Wednesday, April 22, 2009

ARGH! Pictures!

So, I've been trying to upload pictures for the past two hours without success, so this entry is text only for now. Sorry...

There are two things that one should do when he or she goes to Africa. One is see Madonna. The other is go on a safari. Since we had done the former, this past weekend we decided to go after the latter.

Some members of our group are all about the planning, so they set everything up via a travel agent here, and we went on a trip to Zambia. In Malawi, Good Friday and Easter Monday are national holidays, so everyone gets off of work. This four-day weekend seemed like a logical choice for going on a safari, since Zambia isn't a short drive. Libby and I struggled with the idea a lot, though, debating whether to go to church or go on the safari. It was Easter, after all. In the end, we decided to go to church the weekend before Easter, and go on the safari Easter weekend (and just make sure that we could have our own little private Easter celebration).
We headed out on Thursday afternoon, taking a bus to Lilongwe. And there the adventure began. Our bus company is supposedly fairly reliable, but reliable isn't much fun, right? So, it's a good thing that we left about two hours late due to a "mechanical problem," right? And it's a good thing that we were delayed for an hour en route due to a down power line, right?

In the end, we arrived in Lilongwe at 11:30pm instead of 8:30. The taxis that our travel agent had arranged were not there. We went with some random taxi drivers to our hostel. The dinner that was supposed to be waiting for us at the hostel was nowhere to be found. (In fact, the hostel people claimed they had no idea what we were talking about.) Fortunately, though, our room was reserved, so we had a place to sleep.

Early the next morning, we awoke and got ready to be picked up at 7am. When our guides hadn't arrived by 7:15, we were worried (and hungry, since there was no breakfast available until 7:30 at our hostel). Finally, just before 7:30, they showed up (late enough for us to worry, too early to let us eat). And we were off to Zambia!

It was a long drive, but it was good to see some more of Malawi... and how Zambia is exactly the same (according to our guide). Most of Malawi's population (about 80%, I think), live in rural communities. You can't go more than a quarter mile on any main road without seeing tons of people walking and biking (usually carrying what looks like 100 pounds of firewood or charcoal or sugarcane or water or whatever).

Crossing the border into Zambia was fun. A classmate who shall remain nameless had purchased a fradulent yellow fever vaccination card, ethically rationalizing it that the vaccine is no longer officially required to enter Zambia, anyhow. But of course the customs people still demand it, regardless. The classmate produced her card, and the customs officer said, "This is no good." At first we all thought he spotted it as a fake, but he explained that it had only been 10 days since she/he had "received the shot," and the card is only good starting 11 days after he/she receives the shot. The classmate was freaking out, but our guide just asked for 1000 kwacha (about $6) and went to talk to the customs official. It was about this time that we noticed a huge poster on the door explaining how terrible it is to offer bribes, and they will not tolerate corruption at the immigration office. Out emerged our guide, Fletcher, who calmly said, "No problem." And it wasn't. The classmate made it in with no further delays.

We got to the camp in the afternoon. It was in the middle of nowhere. A large portion of the end of the drive was on dirt roads that only a vehicle like the Land Rovers we were riding in could handle. We were situated literally right on the banks of the Luangwa River, which borders the South Luangwa National Park that we would be visiting. We could look across the river at the beautiful undisturbed park. It was actually impressive and awesome how undisturbed the place we were staying was. There was a resort on either side of our camp, but other than that, no signs of civilization. In fact, upon arrival, we were warned what to do if a hippo or elephant wandered into our camp (don't freak out, move slowly away).

We explored the resorts, each with its own outdoor pool. One was on stilts so hippos couldn't get in. The other was egg shaped and had gradually sloped walls so that hippos could get out if they happened to wander in. We decided to go for a swim, and that was when we had our first real animal sighting.

It wasn't a hippo in the pool. It was when I went to the bathroom to change. There was a huge, awesome, and apparently hungry elephant hanging out right outside, eating the grass. He didn't seem to mind the people walking by, looking at him, taking his picture, though we didn't get too close.

That was the only real animal sighting that night, though. No hippoes or anything (though we definitely heard them all night long). We awoke early the next morning, eager to begin our safari. Our driver, Immanuel loaded us into an open-topped Land Rover, and we crossed the river, into the great unknown. We had a good start and saw some monkeys on our way out of our camp, and more as we crossed the bridge into the camp. We would drive around slowly on these dirt roads, and be surrounded by animals. The park is bounded on one side by the river and some cliff on the other side, so the animals are trapped naturally. For such a naturally confined area, though, there is a huge variety of animals. I guess it was a really LARGE confined area.

