Our Last South African Holiday

I write from the Peace Corps office where we are having a few hours of computing time before we fly back to the United States. We had a wonderful last South African holiday the last two weeks and want to share our experiences with everyone here.

My dad and step-mom flew into Durban about 2 Wednesdays ago, and we hired a Toyota Avanza (somewhere in between an SUV, a minivan, and a sedan) from Durban to pick them up and bring them back to Jozini, where we stayed at the beautiful Tiger Lodge for a few evenings. Thursday, we spent the day at the school and saying good-bye to our host family in Makhonyeni. Everyone at school was thrilled to meet my parents, especially the children, who were ecstatic in the middle of a week of examinations to mug for Julie's camera, ask Tony and Julie questions about their travels, and say good-bye to Tim and me. They met many of our friends among the educators, toured the school grounds, visited with the lunch ladies, and just enjoyed learning about South African education at the ground level.

In the afternoon we stayed a few hours in our tiny village home, doing some final packing and giving the folks a tour of the place, from the pit toilet to the outside tap to our indoor washing and bathing system. It was wonderful to share this experience with my dad and step-mom, because it can often be isolating to live in the village and have very poor means of communicating with everyone back in the states, so to share with them and receive their reactions was great. We sometimes take for granted as Peace Corps volunteers a life without running water and air conditioning, as this is something we came for willingly, and it was refreshing in this context to be impressive to Americans more accustomed to the normal American lifestyle.

Tony and Julie brought some gifts from America for our host father, and we spent about an hour with him and host mother under the shade of the tree in our yard, drinking some Coke and visiting. Solomon and Julie enjoyed discussing animal care in the United States versus South Africa, and Solomon and Siphiwe were grateful to receive all of our household items as a small gift for their kindness and generosity over the course of our stay in KwaZulu-Natal (actually, it is Peace Corps policy to leave goods purchased with Peace Corps funds to the community upon finishing service, though not all volunteers do so). After taking some photos, singing some songs, and praying we bid our African family farewell for the time being, promising to stay in good touch and send them the photos we took through the mail after we print them out from the states.

That afternoon we had a boat cruise in Jozini dam with the Tiger Lodge, and it was a lovely, warm day for bird watching on the dam and a swim in the pool. That evening we celebrated Tony and Julie's twenty-first wedding anniversary, and also decided to do a tour through Tembe Elephant Park nearby with the lodge the following morning.

Tembe is about an hour away from Jozini, and we had 3 hours there in a big open-air vehicle to find elephants and other animals. The first place the guide took us to was a watering hole with a hide for our viewing, and there we saw many different antelope species, including many male kudu, impala, nyala, a water buck, and more. We enjoyed spotting plenty of antelope and birds throughout the park, though we did not see too many elephants. However at the end of the tour we returned to the watering hole we had first seen and saw 7 or 8 elephants playing in the water, giving themselves dust bathes, and so on. We enjoyed the time to watch the elephants and antelopes interact and enjoy the spot, before we headed back to the lodge.

That afternoon we drove a short distance to the Mkhuze Game Reserve, another park Tim and I had never been to but which we enjoyed very much. Our accommodation was a quaint chalet where impala and nyala antelopes were at home in the surrounding bush, and Tim made a terrific braai (traditional South African barbeque) with meat on the grill, butternut squash, rice, and salads for dinner. That night we did a guided night drive through the park, and saw a porcupine, a huge owl, many nocturnal bird species, huge spiders, and more. The next morning we did a short game drive, where we saw tons of rhinos and antelopes and enjoyed the scenery of the park. It was a nice, quiet park experience, and we enjoyed the place.

From there we traveled to St. Lucia for the weekend. St. Lucia was one of our favorite destinations here in South Africa so we were thrilled to share it with my parents. The afternoon we arrived we did a hippo and croc cruise along the estuary, where we saw many fish eagles, a buffalo, and many other birds, and of course, tons of hippos and crocs. Tim took some amazing shots and we enjoyed meeting other tourists on our cruise. That night a hippo wandered through the backyard of our chalets for some snacks (mowing down grass), and it was a special experience for us all to watch it from our back porch. The next day we traveled through the game park/nature reserve there, which as a World Heritage Site boasts half a dozen different ecosystems in the same place, and there we saw many kudu, buffalo, hippos, monkeys, water buck, and many adorable tiny antelopes.

From St. Lucia it was about an hour's drive to Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Game Reserve, one of our favorite reserves. The first day we drove around much of the Imfolozi side of the park, where we saw many buffalo, rhino, kudu, giraffe, and zebra. At one point we saw a rhino nursing, which we really enjoyed witnessing. However, we were on the lookout much of the time for elephant, which we saw much evidence of (tons of fresh poop), but we only saw a few from a distance on the way to our lodge. That night Tim made another terrific braai, giving Tony and Julie another opportunity to try some traditional South African foods.

