One Last Day

We depart late today (11pm) so there was time for some last minute sightseeing and wine tasting. Behind us is Table Mountain which unfortunately was closed for annual maintenance of the cableway.

But now it really is time for us to go. Our flight leaves in a few hours and we are resting and charging our many devices before being stuck on a 11 1/2 hour flight to Amsterdam, then our 11 hour flight to LAX.

Touring Cape Town

Yesterday we walked around the city center and visited the aquarium which is quite impressive. We saw fish and sea creatures we'd never seen before. Today we went to a market filled with local artisan clothes, jewelry, pottery, etc. Then we went wine tasting in a different wine area then before.

Tomorrow we head home after a great visit to South Africa. We have enjoyed Cape Town so much that we wish it didn't take 24 hours to get here. It has been a lot of fun but we are ready to be back in our own place and see the cats.

South Africa Wine Country

Today we visited Wine Country which is a short distance outside Cape Town. It is similar to Napa but with more dramatic mountains. The wineries were very impressive and the wines were delicious. We ordered some wine shipped home and bought a bottle to have with dinner tonight.

Here is our guide Pieter who has been taking very good care of us in Cape Town. We highly recommend him if you are ever in Cape Town and you can contact him through his web site.

Cape Point

Yesterday on our first outing in Cape Town, we visited Cape Point which is the most southwesterly point in Africa (not the most southern point as I originally thought). We saw the point and then saw some South African penguins, very small creatures compared to Antarctic penguins.

In the evening we went downtown to First Thursdays where on the first Thursday of each month art galleries and stores stay open late in downtown. We bought some stuff then had a very good dinner.

Last Day in the Bush and Journey to Cape Town

We had our last game drive last night and went looking for crocodiles, one of Steph's favorites. We found one sunning on the side of a water hole. Then at dusk we saw a Cheetah with her 5 cubs. They were so cute. The light was going fast so it was hard to get good pictures but got one with mother and cub. Today we left Phinda for Durban for our 2 hour flight to Cape Town. We are in the Mannabay hotel on the side of the mountain near downtown. We plan to see the sights and wine country over the next few days before heading home.

Cat Rehab

Yesterday we had lunch on our deck and then went on a game drive with a fantastic sunset. This morning we went to the cat rehab facility where they take domesticated or injured cats and either prepare them for release or breed them and return the offspring to the wild.

Surrounded by Lions!

We arrived in the Phinda (the "h" is silent) game reserve yesterday. This is a much nicer place than Zulu Nyana. I'll post pictures later. We had lunch and went out on a game drive where we saw a mother cheetah and her two children, and 2 lionesses with 8 cubs. By the time we saw the lions it was so dark that it was nearly impossible to get a good picture.

Steph says:

We drove out in completely open vehicles last night. Our first stop was after sighting a cheetah with her cubs who were hunting. They tried to catch a Nyala but failed and then went after a Wildebeest and also failed. I wondered if the presence of several safari vehicles interfered. Our ranger was driving through the brush and we had to duck our heads because we were surrounded by dense bushes with sharp stickers. We were crashing through small trees and bushes. It gave new meaning to cross country safari! It was wild.

After watching the Cheetahs for nearly an hour, we came upon a group of eight lion cubs and their two mothers. They were also hunting. We stalked them for two and one-half hours. There was interesting encounter with a Bull Elephant who was not pleased to be surrounded by them. He bellowed an flapped his ears. We quickly got away.

It finally became dark and according to our ranger, the lions had sighted a wildebeest. In the process they watched us and several times, they surrounded our vehicle. It was unnerving. We had no protection and had to rely on our ranger who did have a gun in front. He said that the woman in Johannesburg who was attacked was in a lion safari park where they feed the animals from vehicles so when she opened the window they thought it was a signal for food.

Nevertheless, we were completely exposed so when a male lion walked very close to my side of the car, I was unnerved. They are huge! Their paws alone are as big as two of my feet side by side.

We skipped the early morning drive but are going out later today again. Hopefully, it won't be for four hours. It gets cold and dark and windy. Also, crashing through bushes gets old quickly.

Cheetah in Action and St Lucia Estuary

Yesterday afternoon we went on another game drive and saw many of the same animals in many of the same places. But one new sight were two male giraffes being very affectionate with each other (in a very masculine way I am sure). The picture below shows one of them rubbing the top of his head along the neck of the other.

Then we found the cheetah that in the morning was laying around doing nothing but in the afternoon was out on the hunt. We saw him stalking a nyala (kind of antelope) and chasing it but didn't catch it and spent some time laying about (as cats do) keeping an eye out for any other prey.

