Change In Plans

Greetings from Cape Town.

Sadly, we are leaving today.  Zola keeps asking, “Why are we going?  Why don’t we just buy this house and stay right here?”  Good questions, complicated answers.

We have a 12:50 pm flight from Cape Town to Johannesburg, and then a 6 pm flight from Johannesburg to Sydney. 

I wonder how many emigrating South Africans have taken this same flight, one way, in the last 33 years.  It seems that the first big wave of white South African emigration took place after the Soweto uprising in June 1976.  There were some other big waves: after P.W. Botha’s Rubicon speech in 1985, after successive States of Emergency in the late 1980s, just before and after the first democratic elections in 1994. 

In the last 15 years, emigration seems to have stabilized, but everyone talks about it as an option “if things get bad.”  Having “internationally recognized qualifications,” as an accountant, actuary or doctor still has cachet, and having a foreign passport is even better.  I wonder how many emigres have later changed their minds and taken the flight back to South Africa.

The flight to Sydney is about 13 hours, and we move ahead 9 time zones.  We may have a few sluggish mornings later in the week.  India and I have been reading travel books about Australia, and getting excited to see and experience a completely new place.  We will shift back into a mode of continuous motion and activity, like proper travelers instead of the beach bums we have become.

The kids and I are getting in the car now to go pick up India, who left for her last long one-way run.  I think she has run at least 15 kilometers every day that we have been in Cape Town except Christmas.  Amazing. 

 We will have breakfast by the beach in Camps Bay, come back to hand over the keys and say goodbye to the house, and start the long trip to Sydney.

Our time in South Africa and Namibia has been special.  We are sad to be leaving.

ON TOP OF TABLE MOUNTAIN

Greetings from Llandudno, Cape Town.  It is hard to believe, but we have been in South Africa (and Namibia) for seven weeks.  We are finally gearing up to move on to Australia on Monday.

In our final days we have been scrambling to see friends, to run errands (e.g., shipping 50 kilograms of stuff back to Tennessee), and to do all of the Cape Town things we really like to do. 

On Thursday we went surfing and spent time on the False Bay coast.  We also went to a few art galleries that India had read about, and wanted to see. 

One of the galleries featured a South African photographer named Pieter Hugo  (http://www.michaelstevenson.com).  Hugo had a well received exhibition in New York last year, featuring large photos of tough-looking Nigerians who kept leashed hyenas, pythons, and baboons as pets.  Very freaky. 

The exhibition we saw yesterday was a celebration of “Nollywood,”  Nigeria’s film-production industry.  It is the third-largest film making center in the world (after Hollywood and Bollywood).  The photos were re-creations of scenes from Nollywood horror movies: a lot of death, gore, destruction, and mayhem.  As Zola and I walked around, he kept repeating (almost Rainman like), “This is very disturbing, Dad.  Very disturbing.”  Finally he said, “I’m going to have nightmares from this, aren’t I?”  No nightmares yet, but I’m not sure this was exactly responsible parenting on my part.

We had an amazing dinner last night at a new restaurant way down in Noordhoek called the Food Barn (www.thefoodbarn.co.za).  We met our old, old friends Sven and Christelle, who we had otherwise not had a chance to see on this trip.  As always, they were brilliant company, and their daughters (aged 13 and 11) were very sweet to Zola and Tallulah.  For most of the dinner, all of the kids played outside together on a little playground, and then lay on the grass, watching the stars. 

Immediately after we sat down, the waiter brought me a bottle of champagne, and said that “a friend named Ernest had sent us two bottles as a gift.”  I don’t know anyone named Ernest, so I told the waiter there must be a mistake.  He insisted on giving us the wine, and throughout the dinner I kept wondering aloud who Ernest was, and why he would send me wine.   Sven, Christelle and India wondered along with me, but suggested that we accept the mystery gift and enjoy our good fortune. 

As we drove home,  I mentioned Ernest the Munificent again, and India started to laugh and laugh.  She said, “It was Sven and Christelle!  Duh!  Of course it was them! I can’t believe you fell for their trick!  Ha ha ha!”  Ha ha ha, indeed.  They all kept very straight faces about Ernest throughout the whole evening, but must have laughed themselves silly later.

This morning, we finally completed the hike up Table Mountain.  India ran the 15 kilometers to the base of the mountain, and all four of us did the 90-minute climb together.  Tallulah actually walked about a third of the way up, in Crocs no less, and rode my shoulders the rest of the way.  Zola complained a little during the middle 30 minutes, but was a trooper.  At the top he said, “This was the best hike ever!”  

