South Africa Part 2 - Safari!

Here is South Africa Part 2:

Our bus to Aquila Game Reserve left at 10 am the next morning. There were 8 of us who went on it. 5 of them were a group of friends including the girl who planned it, and Eric, JulieAnne and I kind of hopped on. The bus ride down was fun, everyone pretty much stayed awake talking to each other, and two hours later we arrived at Aquila. My first thought was that it looked like a hybrid between Colorado and New Mexico, certainly more dry and mountainous than I expected. You know when you picture the stereotypical African safari you imagine vast savannah with watering holes, tall wide trees, etc. Here there was far more sand and dirt, bushes, and mountains. Not that I was concerned, I just wanted to see animals. The facilities turned out to be GREAT. When it was described to us, we didn’t expect much. As it would turn out, it was a 4 star resort that had just undergone a bunch of renovations to prepare for the world cup in the summer. There was a brand new, huge buffet restaurant, and a large pool that looked out onto the reserve. It was about 12:30 and our first game drive wasn’t until 5 so we had time to kill. We ate a delicious lunch, checked into our rooms after, and then hung out. I lounged by the pool with two others while the rest took naps I think. Eric observed the architecture of the building, refusing to come to the pool with us. His loss!

The first game drive was a lot of fun. We hopped into our hummer/jeep thing and took off. Within 5 minutes we were up next to zebras and rhinos, both of which roamed across the road in front of us. The rhinos were one of the “Big 5” so we could check them off the list. We continued on and saw elephants (big 5 number 2), which got aggressive and started briskly walking toward our vehicle, giraffes, wildebeasts, springboks and maybe something else. We went to the lion cage to look at them next. It wasn’t so much a cage as it was a fenced off reserve within a reserve. The heard in the main reserve wasn’t big enough yet to have lions killing them off, so they have to keep them caged for now. Anyway we pulled into the enclosure and saw the lions on a cliff high above (big 5 #3).We watched them up there for a bit, including seeing them mate, and then drove out. On the way back we saw hippos which made some pretty crazy noises as the sun was going down, and saw water buffalo pretty close to our hotel room actually (#4). We ate dinner, hung out for a bit, and as the rest were going to continue to sit there and chat, I called it a night at about 11.

The next morning we were supposed to be woken up at 5:30 for our 6:15 game drive. Well we did not. I guess they came and lightly rapped on the door, which didn’t wake me nor JulieAnne up. So at about 6:18 one of the girls in the group came and knocked on our door which successfully woke us up. We rushed to get ready and were good to go by like 6:25. We got into the car and headed off to check out the lions again, hoping to get a better view. When we got there we saw most of the lions walking up to the mountain again, but the head female was still down by the road. She eyed down our car and walked around it, within 5 feet literally. It was JulieAnne, another girl and I in the back seat and we probably could have touched it if we reached out. It was cool to be next to such a dangerous and well known animal like that without the safety of a glass wall or cage between us. We saw more animals on the safari that we had seen the day before, got to see rhinos waking up and locking horns, and hippos again. There was a baby hippo that was apparently 3 days old and he would surface about once every 30 seconds. Extremely cute. Finally we went across the street to a caged area where they had cheetahs, alligators, warthogs, a couple more lions, and the leopard. Leopards are the 5th of the big 5 and are extremely elusive. Our guide said he hadn’t seen one in 5 years working there. The only evidence they have that there are still wild ones is that they find dead carcasses occasionally, they don’t even know how many there are. So we were going to see the caged one and at least say we saw the big 5, but they fed it the night before and it didn’t feel like coming out of its cave. We heard it though, so we saw 4 and a half in my opinion.

After that we had breakfast and the horseback safari on the agenda. The reserve only had 4 horses, so our group of 8 had to split up. The three of us who came together along with another guy, Bruck, decided to take the later drive and enjoy the morning by the pool. Well, two of us hung out at the pool, no idea where the other guys went, but it was very relaxing. As we were sitting there Semester at Sea rolled in with about 100 students on a bunch of busses to do their safari. They paid $282 for one game drive, their itinerary was as follows.

Bus: 8:00 am - 10:30

Safari: 10:30 - 1:00

Lunch: 1:00 - 2:00

Bus: 2:00 - 4:30

We on the other hand paid like $120 more and got two additional safaris, probably 5 hours at the pool, stayed overnight, and had 4 meals instead of one. That right there is the summary of why you never do a SAS trip if independent is even remotely possible.

So after saying hi to all of our friends on the SAS trip, we hopped on our horse safari. My horse was named Starlight, was a beautiful mahogany color, and was not remotely cooperative. Starlight apparently is the lazy one and as such was relegated to the back of the line. The other horses would stay in a pack, not Starlight. He was a legitimate 30 feet behind the group at all times and often tried to take different routes that he considered easier. The only time I could get him to speed up was going up or down small hills, so I took full advantage. There was one hill that went down and crossed like a foot wide ditch. Seeing this, I willed Starlight ahead and actually made him jump over the gap, a proud moment for me and him alike. Later we were by the hippos and he freaks out, charging toward the water while the rest of the group watches and laughs. I loved it though, mine was the only horse who went faster than a walk at all. I think by the end Starlight hated me from digging my heels into his stomach trying to make him speed up, but that’s ok. I also started to steer him for fun, even though they were trained to stay in line. For example if the whole group walked to the right around a bush, I made Starlight walk left. It’s all about having fun J . The ride was fun but we didn’t really see any new animals. We got pretty close to rhinos, zebras, and springbok which was cool, and I got to ride horses which is always fun. Our safari days over, we headed to the lodge, took quick showers, and headed back to the ship.

While waiting at the lodge we asked a ranger about what to do in Cape Town that night and he suggested Hout Bay. We followed his advice and that night headed there. We got two shady drivers who said they were giving us a deal, but ended up taking us further than we wanted to go, tried to get us to buy their dinner, and wanted to go clubbing with us. We finally just told them to go away. So there we are in an expensive restaurant probably 30 minutes from the ship with not much else to do in the area. We ate a pretty good meal, I had fish and chips, then had the manager call us a couple of cabs to take us back to Cape Town. We ended up at Long Street, the nightlife area of Cape Town I guess, specifically at a place that was advertising deals and free entry for SAS folks. We went in to check it out, no one liked it at all, and we all said we would leave in 10 minutes. Four hours later we left and t was a really fun night actually, I really like the group we were with. Plus Eric was irritated the whole time and it made for some good laughs.