Travel and travails

November 18, 2018

City Lodge

Johannesburg              

My friend Phil Abbott used to tell us that the word ‘travel’ is derived from the word ‘travails’.  I looked it up just now and Phil is right – according to the Oxford English Dictionary.  It makes sense to me. There’s so much in common.

Yesterday was mostly uneventful.  Very hot in the Park, lots of wasted time driving around looking for living creatures. What actually happens when it gets hot – like approaching 100F – is that the animals largely declare a truce.  It’s too hot to chase anything, and it’s too hot to run so they just scatter under some sad little tree or bush somewhere and wait for night so that life can return to normal.  We did see a cheetah yesterday, sitting under a sad little tree off in the distance – that characteristic stance and profile against the shimmering heat. But too far and too much heat haze to bother shooting.  

We checked into Orpen Camp again for our last night in the park, hot and, speaking for myself, feeling pretty defeated photographically.  Then the thing that is Kruger happened.  Orpen is a small camp, with a pumped waterhole just outside the fence, lit by a single light.  Animals come there are throughout the night and it’s possible to sit on some benches along the fence and just watch.  Our first night in Orpen, three rhino came down to drink and last night our neighbors alerted  us that there were lions and rhino at the water hole.  So, we quit packing and walked to the fence to find the waterhole full of elephants, who’d evidently pushed everyone else away.  This was a fairly large breeding herd of a dozen or 15 elephants and they stayed to drink and then the matriarch gave the elephant low rumble “let’s move” sound and they all trailed off.  A few minutes later, the three rhino moved from out of the shadows to the water hole, and then there was a single form and then another and then a stream of lions coming in to drink. They clustered on one end of the pool, while the rhino stood at the other end.  And while the lions were drinking, a hyena passed by, keeping a respectful distance from the lions.  So, in 20 minutes, we saw elephant, rhino, lion and hyena, sitting on a park bench a few steps from our beds. By the way, I think there is a webcam from this waterhole on the SANParks website, if you're curious.

Hail Mary shot of lions drinking in the dark 

We got up early this morning and were first out the gate at 0430.  The ranger who opened the gate told us that lions had killed a buffalo outside the other gate (there’s a second gate leaving the camp toward the Park exit), but we went ahead and drove into the Park.  After about a half hour of nothing, Gina and I decided to backtrack and check it out.  We talked to the ranger again, who was unsure exactly where the kill was.  We did eventually find a spot where the kill took place – there were many vultures and we counted 10 hyena around, but no visible kill and no lions present.  We just continued up the road.  This is a paved road and it goes from the Orpen Camp to the actual exit of the Park for probably 10 km or so.  The gate into the Park was not yet open so we had the road to ourselves and it wasn’t actually even clear to us if we were supposed to be there, but we continued and coming over a rise we saw a figure in the middle of the road.  As we got closer we could see that it was a male lion walking away from us in the middle of the road.  We approached and followed at a respectful distance, not wanting to pressure him too much.  He was thin and clearly had had some sort of hip injury and was limping slightly. Eventually he stepped off the road and walked through the grass, beautifully backlit for a short distance before angling off into the thick bush.

Lion

And that was pretty much the end of our time at Kruger.  We packed up and drove to Eastgate Airport in Hoedspruit to catch the shuttle bus back to Jo’burg.  After a hair-raising 6 hour drive, we checked into the City Lodge to get a meal and a few hours of sleep before walking to the airport to catch the 0200 overnight flight to Nairobi.  When we arrived at the airport, we noticed first that the flight had been delayed and when we tried to check in we were told that the plane had been downgraded and there weren’t enough seats for all of the passengers and they could book us on tomorrow’s flight and they were sorry for the inconvenience.  We pleaded and leaned on them, but at the end of the day didn’t heap abuse on them.  It’s kind of heartbreaking though. We planned this for almost a year and now we have to re-work it and we lose a night in the Mara and at least one drive.  We now are scheduled to fly out tomorrow (today now…) at noon but arrive too late to get to the Mara so will spend a night in a hotel in Nairobi and fly to the Mara the next day.  I woke up Tanya from Wild Eye with the situation and she immediately began re-working and we’ll firm it up tomorrow.

Thus, the travails.  We walked back to City Lodge, went back to our old room and now it’s 0130 and Gina’s asleep.  We’ll have time to get some sleep, have a leisurely breakfast here and hopefully not get bumped again.  This kind of stuff happens in travel, but somehow it’s easier to swallow if it’s weather, or a mechanical issue – something that’s about our safety as passengers. I assume that this was an economic decision on the part of Kenya Airways. Which sucks, but one thing about travel is that it will teach you something about letting go, whether you want to or not.  

The good news is that we’re well, my clothes still smell like braii fire from Kruger and the internet at the hotel actually works great.