Sitting outside the cafe at the top of the mountain, we ran into another old, old friend, named Itumeleng Kgaboesele, from my time teaching at the University of Cape Town in 1991.  I had not seen Itu in nearly ten years, but his appearance had not changed a bit.  What has changed is that the very clever, confident undergraduate I knew 18 years ago has become one of the most prominent investors and entrepreneurs in the country (http://www.sphereholdings.co.za/).  Such a good guy, and so deeply deserving of his successes. 

We raced down the mountain, sped home, changed clothes lickety-split, sped off again, and managed to be only 10 minutes late for lunch reservations at The Round House restaurant (http://www.theroundhouserestaurant.com/).  The restaurant is practically within spitting distance of the Table Mountain cable station. 

The Round House was built by Lord Charles Somerset in 1817 as a  hunting lodge, “to shoot lion, leopard and buck on the slopes of Lions Head mountain.”  It is now a World Heritage site (!), sitting on a forested mountainside, in the center of a big nature reserve, overlooking the Atlantic.  It is a five-minute drive from the center of Cape Town.

In the old days (ie, the 1990s), The Round House was run by an eccentric French woman of a certain age.  She played Edith Piaf singles on a phongraph, flirted outrageously with her male guests, and served French food swimming in reductions and demi-glaze.  India and I probably had dinner with her 15 times.

Apparently the building was then abandoned for several years, and has just recently reopened as a new high-end, European bistro.  We sat outside with our friends, two couples, while our collective five kids played barefoot in the grass below the lodge.  Somehow, three very pleasant hours went by.

LUNCH AT THE ROUND HOUSE

One of the kids from lunch, Alec, came home with us, so he and Zola could have a play date.  The boys ended up boogie boarding in the freezing Atlantic for about an hour and a half, until the water had numbed their feet beyond feeling, and the sun had set over the ocean.   I was in with them for the last 45 minutes or so, treasuring their laughter and bravado. 

INTREPID BOOGIE BOARDERS

Our time in Cape Town has been great. 

Unfortunately, I upset the Never Never Land atmosphere by accepting a full-time, six-month assignment in New York, starting on April 20th.  India and I have been discussing this opportunity for months, but I think we hadn’t fully internalized the implications of it until yesterday.  Essentially, our trip, and our time as a 24/7 family will come to an end (temporarily?) then.  

We are working through the logistics (complicated) and the emotions (complicated), and also trying to think through the longer-term questions of where and how we want to live.  Obviously, these are conversations we need to have at some point anyway.  But it definitely feels as though I have somehow poured a cold bucket of uncertain reality on our beachside idyll.

As with everything, we will work through it.  In the meantime, we will enjoy our last days in Cape Town.

THE PROTAGONIST

Greetings from Cape Town!  

Last night we had dinner at La Colombe (http://www.constantia-uitsig.com/pages/restaurants/la-colombe.php), which just won an award as South Africa’s best restaurant.  As always, it was just amazing: outstanding and inventive food, sitting outdoors in the garden by a fountain, excellent service, everything.  Tallulah and I even had a footrace across the cricket pitch before dark.

This short post is a story from a visit to La Colombe last year.  The restaurant is located on a beautiful wine estate called Constantia Uitsig (pronounced “ATE-sigk” for the non-Afrikaans speakers out there).  Uitsig has three restaurants on the estate, and a very small boutique hotel.  The hotel has six rooms, I think.

Last January, India and her parents and the kids stayed at Uitsig for a few nights at the end of our family trip to South Africa.  I had already gone back to work in California, and we had given up the house we had rented.  The six rooms are all on the ground floor, clustered into three small Cape Dutch-style buildings, set in the ancient gardens of the vineyard.  Bucolic and beautiful.

India wanted her parents, Gramae and Pop, to have a romantic dinner at La Colombe.   She and the kids met a friend of ours, Arnold, and his two kids, at 6:30 pm.  They had a picnic dinner served at a table on Uitsig’s small cricket pitch, far from the hotel rooms and the restaurant itself.  Gramae and Pop had a reservation at La Colombe for 6:30 as well, a short walk from their room.

At 7:15, one of the Constantia Uitsig security guards came down onto the cricket pitch, and asked India, “Do you know the older American couple staying in Room #3?”

India was very alarmed, and said, “Yes.  They are my parents.  Are they OK?  Has something happened?”

The security guard said that they were fine, but that they were locked into the room.  Did India have the key?

