Table Mountain

One final excursion awaited us in Plett, river tubing. I imagined us furiously paddling a tube the size of a raft downriver, navigating rapids, careening off rocks, water spraying. What awaited us were tiny tubes, one to an individual, sedately inching their way downriver, rolling down shallow rapids. It was sunny, it was hot, rocky banks and towering trees rose up on either side of us. The water was as red as rooibos. Our progress was lazy at best, more akin to bumper cars than white-water rafting, leaving ample time to hang on to one another’s rafts, engaged in such languid sun-soaked conversation. Our time together was growing short and we knew it. We steered by hand, paddling, light strokes that eventually left rub burns on our inner arms. Otherwise, it was our laziest day, one that culminated in our anchoring at a sinkhole. We tossed our tubes into the pool below, leaping into the base of a falls, too deep to touch bottom, eddied sufficiently to twist and roll us in its depths until we were spit out into the calm bowl that radiated out from it.

Before long we were back on the bus for the final rush to Cape Town, Table Mountain rising up higher and higher as we drew nearer. We asked, would we be going up there, pointing at its flat, expansive summit. Sadly no, Jan said, much to our disappointment. We were going to the cape to see the penguins.

But not before we stopped off to pick up some beer. Jan asked us, “Do you want some beer?” We did, so he collected the cash in a hat. The money in hand, Jan spoke to our driver in Afrikaans. We pulled over, next to a roadside pub, surrounded by a scattering of vehicles, but more so by bicycles.

“Want to help me?” Jan asked. Sure I said. “Leave your wallet on the bus,” he said, “and anything else you hold dear.” That did not inspire much confidence as to the wisdom of our endeavour.

“Not to worry,” Jan said just as he and I walked through the door, all eyes within snapping to us. There was not one white man to be seen among them. Jan didn’t seem concerned, so I followed him when all I wanted to do was beat a fast retreat to the bus. I didn’t. I kept on, focused on his back, despite the eyes that I knew were tracking our progress. I tried to appear as cool as Jan. I likely failed. We approached the bar, its length secured behind a rank of wrought iron fencing that brought black and white western banks to mind. We ordered our beer, paid up front, and waited as the cases were slid out to us, through a gated gap at the floor. We hoisted them, two apiece, and walked back out the door as though we hadn’t a care in the world.

“Not to worry,” Jan repeated.

My mouth was dry. My litre of beer did not last long.

We booked into our motel. “What is there to do?” we asked. We had a free afternoon and evening we were told. So, a few of us made our way to the coast for a swim. We walked, not the brightest decision. It was farther than we’d thought, and there were few whites about. None, actually, besides ourselves. We endured uncomfortable scrutiny, much as I had when I’d walked back from the mall in Sandton City. We didn’t bathe for long; the water was far colder than the Dolphin Coast had been. We knew as much, watching the surfers boarding in and out of the surf, red faced and otherwise wrapped in wetsuits.

We stayed close to the motel after that. There was a bar. There was a disk jockey. There was beer. There was a lot of beer. I was used to that by now, the copious volumes of beer, the late nights and early mornings. Or so I told myself. Tanya and the twins and a couple other girls were very invested in bottles of champagne; I can’t testify to its quality, but judging by its label, I don’t think it was top shelf. I hit my bed as late as I’d become accustomed.

I slept in. As I awoke, I looked at my watch and noted that the bus was set to depart in about fifteen minutes. I felt like shit. Taking stock, I decided to take a pass on the penguins. I showered. I shaved, taking extraordinary care. My hands were shaky. My head was throbbing. I had a big breakfast, with plenty of juice and coffee, chased by about a litre of water and a few extra-strength Tylenols.

I asked the front desk what excursions I could buy. They helped me leaf through the pamphlets at the front desk, and I found two I liked, Robben Island and Table Mountain. All I had to do for Table Mountain was show up; a gondola was scheduled every quarter hour, the price no more than a bus fare. I booked the afternoon Robben Island tour. A cab picked me up and I was off.

Table Island was surreal. It was an actual mountain. It didn’t look that high, owing to its top having been cleaved off, but it was. It was so high, in fact, that the table sported a subarctic ecosystem. Short scrubby shrubs clung to the warmth of its rocky ground. We were warned against ever leaving the marked trails, informed that our very footfalls were deadly to plants already barely clinging to survival. I can imagine why. The table was forever buffeted by the icy subarctic winds of the Southern Ocean, winds that never let up. And it was high enough that the air was thin, rarefied and not particularly warm either. It was cold enough to require the fleece I’d bought at its base. When I faced the sun and closed my eyes, I imagined the red I saw through my lids was the warmer air at sea level; but the side not facing the sun was cool, growing colder by the minute.

