Kruger and Soweto Adventures

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April 11th 2009

Published: April 11th 2009

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Life Through A New Lens

Come Back Little Friend

This is Jeremy, he found a Gecko and was keeping him for a pet until about 3 min after this when he shed his tail as a defense mechanism.

Finally, I got to have my break from classes and once again enjoy being in Africa. The past week has been phenomenal, and I don’t know how I am possibly going to get it all down, but I guess the best thing to do at this point is just to start. Thankfully I have a million pictures (maybe not a million), and those will help to tell the story.

Saturday morning, April 4, I woke up bright and early in order to get to Alma by 6:15 totally packed and ready to go for our 5 day IES trip. I had been mostly packed from the night before, so I just hopped in the shower and threw the remaining few items into my backpack. Yes, I packed for 5 days into a backpack, and I even had a towel. I ended up being about 5 minutes early to Alma, and it’s a good thing because when I got there Susy was freaking out because she had just woken up and had not packed anything the night before. After making sure that Susy was ready to go we headed outside, the 32 of us packed into 3 vans and we headed

Sky above Old Vic

for the airport. By the time we got checked in and had gone through security we ended up boarding shortly after we got to the gate. The flight was nice and short, and basically all the other students were sleeping. I did my usual not being able to sleep in airplanes bit and spent the majority of my time doing Sudoku. When we arrived in Johannesburg, Crazy Dave and two other drivers picked us up at the airport and drove us four hours to Nelspruit. Nelspruit is a small town that is about an hour away from one of the entrances to Kruger National Park, and Crazy Dave owns a backpacker’s there called Old Vic. We stayed at Old Vic that evening. Well, most of the people from IES stayed at Old Vic, but since there were 32 of us, we couldn’t all fit so I stayed down the road at another backpacker’s called the Krazy Kangaroo with 7 other IES people, but we hung out and had supper at Old Vic.

Sunday, April 5, the Kruger adventure began bright and early. We all had to wake up and be at breakfast by 4:30am, because we needed to leave

View from Above

We went into the woods thinking it would take us to the nature reserve, and this is the view from the place where I stopped climbing.

Old Vic by 5am in order to be at Kruger when the gates open at 6. Crazy Dave also has a Kruger Tour service, and so we all got into Safari Vehicles at Old Vic to drive to Kruger. It was a long, cold, and very dark ride, and since I couldn’t see out the plastic windows, I (and most of the other people in the convy) fell asleep. When we got to Kruger the sun was starting rise so our guide, Richard, opened up the side windows of the convy while we waited in line for the gate to open. Before we officially entered the park we crossed the Crocodile River and saw a hippopotamus, and before we entered the gate, we ran into a herd of elephants. It may have been 6am, but it was a wonderful start to the day. We spent the rest of the day driving around and seeing animals. We started off once we entered the park by finding a white Rhinoceros. He was just chilling at the side of the road. Throughout the day we saw elephants, hippos, a water buck and her baby, a wildebeest, African Buffalo, a multitude of birds, a

Pretty Morgan

Morgan chilling on the hill with me behind Old Vic.

couple of Black Rhinoceros, warthogs, a couple of owls, some mongoose, impala, kudu, cliff springers, some more elephants and other animals. This was all before lunch. We saw a lot of elephants of every shape and size, and we sat and watched a young male elephant chase some impala and warthogs for a while.

We stopped at a small picnic area for lunch, and then after lunch we headed out again. We stopped by the river and saw some hippopotamus and a crocodile, and then we turned around, and on our way to camp we saw vermit monkeys, a tower of giraffes (that’s what you call a group), and some zebra butts. I didn’t actually get to see the whole zebras because I was at the wrong angle. Richard told us that any animals we saw at this time of day were bonus, because it was a time when a lot of animals were hiding in the bush from the sun. We came down one road with particularly high grass, and as he started to say that it was hard to find lions because even if they are there they can be 5 feet off the road and we

Crocodile River

The river before we reached the park where we saw the hippo, and I thought Phil was joking.

won’t be able to see them, we came over a hill and a female lion was standing right in the middle of the road. It turns out there were 2 females lions in the road, and we got to get really close to them. We ended up driving right next to them, and as we did Richard kept saying, “Don’t Move! These are predators and they respond to movement”. All in all, it was a wonderful day.

