Close Up

I'm pleased that my blog is featured on the website Expat.com. If you are planning a move to South Africa or anywhere outside of your home country, Expat.com allows you to get in touch with expats living nearby and provides a great resource for discussions, jobs, housing information and more. The website also provides an opportunity to meet people and make friends in your new country. Check it out!

And now onto today's blog post.  

When on safari you have the chance to see many animals. The best part is you are seeing these creatures in their natural environment doing whatever it is they would be doing whether you were there or not. However the animals you are viewing may still be far away and if you are taking photos on safari you likely need to use a zoom lens in order to get really good pictures. 

Recently Mr. Deep and I had the chance to see some animals up close. A few weeks ago we went out for another 4x4 adventure near our home. We came upon some zebras munching on grass. These zebras must be very used to humans being nearby because we were able to get quite close to them and they didn't seem to mind. 

This is not a picture of a zebra. But I love this photo anyway.

Very artsy

A few weeks ago we also visited the Elephant Sanctuary in Hartbeesport in the North West Province. This sanctuary is housed on the same property where the thieving monkeys that I wrote about in this post live. The elephants and the monkeys are kept separately from each other. The elephant sanctuary is home to former zoo and circus elephants who now have the chance to live in a semi-free environment. 

While we were waiting to see elephants we were hanging out with this guy. We are caged and he is free. 

The elephant sanctuary gave us the opportunity to get extremely close to the elephants. We got some great photos!

I can't get over the eyelashes!

Close up of a broken tusk

Our guide, Charles. Pronounced Chouse (rhymes with house)

Charles showing us an elephant skull. The spongy looking area contains air to keep the elephant's brain cool.
The below photo is a dung beetle in the shadow of an elephant.

Here are two photos of the same bug. In the first he is eating a flattened mango. We first noticed the white stripes on his tail. In the second you can really see all of his colors. Does anyone know what kind of insect this is? 

You Win Some

As the saying goes you win some you lose some. 

Mr. Deep and I created the preparedness challenge that I explained in this post feeling so confident that we would win. Who would design a competition knowing that they would lose? 

We lost. We lost in spectacular fashion. To quote Bon Jovi, we went down in a blaze of glory. Only minus the glory.  

Our losing began from the moment we met our fellow campers at the Crocodile Bridge rest camp. As we pulled into the camp there were two 4x4 vehicles already parked there, both with huge trailers attached. Mr. Deep asked me, "do you think those could belong to the other campers?" Of course I said no because I didn't think they made trailers appropriate for off road. Well guess what? They do and it was. This gives you a peek into what might be wrong with Mr. Deep and me. It never occurred to us that someone would have a 4x4 trailer. It was then I began to realize that Mr. Deep and I were like a high school basketball team. We are a good team but we have never played outside of our division. We practiced hard and prepared well but we were outclassed. Similar to high school students we apparently think we know everything and that everything we do is right and perfect and great and maybe that's not always the case.

Our first clue

We didn't lose just by the mere fact of the trailers. In fact, the trailers could have allowed us win if they had gotten stuck or fallen off the trucks or something. The trailers were just the beginning of our losing. We lost on so many levels that I put together a chart showing all of the categories in which we were eclipsed and I have included photos to prove that I'm not exaggerating.

CATEGORY	US	THEM	WINNER	COMMENTS
Fire starting method	Newspaper, kindling and a lighter.	A giant can of propane with a special nozzle that is used to ignite a whole pile of logs at once.	Not us	who knew this even existed?
Meals	Small pre-planned meals such as steak with couscous and chicken soft tacos.	More meat then you can imagine. Enough to share with the entire group and have leftovers.	Not us	This could be chalked up to different styles and they were a group of friends all sharing food.
Method of cooking	camp stove	Separate the coals from the campfire and cook over the coals using a large metal grill like thing.	Not us
Firewood	A few bags of split wood purchased at the local grocery store.	Wood from the black wattle tree which is native to Australia. This wood gives the meat extra flavor when used for cooking	Not us	You can't make this %&!^ up!
Bar	Cans of beer and wine. Wine was consumed out of a coffee mug to reduce number of cups to pack.	A full bar complete with special camping tumblers, real wine glasses and a bar to mix drinks.	Not us
Sleeping	A tent on the ground	There were three couples. One couple did have a tent on the ground (bigger than ours) one slept in their camper and one had a tent on top of the camper.	Not us	If lions do kill people while sleeping guess who was going to be the easiest target?

Firelighter gas can with hose and nozzle and metal grill

Splitting up some of the black wottle wood

Neil's bar

Bobby also has a bar on his trailer. Sadly this is not a great picture of it. Yes, they are all wearing headlamps.

Yummy stuffed sandwiches that our fellow campers shared with us at lunch one day. These were made over the fire the night before with a special camping panini maker. Our lunches were PB&J!

