Hello from Africa!

We’ve been having an amazing week. St Lucia is a small town situated on an estuary by the ocean and near lots of lakes. We’re staying at a self-catered lodge with our own apartment. Our deck overlooks a jungle onto the ocean, making for a fantastic view. 

We spent the week hiking, on a boat cruise looking for hippos and crocs, relaxing, and enjoying the views. Our favorite day was spent in the Hluhluwe-Imfolozi reserve with a hilarious guide named Rick. We were up at 3:00 am and drove into the park, where one of the first things we got to see was giraffes breakfasting on trees, right beside some zebras – but Rick wanted to chase the big animals so he said we wouldn’t stop for anything that looked like a striped horse until later in the day. We were in an open vehicle, and we rode through jungle, open plains, and grasslands, and crossed over rivers, in search of the Big Five (elephant, rhino, lion, buffalo, and leopard). One thing that surprised us the most was how green it was – this wasn’t the Africa we’d imagined! 

Rick took us past tons of animals:
 - Impala (the preferred snack of smaller predators)
 - Giraffes (you can tell the girls because they carry their black makeup brushes on their antlers)
 - African buffalo (cows with attitude)
 - White rhino (the pacifist hippie: peace, love, and fun, baby)
 - Waterbuck (shaggy raindeer-looking antelope found near water)
 - A missing dungbeetle (the dung ball was there but the beetle had become birdfood)
 - Spotted hyena (the misuderstood hunter, hunts 60% of its own food rather than purely scavenging)
 - Savannah baboon (native people used to find water by trapping them, feeding them salt, and following them to water)
 - Nyala (males look different to the females, except for their socks)
 - Warthogs (so ugly they’re cute)
 - Lions (the most boring animal, like the domestic cat, it sleeps all day)
 - Gnus (the Lindsay Lohan of the bush: looks funny and has no brains)
 - Kudu (the biggest antelope, with curly antlers, weighing in at 700lb)

 

But our absolute favorite was a ginormous, grrrumpy, musty bull elephant that mock-charged us, by flapping his ears, trumpeting, and running at us. Rick assured us that he was just testing us, but if we had been alone, I’d have raced backwards all the way out of the park. The tour was rounded out by a traditional braai with grilled steak, boerwurst, salads, and a chilled white. 

Being on the ocean, this area has lots to see, including whales and dolphins. We tried to take a whale-watching tour, but it was canceled twice, so we watched hippos and crocodiles instead. Not too bad. 

The Honeymooners!  iSimangaliso Wetland Park

We also tried to go for a hike on a wooded nature trail.  It would have been two hours of great hiking among zebra, warthogs, antelope, etc….if I wouldn’t have been too  scared.  Philip was ok, but I thought I saw a lion’s rear and its tail twitching back and forth in the bush and I was out of there.  Pronto.  I don’t know that I have hiked so fast before.  Did we mention that there are snakes in this region?  Gaboon adders that bite and don’t let go, puff adders, spitting cobras, black mambo, etc.  The likelyhood that we would have seen any of them is small, but I wan’t comfortable hanging out to find out more. 

Tomorrow we head to our volunteering job. We really have no idea what we’ll be doing, but we’re looking forward to being out among the animals with poeple who know about them.

Honeymoon Apartment - Ingwennya Lodge

Imfolozli River - Hluhluwe - Imfolozi Game Reserve

Burchell's Zebras - see the grey stripes?

Young Impala Bucks at Play

White Rhino

Gnu

Kudu Buck

Grrrumpy Musty Bull

Self Explanatory!

Hippos near St. Lucia

Vervet Monkey Mom and Baby