It turns out that they had been trapped for about 45 minutes.  The windows were barred (South Africa), they could not get anyone on the phone in reception, and they had been shouting for help.  Fortunately, the security guard had walked by, taken notice, and gone to get India.  The guard did not know where the master key was.  India said she had no idea where her parents’ room key was.

At this point, Zola said quietly, “I have the key.”  

The whole party ran up to Room #3 and released Gramae and Pop from their gilded cage.  Being grandparents, they were much more forgiving and kind about the whole thing than I would have been.  

Gramae did ask Zola, “Now sweetheart, why did you lock the door on us?”

Zola said, “You were changing clothes with the door open, and I was afraid that someone would see Pop’s wiener.”

True story.  

They must not keep very good records of their guests’ names, because they accepted our dinner reservation without any “not them again!” alarms going off.   We had another wonderful dinner last night, and I laugh every time that I think of this story.

Greetings from Cape Town!  This post tries to summarize our nearly three weeks in the desert.  As I wrote a few days ago, it may be my favorite part of the trip so far.  I have been trying to figure out why I liked it so much, and what lessons we can apply to the rest of our travels.

Here are some of the fun facts from the trip:

• We were on the road for 20 days, from the date we flew from Cape Town to Upington to the date we flew from Windhoek to Cape Town.
   
• We stayed in 13 different places, which seems like a lot.  These ranged from the very basic (camp sites in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park) to the extremely comfortable (Wolwedans, Little Kulala, Little Ongava, Mowani).  None of these fancy lodges existed in Namibia ten years ago.
   
• We drove 3,400 kilometers on the roads, which means about 40 hours in our rented bakkie.  We also took 21 game drives, averaging about 3 hours each.  All in this means we were driving around on average 4-5 hours a day.  Wow! That seems like a lot as well.
   
• We went on 8 guided game walks, mostly seeing insects, birds, plants and sand.  We also had the long walks to climb sand dunes, to go for sunset drinks, and to go sandboarding.  We shook sand out of our shoes at least 2,000 times (an estimate).
    

CHEETAH IN MID-GROWL

• We saw a lot of game: about 25 lions, 9 cheetah (four essentially in captivity), 26 desert-adapted elephants, 4 venomous snakes, 8 rhino, 500 or so zebras, and about 8 million gemsboks.  No shortage of gemsboks in the desert.
     
  

  THE UBIQUITOUS GEMSBOK

   

• We bought 300 liters of diesel fuel for the bakkie, and no liters of normal gasoline.  I worried about this all of the time.  Also, we only really got stuck once, which was a relief.  We also did not crash, although I nearly ran over a suicidal ostrich, and we had an uncomfortably  close call on the dune track near !Xaus Lodge.
   
• Mostly while we were driving, Zola read about 2,500 pages: three Hardy Boys, the last three books of the Artemis Fowl series, the last two of Percy Jackson, five Michael Morpurgo novels, and a few desert-specific novels (eg, Meerkat Manor).  We are glad he can read in the car and not get carsick.  We are also glad that Swakopmund had some good bookstores.
   
• We met some great guides and people working at lodges: Jason (the Argonaut), Samuel (the musician), Moses (who led us through the desert), Gabriel (the Archangel), Lister (the elephant finder), the three Americans, Joe at Doro !Nawas, Jennifer at Little Kulala, Ellen and Vincent at Mowani, Arne, Ingrid and Rob (the wonderful Dutch), Frederick the Studious, Hayward the Chef, and our favorite all time name - Mighty Power.
  

  MIGHTY POWER AND HAYWARD AT WOLWEDANS

   

• The desert attracts characters.  Many people seem to flee to Namibia to avoid extradition or publicity.   Wesley Snipes hid from his tax problems there.  Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie famously waited for a baby in Swakopmund.  We met and were charmed by Eva, la femme mysterieuse. We met a very rich American father and son, and their too young and beautiful wives (?), whose story didn’t quite make sense.  We wondered, idly, what some of the very elderly German men in Swakopmund did during the war.  India wondered how why the proportion of ruggedly handsome men is so high in Namibia.

RELAXING ON DUNE 45 - SOSSUSVLEI

Greetings from Llandudno, Cape Town.  We flew down from Windhoek yesterday afternoon.  

After having so many great experiences in Namibia, our departure was a bit frustrating and complicated: it took an hour to return the car, with some unspecified assessment for “sand blast damage;” the flight was delayed then undelayed then they put us on a slightly scary “backup” plane; general chaos in slow motion.  

