Chasing leopards
Greetings from Mala Mala, next to the Kruger Park!
We are taking a three-day family vacation to look at animals. It would be a long weekend, except that the days are Sunday to Tuesday.
The story of how we ended up taking this short vacation provides some insight into our current family dynamic. A few weeks ago, the kids had their break between Terms 3 and 4. India wanted very much to go to Madagascar, but I thought it was too much money and too far to go for only a few days. Then she planned a trip to Northern Botswana for the same period, and I thought it was too much money and too far to go for only a few days. Finally, she planned a trip to a restored farmhouse in Swellendam, a long two-hour drive from Cape Town. Everything was set, until we found out that we couldn’t pay with a credit card or transfer funds from a foreign bank, so they cancelled our reservation.
In the end, we stayed at home during the school break, and India expressed some (probably deserved) frustration with me.
Fast forward a couple of weeks. We had been invited to a dinner party in Johannesburg that I very much wanted to attend. India’s perspective was that it was too far to go and too much money for a few hours. Touche.
We agreed to bring the kids, and to make Johannesburg a transit point for going to the Kruger Park to look at animals. And here we are, headed to a lodge called Mala Mala, which (apparently) has the highest-density leopard population in the world.
Getting to Johannesburg was half the fun. Summer arrived in Cape Town on Saturday morning, and the entire city downshifted its pace from “leisurely” to “v-e-r-y s-l-o-w.” It will be like this for the next 8 months. Everyone drives slowly, because they are admiring the ocean or the mountains or the girls in bikinis. Traffic backs up as people innovate beach-side parking spaces that block the road. All personal interactions take a long time, because there is an obligatory exchange about how beautiful the weather is. Everything takes twice as long to do as it would when the weather is lousy.
This partially explains why we were doing an OJ-Simpson sprint through Cape Town’s airport yesterday afternoon, racing to check in before the flight closed. Tallulah was barefoot, and with her wild-child hair and gap-toothed grin (lost a front tooth last week) she looked like a completely feral five-year old as she ran. She also looked wildly happy and excited. Seeing that image in my mind’s eye fills me with humor and love. Zola, struggling to carry the power cords and adapters for his iTouch, his left shoe continually falling off, and dropping his books, sort of brought up the rear of the parade.
Part of the airport challenge was that we had to weave our way through thousands of robe-clad Muslims who were starting the long pilgrimage to Mecca. Sometimes we forget that Cape Town is a Muslim city, although we were out for dinner on the weekend that Ramadan ended, and every restaurant was packed out with happy Muslim families, enjoying a daylight meal. Anyway, our feral and disorganized family pushed our heavily laden luggage trolleys at speed through crowds of excited pilgrims and the families they were leaving behind. “Salaam-aleiku” I said, and “Shakran,” when people let us through. My trips to Egypt are helping.
We made the flight by less than a minute, and were wedged into the far back of the plane. One of the other few non-pilgrims on the plane was an African guy sitting next to me. He had a yellow t-shirt on that read, “Blind Chicks Think I’m Hot.” I told him that I have had the same experience.
In Johannesburg, we parted ways with the pilgrims. They should arrive in Saudi Arabia on the 17th or 18th of October, with nearly a month to pray and purify before the actual Hajj activities in Mecca (14-17 November). It is exciting, by proxy, to see people embarked on what literally is the trip of a lifetime.
We stayed at the Westcliff Hotel in Johannesburg. India and I were last there in 1998, meeting a friend for drinks at the Polo Bar. Nothing appears to have changed: the hotel is still beautiful and elegant, and the purple blossoms of the jacaranda trees sprawl majestically across the valley below. As we drove around the city, Tallulah shouted, “There’s another jacaranda!” about 300 times.
The Westcliff seems populated entirely by khaki-clad Americans and Germans over the age of 60. They have a nice business.
The dinner party was fun. Definitely worth the trip. Early this morning (Sunday), we drove back to the airport, found the charter-flight terminal, and boarded a tiny plane for Mala Mala. More khaki-clad Americans and Germans. South Africa seems to have nailed the high-end eco-tourism and safari market. We are looking forward to our short vacation, and to a few days together. Our trip around the world, when we lived like this all of the time, seems far away now.