kruger national park as traversed by Jane, Ethan, Jennifer and Jim

Jennifer and I were honored to have Jane and Ethan visit us in South Africa.  So honored that we made them fly round trip to Joberg, drive up to Kruger National Park (5 hours) and camp without sleeping pads for two nights, before making the return drive and two massive return flights that must have amounted to at least 36 hours of travel.  I did hear that they are alive and well after the trip and we are very excited about that because we are really looking forward to their wedding in a few weeks!

We had two great mornings exchanging drivers and co-pilots and eventually meandering the minivan back towards camp without running it into the brush of too many acacia trees (we were able to cover up the minor damage by slicking some water and soap over them at a gas station, then letting extra dirt stick to the car while driving (that happens as a consequence of normal driving) :).

We would also go out for afternoon game drives and were lucky enough to spend the evening with our friend Taryn, who we met playing ultimate frizbee.  Taryn has spent at least 3 years studying in Kruger National Park and went there most years of her childhood.  There is actually a whole village in Kruger that helps support park staff and researchers--they just fence their houses.  At night the call of bushbaby's and impala can be heard on the local and majestic golf course.  Taryn brought us to two excellent places for the sunset--one overlooking a dam resevoir (for the town) that was full of grunting hippos and a variety of birds.  The next night we stood atop a kopjie (large granitic rock outcropping or big hill) to look out over the savanna and right below us down the steep slope of rock at a white rhino perusing through the underbrush.

Jane asked Taryn, "what if the rhino tries to come up here?" Taryn laughed and said, "I'd really like to see it try".  That pretty much encapsulated how common sense it was for us to feel safe on the kopjie.  Yet, Taryn followed up that warm feeling with a story about how they had to close the hill for a period of time because rangers saw a leopard stalking them on that spot one night as the leopard was figuring out that easy prey gathered at the same time and same place every night.  Pretty sure that leopard wasn't too close when we were there :).

Check out the pictures!

OK, Mom (Betsy) this is the start of your identification challenge.

addo elephant park with mike, jon, and jim

Rule number one on game drives:  don't get out of the vehicle.  Most tempting rule to break when one needs to find something in the back of the car:  Rule number one.  We had a good time breaking this rule when I was looking for the talisman Mike brought along to give us good luck.  We were having a relatively crappy game drive (nothing but zebras, kudus, and warthogs) up until this point and really wanted to see some lions--so the effort was to recover our lucky talisman, then we would begin seeing big game.  After a fruitless search I climbed back in the car and began driving around the bend...about 200 meters until we saw a pride of lions relaxing next to the road.  Yikes!  That is why you don't get out of the car, ha ha.

We had a blast seeing the animals, cruising around the park, and saving two German fraulines from a gigantic spider.  Good thing our ladies have us disciplined--we recovered the spider and left immediately to recline to a chapter from World War Z--the zombie epic that we were reading to each other in the car.

One of Mike's best sitings was a hare, sitting next to the road just behind a hill so that oncoming traffic could not see us.  We had time to pause for a picture, then get out of the way!

Other fantastic sitings included rhinos, elephants, leopard tortoises, kudus, and of course--the lions.

This makes me wan to eat a salad.

Or be a tortoise

Not a dung beetle though.

Imagine the scene in Money Python... "Run away!  Run away! Clip clop, clip clop, clip clop" 

the great migration (serengeti national park, tanzania, with views to kenya)

We drove to the far north of the park one day with our guide Mosses and driver Emily. They had promised us wildebeests, and they were true to their word.

Somewhere between 1 and 2 million wildebeest and zebra participate in the annual migration from the southern part of the Serengeti, which is a wide, grassy plain, to the northern part and across the border into Kenya and the Masai Mara National Park. The southern part of the park gets lush green grass during the rainy season (usually beginning around November), but during the dry season (starting in May/June) there is very little for wildebeest to eat, so they migrate north to find water and better grass. This year, the migration started nearly a month earlier than usual, so the animals were much further north than we had expected/hoped.

Zebra and wildebeest are partners in the migration; according to guides, zebras have a better memory, and remember the route north. Wildebeest, however, have a better sense of smell, so they are useful for finding water along the route. The two end up traveling together.

It was interesting to see how truly organic and spontaneous the groups of animals are: there is no organized leader of any kind, just animals choosing to follow each other. They bunch up in groups, but we saw many spread out by themselves as well. Make sure to click through to see the most dense groups of wildebeest toward the end of the post (this was likely the second major group of wildebeest to pass through this area), as well as the mini-stampede we witnessed near the end of the day.