My favorite moment was when the Hertz guy looked at me gravely, and said, “Have you been driving in sandy areas?”  It is almost like returning a rental in Minneapolis in January, and having them ask whether the car was exposed to cold temperatures.

Although we had always planned to return to the Llandudno house at the end of the week, India booked two interim nights in a fishing village about an hour north of Cape Town.  The beach house, called the White House, was recently featured in a popular magazine, and the village, called Yzerfontein (pronounced AZER-fon-tane), has become trendy in property development circles.

Tallulah was very disappointed to find out that Mr. Obama would not be at the White House when we arrived.  The rest of us were a little disappointed to find that the White House was really designed for photo shoots, and not for a family to stay in.  Everything was photogenically beautiful, like a Ralph Lauren beachwear advertisement, but there were no comfortable spaces.  Literally every surface in the building (as well as the exterior and trim) was white.  The kids’ room was in the basement, and the master bedroom was on the second floor.  When the owner greeted us with the keys, Tallulah was carrying an open bottle of orange soda.  All of the adults awkwardly foresaw a potential “orange on white” disaster.

More important, the house was in an unoccupied retirement village, with weird and garish (and empty) places surrounding it on three sides.  The fourth side did have a beautiful view of the sand dunes and the ocean.  Because we were at the southern edge of the currently developed part, there was a paved road and  street lights leading off to nowhere in the dunes further south.  The whole thing reminded me of a Bergman movie, with metaphors for death and purity all around us.

As the rain poured down on us this morning, we made the executive decision to retreat to Cape Town a day early.  We could have stayed, I guess, but the desolation and bad weather, and the strangely uncomfortable house were enough to send us home.  We need to wash some clothes anyway.

So, we are back in the same house in Llandudno.  The waves are huge, so Zola and I are going down to boogie board.  Our kids were reunited with all of the stuff that we stored here, so it was like a late January Christmas.  We are happy to be back in a home, instead of the succession of tents and lodges that we have lived in for the last three weeks.  We are particularly glad that it is this particular, familiar, comfortable, Llandudno home.

PostScript- the waves were amazing, and Zola and I had a great time with our friend Paul.  The rip tide was strong, and complicated, so I was glad that Zola stayed in close to the beach.  Holidays are clearly over: we basically had the beach to ourselves.

Greetings from Twee Rivieren, at the southern end of the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park. The park combines two national parks, in South Africa and Botswana, creating a huge desert wilderness area. I will try to incorporate some maps when I am not using my BlackBerry. “Kgalagadi” is the original (and now official) spelling of “Kalahari.”

This short post is about our first day and night here.

We drove about 200 kilometers from Tswalu, entirely over dirt roads. Including the two ‘towns’ we passed, we saw a total of about five motor vehicles, and three donkey carts, on the drive. We were glad to be in a new and reliable 4×4. Breaking down in the 100-degree heat and blazing sun would have been unamusing at best.

India and I stayed at the Twee Rivieren camp site nearly ten years ago, when the park was still just the Kalahari Gemsbok Park. Without going into too much detail, we have reason to believe that Zola was conceived here, a belief that we memorialized by making his full name ‘Zola Atticus Kalahari Baird.’ We explained a little of this to Zola yesterday, but it raised more questions than we were ready to discuss.

Last night we stayed in a desert camp called Kielie Krankie, about 45 dirt-road kilometers in from the park entrance at Twee Rivieren. “Kielie Krankie” means “almost sick” in Afrikaans. Not an auspicious place name for a family that just spent a month in India (the place).

Ten years ago, India (the person) and I saw practically no animals when we were in this park. Times have changed.

Like many South African game parks, this one features “self-drive safaris.”. This means that you rattle around on the dirt roads looking for animals. It is very democratic (ie, inexpensive) and fun.

On the drive in to Kielie Krankie, we saw hundreds of gemsbok (oryx), wildebeest, and springbok. More exciting, we found a pride of ten lions resting in the late-afternoon shade by the road.

As we watched the lions, a large herd of wildebeest ambled down the valley, about 300 meters upwind. The lions suddenly became very alert, and arrayed themselves along a low ridge to observe their potential dinner. For about an hour, we watched the lions watching the wildebeest. The confident, murderous intent of the adult lionesses was clear, although the cubs seemed to be sort of playing along. The wildebeest, meanwhile, seemed oblivious to the danger: they drank from a watering hole, they wandered aimlessly, their babies ran and played.

