am, and I've been up for quite a while, dressed, and thinking about going running or something...once the sun comes up, that is. As you can see, I'm still adjusting to the time change. It's absolutely maddening.

Back on the Chain Gang

I'm back stateside, after enduring a 32-hour journey back (including two flights, one super shuttle ride, a MARC train, and a ride from my dad). It was endless.

Last Thursday afternoon, I traveled from Swakopmund back to Windhoek, the capital of Namibia. I overnighted in Windhoek before flying to Cape Town to spend my last few days in Africa.

My time in Cape Town was lovely, if uneventful. This time I rented a car, which provided much comic relief, as I tried to drive on the wrong side of the road -- and with the stick shift on the wrong side of the car. There were a few close calls, and every time I tried to change lanes, I ended up turning on the windshield wipers.

Once I managed to figure out the driving, I took a jaunt down the peninsula to visit the Cape of Good Hope, revered as the most southern point in Africa and the place where the Indian Ocean meets the Atlantic. In fact, as it turns out, it's neither. But no matter. It was a pleasant coastal drive, with cliff-side roads that snaked through the cape with beautiful views. On the way to the cape point, I stopped to see the large colony of jackass penguins at Boulders Beach. Cool. I also stopped at a seaside town of Simons Town for their annual penguin festival, after seeing two people dressed like penguins riding around in a pick up truck. (That turned out to be the only exciting thing.)

So it was a good weekend. The only hiccup for an otherwise perfect trip was my discovery that my cell phone had been pilfered somewhere between Zambia and Jo-burg, and the later discovery that several hundred dollars had disappeared from my bag. I was a little upset about both events; but, in light of the fact that I've been traveling for years and this is the first time I've ever had anything stolen, I'd say that overall I've been pretty lucky if that's the only really bad thing that's happened to me.

And now I'm back in the US, with major jet lag, no cell phone, and a vague idea that I should probably start looking for a job soon. Maybe next month. In the meantime, I'm going to revel in the memory of a fantastic trip.

The Real World -- Namibia

I'm still in Swakopmund, wasting some time at an internet joint before we drive back to Windhoek this afternoon.

So, I was sitting here quietly perusing The New York Times website, and this thin, blonde South African bloke started yelling loudly through the gated door. He was yelling at a woman sitting near me who was checking her email. Finally, he stopped yelling and marched into the place -- with a cameraman following him and filming his every move.

Apparently they are some sort of reality television people. So, the cameraman taped them having a short argument in Afrikaans. I did not understand a single word, but I can only assume it went something like:

Man: Why are you taking so long to check your email? I would like to go get some delicious Namibian pancakes.
Woman: Go get your bloody pancakes and leave me alone. I'm checking my email. Also, why do the back of your pants look like a thousand years of sand and dirt have accumulated since the last launder? Don't you remember you are on television?
Man: Quit your nagging, woman. I'm going to get me some pancakes.

Then, the guy stormed off in his dirty-arse pants, and the cameraman stuck around for an unnaturally long time filming the woman checking her email. Major yawn. But, I'm in the background while all this goes on, so it's only a matter of time before I'm on South African tv.

Half a World Away

I'm in Swakopmund, a small town on the coast of Namibia . I have come to Namibia to give birth to Brad Pitt's (second) love child . . . er, I mean, to see the largest sand dunes in the world. (For what it's worth, Swakopmund is about 40 km from Walvis Bay, the place where the much anticipated first love-child was born.)

Instead of the fancy game camps I had previously visited, this time I'm on an overland (read: budget) safari. Basically, eight of us piled into a Land Rover and drove ten hours out into the Namib desert. I spent the last two days camping in the desert, and to my surprise, it turned out to be real camping -- not this faux camping that the other places offer -- with sleeping bags, tents, the whole nine yards.

Now, I'm not much of a camping person. In fact, the last time -- and only time -- I went camping I was probably 7 years old. But, the camping went surprisingly well. The only wrinkle occurred on the first night, Monday.

