Fat (lazy) Cats

We kept running into a group of four young male lions (literally - they were sprawled across the road), hanging out like teenagers on summer holidays. I taped a scene just to get the sound of the roaring - it was deafening.

We also saw an older male who had been ousted out of a pride - he was very thin and pitiful looking, a stark contrast to these fat healthy looking boys.

An Important Tip about Elephants

If you are being charged by an elephant - there is a very important distinction between his mock charge and a real charge. If you choose to call his bluff - in the mock charge, his ears will be flapping, he will be trumpeting with his trunk waving and blowing up dust. In a real charge his ears will be flat and his trunk rolled up.

Invaluable advice if you ever decide to play chicken with an elephant ...

The Big Five, the Cute Five and the Tasty Five

The first four of the celebrated "Big Five" African animals - elephant, buffalo, rhino and lion are relatively easy to spot, but that damn elusive leopard .. it's like getting a poker hand with the one paying card missing. Though we did see the bridge where one (I'm guessing very complacent) Ranger used to sit in the evenings and have a smoke until one night when he was taken by a leopard and dragged off to the river bed. His guide tracked them in the dark and killed the animal but the man was toast .. so I guess not seeing a leopard is better than seeing one too closely ...

The Cute Five caused much debate but I settled on hippo, giraffe, zebra, impala and hyena. A tad controversial but hyena edged out monkey due to:

a. sighting two baby hyena trying to eat a tortoise and

b. an unfortunate incident involving an open window on the truck, a family of opportunistic monkeys and a fresh supply of snacks.

The Tasty Five is a work in progress, so far it includes warthog (great sausages), ostrich and kudu (I'm addicted to their biltong). However, there is a possibility of some fluidity between catagories depending on what turns up on the braai...

Willie's Potjie and Samp Millies

The South African tradition of cooking a Potjie (pronounced poor-quie) can take up to 5 hours, dozens of beers and a rugby game or two.

The potjie pot is a big, cast iron cauldron - usually placed on the coals of a fire - with the ingredients carefully layered according to their cooking time.

Willie's Recipe

Saute chicken, fresh ginger, capsicum, onion with garlic / lemon / pasley seasoning. Add Brai salt and cinnamon.

Cover in consecutive layers of potatoes, carrots, brocolli, cauliflower, squash, zuchini and mushrooms.

Add strong Rooboos tea for liquid. DO NOT STIR.

At the end of 4 or 5 hours (a carton of beer / heated discussion about the Springboks) pour over peach chutney and stir JUST BEFORE SERVING with samp millies (thick maize).

Fabulous!!

I have since bought a potjie recipe book (translated from Afrikaans) and will be testing my skill next week while still in the country of origin under the watchful eye of Sobhna.

(Photo : Willie and Jeff - our gourmet guides)

The Hippos of St Lucia

Hippos have a very bad rap - statistically they have killed more people over here than any other animal - but most people don't realise that more deaths occur in Africa annually from champagne corks ... I'm not sure what that means - maybe never serve your Moet near waterholes?

We camp alongside the St Lucia estuary and take an evening stroll to check out our neighbouring crocs and hippos - before retiring behind the razor wire and security guarded gate to fall asleep to the sounds of snorting and farting (no really) hippos ...

Hippos also apparently have a different temperament depending on where they reside - St Lucia hippos from near the estuary mouth are very mild mannered and occasionally wander through the main street to dine at the local gardens.

We were lucky enough on our cruise to spot a (comparatively) teeny new born hippo less than a day old, we didn't get too close - Mum was a tad jumpy, but the rest of the family posed very obligingly ..

My new favorites.

More from Mozambique

Apart from the golfball size beetles that would hurl themselves into my tent everytime I opened the door - we also had scorpions nesting under tents and sand spiders - funny orange and yellow long legged creatures .. and mosquitos ... so many mosquitos ... thanks goodness for DEET ..

Orgulhosamente Mocambicana (Proudly Mozambican!!)

We had to leave the truck at the Border post (after leaving Swaziland, entering and leaving S Africa and then arriving in Mozambique all in a few hours). Climbing into the back of a bakkie (ute) we drove across the dunes to the campsite. It took about an hour - with poor old Goodman laying on the tents in the trailer!

Mozambique is poor (average monthly income about $70), slowly recovering from war (still riddled with mines) and ravaged by HIV (about 20% infection rate) and malaria (even more devastating than HIV).

The main language is Portugese, the beaches are spectacular, the seafood amazing and we have pot plants gowing between the tents!

We are staying at a campsite called Ponta Malongane - there's a bar on site but we hike outside over the sand to the unoffical drinking shack where they serve Tipo Tinto Rhum - very smooth, vanilla laced and $10 / bottle.

This is a chill out stop - 6am swims (for those who didn't drink too much Tipo Tinto), potjie cooking (later post), walks along the beach checking out turtle nests, long evenings around the campfire ... lovely ...

