Monday, April 1, 2013

My South African travels

So, as you may have gathered from previous posts, I went to South Africa for a veterinary continuing education course. And it was awesome.

 
Can't you just hear the Lion King music?
"Why did you go on a veterinary course?" you may ask. "When did you become a veterinarian?" No worries, you did not miss a life changing decision where I decided to scrap the publishing thing and go to vet school instead. I merely went on this trip as the continuing education office's liaison, to be around in case of any problems and to be the keeper of the office credit card (the power...). I decided to make the most of the opportunity and participate as much as they would let me.

Day 1

My group consisted of 11 people including myself. There were 9 veterinarians, me, and a husband of a veterinarian who went along as our personal photographer/videographer. Three vets, Jim, Linda, and Rebecca, were from the college, and the rest, John-Ed, Pat, William, Tom, Stephen, and Sue and her husband Heath, were from around Texas and Oklahoma. We all met up in the terminal at Houston Intercontinental, which was a little difficult since most of us did not know what the others looked like. I casually walked past a group of people that seemed to be introducing themselves and, upon overhearing the word "Africa", decided to dive in and see if they were part of my group. Fortunately, they were. I was also stalking a man that was dressed all in khaki, and it turned out he was with us, too. Everyone somehow congregated together before boarding, which was a relief.

If you have ever flown to Europe, you know approximately half of the suffering that was endured on the 20 hour flight. When we landed in Amsterdam, my foolish first thought was, "That flight wasn't so bad; we just have one more of those and then we're there!" On the flight to the Nederlands, I had Rebecca and Stephen to talk to, and I did not sleep at all, in spite of it being an over night flight. On the flight to Johannesburg, however, I sat next to a lady that I'm pretty sure did not speak any English, and my multiple attempts to sleep all resulted in me doing that annoying head bob where your head falls and you wake yourself up (and look around embarrassed). I will say, however, the meals (I had beef and potatoes, cheese and crackers, salad and a chocolate dessert for one meal, smoked almonds in between, a pastrami sandwich for lunch, and chicken and rice with couscous and chocolate mousse as my other dinner meal) and the free alcohol on our KLM flights were very good. We were even given fruit, rolls, muffins, and breakfast sandwiches in addition to the other food, and ice cream was served at one point as well. I highly recommend KLM for your future travel needs!

By the time we landed in Johannesburg (or Jo-burg as it is affectionately referred to by locals and frequent visitors), our group was exhausted. After exchanging our US dollars for some South African Rand, we made our way through the airport to the attached hotel, and it was at this point that I got a little nervous. It was late, there were not many people in the airport, and there were a lot of soldiers walking about. But, we made it to the hotel and checked in, and everyone was paired off to their rooms. Rebecca, Stephen and I decided we were hungry, however, so we went back into the airport to a 24 hour diner called Mugg & Bean. Pat later showed up as well. 40R (~$5) got me a slice of delicious chocolate mousse cake and a bottle of distilled water. We ate and made it back to our rooms without incident.The rooms were nice, although the two single beds were pushed together into a mega bed, which was a little funny and awkward.


I fell asleep and slept all through the South African night with no jet lag problems... bringing us to:

Day 2

Sunday morning we got up and ate breakfast at the hotel. A bus operated by CityBug picked us up at noon, and we headed for our home for the next week: Ngongoni Game Farm in Nelspruit, Mpumalanga, about 4 hours away (more information about our destination and the work they do can be found here). About halfway to our destination, we stopped at Alzu Petrochemicals, a gas station that had a convenience store in it and pastures of cape buffalo, zebras, antelope, a rhino, and emus behind it. We fondly called it "the zoo" since that was all we could make out of the native Afrikaner bus driver's pronunciation of "Alzu". Not feeling very adventurous about the different things on the menu inside the station, I had basically a grilled cheese sandwich, as did Rebecca. Here we encountered our first language barrier: Rebecca asked the girl behind the counter what kind of cheese came on the cheese sandwich. The dialogue followed like this:

Cashier: "You want a cheese and mayo sandwich?"
Rebecca: "No, what kind of cheese is on the cheese sandwich?"
Cashier: "Ok. One tomato and cheese sandwich."
Rebecca: "No! I just want to know what kind of cheese is on it?"
Cashier: "So you want a bacon and cheese sandwich."
Rebecca: "Just a plain cheese sandwich, please."

