The Out of Africa 2003 Tour
The vacation was amazing, aside from the 24+
hr traveler's bug that caused us to expel
everything from our body (utilizing all
available orifices), and immobilized us for a
full day, wishing we were dead.
On this page we describe the trip in detail,
linking to some places we went and things we
saw. We posted some of our better pictures on
the site - you can link to them by clicking
here:
Gallery.
The
Safari
We started out on our safari, spending 4
days/3 nights in
Kruger National Park (in the Northeast part
of South Africa, near Mozambique) and then about
1 1/2 days in a private game reserve called
Sabi Sands. We traveled with our wonderful
hosts,
the Aarons. The first portion in Kruger is
how most South African families do safari: they
load up the car with food, and drive around the
park looking through the windows or binoculars
trying to find the animals. So that's what we
did. The Sabi Sands experience is how most of
us in the U.S. think of safari: driving around
the bush in an enormous 4x4 with a local
"tracker" who finds footprints, etc. to locate
the animals wherever they are. Between the 2
trips, we saw virtually every animal possible on
the safari including the Big Five (buffalo,
lion, rhino, elephant, leopard). We saw a
leopard, lions, buffalo, elephants, wildebeasts,
African Barking Spiders, crocodiles, giraffes,
trouser snakes, zebras, kudus, rhinos, hippos,
hyenas, jackals, etc. We also had a lovely
run-in with a bat and Alex's bed at Orphen morphed
into an
ant hill in less than an hour.
Timeline
Day 1 - 1/30/03
After arriving from our 2 day traveling
advernture from Seattle to Jo'burg via London,
we drove 6 hours and entered Kruger National
Park at the Crocodile Bridge enterence at the
Southeastern most point of the Park bordering
Mozambique. We travelled through the Park north
to Lower Sabie Camp and eventually made our way
to Skukuza Camp, the largest lodging facility in
the park. We spent the night in Skukuza and
grilled (brai) lamb chops, sausage, South
African porridge and kidney. The animals seen
today were baboons, zebras, giraffes, impalas,
lions, elephants, hippos, crocodiles, wart hogs,
buffalo, kudus.
Day 2 - 1/31/03
We left Skukuza and headed out North to look
for game. We again travelled through the Park
and encountered numerous animals. Our most
exciting adventure was a chicken-match with an
elephant for supremacy of the road. After
about 15 minutes and numerous charges by the
elephant, we eventually gave up and had to find
an alternative route to
Orphen Camp, where we stayed for the next 2
nights. We arrived just in time before the
gates were closed and settled in for the next
couple of days. Dinner that night was escargot
& mussels, leg of lamb, potatos and salad. The
animals seen today were baboons, zebras,
giraffes, impalas, lions, elephants,
hippos, wart hogs, kudus, steenbuck, a jackyl,
mongoose, and duika.
Day 3 - 2/1/03
We awoke at 4:30am to
climb a tower and attempt to get pictures of
an African sunrise. After standing on top of a
tower for about 45 minutes we gave up only to
have the
sun rise beautifully about 10 mins later as
we ate breakfast. We then drove around the Park
for the remainder of the morning and finally
found an elusive rhino. We again spent the
night at Orphen camp, however, our hut was not
only occupied a bat but Alex's bed was invaded
by ants who essentially built a
ant hill and forced him to find
other accommodations. We stayed up late
drinking and debating subject like religion and
politics and watching the stars of the Southern
Sky (no North Star but instead the Southern
Cross) Dinner that night was avacado & biltong
(South African beef jerky, but SO much better)
botjie (South African stew), sampmellies
(rice) & leechies (fruit). The animals seen
today were baboons, zebras, giraffes,
impalas, elephants, rhinos, wart hogs, kudus,
wildebeasts, and waterbucks.
Day 4 - 2/2/03
Today we left Kruger and head West to
Sabi Sands and
Nkorho, our private game park. Sabi Sands
is adjacent to Kruger and borders the Park on
the West. There are no fences on the private
reserve and none between Sabi Sands and Kruger
so the animals have free roam over all the
land. We arrived at
Nkorho in time to take a bush walk through
some of their land. Let's just say it was
"Africa hot" and it was a little nerve-racking
walking through the bush with our tracker,
Morris, who was packing heat. After lounging at
the
pool during the heat of the day we took a
late afternoon drive through the park in our
incredible Land
Rover. We immediately headed to a leopard
spotting and found what we were
looking for. We stayed with the leopard for
a while and then headed off in search of more
game. We stopped for sunset and had a late
afternoon drink and then had a night drive in an
attempt to spot some real action. Unfortunately
we didn't see much on the night drive but it was
still interesting. We had a "Survivor"-like
dinner of crab & philo, calamari, cous cous,
roast beef, and strawberry ice cream and kiwi.
The animals seen today were zebras, giraffes,
impalas, elephants, wildebeasts, kudus, diukers,
hyena, waterbuck, whitetail mongoose, owl, and
nyala.