A wildebeest we spotted on our first day in the park; we thought it was a nice portrait. This animal likely won't make the crossing and go all the way north;  he is in the Western Corridor and will probably just stay here, scrounging for grass with less competition, until going south again around November.

Doing battle.

The victor.

Moving into bigger groups. At some point in this drive, we realized that all the dark spots on the ground in the distance were wildebeest, too.

Now we are nearing the border with Kenya; we've already crossed the Mara river from the south. The hills in the distance of this picture are in Kenya.

Some of the zebra traveling with this group.

Now we are nearing the thick of things.

lions!! (serengeti national park, tanzania)

The final stage of our big trip took place in Tanzania. We went on safari in the Serengeti with a fantastic duo: Moses and Emily, our tour guide and driver, from Moses' company, Sange Safari. We were trying really hard to keep our budget small, and Mosses was amazing at finding us cheap, clean and safe places to stay. Safe being a relative term - we camped in our tent inside the Serengeti for two nights, and there are no fences at the campsites!! We had hyenas watching us brush our teeth, and heard lions calling nearby in the morning. 

Speaking of lions, here is a highlight reel of some of our best photos of the kings and queens of the savanna. We were astounded at the number of lions in the Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater - we saw lions every day. 

Our first lion sighting, on our very first game drive! This pride was beautiful and sleepy, with tons of cute cubs, which made for great photo ops. Our driver Emily had tracked this group for about 45 minutes through the grass and brush, aided by the other car you see in the photo. We were the only two cars for miles. It was beautiful and quiet as we sat with the sleeping pride.

The male lion with this pride is sleeping under the tree on the right-hand side of the photo, a hundred yards away. We got to go see him too.

You could almost hug them. (Almost.)

chimpanzee tracking, nyungwe national forest (rwanda, near borders of congo and burundi)

We began our time in Nyungwe National Forest, Rwanda by tracking chimpanzees--a much easier venture than finding gorillas!  We spotted about three chimpanzees in total and the highlight was watching this big adult male eat his breakfast of figs, spit out his breakfast into one  big handful of fig-rinds, then re-eat the fig paste (it looked like eating poo, ha ha).

I remember making eye contact with the chimpanzee and having that weird moment when your mind interprets what you see as a human face--I remember making eye contact--then feeling a strange sensation as I came to the realization that this animal had just connected with me in some way.

One of my lasting thoughts after seeing the chimps was, could this really be our closest living ancestor?  I mean, we need to go way back (about 8 million years) before we get to a time when we share a common ancestor.  That is a long time and it is weird to think of all the species of bipedal hominids that must have been brought into this world, then died off again, during that period.  It is fascinating for me to think of the Planet of the Apes-like scenarios that could have played out as different species of bipedal hominids fought and killed each other.  Even chimpanzees kill and eat each other--something you can imagine our ancestors have been doing in the practice of war for a loooooong time.  Brutal, but certainly interesting.

It's tough to imagine, but sometimes watching one chimpanzee for 45 minutes can get boring.  This bee was a good target for camera focusing practice!

The older male chimpanzee sat and ate these figs for the entire time we were watching.  The guide said that he would only swallow the juice and kept the rinds in his mouth.  Eventually, he spit the rinds back out...see below.

gorilla tracking (kisoro, uganda)

I wrote this post once and my edits did not save so I am going to do the second revision slightly differently than the original version.  Each picture in this post is astounding because gorillas themselves are incredibly difficult to reach, extremely protected, and awesomely human in a way that only a chimpanzee could be.

The pictures don't need an explanation to be powerful--the experience was surreal and beyond any other wildlife viewing experience I could imagine.  There are very few wild animals that are so powerful and yet so willing to let you be a part of their space without any physical boundaries.  It was like a trip through Jurassic Park without the safari vehicle--except we knew the dinosaurs didn't want to eat us. 

Gorillas are primates and share many aspects with human beings, yet they are so clearly different from humans in function.  I found myself reflecting on the change that humans incur upon their environment for their own gain and most other organisms' loss.  It was a sad prospect to think of how much more damage we have done to the world of animals than these peaceful beasts, our close relatives.  In the end we felt thankful for the opportunity to meet these beautiful creatures.  There have been many people in the past that made gorilla conservation possible--and coming into the forest made the impact of this work very obvious--the Impenetrable Forest of Biwindi ended at the property line and terraced farms began--farms that would have swallowed the homes of gorillas if not for an enormous effort from conservationists.

This was my favorite video of the gorillas because it shows how close and interactive the experience was.