Unfortunately, we had to leave before the drama played itself out. We were required to be at Kielie Krankie by 7:30 pm, or be stuck sleeping in our truck. Our guess is that there are one or two fewer wildebeest in that herd this morning.

Just before we arrived at the desert camp, Zola spotted a family of bat-eared foxes coming out of their den to hunt in the twilight. They were about 150 meters off the road, on a low hillside. Excellent spot, Zola.

Kielie Krankie is an unfenced group of four small bungalows. Each is half building and half tent. The gate to each bungalow locks, and the outdoor space is a deck about two meters above a desert hillside. This is believed to be adequate protection from lions. There is a ranger, named Willem, in a fifth bungalow, and he gave us a whistle to summon him (with rifle, presumably) if we got into trouble. Wild.

As we moved into our bungalow, a huge thunderstorm was brewing in the west. As at Tswalu, it created a spectacular show of lightning and desert sunset, deep reds and blues punctuated by streaks of white.

As we were cooking dinner, the wind began to blow hellaciously. I doused our cooking fire, which was spraying embers all over the dry vegetation in the valley, and we closed all of the windows and tent flaps. A few minutes later, la deluge terrifique. The rain came down in sheets, as lightning flashed and thunder boomed. Both kids tries to be cool about it, but it was a little scary. We ate our dinner on the floor of the kitchen, with rain leaking into the bungalow all over the place.

The rain stopped after an hour, and we all dropped off to sleep. Having only two twin beds made it a tight squeeze.

Greetings from Tswalu!  Unfortunately, we are leaving this desert paradise around noon today.  We will be driving for about four hours to a tent camp in the Trans-Frontier National Park, and staying there for the next few days.  This short post is about what we have been doing in our last 24 hours at Tswalu.

Yesterday afternoon, once we figured out that Zola had gotten the poisonous sap from the tree euphorbia in his nose and mouth, Jason, Samuel and I shifted our afternoon game drive into a quest for bushman medicine. 

Jason dug a succulent root from the side of the road, cut off the outer skin, and gave Zola a piece to chew.  Jason’s insistence that the root “tastes just like warm water” was a bit generous (I tasted a piece myself), but Zola’s mouth felt a little better.  Later, on the theory that the poison was a mild acid, we pulverized some limestone, and made an alkaline mouth rinse.  This didn’t work very well (Zola swallowed a big mouthful, which caused him more anxiety).  A limestone poultice seemed to really help the mild acid burn on his face, though.  Finally, Jason cut us some hoodia, which is a succulent known for giving energy and suppressing appetite (now available in U.S. drugstores).  Again, Jason’s characterization of the taste -”very pleasant, like licorice”- was too charitable, but I definitely felt the stimulus effect.

We did not see a lot of interesting game (except a small buffalo herd), but it was fun finding the bush remedies.  The best part of the drive, though, was watching the spectacular sunset from the top of a small sand dune.  Jason, Samuel and Zola dug up scorpion holes, hoping to find one of the occupants to inspect.  Eventually they went off to look at a dead Oryx by the side of the road.  Tallulah played in the sand.  India and I sat with our drinks and admired the beauty of the desert, and the electric drama of gathering thunderstorms.  We could see 10-20 kilometers in every direction, but could not see evidence of any other human life.  Once again, we got soaked on the drive back to the lodge.

This morning, we slept until 6, and then drove down to the stables.  Like everything else at Tswalu, the stables were absolutely top class.  They had riding boots and chaps waiting for us, and a string of beautiful horses were saddled.  Most exciting, Tallulah got to ride her own horse (with a lead line), and we walked off into the desert.  We saw a sable, a few Nyala, and two grumpy old male buffalo down by a water hole.  The scenery was spectacular.  We saw a burned patch of about 20 acres, where a lightning strike had ignited a brush fire a few months ago.  Apparently, this brings out the entire Tswalu staff of 150 people to light backfires and beat out flames.  If the reserve burnt down, it would be bad for conservation and for business.

On the ride, Jason told a story about when the (now-deposed) King and Queen of Nepal visited Sabi Sands, and he took them on their game drives.  The two Nepali generals who were acting as bodyguards got very nervous every time Jason reached for his rifle.  This is reasonable, given that the king’s predecessor (and brother) died in a hail of gunfire.  Jason said that the king was not very pleasant company, shouting “Drive, just drive!” when Jason stopped to look at any animal not to his regal liking.  As the group sat and watched a mother leopard feeding its cub, the king flicked a lit cigarette next to them.  A team of rangers had to drive off the mother leopard, and beat out the small fire that he had started.  A few months after the king’s visit, the Nepali Maoists finally deposed him, and sent him into internal exile.  Jason said, “I don’t wish bad on anyone, but when I saw that news on CNN, I figured it served the king right.”