It being the desert, I consumed probably about four liters of water on Monday. Even so, I felt really dehydrated. I went to bed kind of early, since we were waking up at 5 am to see the sunrise on the giant dunes. About three hours later, the four liters of water kicked in, and I woke up desperately in need of a bathroom. But, our guide had warned us about the jackals that come around the camp at night. So, I spent the better part of an hour in the tent, debating whether I would be eaten by jackals if I trekked across the camp to the building with the bathrooms. Eventually, I decided that this must happen to other people and they don't get eaten, but that walking across camp was still too risky. (Surely our guide would have told us that story.) Finally, I ended up availing myself of the natural desert facilities near our tent, but the whole time was freaked out that a jackal was going to jump up and bite me in the arse. (At least I didn't see any porcupines.)

Anyway, minor unpleastantries aside, the dunes were amazing. The area with the dunes looks like something from a science fiction movie -- one hundred foot tall dunes made out of red sand. Hiking up one of the dunes is pure torture for your legs. I was thinking that if I could find a way to recreate the giant sand dunes in LA, masses of starlets and bored housewives would give up their trendy stripper pole workout for the ultimate uphill sand dune workout.

In addition to the dunes, the extended time driving around in the Land Rover gave me a chance to see other parts of the Namibia. The landscape varies from huge sand dunes, desert plains, multi-colored rocky mountains, and slate blue lagoons. It seemed like most of the country was untouched. Oh -- and in addition to the beautiful landscapes, the nighttime sky out in the desert was amazing. Minimal light pollution for miles and miles, so you can see hundreds of stars and comets. I've never seen the sky so clearly.

Oh, and I saw a bunch of ostriches. (Or is it: I saw a bunch of ostrich. Either way, that's what I saw.)

Oh...

Forgot to mention that I racked up another visit to a UNESCO World Heritage site today: Robbins Island, where Nelson Mandela was a prisoner for some 18 years.

There were also penguins.

One Lonely Night

I've been ambling around Cape Town for the past two days, and I have to say, I dig it. It's pretty chill, with lots of cafes and sunshine. I'm here for one more day, and then on Sunday I leave for a camping trip in Namibia. I still can't get over the fact that I'm going camping -- even if it is supposed to be fancy camping. Considering how on edge I was staying at the budgety hotels in Asia, it should be highly amusing to see how I react to camping out in the middle of the desert.

No matter, though -- it should be worth it. Apparently there are dunes the size of small mountains. Should be just like the English Patient.

Otherwise, I'm having kind of a lonely evening. It's Friday night in Cape Town, and I am seeing lots of people heading out on the town. (Or gearing up to have people over to watch the opening night of the World Cup of Rugby...I don't know that for sure, but it just seems like that's what people are doing. Rugby is huge here.) It makes me wish that I had my friends around to head out to dinner, or to come over and watch some rugby. Of course, none of us actually care about rugby. But, then again, I don't care about other sports either, so it wouldn't be any different than having a super bowl party. Everyone would hang out and gossip and eat cheese dip.

I've been traveling alone for about two weeks now, which is just about the longest I've ever traveled on my own. For the most part, it's gone smashingly well. I met oodles of people at the various game camps, so there wasn't too much time to feel lonely. Even here in Cape Town, it didn't bother me until tonight. I think it's because it's Friday night. I suppose that I could go out to an Irish bar and watch the opening night of rugby -- you are bound to meet a kooky Australian who will hang out with you. But, that's not really my thing, even if I do enjoy a kooky Australian.

Apparently I'm not the only one feeling lonely tonight in Cape Town. I grabbed a cab back to the hotel tonight, and the cab driver repeatedly offered to give me a full body massage. "No sexual activity," he said. Just a massage. Which would have been a creepy enough offer until he started telling me how much he was looking forward to giving me said massage. Needless to say, I had him drop me off a few blocks early.

I'm meeting some of the strangest characters on this trip.