The next morning we took our time getting started on a game drive, as it was foggy and cold up in the mountains, with low visibility. However within minutes of leaving our camp (that's the human cage within the park, to keep the humans and the other animals safe from each other after dark!), we ran into an enormous bull elephant on the road. We were excited to be so close to an elephant, though we didn't drive right up to him, watching him rather from what we thought was a safe distance.

All of the sudden the elephant seemed to notice us, as if for the first time. He stepped forward into the road, looking directly at us, and raised his ears, to make himself look larger. Before we could think about what was happening, he charged. I immediately began reversing as if our lives depended on it (in all honesty, it probably isn't true that our lives did actually depend on it, but no doubt we would have been in some serious trouble with the rental company for a bashed up vehicle and four thoroughly soiled seats if he had decided to inspect or fight our vehicle...to say nothing of our mental health). I was in the driver's seat and remained calm, as was required, and it is a mystery to us all how I managed to successfully reverse on a mountainous narrow dirt road away from the giant elephant, as I normally cannot reverse very well at all here in South Africa, with the driver's seat on the other side of the car.

After about five seconds of the elephant keeping pace with us in reverse he slowed his jog down to a walk, and within ten more seconds he was out of sight as we had rounded a corner, after watching him get smaller and smaller from behind the windshield. It was a mock charge, meant to scare any car/creature with any common sense away from the beast, but we were fortunate to escape any major damage as this elephant had really not been provoked by us in any way (we weren't really approaching him, and we weren't making any noises or moving outside the windows or anything). Normally they are supposed to give some warning before a charge or mock charge, but I guess this is common behavior among the lone male elephants in this particular park, and it is not as if animal behavior is ever completely predictable. As Julie explained, a bull elephant can be like a dog chasing the mail man away, considering himself triumphant each time he warns the car/mail man away.

In any case, it terrified us. After getting far away from the elephant, we first thought we would take a different route, crossing the path again where we had left the bull, further down the road. However we quickly discovered the bull had followed us some way to the main road, and decided to try an entirely different direction. Within a few minutes it was clear we weren't enjoying ourselves, however, instead just waiting for the next angry elephant to charge. As we returned back to the human cage to collect our bearings, we saw that this same elephant had emerged right up the main road, going a good half-mile our direction since we had seen him last. I raced past him and collapsed with fear upon returning to our safe human cage, where we told the totally unimpressed camp staff about our seemingly near-death experience.

We took it easy the rest of the day, playing some games of Scrabble and enjoying the lovely views from our Hilltop Lodge. That night we did a final night drive, however, determined not to allow that elephant to ruin game viewing for us. The first thing the driver did was take the same path where we saw the elephant that day, but that was not too bad as elephants don't tend to stay in the same place very long, so we were fairly confident we wouldn't see him again, there.

Then we came across a different massive elephant male. The game truck drove right up to him, to our horror, but actually this male was older and a lovely creature, though we do have some terrific pics of my dad looking adamantly away from the elephant, who he probably could have reached out and touched if we wanted. In any case it was good to have a more peaceful elephant encounter.

On the night drive we also saw some rhino and a family of spotted hyena jogging along the road, which was a very special experience for all of us. Mostly we just enjoyed cruising around in the bush at night, and savored our last safari-type experience in the African wild.

The next day we left the park, and headed to Amphitheatre Backpackers. It was a long day in the car on some bad roads, and when we got to the backpackers (hostel) the beautiful Drakensburg escarpment nearby was completely obscured by stormy rainy weather. We awoke to clear skies the next morning however, and were able to prove that there was indeed a beautiful mountain range nearby.

Then we traveled to Golden Gate Highlands Park in the Free State, our final destination of our trip. For two days we enjoyed pleasant hikes through beautiful mountains and caves, with one stop into the quaint tourist town of Clarens for some shopping and high-end snacking. It was a great chance to catch our breath after a very eventful holiday, and we also enjoyed seeing a black-backed jackal and hartebeest and blesbok, along with the usual suspects in the beautiful reserve.

From there we all went to Pretoria for one last evening, where we stayed at a nice guesthouse and ordered Chinese takeout. Then, on Tony and Julie's last day here, we went to the Ann van Dyke De Wildt Cheetah Centre and Maropeng, a museum that is part of the Crade of Humankind here in South Africa. At the cheetah center we enjoyed seeing many cheetah and some cheetah running, we pet an ambassador cheetah (who goes to schools to help with conservation education), and we saw many vultures and other cat species, as well as wild dog puppies and grown wild dogs, who "hunted" our vehicle for their lunch. It was a fun and educational experience, and the museum at Maropeng was also a great experience, where we learned about the history of humankind, evolution, the evidence here in South Africa, and other related topics.

Then we took the folks back to the airport, and began our own journey out of South Africa, beginning our termination of our service the very next day. Before this trip we were looking forward to returning to the states more than we are looking forward to it now, but we are also full of mixed emotions. South Africa is a stunning country, where it has been our privilege to stay and travel and enjoy ourselves. In any case it was truly wonderful to share our experiene and time here with family back home, and with mixed emotions we are looking forward to wherever life takes us next, and of course enjoying some of the best of America in the coming weeks or months upon our return later this weekend.