What a week, what a week. It was a long one with a lot of unexpected ups and downs, but such an eye opening experience nonetheless. It was the long-awaited week of safari and we were all really excited to leave, despite the 5:30am departure time.
We took off on Monday morning and said our goodbyes as half of us got on the safari-bound bus and the other got on the Zulu experience bus. Since my safari group was running ahead of schedule, we went to an extra reserve before heading to the main one. We saw some elephants, lots of (very ugly) baboons, nyala, impala, kudu, warthogs and buffalo. After eating some lunch together, we took off for mKuzi game reserve.
We rode in our open air jeeps for about an hour or so, and after we got into the park, we did a short game drive on our way to our camp. It was so beautiful! Our camp consisted of 4 tent cabins, an open air kitchen/dining area, a campfire area and a bathroom with 2 toilets and 2 showers on each side. The most thrilling part was the lack of fence.
The first night was so much fun! We played signs together before dinner and enjoyed an exciting game of mafia afterwards. It was refreshing to be in a smaller-sized group. It was much more manageable to talk with everyone, but we really missed the others…we really felt incomplete.
On our second day of safari, we saw much of the same animals, plus some tortoise, big spiders, dung beetles, lots of birds and a hippo fight! Hippos were the hoped-for animal of the day, so after lunch, all 3 jeeps took off on separate paths in hopes of spotting some. My jeep, with our guide Israel, found 4 hippo pretty close to shore…just a few car lengths from us. We radioed the other jeeps to let them know we’d found some and sat quietly to watch. Out of nowhere, we heard a huge snuff and one of them jumped out of the water onto another! The first one was obviously upset, and ran up onto the shore—made me so nervous, but I was so excited to see a hippo out of the water in the wild!
We barbecued our dinner next to the campfire that evening and had a chat with Reg before heading to bed. We slept really well that night after 2 really early mornings, but had another early morning on Wednesday. We left our camp at 5:30 to head to another reserve where we saw cheetah! They were so majestic…and close! There is no report of a cheetah EVER attacking a human, so we got pretty close. My guess was about 2 truck-lengths from them. There were 2 brothers and their sister, which was unusual, because usually the females are solitary.
Upon our return to camp was when we heard about the other group. Reg told us that he’d gotten a call informing him of some sick students. 6 of the group had gotten sick with vomiting and the other sort, and had been hospitalized for dehydration. We didn’t realize the severity of it until we met up with them to switch up. We saw the bus pull up and the solemn, almost lifeless faces looking out the window (with a few IV patched arms hanging out, too). As soon as they got out, a few of them just laid on the ground and couldn’t do anything but close their eyes. More had gotten sick since the call that morning. Though no more had gone to the hospital, about half of them were sick.
My group was really nervous to go to the Zulu village, but we prayed for our brothers and sisters as well as ourselves and took off. We drove for a few hours into the middle of nowhere and arrived to 6 mud huts, a grass and cement community hut, 2 outhouses and 2 outdoor bucket showers.
The toilets and showers were quite the experience. Some of us didn’t realize until the second time that we had to climb up on the board and use the hole as a squatty potty, and the flap that blew open with the wind left our privacy up to mother nature. It was the same case in the showers. After filling a basin with warm water from the fire, I had to dump it into a bucket with a tap on the bottom and hoist it up with the rope pulley before soaping up.
Other experiences at the village included a long (but not as long as the first group’s) hike, Zulu dancing, Zulu beer (I think I’ll pass on that next time—unless I develop a taste for thick, milky beer), jump rope, a spear throwing contest, slingshot contest, stick fights and stargazing. Our final experience there was to help finish one of the huts. We mixed up mud with our feet, threw it on the sides of the hut and smeared it in.
We were tired and very happy to arrive back to AE with no illness. Once our friends arrived, though, we were shocked to hear that 20 of their 27 had come down with the sickness. It wasn’t much longer until some of our group got it, too. 2 of my group got hospitalized and a couple others went to the clinic.
We took off this morning on the garden route and arrived to East London tonight. Nobody new has gotten sick, but there are still a lot who are unwell, to say the least. My only serious problem at the moment is carsickness, but my group’s not quite in the clear for the Safari Plague of 2010. I think in another day or so it’ll be safe to say that nobody new will catch it…I’d say that only about 25% haven’t gotten it, and we’re praying to keep it that way.
I’m going to stop for now, but I’ll try to post again soon. Please pray for our health and safety on this road trip! Bungee jumping is on Tuesday, ostrich riding and cave exploring is on Wednesday and we’ll arrive to Cape Town on Thursday. We’re almost there!
Pictures to come later…we only had one day to pack between safari and leaving this morning!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment