Second longest day ever!

Access to wi-fi is anything but easy in South Africa! We have been prepping our blog posts while we wait for the wi-fi to come back up at the lodge, or find it elsewhere.

At 1am on Wednesday I tried to insist to Taylor that it was time to get up. I have a vague memory of being quite certain that I had a better sense of what time it was than all of our devices. Thankfully Taylor convinced me to go back to sleep, because I would need the rest! Our reserve doesn’t have a lot of the game we want to see so we had a half day excursion planned at Hluhluwe-Imfolozi departing just before sunrise; we were out the door by 4:30 for a fun drive. It was dark, it was stormy, the windshield wipers could barely keep up (and they swish the wrong way which is really distracting), other drivers were “encouraging” me to drive half on the shoulder of the 2-lane highway because I was unwilling to go 120kph in the conditions, and let’s not forget that driving on the left side of the road isn’t exactly second nature yet. Have we mentioned yet how many workers and school children walk many miles along the side of the road for their daily commute? We showed up a few minutes after 6, convinced that all had been for naught and that the guide would have left without us but as lions apparently don’t like storms any more than we do, the tour was cancelled. (Insert appropriate emoticon here.)

The guide suggested that we go to St. Lucia and check out the wetlands. We decided to continue the morning’s trend of keeping it safe and walked along the Estuary Boardwalk.

Luckily the only wildlife we saw were many vervets (I don’t know why they refuse to let me take their pictures), reptiles, insects, birds and this giant snail that would easily fill your outstretched hand.

We did hear a hippo that was pretty close by so we decided it was best to move along as they can waddle at over 20mph. Next we drove around the Eastern Shores of and saw lots of amazingness! There is a paved road with many dirt loop side roads, though after the first one we decided that Wimpy wasn’t really up for the task thanks to the downpours that morning. We went out to Cape Vidal and put our toes in the Indian Ocean. Taylor says that this picture looks like it was taken at Ocean Shores. Haha, we aren’t actually in Africa everybody!

Oh, and don’t let the puny clouds in that pic fool you, here’s one taken a few minutes later showing the angry clouds that threw giant raindrops at us as we got back into the car. They move incredibly fast here!

We grabbed lunch at a place that can best be compared to what I think Long John Silver’s is like, and, lucky us, Wednesday is half priced sushi day! We politely declined the special – the cheap to brave ratio doesn’t allow for half-priced sushi.

Thanks to all of the jostling in the safari truck, I needed to pick up some Dramamine to deal with my vertigo. The pharmacist informed that it had been banned 30 years prior in South Africa because of the side effects, but he had plenty of suggestions for better medications that actually make you feel normal, instead of bad in a different way. Way to go USA! Wi-fi nearly everywhere but your solution for motion sickness could not be purchased from a pharmacy that was only open because they had a generator to deal with the regular brownouts.

On to the Emdoneni Cat Rehabilitation Centre!

This place was really cool. Cats have been hunted nearly to the point of extinction for their pelts, medicinal purposes, or by farmers protecting their herds. Emdoneni is working to eradicate these problems and to increase the populations of cheetahs, cervals, caracals and African wild cats with their breeding pairs that for one reason or another cannot be released back into the wild (too comfortable with humans, half blind, etc). One way they raise both awareness and funds is through tours where this happens:

It is also the place where German tourists are total a-holes. There was a tour bus full of them, and we were repeatedly bumped, leaned on, and pushed while they tried to take pictures and videos. Based on how often and how loudly they were talking I assume they couldn’t understand what the guide was saying. There were a handful of them who seemed to think that it was ok to act like they hadn't yet had a turn petting the cheetah (repeatedly). The worst though was the old guy who thought it was acceptable to LIGHT A CIGARETTE inside the cheetah’s enclosure. Worse than the worst was that when he was done he dropped his butt and ground it under his boot. Did I say something to him? You bet I did!

I took the long, long, long way back to the lodge by mistake, and by the time dinner was over we were ready for bed! Tomorrow's agenda: Sleeping in until 5am for safari time at our lodge!