I descended having wandered about for an hour and made for the pier. I was early so I ate an early lunch, drank another litre of water, and popped yet more pills.

The ferry was full. Nelson Mandela was all the rage at the time, and those tourists who’d come to the Garden Route were eager to see the prison where he’d spent decades of misery, sentenced to hard labour breaking chalk, going nearly blind for his trouble. Sunlight reflected off the chalk wall had taken its toll, destroying his eyesight. I saw his cramped cell, no larger than a cot, its walls apt to be frigid by winter and suffocating by summer. I was horrified when I saw implements that ought not to have been of use even in the Spanish Inquisition, and was treated to a lecture on what life was like for the political prisoners sent there to waste away in anonymity, or in the case of Mandela, unseen by those he continued to inspire in spite of his prolonged absence. Had they killed him, he’d have been a martyr, so they tucked him away and worked him to within an inch of his life, instead.

The tour complete, I made my way back to the pier where I browsed for a few souvenirs and had an early supper. I was making my way back to the car park when I saw, to my heart’s delight, my tour bus. No guesswork was required: how many buses could there be in Cape Town with Contiki Tours scrawled across its flank.

I made my way for it. When I’d closed about half the distance, it began to pull away. So, I began to run, waving my arms. It didn’t look like it was going to stop, so I slowed to a walk again, thinking myself no worse off than I’d been. I hadn’t expected to see the tour bus, after all.

I stopped! Its door opened, and my heart leapt again. I began to run again, but my souvenir bags made running difficult. I slowed. I walked. I mounted the steps to the cheers of my friends.

“Where were you?” the twins asked. I filled them in. They were envious.

I asked them about their own trip to the Cape. They said the bus ride there and back was long, the visit short, the penguins not very forthcoming. I was glad I’d missed it.

We had a going away party that evening. Those who were close, sat closer still. No one got drunk. Some slipped away early for more private goodbyes.

We all signed a page, leaving our contact information: names, addresses, email, and such. It’s kind of a ritual on Contiki Tours, I’d come to realize.

I kept in touch with Tanya and the twins for a little while, but those letters, quickly exchanged a first, became infrequent, as one might expect. Travel friendships, Euro pals they’re called, fade quickly. A world separates them, and they’re usually soon forgotten. That’s expected. Think on it: How long did you know them for, anyways? A week? A day? And did you really know them? I think you did, some anyways. If anything, those fleeting friendships are the most intense you’ll ever know. You’ll share with them what you’d never think to share with even your closest friends. But in the end, in a blink of an eye, your time together comes to an end and you never see them again.

Elizabeth was a blink in my eye. Flaxen hair. Bright blue eyes. “Hi.”

I loved you for a moment. And then you were gone.

 

Second Wind

We caught our second wing in Plettenberg Bay after sleeping off the ride from Port Elizabeth. It was more a nap then a sleep, about three hours. Just enough to refresh us a little. The weather had improved. The sun had risen again and the rain had dried up. But the wind continued to howl and gust inland, just in time for Bloukrans Bridge.

There was no way I was jumping off that bridge. No matter the wind. And the wind did howl that day, made worse by its being funnelled up the course of the Bloukrans, confined and concentrated by the steeply rising flanks of the gorge. At 216 m (709 ft.) it’s the world’s highest commercial bungee jump. To be entirely truthful, I wouldn’t have jumped off it even if it were the lowest commercial bungee jump. I can think of better things to do than jump off a perfectly good bridge with an elastic band tied to my ankles. But that’s just me.

We did have some takers, though, one of the Albertan engineers, a few others. There was serious discussion by them as to whether to buy tighty-whities for the occasion. We other brave souls sufficed with watching from the observation post, some distance away. One had to be, it was a hell of a drop. We bought beers, shared smokes, and gasped as we watched them leap and drop out of sight, then rebound in what must have been harrowing fright. We watched again by video, giving us an even closer view, fully experiencing how frightening the winds and heights were from the bridge, from our safe vantage afar.

The Albertan kept a journal of his journey, had kept it from his having embarked from Alberta, while in Casablanca and Morocco, even throughout our most alcoholic of stretches. I say that, but the Albertans were “good boys,” far less excessive that we others were. So maybe it’s no surprise that he was always diligent in transcribing his experiences each day while we languished on the bus between the here’s and there’s, sleeping off the latter late night. He got stuck after the bungee jump, making notes on scraps of paper, trying to get all his feelings and sensations into words, as if that were possible. When I saw him staring into space, pad and paper in hand, I asked him what he was doing, although it seemed obvious to me. So he told me what he was doing and how he’d gotten stuck.

