African time has seeped into my bones and I no longer know what the day, date or barely the month is...
I sit writing on an overcast morning in Capetown, South Africa. It's cool, especially after spending some time in Zanzibar, Tanzania but it provides an opportunity to let you all know that I'm alive and well :-) This is the first place in about a month that I have had access to decent internet connection so I shall spill some stories onto the page in maybe a rather disorganised manner about my last month of travel...
I farewelled Ghana and landed in Nariobi after a short layover at Addis Adaba airport in Ethiopia (another country that I'd love to visit but now's not the time!). I wondered where all the chaos of Ghana was, the humidity, the loud music and missed the West African country that I had just spent an amazing 3 weeeks in. Exploring the city, I discovered a small market and was amused at the selling techniques that were used. One guy told me that a particular bracelet was made from giraffe tail. After telling him that it looked extremely like plastic he assured me that it was giraffe tail...hmmmm, I can be gullible but maybe not quite that gullible! They must have a great laugh after tourists walk out of their stores, swapping stories of the most ludicrous tale they've told!
East Africa was my 'switch off brain' section of the trip as I joined an overland tour. And switch off brain I did. By the first few days of the trip I had lost my debit card, my memory card from Ghana went MIA and numerous bits and pieces just vansihed into thin air. I'm sure there were goblins following me around hiding my stuff. I became known as the person who lost everything. The ordeal with my lost debit card has become a comedy of errors and I'm still unable to withdraw money. My card finally arrived in Dar es Salaam (after a stuff up with the bank in Oz-not going into boring details) and the evening I went to pick it up at the campsite I was staying at I was told that on the way back from the post office, the manager had been stopped by police and due to Tanzanian corruption, the car had been impounded...with, as he realised after he returned to the camp site, with my package in it. Luckily, it was returned to me later that night, as I was due to fly out the next day for Cape Town. Phew! After 3 days I was eventually able to get through to my bank. I activated my card and went to use it but it didn't work. The brainiacs at the bank hadn't assigned a pin number to my card. Soooo, I am now waiting for a pin number...I'm hoping my card will be back in action by early next week???!!! Tis all fun and games...
Talking of fun and games, I've played numerous games of hide and seek over the past few weeks with some amazing African animals. Although, I've been doing all the seeking and they've been doing the hiding as I don't fancy being stalked by African game. But the seeking has been successful!
The first game drive we did was in the Masai Mara in Kenya. It was a surreal moment the first time I saw a giraffe in the wild. Many of them. I had to pinch myself when to my left was a group of elephants fairly close to the truck and on my right, walking off toward the horizon a giraffe. Wow, these animals really do exist off TV screens, pages of books and out of zoos. THIS is their natural habitat! Earlier that day, we'd seen lions lazily lying on the ground metres from our truck and there were too many zebras, wild beast and gazelle to count.
However, this game drive had nothing on the Ngorogoro Crater and the Serengeti. These two places are like a buffet of wild animals. The Ngorogoro crater is literally where wild animals roam free. Zebras, wilderbeast and random wart hogs were dotted across the plains. A lioness and her cubs paraded across the near horizon in the early morning sun. Shorlty after we spotted a male lion and his impressive mane, lazing by a water hole. After watching him for a short while, he strode up to our truck, stared and walked past. I had to stop taking photos and just take in the moment as he apporached. To be that close to a lion in the wild was amazing. His stare is ingrained in my brain. It was the one animal I desperately wanted to see that day and there he was, not disappointing me. There were more visual treats to come though. Especially as we hadn't hit the Serengeti yet. A leopard sat in a tree and then jumped between two limbs, the colours of evening dusk highlighting its dark figure before it crawled down the trunk and like stealth, disapeared into the undergrowth. At one point I though we were going to be charged by an aggressive looking elephant as it led family members across the road. Ostriches ran in a smooth but awkward way at the same time, twisting their necks necks in different directions whilst standing still. A wort hog stupidly advertised its self to a lioness, two cheetahs lazed under a tree in the heat of the day, hippos hid in muddy water and amused us when 2 decided to go for a short run. Have you ever seen a hippo run? quite amusing! Black and White Rhinos were nice enough to show themselves, wilderbeast fought for females, grunting loudly in the process and numerous type of gazelle leaped, grazed and just stood staring, possibly wondering if the grass was greener on the other side...of which I could tell them it wasn't.
If that's not enough, the Bwindi impenetrable forest in Uganda (although not totally impenetrable as we ventured into it) housed a family of mountain gorillas that we came across during our 12 hour hike! It was an amazing hour spent with them. I felt as if I was in a David Attenborough documentary. They were only metres away. There were 2 silverbacks, 2 three year olds and the rest were adult females. A total of 8 gorillas in all. The first Silverback we came across was sitting in a tree nearly above our heads and as it climbed down we followed it to the rest of the group. At one stage, one of the adults got on all fours and just stared at us. The hours of trecking and bush bashing (there was a guide up the front with a machete chopping down branches as we went as well as a guy with a gun incase we got charged by animals such as elephants) was worth it. We were all very hungry and dirty by the end of the day though!
This is a fraction of the last four weeks...more to come in next installment!...
Head off on a South African road trip tomorrow with two other gals...