On the way back from riding, we saw two male warthogs fighting ferociously on the road.  They butted heads, slashed at each other with their tusks, and generally mixed it up.  Eventually, one warthog backed away warily, while his victorious opponent sprayed sand in the air and grunted triumphantly.  After breakfast, and some on-line math (Zola and I are cranking), Jason and Samuel took the kids to do archery.  Zola shot the arrows, and Tallulah ran to retrieve them.

Tswalu is just great.  We are sorry to be leaving, but are excited about heading back to Namibia.  The long drive begins today.

Greetings from Tswalu!  This short post relates a few of the stories/facts that Jason, our guide, has told us during our game drives in the last two days.

Last January, after our holiday in Cape Town, India came to Tswalu with her parents and our kids.  I had gone back to work in San Diego.  They had a guide named Jason, who each member of the family seemed to fall in love with a little bit.  Aside from the game drives, he accompanied India on walks and runs in the desert.  He took Zola to ride horses and do archery, and he talked with him endlessly about snakes.  He carried Tallulah, told her funny stories, and let her be a big girl.  The prospect of having Jason as our guide again was a big draw for our return to Tswalu this year.

Having gotten over my slight prejudicial jealousy (I really wish I were a better person), I have been wildly impressed with Jason.  The depth and breadth of his knowledge is truly phenomenal, and his boyish enthusiasm for being out in nature is infectious.  Mostly, though, the stories that he tells, and the facts that he imparts, have been remarkable.  Most are delivered in an off-hand way, in reference to something we are walking by or driving by.  Here are a few examples:

Pink-billed Ostrich - this morning we saw a male ostrich with a bright pink bill.  Jason remarked that this was a sign of very high testosterone, and that his shins would be colored pink as well (they were).  When male ostriches are looking to mate, they get these pink markings, and, apparently they get very aggressive.  ”I had to shoot one once in the Kruger Park, you know.” Jason said.  He was leading a group of guests on a walk, and a lust-crazed ostrich attacked them.  He fended off the ostrich, using his rifle as a club, but the ostrich started to kick at him.  An ostrich’s kick as as dangerous as a horse’s.  Jason radioed for a vehicle to come rescue the group, but was told it would be 20 minutes.  ”So, unfortunately, I had to shoot him before he kicked my ribs in.  It was too bad, really.  He just wouldn’t leave us alone”

Tampan Ticks and the Shepherd Bush - A Shepherd Bush is a low, scrubby plant that has high protein and Vitamin A content in its leaves.  As we drove past the zillionth one, Jason remarked “the ground around them is filled with Tampan ticks.  Very dangerous.”  These ticks sense the carbon dioxide that an animal or human emits, and they crawl up out of the ground and bite whatever is resting in the shade of the Shepherd Bush.  The real risk, though, is that “from the anti-coagulant in a few of those bites, you get temporary paralysis.”  If no one hauls your temporarily paralyzed self away from the ticks, they would essentially bite you to death.  Not a pleasant way to go, but very uncommon.  Most people pull off the ticks and walk away before the paralysis sets in.

Radiating gnu - the wildebeest, or brindled gnu, has alternating stripes of thick/black and thin/brown fur along its sides.  This pattern is the “brindling.”  Jason says that the sun heats the thin and thick fur to slightly different temperatures, and that the heat exchange between them creates a very slight cooling convective effect.  I would want to see the paper describing this, but it makes sense.

Elephant and Ecologist -A British woman with sixteen years of experience as an ecologist was killed by an elephant in Sabi Sands a few years ago.  She and Jason worked together for eight years, as she studied the habits of an elephant breeding herd.  In one of her thousands of encounters with the elephants, the matriarch started charging toward her.  Her colleague ran for shelter, but she clapped her hands loudly, which had stopped that same she-elephant on many previous occasions.  This time, the elephant knocked her down and trampled her to death.  Jason said, “I arrived a few minutes later, and there was really nothing left of her, just a red spot in the dust.”  After shooting the elephant (standard operating procedure), the rangers boxed the woman’s remains, and held a sad and well attended burial service on a hill in the Sabi Sands.  A few days later, the elephant herd, with a new matriarch, spent the entire day at the grave site, “scratching at the dirt, and paying their respects.”  I asked whether they knew that the ecologist was buried there, and Jason said, “Of course.  Elephants are extremely clever, and they would have done this for one of their own.”

