This is Africa

I’ve been told by multiple people that it’s about time I give an update on my African adventures. Sorry for such a long delay but here it is… this is Africa.

I’ve been gone for about a month now in South Africa, after a 22 hour flight I finally arrived to Johannesburg. I was astonished at how lush and green it is here! I guess after being in dry, brown Colorado for a while coming to a brilliant green atmosphere was astonishing. The next day I took one more 50 minute flight to my destination, Kruger National Park. The airport I flew into was a 4 hour drive from my camp in the park, Satara.

The closest village to Satara is about a 2 hour drive, meaning I have to think in advance and have enough groceries for about 2 weeks until we are able to get back into town. I was actually very surprised at the development here, I didn’t know at all what to expect. But you can find almost anything here that you would want to find in the US. The grocery stores here are generally found within a mall, which really intrigues me. Everything is very disorganized however and it can often take multiple trips through isles of food before you find what you need.

The villages here are also very interesting, their driving laws are much more lenient here, which could be a good or bad thing depending on who you ask. When there are two lanes on a road cars will often pull over and use the shoulder as a “slow” lane. Every one packs as many people as they can in one car, which doesn’t surprise me too much. Tons of people often line the roads waiting to be picked up for work in random cars and are always walking somewhere on foot. This is generally in the bigger villages, the smaller villages are a lot different and typical to what you would see on TV with random chicken, goats, and dogs running around, grumpy old women sitting outside of their brick houses, and children playing football (soccer) in their stadiums after school. Of course I had to be a typical tourist and get a picture of some African children who were more then thrilled to be in our photograph.

  

Where I live is amazing to say the least! Kruger National Park is the largest park in South Africa and would take an entire day to drive from the Southern point of the park to the North. I live right in the middle in a camp called Satara, it is equivalent to the eastern prairies of Colorado. Except filled with multiple large predators. To give an example, the other night I was out helping a PostDoc fill a generator at night. When we were driving to her sight a hyena erupted from the bushes. I started screaming, as I am still not used to giant wolverine looking predators coming out of the bush. I scarred everyone half to death and then created quite a big laughter. 

The research camp I live in is a lot nicer then what I was expecting. My living situation is a large army tent, with out air-conditioning. Luckily it hasn’t been too hot yet and has been pretty bearable during the day. Its funny because the permanent residents in the research camp have almost luxurious tents. One girl has a television in her tent connected to a satellite dish for movies and TV. When I got here I laughed and was like what is this, a television in the bush, I still can’t get over the ridiculousness of it. Yet I am there pretty regularly taking over her bed and TV after a long day of field work.

Last weekend we did some traveling around the park and went to the South Eastern part of the park. It was gorgeous, the landscape had very lush green mountains, it reminded me a lot of Colorado. Its probably my favorite part of the park. We stayed in a trails camp, called Bushmans, about an hour drive from the closest camp, Burg en Dal. These trails camps don’t have electricity and the lodging is in thatch roof huts, a very typical African style. Tourists pay a lot of money to stay at these camps but staff can rent them out on Saturday for only about 100 rand (approximately $12). Bushmans was situated high in the mountains in a valley next to a water hole. It was very remote, we could hear lions around us at night, another thing I have yet to get used to. The view was astonishing.

It still shocks and excites me when I am in the field working and see a giraffe curiously peaking its head over a bush looking at us while we collect plant samples. For the most part I have seen all the animals any tourist would want to see while in Africa. The only thing I have yet to see is a good sighting of an African Wild Dog and a Cheetah. I have seen tons of lions, some with cubs only about 5 feet away from my car as well as Leopard. Speaking of Leopards, one morning I was on a game drive and happened to come up to a jam of tourists, we stopped to ask what they saw. It was a gorgeous female leopard, the first one I had seen thus far. They also told us there were 3 other leopards hiding in the bushes behind. After sitting there for a while looking at the leopard we decided to be on our way and then all of the sudden got a flat tire. The only thing we could do of course was pull over to the side of the road and change this flat tire. Probably scariest thing of my life, considering there were 4 leopards less then 100 meters away from our car, we were literally directly across from where the leopards had been spotted. I, of course, was put on leopard watch. We luckily were not eaten, and I live to tell the classic story of how I was almost eaten by a leopard, except not really.

It is amazing at how many dangerous things South Africans live with, coming from a country where I don’t have to worry very often about my life being in danger I have still not come to the realization how many things can harm me out here. I often forget to look around me while I am doing fieldwork and an elephant is still just as intriguing to me as before, where as so many people here fear elephants. I have also come to fall in love with Warthogs! They are by far one of my favorite animals, I love seeing their little tails sticking straight up running through the tall grass.

I was hoping to get some images of Africa up here, but unfortunately the internet connections are so slow it would take ages to load even one file.

I of course have tons more to tell but am off to do herbivore counts. Until next time!