Wine, Ostriches, Sharks, and Table Mountain: South Africa!

Greetings from South Africa! Hello from Leopard Hills Private Game Reserve! Welcome to our first official journal entry. We hope everyone is doing great back home and we're thinking of you all. Africa has been amazing so far, and we're really enjoying the trip. E-mail and Internet access is very spotty, though, so it looks like we'll get to update once every ten days or so... And even so, I'm going to keep things shorter than I might have otherwise due to the shaky dial-up connections here... It simply takes forever to upload, and there's usually a line of people waiting for the PC! I'll do my best though! So here goes...

Cathy and I arrived in Capetown, South Africa last Monday, July 15th. Capetown is a spectacular city - one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. It pretty much has it all - mountains, beaches, wine lands surrounding a small harbor city. Think San Francisco as it may have seemed 50-75 years ago. It has a very cosmopolitan feel to it - almost Mediterranean - and the people are well cultured and interesting. And the food and wine are outstanding!We took advantage of the scenery and enjoyed 2 awesome excursions. 

The first was to Cape Point National Park, which surrounds and includes The Cape of Good Hope, long considered the southern-most tip of Africa (it's actually not) and a major shipping point along the ancient Spice Route from Europe to the Orient. 

Cape Point is gorgeous, marked by crashing waves, spectacular cliffs, brushy flora, soaring gulls, diving cormorants, grazing ostriches & eland (an antelope of sorts - think reindeer), scruffy rock hyraxes (also known as dassies - they look like big hamsters, or more appropriately, the gopher in 'Caddyshack'... also, they urinate on their own hind legs to give themselves more traction on the rocks), and mischievous baboons (who knock peoples food out of their hands and steal it!). 

 There are also colonies of penguins around the Cape. It's amazing. Is there any other place in the world one can see baboons, ostriches, and penguins together in the wild? 

 
We also tried the "Great White Shark Dive" which turned out to be a dud due to bad weather. The Cape generally suffers rough seas and we got to see some of that first hand. Usually, the shark boats make for a channel in between two seal island colonies about 5 miles offshore. There, in their feeding territory, the Great Whites appear in great numbers as the fishermen chum the water. They bait the fish, but never feed them. Due to a slow metabolism, GW Sharks feed every 3-4 days, and if they fed the sharks, their business would suffer since the sharks wouldn't come around for another few days. Anyway, all this was foiled by the weather, especially the huge swells. We couldn't get into the channel itself and had to settle for rougher seas a bit further off. The result? 5 sharks and everyone tossing their cookies multiple times, despite full doses of Dramamine. Even the fisherman looked green! I did manage to get in the cage for a bit, though, and got a glimpse of a Great White as it nosed the tuna's head on a rope used as bait. Inside the cage was like the inside of a blender in the rough sea, though, and I could only make out a huge grey shape ahead - not really the photo op I was hoping for. I only lasted 15 minutes in the cage before throwing up a few more times. Good fun. You could see the sharks clearly from the boat, though. They were truly breathtaking. Staggeringly big - usually about 12 feet long, which was half the size of the boat! Really, really amazing when you see the sleek grey body and the dorsal fin cutting the water. I thought I would be more scared, but frankly, I found them beautiful. Moreover, all that "Jaws"-type thinking is non-sense. The sharks were amazingly calm and had little or no interest in people, or our boat, whatsoever. On the trip out, my paranoid, Hollywood-ized brain had imagined every scenario where the sharks flip the boat and kill us all, but it just isn't realistic.

Next we climbed Table Mountain, the 3,500 foot mesa that backs downtown Cape Town. That was a lot of fun, and the scenery from up there was amazing. Mountains in the distance, green valleys below, blue sea all around... We climbed up from Kirstenboch, the national gardens at the back of Table Mountain, made our way to the top (about a 2 hour climb, flavored with natural mountain springs all the way up with the best-tasting water ever), walked across the top to the cable car station, and cabled down. It's a must-do for anyone who visits Cape Town. 

The food and wine in Cape Town were also major highlights. Tastiest meal? Ostrich! Can you believe it? Tastes like Filet Mignon with none of the fat. It was great. As for wines, we were really impressed. South Africa makes some great stuff and we bought some to ship home.