Close Encounter of the Rhino kind ...

The Kingdom of Swaziland is VERY poor - the King isn't - all his wives have enormous houses and his kids go to school all over the word - but the people are, which might explain why our walking safari guide Johannes carried a walking stick instead of a gun as a weapon ...

We were drilled in Safari Etiquette - walk silently in single file, click or clap if you spot an animal, don't run (prey runs) and obey your guide to the letter - so when I spotted a HUGE rhino and baby just to my right I clapped up a storm and mimed a frenetic charade of "hugebloodygreyhornedbeastwithinspittingdistanceohbuggerareyousurewecan'trun?".

Baby rhino was nervous and edgy (he could see us better - older rhinos have terrible vision) - I was similarly nervous and edgy (having just been told the story of a guide who had fled a charging rhino and his two abandoned clients were injured - an exercise which can lead to manslaughter charges interestingly) .

Johannes indicated that we should freeze - really really easy under these circumstances - and we all held our breath until they started to walk away to my right .... suddenly Mum turned and started walking straight towards me ... I'm still frozen (possibly filming a rather grizzly demise) .. and Johannes runs from the front of the line, races between us and chases them away by banging his cane ... apparently these were "White Rhino" - which are much more timid than the identically and confusingly grey coloured "Black Rhino" - which will charge and kill you ... lucky us (though Johannes asked us not to tell his boss what happened!)

We gave him a fairsized "thanks-for-throwing-yourself-in-front-of-a-rhino" tip and went back to camp for a drink ...

My First Kill

4.30am in Kruger Park - dawn is just breaking - Ester and I climb into the (extremely open) ute with our guides, Erik and Geven, and two bloody HUGE (and very comforting) rifles (.458 Winchester magnums - bullets the length of my fingers), heading off for a walking safari (leaving our camp mates snoring).
The first thing I see is the giraffe's head - laying eyeless - just a few feet from the road, then we spot the lions surrounding the disembowelled carcass - just a few feet farther. Apparently they eat the soft organs first and then later, when that meal goes down, they eat again.
We stop and watch them watching us and try and take photos in dark.
We drive past later with a gang and they are still there, the carcass is now smelling really ripe, flies are swarming over the spilt entrails and the male lion is lifting the head and tearing at the neck - again all within a few feet of us.

We CSI the scene - after generations in the park predators have adapted their hunting styles and the lions have learnt that giraffes can't run on the paved roads without slipping. Hence they will separate a single animal and run alongside to steer their victim to the tarmac where they lose their footing and fall. We can see the dirt when the giraffe stumbled and the drag marks to where the lions made the kill.

... here is the evidence that dogs are completely capable of emotional manipulation – Rusty expressing his feelings of abandonment by using my backpack as a pillow... riddled with guilt I succumb and shower him with treats.. I am SUCH a sucker ..

Molo!!

Four sleeps to go and I’m as ready as I can be – I am packed, vaccinated and have finished my prescribed reading (“How to Amputate your Own Leg and Other Ways to Stay out of Trouble in a War Zone”- thanks Jason and Sian) and viewing (enlightening clip of the Mozambique rats trained to detect TNT on the minefields – thanks Claud) and I have learnt my important Xhosa greeting “molo ndilahlekile” (Hello I am lost).

Thanks also to everyone for the well wishes and advice on what to do if kidnapped (thanks Jordan) /caught in cross-fire / chased by mambas. As my first night will be spent in a tent somewhere near Soweto it may be redundant after next weekend anyway.

It is highly unlikely that I will have access to a computer …or electricity … for the first part of trek (the highlighted features of most campsites I’ve read is “running water”), so it may be a week or so before I get to post. For the people who were asking if I had blogged my Laos trip, I didn't (this is all so new to me) but you can find it at google docs : https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B3x4A-xlsAA8Zjg2MTNjYWMtNjU0YS00ZTcyLWJiOGItYTg2MTBiOWNkODUz&hl=en

Sobonana

Fi xx

A week to go and my room looks like the back dorm of the Dublin youth hostel - an explosion of Lonely Planet Guides, agent-orange-strength mosquito repellant, trousers that zip into shorts (trorts?), headlamps, sleeping sheets, first-aid kits, tundra ready sleeping bag and - in the centre of the maelstrom optimistically gaping, a teeny little backpack ... somehow I think the whole rolling-clothes-space-saving packing technique isn't going to cut it ...

So I figure, rather than send hundreds of emails about my trips, I'll try blogging and see how that goes. I leave in two weeks for Mozambique, South Africa and Swaziland and I'm extremely excited. I'm not daunted at ALL by personal stories of hijacked tour buses, elephant attacks, rampaging hippos and the enthusiasm of my friends to launch a ransom fund. I DO however regret making the said ransom-fund-friends the beneficiaries of my will ...