Day 5 - 2/3/03
Today we take an early morning bush ride
through Sabi Sands. Unfortunately, not much was
stirring and we ended up driving for a couple of
hours not seeing too much game. We did see more
rhino but no more lions or leopards. The
animals seen today were baboons, giraffes,
impalas, wildebeasts, rhinos, nyala, and
kudus. We then made our way back to Jo'burg for
our flight to Cape Town. The drive is about 6
hours and we make it in time for our flight.
Capetown
We arrived in Cape Town, an amazingly
beautiful city surrounded by ocean and
mountains, at about 8pm and our host, Ronnie
Joffe, fetched us from the airport to took us to
Fresnaye
where he lives with his lovely wife Renee.
Fresnaye is a suburb of Cape Town near Sea Point
and Camp's Bay, a great location with a
great view of
Table Mountain. We employed the services of
informative, interesting and fun tourguide
Selwyn Davidowitz for a good portion of our
Capetown touring.
Timeline
Day 1 - 2/4/03
When we arrived in Capetown the evening
before, we had a quick dinner . . . not sure if
it was that dinner or something we had eaten in
Kruger that took some time to catch up with us,
but Brian woke up that morning not feeling too
good (nausea, stomach problems, etc.). After
insuring that nothing else remained in his
system, he went with Alex and Selwyn,
our tourguide, to begin a day of travel around
Capetown. At about noon, Alex came down with
the same sickness and Brian was still having
some issues, so we called it a day and went home
to sit in bed and pretend we didn't exist.
Dinner that night consisted of toast.
Day 2 - 2/5/03
It's amazing what a night of sleep can do for
you. We woke up feeling great. Well, mostly
great. Good enough to sleep in and then go
play. This was our make-up day after Tuesday's
sickness episode. We toured most of Capetown
with
Selwyn, our fearless leader. Our tour
included seeing
Muizenberg,
Fish Hoek, Boulder's Beach and its
penguins,
Cape Point and the the
Cape of Good Hope (most southwestern point
in Africa), Scarborough, Kommetjie, Constantia,
Camps Bay, Sea Point, and then finally the
sunset from Table Mountain with champagne
and marula, local South African moonshine. This
night we dined on osterich and filet mingnon at
Nelson's Eye, a great steak place in Cape Town.
Day 3 - 2/6/03
Today we were on our own and we were planning
on climbing Table Mountain. However, we made
the executive decision to forego this as we were
still a little shaky from the food
poisoning episode and just a little lazy. So
instead we went to the lovely Kirstenbosch
Botanical Gardens where we frolicked among the
greenery. After that we went to the
Waterfront for lunch and then caught a boat to
Robben Island for a tour, where Nelson
Mandela spent a good portion of his life in
prison.
That night we had a lovely sushi meal at a
swanky restaurant called Wakami, where we ran
into
Breckin Meyer (of Road Trip fame) and
Eddie Griffin (of Undercover Brother
fame) hanging with a posse of HOT female models
and random other folks. Alex made contact in an
attempt to have us join their crew, but let us
just say, after a pleasant conversation in which
he actually remembered Alex's name, we went home
alone instead of to a raging party or hot tub
with the beautiful babies.
Day 4 - 2/7/03
Today was the 2nd day of our tour with
Selwyn. We started the tour by traveling the
the Winelands and Stellenbosch, about 45 minutes
east of Cape Town. We first visited the
Middelvlei Winery where we not only tasted
the wine but also helped
harvest the grapes! We then had a nice
picnic lunch at the Stellenbosch Opera after
picking up fresh sandwiches and cheese at a
local shop. We then visited Kayamandi
Township, a black "neighborhood" outside of
Stellenbosch created when apartheid ended and
people sought work in the cities. It was very
interesting, and we toured a pre-school and
youth teen center that Selwyn and our other
guide,
Uszebechi, helped build in Kayamandi to
educate youth on AIDS. We walked around the
township and visited some residences and
interacted with some members of the community.
The children especially liked us and were very
inquisitive and loved being
photographed! We then visited the
Rust en Vrede Winery. The
R&V Winery was very nice and they
produce some of the best wine in South Africa;
in fact, they were in the
top 100 wines of 2002 according to Wine
Spectator magazine. We had a tasting and
left a good portion of our money with them!
They also produce the new Ernie Els label wine
but unfortunately all the bottles have already
been sold.
That night we went to dinner with a friend of
Ronnie and Renee to a very swanky restaurant
called La Perla. However, after waiting for
over an hour we left that establishment (after
our host took their reservation list) and headed
to an equally swanky restaurant called La Prilla.
We had a wonderful meal of grilled kudu, filet
mignon and tequilla shots and then headed out to
check out the Cape Town bar/club scene.
Day 5 - 2/8/03
After packing up we headed down to Camp's Bay
Beach for lunch and hopefully some beach time.
Unfortunately, the
wind would not cooperate and the beach was
much too windy and sandy for anyone to sit on.
We had lunch at a nice beachside cafe and
imagined that we were sitting on the beach! We
then started our long journey home by first
catching our flight from Cape Town to Jo'burg, then
our flight from Jo'burg to London. We continued
to travel our seperate ways for the next 2 days,
eventually winding up in Atlanta (via Seattle
for Alex) and Seattle (via Romania for Brian),
but we had a wonderful time in South Africa.
