Saturday morning we packed up nice and early and headed out to Hluhluwe. If you're sitting at home and trying to pronounce that word, you can just stop, because I guarantee you won't get it. The “hl” morpheme here is one that we don't have in English. It sounds kind of like “sh”, but it's pronounced out the side of the mouth. I've been corrected on it no less than a million times since I've been here, although I think I'm getting better.
Anyway, we drove to Hluhluwe with a quick stop just outside Mkuze for some gas and food. Let me say, fast food has never been so delicious. I'm not sure what to classify “Wimpy's”... it was kind of like a George Webbs or Perkins? In any case, we ate pretty well and for very cheap and stole all their sugar packets for use back at IOC. The waitress actually caught us at this and asked us later “where's all the sugar?” to which we stuttered and looked around nervously until she smiled with a big “I'm kidding!” Yes, we are continually jokes here.
We got to Hluhluwe a bit after noon, I think. Once through the main gate we were immediately accosted by a water buffalo, the first of the Big Five on this trip (technically, we'd seen lions at the Lion Park in Johannesburg). For those of you who didn't grow up addicted to Kratt's Creatures, the “Big Five” are lion, leopard, elephant, rhinocerous, and water buffalo. They are supposedly the Need-To-See animals in Africa, although if I had to make a list I'd probably put the cheetah somewhere on there. Giraffe also. To be honest, Africa just has too many awesome animals.
Anyway, back to the buffalo. It was probably an old male, since it was on its own. The thing let us get really close to it. We tried to get around it, but it started moving towards us and in the shortest game of chicken ever, despite us being in a 2-ton car, we backed off. It might be just like a big cow, but it was impressive none the less. Eventually it let us move on.
After that there was a bit of time to admire the scnery. A lot of Africa has been absorbed by its version of suburban sprawl; houses or shacks spread far apart over large areas. The Ingwavuma area is like this. Hluhluwe, because it's a preserve, is just a huge area nearly devoid of humans. It is slightly mountainous and incredibly gorgeous and probably more how I imagined Africa looking from all the nature shows on television.
Then we saw a giraffe. I'd seen one closer at the Lion Park, but it was nice to see one in its “natural” habitat. We stopped at a lookout near a watering hole and saw at a distance an entire troop of babboons and some impala and some zebra. Also, I think a nyala. I'll have to check my pictures later.
After this was some more scenery admiring and then HOLY CRAP A ZEBRA. They were right in the middle of the road. We got some fantastic pictures of them, when they'd look up from their grazing. They're such interesting animals, and it's amazing that the black-on-white scheme could work for them, but it really does.
Another lookout point came up and we got out of the car only to see ELEPHANTS! They were across from us, on the next hill/mountain, and there were about fourteen of them total. Since our tour guide later on said that the bull (male) elephants travel alone, these must have been females and their young. Cross off another on our list of the Big Five.
We watched them for a while because they were honestly pretty fascinating. I'm sure my pictures don't do them justice. We could hear them eating in the distance, which by the sound of it meant tearing down some trees.
After this was more edge of your seat driving and then a hairpin turn and we nearly crashed into zebras! Which were pretty much the same as the last time we'd seen them, but hey, it's awesome anyway!
So eventually we made our way to Hilltop Camp for the night. We signed up for a game drive for the next morning, for dinner, and then we headed to our rooms. We actually had reserved two seperate huts called “rondavels”, which are round huts. They were certainly not huts in the traditional sense; they were definitely hotel rooms inside. They had a sink and mini fridge and holy crap the nicest beds we'd slept in in a week. Fantastic.
We went out for another quick drive but really only saw a warthog. You're not supposed to drive around in the park after dark and we had dinner reservations besides, so we headed back. Which meant that when we got back we took SHOWERS.
Dude. Ingwavuma is great, but it is not known for reliable water. We've had our water cut off more than we've had it on, and hot water is just a myth. So for us to take showers with hot water, even if the showers were in a communal bathroom... we were really in heaven. For the first time in a while I felt fully human. I got “dolled up”, which basically meant putting on clean clothes and some eyeliner. Heh. It was wonderful. Heck, they even had mirrors, and I pretty much hadn't seen myself in a week.
Dinner was fantastic. It was buffet style and we all ate until we burst. We also drank some pretty delicious mixed drinks; Jessy and Machiko had “Sex in the Bush” and I had a “Hilltop Sunrise”. We were also right by the windows, so we saw a genet, which is a type of wild cat that's nocturnal and pretty shy. The dessert menu was as fantastic as the rest of the food, and afterwards we enjoyed a can of South African beer. Castle, I think it was.
So by then we were beat and basically just headed back to bed and crashed for the night. For all of those of you in Wisconsin you're probably not to impressed by my stories about comfortable beds and hot showers, but you really don't appreciate this stuff until it's REALLY gone.
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