C-H's travel stories: Swaziland, August 7, 2009

Gary and Jeri at the Mahamba Gorge

Richard, on his famous portable gas wok, making delicious breakfast burritos

Zebras in the tall grass

Beautiful, majestic giraffe

Croc under a bridge--it was HUGE!

It took the giraffe about 20 minutes to get into this position to take a short drink. This is the watering hole where the famous YouTube video was filmed.

Ostrich walking in front of huge pile of traps put out by poachers in park

Gary and Chris in front our little cabin having breakfast

White Rhinos- Part of the Big 5-They can be mean and run fast!

Gary, Jeri and Chris in front of our safari vehicle

Baby elephant in burned area

Lonely lion? (part of the Big 5)

Elephant family (part of the Big 5)

Lion in the burned out area of Hlane

Dear Family and Friends, August 7, 2009

This has been a slow week as far as working goes—no big projects for us right now. Chris of course is very involved with her work and she continues to go out to Lomngeletjane and out to several other schools to work with the Orphaned and Vulnerable Children. We tag along when appropriate and at other times just stay at home and get caught up on errands or do some short travel out to the countryside.

We realized that we had never written about Kruger National Park. I am including it here in this blog as well as a Swaziland game park, called Hlane (pronounced SHlane), where we went with Chris for an overnight a few days ago.

Kruger National Park – South Africa

Rhinos, and warthogs and elephants—Oh My! Kruger was such a beautiful place to be. We spent two different times there helping with the transportation of the two work teams. Richard Bosart, the Methodist Volunteers in Mission Coordinator who was our guide on these trips has been to Kruger over 100 times in the 20 years he has lived here and was an excellent guide. We drove for miles, on dirt roads and on tar (their word for paved) looking for animals. Each vehicle had a walkie talkie—“elephant on the right!” “Warthogs on the left!” “Zebras!” “ Monkeys!” So fun to be the one to spot a different animal. So incredible to be in their home—not them on our foreign land. NOW, THIS IS AFRICA—we all said. The grasses were the color of straw (or lions—which we never did spot), the sky was a brilliant blue and all eyes were peeled to the right or left. We were ecstatic if we spotted something moving in the tall grass. I have included a few pictures of the different animals. I loved the elephants the best and then the giraffes. Both so majestic—the giraffe standing so tall to eat the succulent leaves on the tops of the trees. But, oh, the elephant—we saw several groups of them--always with the largest male in a protective stance. Once they were all crossing the road—us with cameras all snapping pictures like crazy. The head male waited till all of the females and babies had crossed the road then he raised his trunk in a triumphant way and waved at all of us as if to say “I am king!” He looked so much like a crossing guard in front of a school—protecting the crowd. I must say I was disappointed that we didn’t see lions but on the last day we were told there was a cheetah down the road hiding behind a tree. We were able to spot the place by all the vehicles and people hanging out of their windows! There actually was a cheetah in the brush—eating a kill. We knew that because of the vultures on a tree branch ready to swoop in when the cheetah was finished. Then, amazingly, a hyena crossed the road in front of us—hoping to get a morsel also. Even though we only saw the cheetah raise its head once (eyeing all of us suspiciously) we felt we were really in the presence of a ‘wild happening” Cheetahs are very rare in this area and only 230 are known to exist in this huge park. We also drove down to the watering hole where the famous YouTube video was shot of the a baby wildebeest being taken down by the lions and in which a crocodile tried to take it away and the wildebeest herd came back and this enabled the mother wildebeest to escape with the baby. Both of our trips there were exciting and also filled us with awe at the number of animals we saw and how we felt so humbled to be in their land.

Hlane Royal National Park - Swaziland

Last weekend (July 31st) the 3 of us took a short drive to one of Swaziland’s animal parks for Gary’s 65th birthday. It was a lovely park, more primitive and much smaller than Kruger, which is quite large. We stayed overnight in a small cabin right on the edge of a watering hole where we could bring our chairs and sit behind the fence and watch the White Rhinos (huge!) and the Hippos. So very relaxing to just watch them do their stuff. We took a sunset drive out into the various areas to look for lions and elephants and any other animals in the wild. We finally saw a lion, all alone and of course, Jeri thought he was lonely! There had been a terrible fire in this park in the last week so much of the area in it burned. We learned from our guide that the entire staff of the park, including kitchen staff was out on the fire lines. I asked him how they fought the fire and he said they had rubber mats (maybe like tub mats) attached to a wooden stick and they beat the fire down. There is very little water in the park so this was the only way to get it out. They fought if for several days like this—can you imagine? So, yes the lion probably was lonely—most of the land in the lion’s area was burned so their usual smells and grasses are all gone. They still are not sure how many animals in the park died as a result of the fire—it is still smoldering in parts so it is hard to tell yet. One theory is that the fire was started by poachers to divert attention away from them as they were trying to get in to kill some of the Rhinos. (they want their horns because they can get 1000’s of dollars for them in China to be used as an aphrodisiac). We did see, as we were leaving this area, off in the distance, a female lion so maybe they were just in hiding when we went through.

We also saw several families of elephants. They are so protective of their young-guarding them with all the adult elephants gathering around the babies. One baby was so little it was able to walk under its moms belly and it was nursing while we were watching. To see them in their natural habitat is a thrill and we feel so blessed to be able to witness them.

We also got up at 5:30 am on Saturday to go on the sunrise ride. Not as many animals to see this day but we learned a lot from our guide which I will share now—we thought these tidbits were very interesting. There is a bird in the park called the Red Tailed Hornbill bird. When the female is ready to lay her eggs, the male pokes a hole in the bark of a tree and she gets inside the tree—the male bird then seals her in (yes—seals!) the trees interior. She then, pulls off all of her feathers and makes a bed for the eggs. She lays the eggs and the male has to continually bring her food-unsealing the tree and then sealing it back up again. When the babies hatch, the male bird still brings food but now for all the birds and then seals them back in the tree. This young Swazi guide told us he was studying one of these pair of Hornbilled birds before the fire and when he went back after the fire the tree had burned down so he is afraid both birds were lost to the fire.

Did you know the lion is very lazy? Our guide told us many times lions will just sleep (they can sleep up to 16 hours a day) near a watering hole and wait for prey to come for a drink. They can have up to 6 females as their ‘wives’ (hmmm—sounds like the King of Swaziland!—but he has many more). Their roar can be heard up to 8 km away-about 5 miles. We heard them in the night in our cabin. When they walk they make a low rumbling sound, which we also heard, to stake out their territory and also to call in any females who want to join him. Only the females hunt; and if a male lion is alone, he can starve to death if he doesn’t figure out how to hunt. One last bit of info—they can flip their ears around 360 degrees to be able to hear all around them—this is called onmidirectional hearing.

So there you have our game park adventures so far. We are heading off for 6 days with Richard and Chris over to the coast on the Indian Ocean, just below Mozambique and staying in 3 different game parks in South Africa. We won’t have internet for those 7 days so don’t worry if you don’t hear from us.

With lots of love,

Nokulunga and Sipho (Jeri and Gary)