It has been fun riding and walking round in the Kalahari, tracking animals and listening to stories.  I had not gone on safari in Africa for about three years, and I had forgotten how much pure fun it can be.  With a guide like Jason, and a tracker like Samuel (more on him later), this is as good as it gets.

PostScript- to avoid embarrassment (my own), I asked Jason whether these stories were, in fact, true. He said “gospel truth,” after I read each one. He specified that the late ecologist was named Kay Hickox.

In the meantime, Zola managed to poison himself (very slightly) by jabbing holes in a cactus with a porcupine quill. Turns out that the milky sap from the cactus, a tree euphorbia, is highly toxic. The indigenous KhoiSan use the sap to poison their darts. By touching the quill point and his nose and mouth he has had an unpleasant few hours of burning sensation. It is absolutely not dangerous, but he probably won’t do it again. We are off to make a mild alkaloid bush remedy from pulverized lime. Once again, India and I ask ourselves, “is this responsible parenting?”

KALAHARI DESERT SUNSET

Greetings from Tswalu Nature Reserve, Northern Cape Province, South Africa. We have been at Tswalu Motse, an amazing safari lodge, for just over a day. This post is about five things I have seen here that I had never seen before. Photos to follow.

I am writing this on my BlackBerry from our windswept, open-air campsite on the top of a little hill, in the middle of the Kalahari Desert. All four of us are lined up on army cots under the stars. We are about 10 kilometers from the main lodge, having driven out after dinner.  We will never forget this night of sleeping out.

Here are the five new things, in no particular order:

1- Zola playing Risk and solving pre-algebra math problems. Suddenly his brain has switched on in a new way. We are halfway through his first-ever game of Risk, and the kid is crushing me. I would like to say it is all luck, but he is playing well. More important, his on-line math curriculum vaulted him into a new level of problem-solving complexity today. He grumbled, but stepped up. I am suddenly encouraged.  It is great that Tswalu Motse has Risk (and about 50 other board games) in its game room.  It also has great satellite broad-band access.

CHEETAH OBSERVED ON FOOT FROM 3 METERS

2- A cheetah with a freshly killed steenbok, observed on foot from three meters away. Our guide and tracker jumped off the vehicle on this morning’s game drive, tracking wild dogs on foot into the off-road bush. They did not take a rifle. Ten minutes later, they emerged from the undergrowth, slightly shaken. Our guide, Jason the Great, was clutching his Leatherman tool, with its 8 centimeter knife blade out.  He had improvised the tiny knife as a potential weapon against a cheetah they had surprised in the bush. This struck us all as very funny.  We all walked back in (Lu on my shoulders) and tracked the cheetah to a little temporary lair. Cheetahs are the weakest of the big-cat predators, and their kills are taken away by other animals (eg, hyenas, lions, even large birds of prey).  As we watched, the cheetah got comfortable with our presence a few feet away, then started to eat the tiny deer in its jaws. Amazing.

3- a pride of lions feasting on a baby mountain zebra. We watched from about three meters away in our Land Rover, as a male lion and four cubs ripped their kill to shreds. The rest of the pride, two lionesses and four other cubs lolled and licked blood from each others’ faces nearby. Very primeval, and very dramatic.  We all sat quite still and silent, but Tallulah (wearing a giraffe-print dress) shifted around some in my lap.  The big male lion started staring at her with considerable interest, which was very unnerving.  Jason started the engine and got us out of there quickly.

4- a spectacular 360-degree lightning show. At sunset, we started seeing huge and dramatic lightning strikes in the distance. We have not heard thunder, or felt rain (good thing, given our al fresco sleeping arrangements), but the sky is alight all around us.  Apparently, the high iron content of the Kalahari soil draws lightning like warm meat draws flies, or free beer draws frat boys, or a pre-Christmas sale draws Wal-Mart shoppers.  Choose your metaphor, it is pretty amazing to look at.

ZOLA IN THE TRACKER

5- a game lodge as cool as Tswalu Motse. We are basically the only people here. This is a 100,000 hectare nature preserve, handed over to the Baird Family for a few days. Want to go for a walk in the desert at mid-day? Sure.  Want to let Zola ride in the tracker’s seat on the Land Rover’s hood for a while? No problem. Want to camp in the desert instead of sleeping in your big rondavel? Absolutely. Want to ride horses instead of driving around in a Land Rover?  Let me call the stables.

