Two days later? Seriously, that's all? Then we've got 4 cities and a crapton of stuff to cover.
Yesterday morning, we went on a 3 hour bush walk with a guide at the Timbavati lodge, just outside of Kruger. Timbavati doesn't have predators, so while we weren't about to go petting anything, no shotgun needed.
Our guide showed us which plants were good to eat, which branches to brush our teeth with, and which could blind you for life. He also let us hold certain droppings – but not others.
“Giraffe droppings is clean,” he explained. “Dung from wildebeest is not clean.” We nodded, sagely taking notes in case we were ever tempted to pick up wildebeest dung.
While the notes on flora, footprints and feces were a little (ahem...) dry, he got a lot more interested when he heard a rustling in the bushes. He brought us to a clearing where we saw a gigantic giraffe leaving the scene, and raced through the high grass with us struggling to keep up. Like a SWAT team in a Michael Bay film, we intercepted the giraffe and found him among some wildebeest, munching on some leaves. We cursed ourselves for not remembering which pieces of dung we were allowed to take home as souvenirs.
From there, we got one last ride with John, our fearless tour guide. “I will miss my skorokoro group,” he said with a smile (skorokoro, he tells us, basically means a screw-up – it applies mainly to cars, but he made a special exception for us).
We stayed the night at a hostel – but since the hostel's rooms cost a bunch, we opted for their tents out back...at $50 a night per person. Next time you're camping, remember that Brad paid someone way too much money to sleep as uncomfortably as you are for free.
This morning, we headed to the airport, where we departed for Cape Town. While we waited in the terminal, we made friends with a friendly, goofy, and jumpy 18 year old, who was heading to downtown Cape Town for a friend's senior prom. He offered to give us a lift, so we ended up saving most of the money we blew on our tent. If you haven't guessed, I'm still not quite over the tent.
We're staying on Long Street, the hip, happening young people's place in the downtown area. We haven't veered off of this street yet, but I've already fallen in love with the Cape Town vibe. The architecture is straight out of New Orleans, the weather is great for a wintertime beach town, and South Africa continues to outdo itself in the “really friendly people” category. There's also cheap food, trendy stores, and the constant honking of vuvuzelas in the streets. I bought one for 3 bucks to fit in, and it's proved worth every penny.
Alexis was in charge or doing fun stuff, while I was in charge of getting us in trouble, so after being escorted out of the South African Parliamentary Grounds by the cops (a guard had left a door open), we went to a local movie house and saw a documentary about the 2002 “Other Final,” starring the teams of Bhutan and Montserrano. On the same day as the World Cup final in Japan, all eyes in these two small nations were on their football teams, which were the two lowest-ranked teams in FIFA's rankings. The Montserrano team, captained by a police officer whose life savings were poured into a house which was destroyed by the island's volcano, took 7 flights to get to Bhutan, a monarchy in the Himalayas. The team was thrown a celebration in honor of their arrival, interviewed by the international press, and mobbed by the local schoolchildren. When the captain admitted that these were the first autographs he had ever signed...man. You should watch this movie.
So now, here I sit in our cleaner, nicer, and decidedly cheaper hostel on a bitchin' street in maybe the coolest city in the Southern Hemisphere. The party rolls on.
