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Published: July 27th 2008
Baz Bus
I'm in the middle, and Scott is at the front acting the clown!"Ladies and gentlemen, we are about to land in Johannesburg. Local time is 8:45am and ground temperature is seven degrees celsius..."
What?!! Seven degrees celsius!!! Coming from almost 40 degree heat in Delhi, it was a shock to step off the plane only to be hit with a gust of icy wind. For the next day and a half, we froze to death in Johannesburg even whilst wearing 6 layers of clothing in the evening. We didn't do much apart from visit the local shopping centre. Wow! What a treat after India. Everything was unbelievably clean and orderly, no garbage, no-one trying to sell us mineral water or toilet rolls, but sadly no cows either!
On our third day we finally left Johannesburg. We went by Baz Bus, a hop-on hop-off backpacker bus, mainly to avoid becoming one of South Africa's horrendous crime statistics. Apparently, just going to Park Station to catch a bus is practically a guarantee to get mugged. By taking Baz Bus, we sacrificed a bit of flexibility and a lot of money, but we thought it was worth it for the safety. We later found out that backpackers in another Johannesburg hostel were held up
at gunpoint inside their hostel! I guess no-where is really safe.
Our first destiniation was Nelspruit, gateway to Kruger National Park. Jimmy and J.P. were still at Nelspruit Backpackers, and remembered us from nine months ago when we were last here. They helped us to rent a car and get accommodation in the park, so we were soon set to go. Unfortunately, Scott had just realized that his drivers license had expired and so I would have to do all of the driving.
At 4:00am, the alarm rudely awakened us for an early morning drive to make the gate for 6am when it opened. Within a few minutes of entering the park we saw a rhino. It's exactly what happened last time! Over the course of the next three days, we saw the "Big 5" (lion, leopard, water buffalo, elephant, and rhino) plus lots more. Of course, we had all of the usual false alarms such as hippos which turned out to be rocks, otherwise known as
hippopotorocks, and crocodiles that turned out to be logs, otherwise known as
crocologs. At one point as we watched the leopard, it crouched down and stealthilymoved along close to the ground,
obviously hunting. In the undergrowth we could see something big and dark-colored sitting very still, probably a buffalo. Scott even told a car that had just arrived what we were all looking at, "There is a leopard hunting that buffalo over there." Within minutes, the leopard had stealthily vanished into the bushes and so we moved on. With the change of angle, we could finally see that what we were convinced was a buffalo was in fact just a burth out log - oops! I'm sure when the other people saw this they just assumed that the leopard was a figment of our imaginations, too. Unfortunately, as all of the big cats we saw were at a distance, I have no photos so you will just have to take my word!
A memorable couple of incidents involved two families frok our last-visited country: India. First, they pulled their two cars alongside the watering hole and all piled out, kids and all (something which is completely illegal by the way). After dropping a piece of garbage into the water, one urinated into it in full view of everyone and they all stood on shore. Craziness given that we could see
dozens of hippos and huge crocodiles in the water.
A little later that same day we were watching three lions trying to smeak up on a herd of impalas when the same two Indian families showed up. Again, they immediately piled out of the cars in order to get a closer photo of the lions. Again, it was obviously pure madness. They only got back into their cars when a local South African threatened to make a citizen's arrest. The next day, we were driving slowly around the park when six police cars and an ambulance came racing past us into the park. We're guessing the same two families decided to feed or ride the "friendly" elephants!
By the end of our three days there, we'd seen practically all the animals that we'd wanted to, I'd re-learned to drive a stick-shift car, and we were both several pounds heavier due to the Kruger park staple food - fries with absolutely everything! We went back to Nelspruit backpackers and I made myself a very boring but very healthy plate of boiled fresh veggies, washed down by a not-so-healthy beer in honour of not crashing the rental car. So much
for our plan for an early night. We ended up meeting two British medical students who had some very interesting stories after six weeks of working in a Tanzanian hospital, and two guys from Zambia who were on their way to Mozambique. We ended up staying up and talking until midnight, when we turned into pumpkins and collapsed into bed!
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Andi
non-member comment
I'm getting worried...
...you are turning into an American - 'shift stick', come on ; ) When you and Scott are back in the UK we're going to have to put Scott through an intensive course on how to speak ENGLISH!