This morning we left the private reserve and went to the nearby town of St Lucia on the Indian Ocean where we took a boat up the Estuary and saw crocodiles, hippos, a fish eagle, and a goliath heron. Below Steph is holding a hippo tooth.

Our guide told us that the locals in St Lucia had to be careful because at night hippos roamed the streets and sometimes crocodiles walked down the streets. We found news articles about the hippos but couldn't verify that crocodiles were seen on the streets of St Lucia.

Tomorrow we transfer to Phinda.

First Game Drive

This morning we woke at 5:30am for our first game drive.

Many of these animals we saw in Tanzania two years ago but this was our first close encounter with a rhino. As I said in a previous post this is a small private preserve and the guides know where all the animals hang out. We were in Tanzania in February which is summer down here and now we are here in their winter. Once we got in the open air jeep and started flying down the dirt roads it got pretty cold. My fingers were partially numb for a while after we returned.

Steph says:
We were so close to these animals! It was extraordinary being twenty feet from a White Rhino and a similar distance from a Hippo. Our guide said that the only time Hippos are really dangerous is when
you stand in between them and the water. They kill a lot of people defending their territory.

Similarly, we were told to maintain a distance from the Cheetah who would be threatened if we got too close. It was sad to see the male by himself. His partner died recently after being bitten by a Mambo Snake.

We plan to go to the Cheetah Rescue Center while we are here. This afternoon, we are going out on another game drive but it is very windy and very cold. Thankfully, Katie Sullivan told me to bring a down jacket so I am warm.

Zulu Nyana Safari Game Lodge

Here is our room at the game lodge.

It seems a nice place though we haven't seem much of it yet.

Here is what Steph wrote to her son David early this morning:

It's 5 am and I finally gave up tossing and turning. I slept too much on the plane. We arrived here last night after waiting for our ride for over an hour. Our flight was early so apparently it wasn't noted even though Dwight had alerted them. From what I could see in the dark from the freeway, Johannesburg is sprawling with lots of American fast food and strip malls. There is apparently a horrendous traffic problem. We had to stop at the original hotel where we were booked to pay our bill before we checked in here. We were told that the first hotel - Country Manor - was closed for "security reasons" which the clerk wasn't at liberty to discuss. But she did tell us that some group had taken over the whole property and didn't want any strangers there  for fear of kidnapping! We are flying to Durban this morning and then driving three hours to Nyala. We were able to get into the other place for the 2nd three nights. I am looking forward to the excursion to St. Lucia and seeing the crocodiles. I am also excited about seeing the Cheetah at Nyala.

We have been checking the Tripadvisor reviews, something I'm sure I did last year when we won this at a silent auction, but now the reviews seem quite different. Everyone says they are here because they won it in a charity auction and someone investigated it and said most of their business comes from charities where the charity keeps half and the safari camp keeps half. Then the safari camp charges for everything other than the basics and provides rooms so poor that people feel the need to upgrade the room. We had already upgraded figuring the donated rooms wouldn't be the best. Reviews also point out that this is an extremely small private reserve with 3 elephants, one cheetah and a few other animals. People complained that they were taken to the same places each day to see the same animals. Another way the safari camp increases revenues is by offering excursions outside this preserve. A couple of reviewers recommended moving to a nearby much larger preserve called Phinda after a couple of days here. So we have arranged to move after 3 days to Phinda Rock Lodge for the rest of our safari part of this trip. The complaints about the food here (and the praise for the food at Phinda) was also a factor.

South Africa Itinerary

We are spending 6 days on safari then 5 days in Cape Town. We will be staying at the Zulu Nyala Safari Game Lodge.

The safari camp is on the northern east coast of South Africa, Cape Town is on the southwest tip.

We depart Los Angeles on Tuesday, July 28, fly through Amsterdam and arrive in Johannesburg on Wednesday night. We stay over in a hotel then flight out on Thursday for Durban where we are picked up and driven to the safari camp hotel. We are there July 31 - Aug 4 then leave on the 5th to fly to Cape Town. We are staying at the MannaBay Hotel. There we will eat, visit wine country, shop, see the sights, and relax after being on safari.

Revisions: I wrote the previous a couple of days before the start of the trip and there have been some last minute changes. On Monday morning we woke to a text and email from Delta saying our flight from LA to Amsterdam had been canceled apparently due to weather. We had KLM flights booked through Delta as a code share. We got on the phone with Delta and were booked on much better flights through Atlanta, on Delta planes. We hadn't booked that originally because it was twice the price of the KLM flights. We got to leave out of San Diego instead of LA and we arrived in Johannesburg 4 hours earlier.