We are now in Madrid, Spain, and we won´t be returning to Africa, sadly. We last left you in Cape Town, where we had completed a cultural tour and were headed off to a safari in Kruger National Park. Kruger is a massive tract of land, and a safari there isn´t quite what you might imagine - you basically fly there, rent a car, enter the park and drive around looking for animals. Our rental car happened to be a bright red VW Golf hatchback, which isn´t quite what you might think of as a safari vehicle.
In Kruger Park we spent a lot of time driving around ourselves, doing organized game drives, and we were able to get out on foot for a guided morning walk. For that, the drive leaves at 6am, but you do end up seeing some really phenomenal sunrises.
On one of our morning walks, we were able to see a pair of white rhino grazing. Mind you, this rhino is 100 meters away, but it´s pretty cool to be out there on foot, in the silence of the morning, watching such an amazing animal have his breakfast. This guy is a baby.
There is an amazing variety of wildlife in Kruger Park. Zebras and giraffes stick together for security purposes - each of them has a special skill for detecting danger (giraffes can see far, zebras can smell well). You end up with scenes like this around a waterhole.
Kruger is home to all of the Big Five of game - water buffalo, elephant (loads of those), hippo, leopard and lion. We were able to see all five, which was a treat. In one case, a pair of male lions was hanging out near a herd of Impala (a type of antelope). We hoped the lions might try for dinner, but they were being pretty lazy. We subsequently learned that only the female lions do the hunting. More on that later.
From Kruger we made our way to Livingstone, Zambia - made famous by the British explorer Dr. David Livingstone (as in, ¨Dr. Livingstone, I presume¨). Zambia is bona fide third-world, but we stayed at a backpackers there that was pretty sheltered. It was funny, it seems that there are a lot of British teenagers who come to Zambia thinking they´re going to save the world. Most of them, though, seemed more interested in lounging around in skimpy clothing and drinking too much beer.
We had gone there to see Victoria Falls, for which we had budgeted four days. Realizing that being in a third world town for four days with one days´worth of sightseeing to do would probably drive us nuts, we decided to do an overnight safari to Botswana. Livingstone is near the confluence of four countries - Zambia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Namibia. In fact, en route to the safari, we were able to stand in one spot and see four countries. Here´s a cheeky photo of us straddling the Botswana-Zimbabwe border.
In Botswana, we spent two days in Chobe National Park, which was really great because the landscape was so different than that in Kruger Park. Chobe is actually in the Chobe desert, complete with desert sand. But there is still a good bit of vegetation - but it´s sparse enough there that you can see the animals really well.
On our first game drive, we really lucked out and were able to see four lionesses just waking up from their day´s slumber. (They sleep during the day and hunt at night.) A few giraffes were unlucky enough to be in the area, and we saw the lionesses rouse from their slumber and begin to quietly stalk the giraffes (remember, the females hunt). We were nervous, thinking the giraffes might become dinner, and the lions did indeed attack, but were unable to catch the giraffes. Our guide says that lions don´t often like to feed on giraffes, but they´ll scare them away in hopes that the giraffe will hit a tree or something and become easy prey.
The lionesses returned to the area where we had found them and had a bit of a siesta.
Here are some more photos we took in Chobe. There´s a ton of hippos. They´re very agressive and kill more people than all the other kinds of animals there combined.
This is a Fish Eagle. They mate for life. (aww.)
This herd of elephants lined up picturesquely for us. They then proceded to get in the water and swim a good 100m across the river to the Namibian side of the river, using their trunks as snorkels. This included the whole herd, including 6 week old babies. Who knew that elephants were such good swimmers?
Finally, here we are at our campsite. We´re not this good at camping. The safari company set it up for us! It was a bit scary because the campsite was not fenced, and you can see the lamp in the background. Animals will not come too close if there´s light.
Back in Livingstone, we went to visit Victoria Falls, which according to Wikipedia ranges from 90 to 107 meters high and is 1.7 kilometers long. Pretty impressive, really. Here´s a photo of us in front of it, but what you can´t see is that between us and the falls there´s a ravine as high as a ten story building.
We took the time to see the falls from the Zambian and Zimbabwean sides. There´s a famous bridge between the two countries, over the gorge, where you can bungy jump - but you have to have your passport stamped out of Zambia, and the bridge is before the Zimbabwe border post, so not only are you jumping a giant ravine you´re doing so without actually being in a country. A bit dodgy if you ask me. Maybe that´s why we were offered three jumps for $90. (We didn´t take it.)