No Gnus is Good Gnus

On Monday morning, I left Zimbabwe to go on another safari, this time in Botswana. As promised, the setting was absolutely beautiful. In addition to the dry bushy-type landscape that I saw in South Africa, the area I visited in Botswana also had lush, grassy floodplains (which look just like it sounds). There were flat grassy areas as far as the eye could see, interrupted in spots by the Chobe River and other little water inlets.

My room at the game lodge was more like a hotel than a game camp. (Apparently Liz Taylor and Richard Burton got married there for the second time in the 1970's.) In any case, the view from my room was spectacular -- there was full wall of windows that looked across the very narrow Chobe River to Namibia, where a herd of elephants was grazing. (I had no idea that the game lodge was only about 50 yards from Namibia.)

The game lodge is in a national park in Botswana, so you can't go off the roads like we could in the private game reserve in South Africa. This means that you don't get to see the animals as closely, and you can't follow them through the bush. On the other hand, the sheer number of animals hanging out in Botswana was far greater than SA. Every ten minutes or so, we'd stumble onto a new herd of elephants. That's one of the impressive things about being on a safari, period -- instead of seeing three or four elephants in a zoo, you see dozens at a time.

Though the Botswana park had more animals (in terms of numbers), there seemed to be less variety than SA. Most of what I saw were giraffes and elephants and various varieties of 'lopes. Unfortunately, giraffes and elephants don't do much more than eat, so it can get kind of boring. I also saw a gun (wildebeest), which I had been dying to see. Turns out they are probably the second ugliest animal in nature, after the warthog. That's unfortunate, since I have had a strange fascination with gnus dating back to the days of newsman Gary Gnu on The Great Space Coaster.

The game lodge was huge by African standards -- some 60 people were staying there. As a result, it lacked the warm and fuzzy feeling that I understand is pretty typical of the smaller camps, and that I myself reveled in while staying in SA. Still, I managed to meet some interesting people while I was there -- including, if you can believe the odds, an associate who currently works at my old firm (Washington office, though, not NYC).

Monday night, I ended up having drinks with a random group of people, that included two photographers (traveling separately), a Botswana tourism official, and an Irish woman. We talked for quite a while, and when it came time for me to head back to my side of the lodge, it was pretty late. Whereas the camp in SA didn't let you walk around at night alone, the Botswana lodge had said it was okay to walk on the lit-paths.

So, I headed off on one of the lit paths towards my room. I was about a third of the way there, when I realized that the whole common area of the lodge was pitch black, and I was going to have to walk through that to get to my room. I mustered up all my courage and started to head through. Then, I heard a rustling, and had a mini-heart attack. I was sure a lion was about to eat me. Some chairs moved, I held my breath...and a huge, gargantuan porcupine waddled out of the dining area right onto the path I needed to walk on. I know porcupines are more friend than foe, but I'd never seen one in person, and it was huge. And I was kind of tipsy.

I ended up running back to the patio where the others were still having drinks, and the Botswana tourism official -- a very petite woman and unlikely bodyguard -- kindly walked me back to my room. (She had worked at the lodge before, and apparently has no fear of deadly porcupines.)

The rest of my stay was fairly uneventful. Lovely landscapes, nice people, but no further porcupine or gnu sightings.

Yesterday, I left Botswana for Cape Town, where I'll be for the next few days, at least. So far, me likey. As much as I loved visiting the nature reserves and parks, it's nice to be back in civilization for a while.

P.S.

I don't know how, but I forgot to mention that while I was touring Vic Falls (the Zambian side) two different groups of people stopped me to take my picture. One of the groups even posed with me in the picture. I don't know if it was my awesome fashion (Gap, circa 2005), or my blonde hair. Either way, I'm not used to such idolatry.