We then arrived at our camp. We stayed at Pretoriuskop Camp in little round huts, two people per hut. I went swimming for a bit, and then took a shower and chilled with Morgan in the hut until supper. Outside there were always a multitude of Impala and Vermit Monkeys around, and we sat and watched the monkeys steal food from tables and trash cans. Some people saw them go into the open widow of a coach bus and steal someone’s malarone (anti-malarial) pills. We then had a braai at our camp and after chilling for a while went into our huts. Morgan and I talked for a while and then went to sleep.

Monday, April 6 was another early morning.

Kruger Adventure

Welcome to Kruger National Park

We had breakfast at 5:30, and we all hurried to jump into our convies as soon as the drivers arrived because we had heard the lions were out again, and half of the 4 conveys had not seen them the day before because some idiot with a loud car parked right next to them and they went into the tall grass. By the time we got to them there was a traffic jam so we didn’t get to see them well, but that’s ok. Later down the road we saw two more, and there was a male lion with that pair, but we didn’t see him because he was hiding. After driving around and seeing more animals, we got a call over the radio from another driver and headed toward a female and baby of something. The drivers always used the local names for the animals so that we would not get too excited about something or too upset if it had moved by the time we got to the spot so we didn’t get to see it, and the only words we figured out were male, female and baby. When we got there it was a mom and baby

White Rhino

That whole white thing is really just a big misunderstanding. The original name was Wide Rhino because of it's wide mouth, but it got lost in translation.

cheetah, and they were on the hunt! Well, mom was on the hunt and baby was taking notes. We sat for probably 30 minutes and watched her pursue some impala. At one point in time after she had been crouched for a while she came up and freaked out the impala and one of them came from my right and jumped up while running beside our convy no more than 3 feet away. We never saw her catch anything, but it was exciting all the same. Throughout the day we drove around, and our main aim was to try and find a leopard. We saw lots of cool animals on the way, and we would stop and watch every single one of them, but we never did find a leopard. I was on lookout duty because I had historically been the best sighter in the group, but at the end of the day I ended up only spotting 3 spotted stumps and logs that looked suspiciously like cats, and every time we would reverse for them someone else would also think that it was a leopard until Richard pulled out the binoculars and affirmed that it was only wood. We

Water Buck and Baby

These guys are pretty skiddish, and many people don't ever see them.

also saw a bunch of baboons. Now this isn’t the first time that I’ve seen baboons, but it was the first time I actually got to get pictures of them.

We stopped at the Kruger Country Club for lunch, and even though we had called in our orders ahead of time, they ran out and we ended up being there for a long time because they had to go and buy more food for us. It was ok though, because the golf course is not blocked off from the park, so while we were waiting we watched the hippos and the warthogs that wondered around the course. After lunch on our drive back to camp, the first thing we ran into was a male cheetah walking down the road towards us. We have the best luck. The chances of seeing a cheetah are slim but seeing 3 in one day is nearly impossible. After we followed him for a while and a guy in a car scared him into the tall grass, Richard radioed it into the other convies because he figured the cheetah would come back onto the road, and we continued. After a while, we finally saw

Lion Food

These water buck are hunted by lions, and Guy says it's because they have a target on their butts.

a herd of zebras. I was so excited when we found them, because it was the only animal that I really wanted to see that we had not yet seen. We stopped for a quick photo shoot and then headed on to camp spotting zebras, impala, elephants, monkeys and other animals on the way back. During our two days in Kruger, we saw 4 of the Big 5, which is pretty good if you ask me. Back at camp we had a meeting with Crazy Dave, I went swimming again, and then after my shower we had another Braai. This time we had STEAK!! After supper and star gazing with Ryan and Steven, I was exhausted and went to bed.

Tuesday, April 7, we had to leave Kruger. We once again had breakfast bright and early so that we could get a jump start on the day. I was the first one at breakfast, and while I was eating, there were some monkeys in the tree eyeing my food. I kept one eye on the monkey that was slowly moving toward me in the tree. I’ve seen what these little guys are capable of. I’ve see the Dirty Jobs

Dang People

This young male was chewing us out after the small herd crossed in front of us.

episode where Patty the evil Vermit Monkey attacks the whole crew. After everyone had had breakfast the vans arrived and we all piled in and headed out. Our final destination for the day was Soweto, but on the way we made lots of stops to see the beauty that South Africa has to offer.