I'm pretty sure, from the look she was given upon receiving her sandwich, that perhaps proper sanitary practices were not followed with her food.

We loaded back up in the bus and headed for our farm. However, we had to stop for road construction, and we were allowed to get out and walk around.

My first pic in Africa!

Our stop did not take as long as expected and, shortly after, we were at the gate to our game farm. I'd like to take a moment here to relay my experience with South African drivers: they are on a mission when they drive, and that mission is to get to where they are going as quickly as possible. No matter what type of vehicle they are driving, no matter how good or bad the road is, and no matter how many screams of terror elicit from the backseat. We turned onto a dirt road before reaching Ngongoni, and it didn't matter. We flew over it, jack hammering in our seats the whole way. At one point we shot around a slower vehicle in our luggage-trailer-towing van, and someone in the back yelled "Off the road, lightweight!" It was quite an experience.

Upon entering the farm, we immediately saw a monkey sitting under a tree, and then shortly afterwards, we found a giraffe off to the side eyeballing us. We had to stop and take a million pictures, as any tourist would. Unfortunately I was still messing with the settings on my camera, so the best picture I could get was this:

"What? I'm trying to eat here!"
We continued on up the long, steep driveway, and finally the brush cleared away and we could see our accommodations. We were greeted by Jan, or Poemie, as everyone called him, who showed us to our rooms. Rebecca and I roomed together in a 2 bedroom hut with a thatched roof. It had concrete walls and a concrete floor and three beds total- a queen in Rebecca's and two twins in mine. My suitcase slept on one of them the whole time. Apparently there was a lizard living in the hut as well, since every morning I found reptile poop on my made bed.

Home away from home

Walkways to other huts and to the dining/bar area... so pretty when lit up at night!

Walkway to fire pit and Sue and Heath's hut
 
After getting our stuff into our rooms, Rebecca and I, tired of being cooped up in planes and buses, decided to go for a run on the farm. If I had the ability to run out there all the time, with the mountains all around me and the possibility of coming across exotic wildlife ever present, I would run every day. It was so beautiful, and even the steepness of the slope we were running up was overlooked because of the excitement of being there. We did not see any of the resident giraffes, wildebeest, or impalas while running, which was probably for the best- I'm not sure what we would have done should one of them have decided to give chase. We did see paw prints, some of which looked pretty predatory. There was a thunderstorm rolling in in the distance over the mountains, which was just awesome to see.

We got back to our hut and cleaned up for dinner, and the people who ran the lodge, Michelle and Garan, treated us spectacularly well. They made us a traditional South African dinner called "Potjie" that was like a chicken and veggie stew- it was DELICIOUS. My only regret is that I did not eat more of it. There was also a wonderful butternut squash soup and melk tert for dessert.

We met many people at dinner- Cobus, who is a veterinarian that owns Ngongoni Game Farm and who worked with us the entire time, Derik, a veterinarian that works for Cobus and lives out at Ngongoni and who did a wonderful job teaching us as well, Michelle's adorable daughters, who were fun to hang out with, in addition to too many other people to name. I learned from talking with Poemie and Derik that baboons use part of the ranch as a pathway up and down the mountain, which, I'm not going to lie, terrified me a little. We never saw or heard them while we stayed, but how incredible!

Cobus informed us that we would be tending to an injured rhino the next morning, so we would be eating breakfast at 5:30 AM and then heading out at 6 AM. I can't say that everyone was exactly thrilled to get up so early, but since it was for a rhino, we all willingly went to bed early, excited for our new adventure. Unfortunately, every single one of us woke up between 1 and 2 AM that morning and stayed awake for the rest of the night, due to jet lag. It made it that much easier to go to bed the next night!

I'm going to end this post here, since that was already a lot for just the first two days! I don't want to leave out a single detail, however. Day 3 to come along shortly!

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