This is a phenomenally great place. Our guide and tracker, Jason and Samuel, and the rest of the staff, are all unbelievably good.  The landscape is dramatically beautiful, and the reserve is loaded with healthy game.  It is even worth the 5 am wakeup call.

Who knows what we will see tomorrow. Today has been pretty spectacular.

Late-night PostScript: about an hour after I posted this, the heavens opened up, and we got thoroughly rained upon.  Maybe the tentless camping wasn’t such a great idea after all.  We packed up our camp quickly, and drove back to the lodge in the open Land Rover, getting wetter with each kilometer.  Tallulah slept through it all.  We will be up again in about 4 hours for the morning game drive.

[Note: Written on 7 January, but only published on 8 January]

Greetings from Upington, South Africa.  This short post is about our trip from Cape Town, and our short stay in Upington.

Our flight was delayed about 20 minutes, but eventually we boarded a bus and rolled out to the airplane.  Except for us, everyone on the bus was speaking Afrikaans.  There were no children, and no obvious tourists.  A man about my age asked, in English, “Are you lot really going to Upington?  Are you sure?”  I guess there is a reason that there is only one flight per day.

Stepping off the plane in Upington was like walking into a wall of heat.  It was just over 40 degrees Celsius, or 105 Fahrenheit.  Welcome to the desert!  As they say, “It’s a dry heat.”

Upington International Airport is about the size of a two-bedroom Manhattan apartment.  Occasionally flights land from Namibia or Botswana, giving it “International” status.  The Cape Town flight must have been the last of the day, because as soon as we had collected our luggage, and walked out to the parking lot, the airport staff all left and locked the door behind us.

There is a row of six small sheds which house the representatives of six different rental-car companies.  We found Gustav, from Hertz, and he checked us in to our Isuzu 4×4 pick-up truck (invariably described as a “bakkie” in South Africa).  I asked Gustav if it had been busy during the holidays, and he said that we were his first rental in the last seven days.  My guess is that Gustav gets a lot of reading done, and/or has an awesome Facebook page.

We stayed over at a guest house called Le Must.  When I called for directions, and I described where I was, Natasha, Le Must’s manageress, said, “Ag, you are too far away for me to tell you how to get here.  Call back when you see the Absa Bank on Schroder Straat.”  Literally ten seconds later I was in front of the bank.  Sixty seconds after that, we were driving past a series of curiously named guest houses along the Orange River: “The Hadeda,” “The Burger House,” “Biki B&B,” “Nirvana.” And sixty seconds after that we were in the driveway of Le Must.

Upington is a dusty, old-fashioned, South African town.  The streets are still all named after Afrikaner settlers, and the stores carry the necessities of living in a hot, dry climate.  90% of the population is mixed race, what the apartheid system used to classify as “coloured.”  Virtually everyone speaks Afrikaans.  The biggest building in town is the Dutch Reformed Church. It does not appear to have changed much in the ten years since I was last here.

Le Must guest house, rated the best in Upington, was small, and comfortable, and unbelievably inexpensive.  The total cost for two rooms, including breakfast, was about $50.  Hallelujah!  We went for a short swim, then drove back into town for a heavy but good dinner outdoors at Le Must’s restaurant.   The menu warned us, “You are in meat country.  The fish has been frozen.”  By 9pm, we were all in bed.

Leaving Cape Town seems to have been more traumatic for Tallulah and Zola than we had anticipated.  Tallulah has been clinging to three Barbie dolls as if they were a life raft in a stormy sea.  At dinner she sat under the table for most of the meal, playing with the dolls in the rocks and sand.  She insisted that this was OK, because “Sienna’s daddy said it was OK in Cape Town.”  That night she tossed and turned and talked in her sleep.

Zola has been moody and uncommunicative since we left for the airport in Cape Town.  He was sorry to leave Winston, our Llandudno neighbor and his constant companion of the last week.  Also, as we have realized, Zola likes stability and predictability.  Having a “home” in Cape Town, and having some semblance of a daily rhythm really suited him.  Now he is alone and in constant motion again.  We hope he will cheer up once we get out to Tswalu (also familiar turf for him), and we start tracking animals.

India is in high spirits.  She loves game drives, and she loves the desert.  She is ready to get moving again.  As usual, I am somewhere in the middle.  We had gotten very comfortable in our little home by the sea, and in our vacation-bubble faux normalcy. 

It is getting hot again, and we need to get on the road.  It is a three-hour drive to the gates of the Tswalu Nature Reserve.  The bakkie is loaded, and we are ready to go.  Tot siens, Upington.