Blog post in blue, #1

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hello faithful readers, and welcome to the nick in africa blog. knowing me this will be my first and last posting, but ohh well, here goes.

i arrived in joburg safe and sound after a fairly uneventful flight (aside from almost missing my connecting flight in dc thanks to really slow airport shuttles). spend a night at my friends place in joburg and then flew on to swaziland. met up with my friend from childhood Tao here and then the real holiday could begin.

it's been good to catch up with tao. i can't say it's like i never left, but we certainly get on really well now too. after supper at his parents (beautiful) place we got ready to head up and visit his brother, who works at a private game reserve in south africa. yes, i flew to swaziland so i could drive back to south africa, shush.

its about a four hour drive to where Tal (Tao's brother) works as a ranger, through Kruger National Park, which was fun to drive through because you see all sorts of animals along the road. It's a small, two lane road, and people just stop, both sides, whenever there's something interesting to look at. So you'll be completely stuck for a bit while everyone oogles elephants or whatever. you get to look at the elephants too though, so it's all okay.

out the other side, it's a short drive to Tal's lodge along a dirt road. now this is no ordinary lodge. it's called Singita, you can check it out online at www.singita.com to get an idea of what kind of place it is. this is a place for the richest of the rich. at $1000 a night per person, you have to be pretty fucking loaded to stay there.

we of course did not get to stay in the guest rooms, but the staff quarters were pretty nice too, with a swimming pool and nice grassy areas to sit. there was a going away party for one of the rangers the first night, so that was a nice way to meet a lot of the people who work there and to drink some, since that seems to be the only way i can trick my internal clock into actually letting me go to sleep before dawn.

the real fun was to begin the following day however, when we got to start going on what they call 'game drives'. up at 5am on the first day to get coffee and snacks in the lodge and chat with really rich 'real' guests. then you pile with four of those guests, into an open land rover and go driving off on little dirt roads into the bush. the ranger (Tal in our case) is in touch with everyone by radio, and they all report animals they see so everyone can go have a look. On our very first drive we honestly saw rhino, zebra, elephant, giraffe, and even a lion that had just killed a baby giraffe and was resting next to it. now the really crazy thing is that you can drive up to within like 5 feet of these animals. they are totally used to the land rover and they completely ignore it. these are hard core vehicles, so they just drive off the road into the bush, knocking over small bushes and trees, over crazy bumps, whatever, and drive right up to what you're looking it. it's so amazing. our first trip was with four fat french people, so not much converstation there, but the other three were all with an american couple on honeymoon, and an older british couple who were all cool and fun to chat with.

over the course of the drives we saw: rhino, elephant, zebra, antelope, lion, hippo, leopard, giraffe, buffalo, loads of birds, and probably others that i'm forgetting now. all of these seen from no more that 10 meters away. Tal has also been doing this for six years, so he knows tons of shit about all the animals and has funny stories to tell the whole time. it's a good time all around.

you stop in the middle of the drive, way out in the bush, and they make coffee or tea for everyone and give you delicious cookies and snacks and stuff. it's all a bit surreal getting to live the life of the super rich for a few hours. a pretty amazing experience all around.

i stupidly didn't (don't) have a camera, but Tal is a hard core photographer, so I'll show some of his photos when I get back and you can get an idea of what it's like.

we drove back to swaziland on monday and i'm hanging out here for a few days before we're off to mozambique to stay with a friend of tao's who's building a backpacking place right on the beach there. it's a tough life in these parts. turns out anita's in town, (like really, in the same town i'm in here) which is crazy, so we're meeting up for drinks this evening. small world huh?

that's all for now. i'm trying to organize a camera i can use for the mozambique trip so hopefully i'll have some photos to post next time. until then, thanks for reading.

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