We saw tons and tons of different kinds of antelope. The most common were impala. We saw lots and lots of elephants. We saw lots of zebras. Some warthogs. Tons of different pretty birds. One crocodile. And a bunch of other animals I can't remember at the moment.

In that first drive, though, we didn't see hippos, lions, giraffes, buffalo, or leopards. We ended up seeing all of those except for the leopards (which are apparently quite elusive).

We had four game drives, in total. Two morning drives and two evening drives. It was on the first evening drive that we had some intense excitement. Once the sun set during our evening drives, a second guide in our car would shine a big flashlight and we would look for animals. It was an interesting concept, but it quickly got a little dull because we couldn't see as much, and the little that we could see was just the same as what we saw during the day... only darker.

But then, when we were relatively close to two other Land Rovers, we heard a loud, "POP! Whoooshhhhh!" We drove over to investigate, and our suspicions were correct: flat tire. So the two healthy vehicles got nice and close to the one with the flat, and the three drivers banded together to change the flat. After about 15 minutes, our guide who was holding the big flashlight (the "torch," as they call it) was making one of his routine searches of the surroundings, when his light suddenly stopped. About 30 yards away there was a lion walking slowly.

Our initial excitement and joy quickly turned to a bit of anxiety when we assessed the situation: a lion, 30 feet away, creeping toward us, being followed by the other 7 members of her pride, our car wedged in between stumps on the side of the road, our driver 10 feet from the wheel... interesting situation.

We tried taking pictures (which didn't turn out super well because of the darkness), and we got a bit scared. The lions ended up all walking RIGHT behind our vehicle, within about 8 feet. There were seven females and one male. All looked like they could easily crush us without a second thought. We thought they were wandering off, but we soon realized they were circling us a bit. What fun!

A few minutes later, though, all of the passengers of the Land Rover with the flat crammed into ours so that the drivers could get the tire switched out. They did that, and then the passengers returned to the vehicle and we got going without further incident. We actually looked for the lions after that, and they were just kind of chilling out a short distance away, so we headed home for the evening.
We had some animal sightings in our camp, too. Our camp was taken over by monkeys for awhile. There were probably about 30 or so of them. They let you get pretty close as long as you didn't look them in the eye.

Libby and I woke up before sunrise one day, and we saw a few hippos. We started to walk closer, but then they started walking toward us, and we retreated. Then ended up not coming any closer, and they climbed down the steep bank of the river to get into the water. They were impressively graceful, actually.

The next day we had another interesting experience: we met Robert. He's a warthog. Turns out someone bought him from Herrod's (which all you blog followers should remember), and raised him for several years before returning him to the wild. Now, whenever he sees a vehicle full of people around, he runs up to it and wants to be pet. So, we got to meet, and pet a warthog. He seemed to enjoy it. A lot. In fact, he seemed to be a bit aroused by the experience.

That evening we had another lion sighting. It was a different pride, this time with 9 lions. They had a run at a baby elephant, but the parents threatened the lions away. That was fun to see. We followed this pride because they seemed to be out hunting. Again, we got really freaking close. You know how when you go to the zoo, you get the urge to climb the fence and cross the moat to be with the animals? (Or is that just me?) Well, that's basically what we had done. Those lions were easily within pouncing distance. Eventually, though, as the moon rose, the lions settled down, unsuccessful in their hunt before it got light enough for their prey to see them coming, and we stopped following them.

On our way home, just outside our camp, we were still very excited about the lion sighting when suddenly a HUGE hippo ran out in front of our car, making Immanuel slam on the brakes. We stopped about a foot shy of him, even though we were only going about 5 or 10 mph. He was booking it, too.

Anyway, it was a really cool experience. It was fun seeing the animals in the park. It was fun staying in a place where animals were so close. It's hard to explain just how cool it was. But it was awesome. Come visit us and see pictures because this computer/Internet hates me.

2 comments:

  1. I'm really glad you had the opportunity to see so many animals in their natural habitat --- but did they have to be SO CLOSE? (Hmmmm - I guess that probably sounds like a parent sort of thought, eh ? -- lol) I'm Really looking forward to the pictures that I'm sure you got though !!

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  2. Great fun, great story, thanks. Which camp did you stay with?

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