Not sure if you are aware but Zimbabwe is a country in major disarray at the moment. Its president, Robert Mugabe, holds an iron fist on power. Inflation runs 4,600% a year and basics such as bread are simply nonexistent (the government forces stores to sell it at half what it costs). It was wierd walking into Victoria Falls town there, and seeing no tourists at all. The shoe stores had no shoes, the liquor stores had no liquor, and the people there were desperate for any kind of money - they tried to barter for your hat, your sunglasses, the shirt off your back. It was all very sad. Mr. Mugabe should be ashamed, but he won´t step down because he´s been murdering and torturing his opponents, and he fears being prosecuted for human rights violations or vigilantes. For more on the crisis, here´s a link - http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=3535&l=1
It´s particularly sad because for a long time Zimbabwe was the jewel of southern Africa.
From Zambia, we made our way back to Johannesburg then onto Cairo via London, which we tell you, made for a long and exhausting two days.
If you could sum up Cairo so succinctly, you could say that it´s chaos embodied. The traffic is by far the worst we have ever seen (traffic lights are rare and almost never obeyed), people accost you at every corner, and it´s the scam capital of the world. Here´s a street scene.
Note that the women are all wearing Islamic headscarves, which was a bit of a problem for Gina. Not being Muslim she didn´t wear one, and whenever we went out into the city she was getting harassed pretty mercilessly. Surprisingly, this came mostly from other women. People we interacted with didn´t even acknowledge her existence. Pretty intense culture shock, to be honest. But the adherence to Islam means that Cairo is a very safe city, there is almost no crime and terrorism hasn´t been an issue for a decade now.
Most people don´t travel to Cairo independently so we had some trouble getting out to see what we wanted to see. In one case, we hired a driver to take us to the Giza pyramids (from a Hertz branded service), and the guy got in a fender bender and ended up in a fistfight with the other driver in the street. The driver we hired the next day to take us to the main city sights didn´t understand that we actually had done some homework and knew what we wanted to see - we had to yell at him to get us to take us to the off-the-beaten-path stops.
We stayed at a hotel near the Pyramids. It´s kind of surprising, but the Pyramids aren´t really in the desert as you might picture them. They´re on a reserve at the edge of modern Cairo. If they were in Boston, it´d be like if they were in Quincy. God bless the Starwood Preferred Guest program because we were able to stay at Le Meridien hotel right near the Pyramids on points. This was the view from our room -
Modern Cairo is right up against the ancient ruins. Here´s a view of the Sphinx from behind.
If you look closely, he looks out over a Pizza Hut/KFC franchise (the red signs). We spent a good bit of time near the Pyramids. Suffice it to say, it´s hot, and can reach 52 degrees centigrade there (that´s 125 F). We drank a lot of water.
We got to go on a camel ride, which was really cool. It brought us to some great views that we wouldn´t have otherwise gotten.
There are nine pyramids on the main plateau at Giza, but there are about 100 of them scattered around Egypt. None are quite as impressive, or have stood the time as well as the big ones at Giza. Here are some photos of us out and about in the heat.
We got to go to the Egyptian Museum as well, which is pretty amazing, but no photos were allowed inside (sorry). We did get to see some priceless stuff, like King Tut´s death mask. But the Museum is pretty amazing in how, well, half-assed it is. It feels like a warehouse. Lots of things you can just walk up and touch. You would think they would do a better job of preserving their artifacts. At Saqqara, a site south of Giza, there are some impressive tombs with original carvings and even original paint, that you could walk up to and touch if you wanted to. It´s sad that so little is being done to preserve these great treasures. At least you can´t climb the Pyramids themselves.
And we have to say that the Pyramids are amazing. It´s hard to find the words to describe how very immense they are - you can see them from clear across town (smog permitting). And they´re 4,500 years old.
Finally, here´s a photo of Gina with our bellman as we left the hotel. Note the quality of the cab, and that our bags are being lashed to the roof.
We have so much to say about each of these places. Southern Africa was nothing short of amazing, we loved it there and would go back in an instant. Cairo was a bit of an attack on the senses, and rivaled China for the most difficult place yet to travel, but we were really glad we made the effort to go.
-bob