Our not so enviable setup

As the trip progressed Mr. Deep and I made lots of jokes to each other such as how we were Team Angola facing the Dream Team in the first round of the 1992 Olympics.  But it still wasn't a sure thing that we had lost the challenge. If the trip were a boxing match we might have gotten a few points in a decision from some of the judges for things like "most creative use of regular household items" or "camping on a budget" or "nice touch in adding sauerkraut to your poached hot dog dinner." 

But to keep going with the boxing reference unfortunately a knockout punch was eventually delivered. Our car battery died. It didn't just die. It started dying a slow and agonizing death. At first, we blamed our camping fridge. Oh by the way, they had a camping fridge and a freezer. I saw them eating ice cream pops on day three. Not even kidding. But anyway, even though our camping fridge is supposed to have a mechanism to ensure it does not drain the car battery, when the jeep battery started to die we figured the regulator on the fridge wasn't working. To address this we starting unplugging the fridge when the car wasn't running and we shifted our planned meals around to eat our most perishable food first. When despite these efforts the battery continued to die, we bought ice at a rest camp and turned the camping fridge into a cooler.

I do want to pause and point out that Mr. Deep does get kudos for purchasing a compact jump starter prior to the trip called ResQ. This small little battery about the size of a walkman from the 80s can jump start a car 15 times on a single charge and it really does work. So that was impressive. What's not that impressive is that at this point we were jump starting our battery every time we started the car. Then one morning it became clear that although the jeep started it didn't want to keep running and that our battery was going to die for good and soon.  This was definitely a low point not only because we knew at this point we clearly lost the competition but because we might be stranded and either starve to death or be eaten by wild animals.  When this happened we were about 40 miles (60 kilometers) from any kind of civilization or help.

Luckily Piet was not going to leave us stranded for wild dogs to find. We kept the jeep running and then made a scheduled stop at a rest camp 40 miles away (it took half a day to get there.) When we reached the rest camp Piet called a garage, which thanks to aligning stars was located at this rest camp to fix ranger vehicles. The garage miraculously had a battery that was the right size for our jeep and it was installed and we were on our way. Yes, we were very, very lucky! When the battery was removed it was so hot that we were told it could have exploded at any time. 

Old

New

This is Ivan the mechanic who installed our new battery. He saved our trip and possibly our lives!

So lessons learned are:
1) you don't know what you don't know
2) there are many different styles of camping
3) always have an extra car battery with you
4) in addition preferably have two batteries one that runs your car and one that runs your fridge and other systems

The other people on the trip were so nice to us. They shared their delicious food with us. They didn't make fun of us at all (at least not to our faces.) They are now friends and have invited us to come and visit them in the Free State province where they live.

New friends. I'm not in this picture as I'm behind the camera.

The ResQ charger got one last use on the way home from Kruger
Park. After we left the park we stopped for gas and came across people in a car with a dead battery. Mr. Deep (sliver of orange shirt) gave them a quick jump.

More Tales From the Lebombo Eco Trail

If you ask Mr. Deep to share his favorite part of the trip to Kruger Park, he might say that it was jumping in the fray helping Piet to clear a tree that was likely knocked down by elephants and was blocking the road. In addition to getting to use his saw, he also got to use his tie down straps to drag the tree out of the way. You might remember from this post that he contemplated for a while whether or not to even bring the tie down straps on the trip. Good thing he decided to bring them along!

With our new friends Jan and Bella

Or, he might say that his favorite part of the trip was sneaking under the fence across the border to Mozambique with his new BFF Jan (pronounced Yon) and yelling "first time in Moz!"

Or he might say it was staying up late with his new friends drinking "police coffee" which seems to be like Irish coffee only the spirits are from Africa and not Ireland. I have no idea why it's called police coffee.

If you ask me what my favorite part of the trip was I would say it was when Mr. Deep stayed up late drinking police coffee. No, just kidding. It was definitely seeing the animals, the scenery and meeting some fun new friends. 

First time in Moz! Sorry about the bad picture quality. I tried to get a photo from a video. The poor quality does make him look more criminal like though.

Here are some of our most interesting pictures. 

This is a tree stump that has been rubbed smooth by rhinos scratching themselves on it. Piet said it has probably taken almost 30 years to get this smooth.

Part of the remains of a rhino killed for his horn. You can see on the left the spot where the horn was sawed off by the poachers.

Our route

Waterbuck

Piet with his shotgun

Bella sticking her head into a hippo skull. Kind of reminds me of when Mr. Deep climbed into a tortoise shell in the Galapagos...

Whether he is illegally crossing borders or wearing discarded animal parts he certainly tries to make the most of his vacations.

Southern yellow-billed hornbill. I looked it up.

Potentially spotting a poacher. There was definitely a guy up on the mountain but not sure what he was doing there.

Coming in my next post the long awaited results of the Lebombo Eco Trail preparedness challenge.