Our next stop after Cape Town was Garonga Lodge. Garonga actually means "big elephant" and we saw quite a few. Garonga sits in the eastern part of South Africa, not far from Kruger National Park. It's about 20,000 hectares, and a hectare is 2.2 acres, I think. Life in a "bush camp" surrounds the game drive. There are two game drives per day - one in the morning and one in the evening. Due to the heat, this is the most active time for most animals. Morning drives leave between 6:30-7:00 am and return at 10ish. Evening drives leave at 4:00 pm and return around 7. Basically, all the tourists pile onto the back of an open Land Rover, which has seats stepped upwards, like bleachers. The Ranger drives and his spotter/tracker sits on a special chair on the hood and "tracks" the animals. Tracking along the dirt roads is pretty easy since most animals use the roads because they are easier to walk along than the dense bush. The idea is to find animals, turn off the car, and sit and watch. The animals really don't run because they all grew up in the park around the vehicles and ignore them. That does not mean the animals are domestic, though. If you stand up or move from your seat, an animal may attack you. Most animals see the car as one strange looking and sounding harmless animal. But if you distinguish yourself from that, the animal can pick you up and react. After a while, the game drive gets a bit silly. I feel like we should leave the animals alone, you know? But I must admit, getting close to some of these pre-historic beasts is awesome. We had one experience where we stopped about 50-75 feet from a grazing elephant (elephants eat shrubs and tree branches). This time, however, instead of ignoring us, he came straight towards us. He literally stopped 2 feet from the open car. Everyone in the car was holding their breath and sitting still. It's head was huge, the tusks ominous, and the eyes dark and dangerous. There's a point at which you realize that this is not a zoo, and that the animal can at any time kill you. He passed on the left side of the car, completely dwarfing the whole vehicle. As we started to breathe again, he stopped behind us (imagine this beast passing by and not being able to turn your head to watch it go, and not knowing if it's really gone!). Cathy and I had the last row (of the 3 rows in the car) of seats and we were about shoulder level to this guy. He stopped and stuck his trunk right between us and took a good snort. I saw the fleshy interior of the trunk as he did it and wondered, 'what do I do if he grabs me with it?' Luckily he didn't care for our smell, turned and walked off, and our group collectively sighed with relief. Man, that was an up close and personal encounter. 

We left Garonga after 3 days via charter plane for our next and current stop, Leopard Hills. Leopard Hills has more cats than Garonga, and that has been the highlight thus far. This morning we saw leopard, which are the most graceful, sleek, and gorgeous animals you've ever seen. And when they walk you can literally see the ripple of their powerful muscles. 

We stumbled across a mother leopard and her 3 cubs. The mother had just made a kill, and was resting after putting a small impala up a tree for her cubs. Once cub had made it up and was feeding, but 5 hyena had moved in for scraps (they can't climb trees) and were keeping the other cubs at bay. Hyena, lion, leopard, and cheetah will all kill each other given the chance, just to eliminate other competition for food. But here was full drama being played out in the wild. The feeding cub, the patient hyena, the other cubs and the mother leopard lurking nearby, hoping for a chance to make it up the tree to feed... How was this going to play out? How was the cub in the tree going to get down? We plan on returning to the site tonight to find out.  See below for the scene...

Last night we saw a male lion from 10 feet away and over the course of 15 minutes it made 2 sets of territorial growls/roars. I'm telling you, this is one of the most primal, raw, powerful, ominous, haunting, disturbing, and yet moving things I've ever heard. I only wish we had brought a video camera for the audio. With guttural power, a low base rumbling develops in his gut and just rolls out of his muzzle like thunder. If I heard that while out for a walk, I'd run and hide. It used to be cliché, but now I know why the lion is king in these parts.

We're off to Sausage Tree Camp in Zambia tomorrow, and parting ways with South Africa. We may not get another chance to update for 10 days or so, so check back then. South Africa has been great, in every sense. We have learned a ton about the landscape, the people, the history, and the animals in this beautiful country. The Lodges have been more than comfortable, water is fine from the tap, our health is good, and we are looking forward to the next chapter. Talk to you all again soon! 

All the Best, BEN & CATHY