(Big) Five for five

Rhino – check.

Elephant – check.

Cape buffalo – check.

Lion – check.

Leopard – check.

Dang, I’m done.

Wiki sayeth: “In Africa, the Big Five game animals are the lion, leopard, rhinoceros, elephant, and Cape buffalo. The term was coined by big-game hunters, and refers to the five most difficult animals in Africa to hunt on foot, but is now also widely used by safari tour operators.”

No. 1 of Big Five

A successful day in Kruger National Park here in South Africa. The park, about the size of Israel, one of the guides told us, is filled with critters. We saw impalas right off, plus some other deer-ish thing that had a stripe, then happened upon three hyenas, which was one of my highlights. I don’t think I’d ever seen a hyena, even in a zoo. (Like I’d have come across one anywhere else.) A little bit later, we came across a mamma hyena with three hyena … pups? Cubs? Kittens? Not a clue, but they were so cute, it was sad to know they are going to grow up to be nasty predators that stalk on anything.

When we found a sick lioness (and by “found,” on this one I mean other people confirmed the sighting but I never did), the tour guide pointed out that the hyenas would get her if she didn’t get well.

But she was the second lion our group sighted. We came across a bunch of tourist cars in an area, and knew there was something cool there, but after waiting a bit, everyone decided they’d all missed it, so the cars started to disperse. Ours went in one direction, and all of a sudden, someone in the back called out that she sighted the male lion, walking through the bush. We followed him for a bit, until we lost him as he stalked impalas, but I really got a good view of the lion. At one point, he was walking in our direction. Granted, I was sitting  in a vehicle that could take off at any moment, but I had this moment of, “I’m calmly taking pictures as a lion is walking in my direction no more than 40 meters away.” But wow, what a moment.

As we were coming across all kinds of other animals – giraffes, elephants – the driver got a message over the radio and took off towards a watering hole.

Mandela's cell
at Robben Island

The tourist safari vehicles, like the dunebusters in the UAE, are all modified Toyota trucks. They seat 10 plus the driver – three bench seats that seat three (comfortably; the middle seat is just as good) and the shotgun position, which, since South Africa’s steering wheels are on the wrong side, are on America’s driver side.

My tour group of 25 (12 of whom are all together) has one person who’s 6-foot-8, so he got shotgun. The other eight in our Toyota group – the larger group was split into three – rotated seats during breaks, as we stopped and ate both breakfast and lunch in the park. And all the drivers, not just our three drivers, talk to each other to let everyone else know where the Big Five are.

Granted, I’m not sure what language Sinky, our driver, spoke, but I could tell he got a good sighting report when we took off all of a sudden to a watering hole. Across the way – far enough to identify it, but not close enough to get a good picture from an iPhone 6 – was a leopard! Holy cow, how lucky could we get?

Actually, probably a bit luckier. Two of the four “Houston 12,” who were seated in our Toyota, had gigantic cameras with lenses, no lie, that were over a foot long. One was sitting in my row, so every time he went to take a picture, I couldn’t see a damn thing. The driver kept asking if everyone could see whatever animal it was, and I would be like, uh, no.

African Penguins

Rant: NO ONE WANTS TO SEE YOUR PICTURES. Seriously, people. You do not need 9000 photos of Elephant No. 17 or Impala No. 672 (seriously, they were everywhere). You will never go back through them. You can flatter yourself by thinking that people care, but they don’t. No, they don’t. No one will look at your 80,000 photos from your two safari days. Take some photos to spark your memory, but don’t let taking photos take you away from being in the moment. Just sit back and observe – watch nature unfold. It’s a helluva reality show, I promise. And you will not go all Aunt Patty and Selma, forcing Bart and Lisa to watch vacation slideshow after vacation slideshow. People appreciate a couple. They do not appreciate 67 photos of the same kudo (a cool antelope) and then 81 of that bloat of hippos you saw sunning themselves. (Yes, I looked up what a group of hippos is called. Also acceptable: pod, school, herd. But “bloat” sounds best.)

Clearly, today’s been my highlight so far. This has something to do with Kruger National Park being awesome, but also because my planned cage diving in Cape Town got weathered out. The day turned out to be nice, but it was super windy the night before and they had to make the call, so no death by Jaws for me on this vacation. I’ll have to leave that on the bucket list.

Cape Town’s a very nice area, too. We spent four night there, and it seems like it was so long ago. We had a penguin outing and went to Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was jailed for 18 years.

Just up from the Cape of Good Hope – the most southern part of Africa – we went to visit the lighthouse, which is where one of the explorers and now I can’t remember – said was the most beautiful sight on the planet. And, being an explorer, he would know, even if I can’t remember his name.  It was pretty amazing.

Botanical gardens.
Straight out of
Dr. Seuss

By sheer coincidence, I managed to run into a colleague, too. We were both wearing sunglasses so I wasn’t completely sure it was her, but when my salsa buddy from the Australian embassy sighted me between bites of her pizza, she shouted my name. Cue “It’s a Small World After All.” An American running into an Australian she knows from Baghdad while visiting the southernmost point of Africa. And neither of us was totally shocked.

I’m still mid-R&R, but this tour is winding down. We head to Jo-berg tomorrow, and it’s a long, long travel day. There are a couple stops along the way, such as at the third-largest canyon in the world. I really am not paying a whole lot of attention to the upcoming attractions; I booked the tour at the last minute because I had to go somewhere and didn’t read past “cage diving,” so everything’s a pleasant surprise.

Once this tour is done, I am scheduled to travel to Victoria Falls with another small group, and then it’s back to work. Except I still don’t know where that’s going to be. As it stands now, it’s DC, even though my current flight is back to Baghdad. I’ll need to change it, but there’s still a chance that our post’s status could change and I get directed back there. I’m really not sure when to make the call, but I’m not going to worry about it now.