Our first stop was supposed to be God’s Window, but it was so cloudy that you couldn’t even see past the sign, so stopping would have been pointless. Our second stop was the Lisbon Falls. They were absolutely gorgeous, even in the cool drizzle. We stopped there for a while, and then we headed on. Next stop was Bourke’s Luck Potholes. These are basically gorges formed by the Tear River in super soft rock. There are lots of little waterfalls there, and we all spent time climbing on the rocks and playing in the water. Susy even fell totally into the water on accident and lost her sandals. After that was my favorite stop, Blyde Canyon. This is the 3rd largest canyon in the world, and it was so beautiful that it actually took my breath away. I could have sat there for days and

Enjoy the View

This is what our convy looked like from the inside.

looked at it. It was totally green with a river running through the bottom of it. Unfortunately, we were on a schedule and we had to keep going. For lunch we stopped at a place called Harries Pancakes, and it was AMAZING. They make crêpe style pancakes filled with all sorts of wonderful things.

After all of our driving we had a few more hours of driving before we arrived in Soweto. After asking for directions from multiple different people, we finally made it to our final destination, Lebo’s Backpacker’s in Soweto. Soweto is the largest township in South Africa, and it has a history like you wouldn’t believe. At Lebo’s some of us spent time playing with the kids at the park across the street, and then after supper we all just chilled. Lebo’s has a super sweet backyard complete with a fire circle and a hammock.

The next morning after breakfast we went on a biking tour of Soweto. We started our tour in the barrack area, and here they fed us township beer, which I graciously passed on, and then a group of young girls performed traditional Zulu dances for us. We continued and learned

Elephant Skull

At this point we stopped to check out the bones and lost the tracks of the lion we were following because a guy behind us got impatient and ran them over.

more about Soweto and the role that it played in the history of South Africa as well as what it is like today. It was the Soweto student revolts that are said to be what changed the era of apartheid and was the beginning of the end. Along the way we stopped at a roadside stand where they were cooking traditional meat, straight from the cows head. In fact, we stood by and watched them cut it off the face. We also had iced lollies, and other foods. We stopped for lunch at a restaurant across the street from Nelson Mandela’s House, and then after stopping at Desmond Tutu’s house, we started back toward Lebo’s. On the way, we took a break at a shebeen (a local backyard tavern) before finishing our tour. Unfortunately, the handlebars on my bike got loose, so after riding for a while without being able to change gears and having trouble operating my breaks, I stopped with a couple of the guides so that they could fix my bike. The rest of group ended up having to wait for me, but it was ok, because after we stopped for the second time to fix the

Wildebeest

You always think that these guys travel in groups, but we only saw them in single pairs. This male was chasing impala.

handlebars, I ended up riding past a couple of people who were having trouble making it up the hill and only being the 4th to last person to join the group.

After we got back to Lebo’s and after my shower I went back to the park across the street, and I spent a few hours playing with the kids. They were all really cute, but they tired me out. They all wanted to be carried and swung around, and there was one little girl in particular, Ma, who every time I stood up would climb onto me, and if I sat down would say, “Stand Up”, and followed me everywhere I went. The kids were great though, and they played with me, and did my hair. One little boy, after he finished his bag of popcorn decided he was going to do my hair for me. Of course, his number one choice in hair product was butter and salt. Needless to say, even though I had just taken a shower, my hair was no longer clean. For supper we went to a local restaurant and were given South African style buffet. It was wonderful, but afterwards I was

Cute Owl

I can't remember his proper name, but he sure is cute.

tired. Some people went back to the shebeen, but I called it a night, went back to Lebo’s, packed up my stuff and went to bed. I was so tired I almost fell asleep with the light on.

The morning of Thursday, April 9 was our free time. After breakfast, Sam, Susy, Morgan, Alex, Johanna and I took a taxi into Johannesburg to the Newtown district. Here they have the Museum Africa and some other things. We strolled some shops and went to the museum, and then we stopped at a little café for bagels, smoothies, coffee and croissants. We then took the taxi back to Lebo’s and after lunch at Lebo’s those of us who were left headed for the airport. Many of the other students had already left because they were flying other places and doing other things for the rest of break.

When we arrived in Cape Town it was a really weird feeling. As the plane neared the city and we could see table mountain, I felt like I was going home, and other people shared the same feelings. It is so strange that after being here for only 3 months, Cape Town has

A Beautiful Day in the Bush

This is what we saw most of the time, but if you stop and take it in, it's quite pretty.

become my home. It is very hard to put into words, but it felt like it usually does when flying into Minneapolis or Rochester or when I’m driving home and reach the MN border, but it is on the other side of the world. I don’t know how to explain it, but I kind of like it. It is going to be weird when it comes time to leave this place to go to my actual home, because I’ve never left home to return home before. That evening my housemates rented the Wild Thornberry’s Movie and we watched it. I then called it a night and settled into my bed in my home here in Cape Town. It was good to be home.

With Love from Cape Town,
April

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