After Expedition One

This morning, around 6:00 am I was in the bush in South Africa tracking a white rhino. After three hours we spotted it, but it bolted as we had followed the tracks from upwind of the beast. The sound of a rhino running through the bush isn't something that I'm likely to forget, and I'm exceedingly happy that it chose to run the other way.



Now I'm finally back in Jo-Burg (Johannesburg) and I have to say that I've had a blast. The past four days I have been at Pafuri lodge, which is in on the northern edge of South Africa, in the Kruger park in an area called the Makuleke consession (the Makuleke's won back the land in 1998 as a consession for their traditional tribal land and they now commerically run the land as a game reserve, something that's quite popular for indiginous populations out here and I must say is a hell of a lot better than casinos).

The lodge is on the Luvuvhu river and the Limpopo and is near the tri-national border of South Africa, Zimbabwe and Mozambique. Our days were essentially broken down into the following patter: wake up at 4:30am, tea at 5:00 and on the morning game drive/hike by 5:15am. Come back to the lodge around 9:00-9:30 and have brunch. Rest through the afternoon (which reached 40 C or 104 F one day with 86% humidity!), usually napping, until 3:30 for afternoon tea. By 4:00 you're on the evening game drive, and coming back from that (in the dark, night spotting) around 7:00, dinner by 7:30 and bed by 9. It has been quite a different schedual from the one that I am used to living with my college roomates, but I've been able to adapt. Our guide was really knowledgeable and enthusiastic and that made all the difference for my first safari experience. Tomorrow we wake again early and head out to Botswana for another game drive, and then off to Victoria Falls, even though Zimbabwe is sort of in the dumps at the moment.

I will write more country oriented things later.

-Travelor