Animals in Africa!

Sanibonani!


A lot has happened since I last wrote about Cape Town. I finished up my paper and presented on my observations at St. Mary's hospital on Friday (the 30th). Hallelujah! That is over with :-) It was actually quite interesting listening to what everyone else had done and discovered in their own projects. People were working with NGOs, hospitals, schools, and even pharmaceutical drug prices.

Over the weekend I did some shopping, attempted to get some sun at the beach (it was a bit cloudy), and went to a rotating restaurant in Durban (where I had my first crocodile steak). Sunday I visited my Cato family one last time. My mama made steam bread and chicken curry, it was great to see her and my bhuti one last time :-)


Monday (the 1st) we left Durban, and headed off to St. Lucia for a safari! It was fabulous! I was sad to leave Durban, but happy to be out of that backpacker where I was sleeping on a mattress on the floor. St. Lucia was gorgeous! We stayed in a very nice flat by the river, warned about the crocodiles and hippos. Although I never saw any, the Hippos come up to eat the lawns in the night. Also, the river is very dangerous because of the crocodiles; an average of 3 ppl die in the river each year. Monday night we took a sunset river cruise and saw hippos and crocodiles. It was wonderful :-)


Tuesday was quite an adventure! (It was a safari!) We woke up @ 4am and were picked up at 5 by our guides in safari jeeps! There were 9 of us in a jeep, and we traveled an hour to get to the park, Hluhluwe Umfolozi Game Reserve, which is the oldest in South Africa. The first hour and a half we were at the park we saw soo much! The animals are used to the jeeps, and as long as no one gets out of the jeep the animals are generally undisturbed. We saw wildebeests, types of antelope, water buffalo, white rhinos, zebras, giraffes, warthogs, and much more. In the late morning, we headed to a point in the park great for pictures. One jeep was already there (there were 3 of us), and our jeep was about to stop, when they got a call about a cheetah sighting! So we whipped it into reverse, the other people jumped into their jeep, and we drove crazy fast over to the area. And we saw a cheetah in action! Ok... so she didn't kill anything, but she was beautiful! And we got really close to her. The guides said this was the best cheetah sighting they had seen in years, because there are only about 60 cheetahs in the entire park. After our cheetah adventure, we saw many of the same animals we had seen earlier. Our guides knew a lot, and we saw a lot of types of animals grazing together. The animals do this because the smaller/weaker animals, i.e. the antelope, have super intune senses. So they are able to warn the bigger animals of danger, i.e. the cheetah. We were able to hear the warning noises they made. It was so intriguing watching the predator/prey interactions between the cheetah and wildebeests. The cheetah would walk towards the herd, and they would back up slowly. But then as the cheetah walked away from the herd, they would follow it. As soon as the cheetah turned around (or stopped and turned its head), the herd stopped immediately. It looked just like a game of red-light-green-light. As soon as the cheetah turned around and walked away again, the herd followed. It was fascinating!
Later in the afternoon, our guides got a call about 7 lions spotted at a watering hole! So again, we rushed over there. One thing our guide said was that we had one rule to follow, if we spot a lion, we cannot run. At the watering hole, there is a hut with benches and a slit at eye level for us to sit and observe the animals. As we follow each other into the hut, the guides stayed outside, and we saw one start to walk into the bush. All of a sudden, they run into the hut all freaked out! One of the lions had false charged, or charged a few steps, towards one of the guides! This guy was really freaked out, he was a grown man and still shaking when we left! (But I would probably be too if a lion had charged at me.) We drove around and attempted to find them, but they had gotten spooked off. Still, it was an exciting day. At the end of the trip, we saw tons of baboons crossing the trail, which was a nice end to our trip.


Tuesday night we had a farwell dinner at a restaurant (paid for by SIT, so I got a multiple course meal, complete with dessert!). Wednesday we had a long 9 hour car ride to Joburg (where we repeatedly got completely stopped in construction traffic) to say our final good-byes. It was hard not just to say good-bye to our staff leaders, but to many of the girls who I will probably never see again :-( But we swapped American cell numbers and promised to keep in touch through facebook :-)



Hambani Kahle!