Dr. Livingstone, I Presume

I'm in Zimbabwe at the moment, visiting one of the seven wonders of the natural world and UNESCO World Heritage Site, Victoria Falls. The falls are the largest in the world, the water plunging from a cliff down to a gorge 300 feet below. Impressive, for sure. But, the visit kind of reaffirmed my previous guiding principle about waterfalls: that is, they are fine to see, but don't go out of your way to do so.

I mean, the falls are great. But it takes about an hour to see them from every which angle. And then you are done. And there is nothing else really here. And my travel agent booked me here for three nights.

Still, it's a big draw and there are many, many tourists here. Interestingly, more than half of the travelers that I have seen are over 50 years old, many seeming to be from the US. (By contrast, when I was on safari, Americans were overwhelmingly in the minority, and there were a number of younger people, too.) A surprising number of the tourists here sport khaki safari vest/jackets while walking around. Sure, it's Africa, but about the hardest thing people are doing here is trying to track down bottled water from the porters at the fancy hotel. It's funny, though, because in the vests everyone looks like either an AP photographer read to go on assignment on Beirut, or Dick Cheney on a fishing trip.

Given the demographics of the visitors, you can imagine my surprise at how many adventure companies there are that offer the chance to bungee jump from the bridge near the falls, or to raft through Class 5 rapids. I can't see that appealing to the over-60 set. But that's the main thing to do around here, apart from viewing the falls. However, you couldn't convince me to partake even in the US, where there are tons of safety measures and liability concerns. (You can sense the huge difference between the American legal system and the Zimbabwe system by the number of people that are freely allowed to walk out into the water maybe a half dozen feet from falling -- to their deaths -- into the LARGEST WATERFALL IN THE WHOLE FREAKING WORLD.)

Deciding to pass on the bungee jumping, I took a trip this afternoon into Zambia, which is on the other side of the falls. Not much to see there, either, except for the falls, at a slightly different angle. Oh -- and there seemed to be more 8 foot high wooden giraffes available for purchase, which I secretly kind of want, although I have no idea how I'd get it home or what I'd do with it in the US.

Oh -- I forgot to mention what Dr. Livingstone has to do with any of this. For some inexplicable reason, that phrase popped into my head several times since arriving in Africa, and I had to fight an urge to say it. I must have read it in my guidebooks before I left. Apparently the infamous Dr. Livingstone was a British missionary/explorer who "discovered" the falls in the 1800's when he came to Africa. Years later, he went missing and a reporter for the New York Times tracked Livingstone down to a town farther north in Zambia, supposedly muttering the now famous phrase when he encountered Livingstone.

And with that exciting history lesson, I'm off to head back from town to my hotel. Tomorrow morning I leave for Botswana, where I'll be spending another couple days on safari. (Yay safari!) They say Botswana has some of the most beautiful and undisturbed landscapes in southern africa, so I'm really looking forward to the trip.

And Where Shall I Begin?

So, the safari turned out to be even more fantastic than I ever imagined.

I went to a game camp named Motswari in the northeastern corner of South Africa, right near Kruger National Park. The camp is located on a huge nature reserve that is actually a conglomeration of a number of privately owned farms. But, there's no fence between Kruger and the reserve. So, the animals migrate freely to and fro. Plus, the bonus is that on the private reserve, you can drive off the main road (which you can't in Kruger), so you can see the animals closer.

I call it a camp, which is really not a fit description. Sure, it's a camp, in that every one's living in the middle of the african bush. But, I had my own enclosed bungalow, complete with a super comfy king size bed, down bedding, huge freestanding tub built for two, rain shower, etc. The accommodations could easily rival some of the nicer places in the US.

On the other hand, you can't walk outside your bungalow by yourself at night, lest the hyenas may eat you. (The Westin should consider adding that amenity!) Although I didn't see any, supposedly elephants have been known to wander into camp. I did, however, see a huge group of baboons hanging out across from the lounge. (The lounge is an open air pavilion where you have tea in the morning, and lunch in the afternoon.)

The schedule is more or less set each day. Someone wakes you up at 5:30. You have some tea or coffee, then it's off for the morning game drive. You get back around 10 am, eat breakfast (delicious omelettes), and then are free to take a nap or go on a guided walk. But, that's about all there is to do. Then, they serve a lunch at 2:30 and you're off again on the late afternoon game drive. You get back from that drive at 6:45. Dinner/drinks were about an hour after that. That's it.

So this was the schedule every day. I did skip one of the morning drives. But otherwise that's what I did. The game drives were awesome. You tour around in an open Land Rover with stadium seating. I saw oodles of animals: lions, leopards, giraffes, elephants, zebras, warthogs, rhinos, hyenas, all varieties of antelope, etc. It was amazing how close some of the animals came to the vehicle. Thursday morning, we had a herd of elephants pass about 10 feet away from the car. That same morning, we also had a leopard walk about two feet behind the back of the vehicle. Surprisingly, it's not as scary as you'd think.

But even without the animals, the scenery was just so beautiful. It is the end of winter and the dry season, so it's not anywhere near as green or as lush as it is in summer. But, it's beautiful nonetheless. Lots of short trees, tall golden grasses, and the most amazing sunsets. (Each night we stopped during the drive to have a drink -- a sundowner -- and watch the sun set.) Plus, the temperature was like the late days of spring in the US -- sunny and pleasantly warm, with a light breeze.

When you get there, you are assigned a guide and tracker who look out after you for your stay. As a result, you also are driving around and eating dinner with the same people for a few days. I met some interesting people -- some good, and some just bad.

The first two days I was in a group that included all Europeans: a very friendly couple from Serbia and France; a stoic German couple that never talked; and, a gregarious Italian man and his wife, named Roberto and Roberta. Roberto liked to try to make jokes in the very little English he knew, and you found yourself laughing heartily along with him, even though his jokes tended to be something like "Buffalo? I like buffalo mozzarella."

Then, they all left, and a group of Americans joined us. They included a husband and wife from Ohio, and their college aged son. They were all in South Africa because the husband was attending a competition wherein he would shoot targets with an 18th Century musket or some such firearm...if that tells you something. The wife seemed extremely bitter that she was in Africa, which could be because she doesn't like 18th Century musket shooting competitions...or it could be that she is just plain racist, as evidenced by the comment I overheard (but won't repeat) the first night they arrived. Their son was a disaffected youth, who didn't seem to realize how awesome it was that his parents TOOK HIM TO AFRICA. I talked to these folks some, but they pretty much whined and hated everything. Except for the photo opps. They had huge crazy professional cameras with foot-long lenses, and took thousands of photos. I thought they were going to explode with delight when we stumbled upon a group of buffalo locking horns...with beautiful backlighting...and the right amount of dust to really set off the lighting. But, even as annoying as they were, it still couldn't bring me down. Mostly I was kind of amused.

By the last day, it was just me and an English couple from outside London. We, along with our guide, were about the same age, and all got on very well. Oh -- our guide was really cool, too. He was a little reserved by American standards, but very nice and extremely smart. His love of the bush and the animals was contagious, and by the end of the trip, I found myself completely taken with the area...and had managed to develop a mini-crush on our guide, too. (After he took a few of us on a walk through the area around the camp-- carrying a gun to protect us from elephants and such -- it was completely impossible not to be crushing a little bit.)

So, I ended on an extremely high note. The last day was just sublime -- very chill company, the most beautiful weather, morning tea across from a small river filled with hippos. Just perfection. I felt completely calm and relaxed, like I could have stayed there forever.

I was surprised at how very sad I was when I left on Thursday. As awesome as the whole trip had been -- the last day in particular -- I realized that I would never have that experience again. To be sure, you can go back to an area, or even stay in touch with people you meet on a trip. But, I was acutely aware that it would be impossible to recreate how wonderful that particular moment had been, and sad that the moment had passed.

So that was my safari experience. I loved it so dearly, that it made me startlingly sad to leave.