Blouberg & Kruger

After crossing the Botswana-South Africa border, our first visit was to Blouberg.  Our campsite was in a beautiful location, set in the hills.  We took a quick hike up one of the hills to a swimming hole, then drove in to visit the local community.  We first sampled traditional beer at a shabeen (an informal bar, usually located in somebody's residence).  I confess I wouldn't select it over the beers that I'm used to, but it wasn't *so* bad -- just a bit sour and with a milkier texture than normal.  We also learned a slow, kind of shuffling dance from the shabeen's other customers.  Next, we enjoyed a traditional meal.  There were so many dishes it would perhaps better be labeled a feast; there had to have been at least 20.

Overall, the visit was interesting, but I always feel terribly awkward during such events.  The kids were generally pretty great, and appeared more excited to greet us than anyone usually is to see me.  But the reasons for this were perhaps not wholly selfless; some asked repeatedly for sweets, and a few half-asked for and half-demanded the hairties on my wrist, taking them off themselves.  Still, it was an overall positive experience.

We spent the next two and a half days at Kruger National Park, which was phenomenal.  I'd expect you could spend a couple weeks just in Kruger without getting bored.

We saw so many animals, including all of the Big 5 (buffalo, both white and black rhinos, a leopard, a lion, and a plethora of elephants).  I'm not totally sure why there's such a fixation on those five animals, though, because I also really loved watching animals not on that list, especially hippos, giraffes, zebras, and two juvenile hyenas, and one honeybadger (from a pretty big distance, though).

The night drive was (somewhat surprisingly) a real highlight.  The trucks weren't anywhere near full, so we were able to work the side spotlights looking for wildlife.  Familiar animals look different at night; wildebeest, for example, look positively demonic with glowing eyes underneath their horns.  Even a herd of impalas is a little creepy when so many sets of eyes glow back at you.  But for my part it was really the nocturnal animals (and the lion) that made the drive so fun.  We saw an abundance of spring hares, little furry bouncy animals like rabbits, except with a long tail. We loved watching them bounce around, but the driver wasn't impressed.  Depicted on the right is a genet, a nocturnal animal that at times looks almost like a cat, but is actually closer to a rodent.

It was also really cool to see different kinds of animals hanging out together.  On the left is one of my favorite pictures from the trip, showing two baboons sitting close together (maybe they're on a date), being chaperoned by a kudu behind a tree.

After leaving Kruger, we made a quick stop at Blyde River Canyon, the third largest in the world after the Grand Canyon and Fish River Canyon (in Namibia).  Although it probably lengthened the already long driving time, its beauty made the stop completely worth it.

There was only one really notable incident during this leg of the trip: there was a windstorm during our night in Blouberg.  I've never experienced a windstorm from a tent before and to be honest I'm not anxious to repeat the experience.  We were somewhat lucky because our tent was oriented so that the wind blew straight through it, making us cold but not overly upsetting the balance of the tent.  Still, the tent was shaking and bending vigorously enough that I began to picture the wind picking up the wwhole kit and kaboodle and swirling us away, like the tornado at the beginning of the Wizard of Oz.  Needdless to say, we didn't sleep particularly well that night.