40 years later, i wake up and say to myself, damn woman, you old!

Even though I took half a oxycodon in anticipation... I searched all over this morning to find a place on my body that didn't ache and couldn't find one. Did I climb a mountain yesterday? No, I just rode in a land rover on a safari.

This blog will not be sequential because even before the drug my brain was feeling more scrambled, the effects of the concussion seeming to come and go on its own random schedule with memory being its favorite ride (with spelling a close second) First, let me say that while it was deeply satisfying, my second safari was nothing like the first... a place where they can number the lions and elephants and rhinoceros, etc. is nothing like the Serengeti where you can not count the number within your sight. I know how amazingly fortunate I was to have been on safari in the early 70's and to have witnessed what I did, but at the same time, what I witnessed yesterday was pretty impressive as well, and is certainly worth supporting. In 1996 a fruit farm bit the dust after years of drought, and the land became Inverdoorn Game Reserve & Safari Lodge www.inverdoom.com or at least that is its name now.

A spot of coffee at the lodge. 

Ready to go.

The important thing is that it became a place of safety where the flora and fauna could return to its natural state. In 2001, a cheetah project began to reestablish the endangered cheetahs into the world. Cheetahs have many enemies and are basically loners so what we saw yesterday is far from natural.. five cheetahs lounging together some within a few feet of each other would never be seen in the wild. But in the wild they are dying out. Romance is difficult in the cheetah world, and survival even harder. In the first place, the female cheetah must be hot to be fertile while the male's sperm will burn up if he gets overheated. Secondly, she actually has to like the guy to allow him to mate with her... what a radical thought! The way they get around the first issue is to feed the males while they tempt the females with a game of tag with colorful t-shirts on a string. It appears that cheetahs have more than non-detractable claws in common with dogs.... For the second challenge, the guys are on their own.

AAAAAARRRGGGGG!   

Our computers combined with the internet have determined to stress me out by not only randomly moving my cursor to odd places while I am typing and eating Maura’s safari movies and photos, but now they have eaten the last five to six paragraphs of this blog… and any of you that have done any amount of writing in your lifetime and lost it know that it is so much harder to recreate something you have already written that to simply start over… so I’m obviously just starting over… fortified by a piece of milk tort pie.. South Africa’s version of buttermilk pie, and this particular version not nearly as good as any I’ve had yet, coming from the Checkers and a mere grocery store version.. but still.. some slight conciliation to my computer tragedy.

So… the Inverdoorn safari was a place of  few wild animals in comparison to my experience of 40 years ago, and in fact, when it comes to most of the BIG 5, while not tame, not the wild animals of my experience because they had been raised in human captivity. In the case of the lions, they had been raised and fed  with steroid enhanced food for the sole purpose of allowing some rich white guy to shoot it “on safari” often while sedated so he could mount it as a trophy on his wall  and brag to his friends how big his… uh.. gun is..

 One of the elephants had been a movie star. Only one day, he got pissed off and started to destroy the set at which point the humans felt like they had the right to destroy him. He joins another, much smaller but equally abused but much shyer male on this beautiful preserve where they have created  a little family for themselves. The movie star takes care of his shy young brother, giving us and show and then going over to assure the other that it is only these crazy humans with their small cameras.

His left tusk was not taken by poachers, but was a result of the set destruction

The  male lion has two sterilized females with him that don’t hunt. They are fed daily. They doesn’t make them tame.. but it does mean that our driver pulls way closer to them than my driver in the Serengeti ever would. It was a good job that fed his family.. but not if he fed the lion’s family. BTW, the women do most of the hunting and bring the meat back to the males. They mostly just sit around looking fierce. I must admit that as we were driving away, he looked a bit too interested in us. He certainly could have taken us on in a skinny minute if he got the least bit interested.

Also of limited quantity were the rhinoceros and we definitely got closer than I ever got to one in the Serengeti. Their eyesight is very poor but their hearing is excellent and they are exciting by flashes… such as glasses reflected by the sun or camera flashes and they are amazingly quick for their size and flipping our land rover would be nothing for them… so we were told to sit quietly and put our cameras away… which we did. And we discussed the possibility of drawing closer, I might have mentioned that I had recently had a concussion and a second one would really not be a very good idea for my brain.

Of course, the highlight for me were the giraffe, what I consider to be the most beautiful animals on Earth. Even though I did not see them racing across the plains in a herd, I did see them up close and personal nibbling on trees which I would never have been able to do 40 years ago.  The giraffe were not numbered. They were, of course, not as numerous as in the Serengeti; but they were not counted as they were naturally occurring in the setting and not brought there as rescues. Neither of course were the various antelope or the ostriches, or the Egyptian geese or other various avian, or the zebra (who are black<or brown> with white stripes)

It was a good place. And it will be a better place. It is not completely natural. The water holes are man-made and are not allowed to run dry.  The cheetahs and lions do not yet hunt for themselves… but man has done much to undo the natural ways that once supported them. I think it is okay to resupport them for a while.

Speaking of support… Maura’s back and my everything could have used a little more over the bumps. We shared our land rover with only two other people, a couple who had just been on a shark dive. He has just finished his masters degree in marine biology from College of Charleston. How random is that!!! So we all had really good seats and views. They had these really cool video cameras that they strapped on their heads and she used her binoculars with her iphone and got some really amazing shots. Needless to say, they were more tech savvy than us.

We almost missed our trip altogether. Maura called for pizza delivery the night before because neither of us felt like going out but it took them almost two hours to deliver. I was feeling pretty stressed because of the computer issues and then worrying about sleeping because we needed to get up early and then the food never coming… but I managed to sleep fine.. very fine as a matter of fact because I was sleeping soundly when Maura said it’s six thirty. The driver will be here in 15 minutes.

An early morning start after missing the alarm.

We made it. Dressed and ready to go and had all that extra sleep time that we thought we needed to get ready to go. Our driver was Richard from Cameroon and we ended up being his only passengers. It was great. He took us over the mountains and gave us so much information and it was so incredibly beautiful. We stopped in Ceres, which is a little apple growing town where everyone was going to market for the week and I went to the toilet and got some water and the best milk tart I’ve had yet J

And on the way back, we went a different route and saw a different set of mountains, that looked more like New Mexico and went through a river valley where we twice saw baboons, and then went through a tunnel under the mountain, which I admit was just a little bit claustrophobic and then once again through country that was more like where more average South Africans (if there is such a thing) lived before Richard dropped a completely exhausted two passengers at their door.

Actually, after a brief rest, we rallied enough to go to Green Point and buy a disappointing milk tart  pie along with bread and other food supplies and get a taxi home with a Russian/East European guy named Sasha drinking coffee and listening to classical music (He’s probably a doctor or college professor in his own country) who thought we were locals because of our hats and the fact that we were shopping at checkers on a Saturday night.