“It’s hard to get into words,” he said. “I don’t know how to describe it.”

Next to impossible, I thought. Feelings are elusive and ephemeral, not particularly empirical or quantitative.

Besides, he was an engineer; and most engineers don’t have a flair for artistic expression.

“Fight or flight,” I said.

“What?” he said.

“You felt fight or flight. Your body thought it was about to die, so you had a surge of adrenaline to cope with it. That’s not terribly romantic, and it certainly isn’t as cliché as ‘my heart leapt into my throat,’ or ‘I was delirious with fright,’ or ‘time slowed to a crawl and I felt every hair on my body electrified,’ but fight or flight is as accurate as anything.”

I don’t know what he wrote. Two days later he was still struggling with it. Like I said, no imagination. I expect his travel log read like a timetable, filled with names and times and quantities of beast, each noted in a separate column.

Our second wing lasted into the night. We plunged into the tepid pool at the resort as the sun dipped low and the light bathed us in a golden glow, remaining long after the incandescent pots blazed white.
The Aussies, sans Tanya, the Albertans, and their hook-ups disappeared for a little tumble and twister while the rest of us hung out with a case of beer, luxuriating in the warm water and cooler air.

We paired off, girls on shoulders and wrestled one another, the losers driven under the surface. We played rough, tripping one another up, bulldozing those not likely to trip. Boys and girls alike ended up with angry red welts from grasping, groping, raking nails.

Growing tired, we lazed about and floated, staring up into the night sky, opening up to one another and telling tales we’d likely never tell our friends. Temporary friends are good for that. We all had quiet declarations. We all had woes. Travel can be a confessional.

We all had desires. But how to accommodate those when bunked four to a room?
The others faded into the night, two at a time until there were very few of us left. I was shy, older than each and every one of them, and not what I thought particularly attractive. Not particularly sure if I’d been flirted with from time to time. I can be dense that way, only realizing what might have been after it had come and gone. Sometimes it seemed obvious, but I’d always been a little daft in that department.

Elizabeth, one of the twins, had lingered close by me most of the evening. She was tall and blonde to her friend’s short dusky dark countenance.

She plunged below the pool’s calm surface, kicked off, spanning the pool’s width, twisting and returning without rising. My gaze followed her progress, admiring her fluid glide, her practiced grace. She flowed beneath the surf with all the self-assurance of an otter. She’d been a lifeguard, a swimmer like me. She had none of the clumsiness of someone unaccustomed to years in the water.

She arched her back and her body buoyed up below and before me, her head back, her hair flowing back from her brow, tucked back behind her ears. Her eyes were closed. She came to rest between my dangling legs, her forearms on my thighs, her hands folded beneath her chin.

She opened her eyes, capturing mine in hers. Bright blue.

She whispered, “Hi.”

I’d had one or two infatuations while on that trip. I was taken with Tanya, short, strong, compact, as tenacious as a terrier. And I had spent more than a few hours watching Alison curled up and sleeping on the bus in the seat opposite me, her Asian complexion glowing in the sun.

I forgot them just then, under the spell of bright blue and a whispered, “Hi.”

The Island Monkey

The South African Vervet Monkey

Our time in Durban was short. Our time everywhere was short. You might think that doing a circle tour of a fairly large country would be a bit too much to chew. It was. And it was exhausting. I’d averaged about five hours of sleep a night, and that was taking its toll. I was nodding off on the bus, despite my wanting to stay awake, soaking in the landscape as it rolled past. An Asian American girl on our tour slept every chance she got. I thought she was sleeping her life away, and told her so, but she disagreed. “It’s too much,” she said. “You can’t possibly see it all. And besides, I’m tired.”

As for alcohol, we’d pretty well reached our saturation point by the end of the first week. Go figure.
One of the high points of Durban was that our hotel had a laundromat. That might sound ridiculous, but we were all thrilled. Clean clothes! Everything in my pack had begun to get a little musty, everything being jammed down its length, the damp with the dry.

We took the time for much needed down time. And good-byes. A third of us were leaving, some for Zimbabwe, some for Mozambique. That also meant new people would be joining us.
I found the German girls leafing through our newest itinerary pages, noting our agenda for the coming week, noting the list of participants.

“Good reading?” I asked.

“Did you see this?” they asked. I hadn’t.

“We’re getting an Island Monkey,” they said. I had no clue what they were talking about and said so.
“An English,” they said. I shrugged. They explained.

“There are two types of English,” they said. “There are BBC English, calm, eloquent, upper class; they’re just assholes. Then there are the Island Monkeys, ill-mannered, hard-drinking, football hooligans. Most English are like that; get a few beers in them and they’re jumping up and down on tables, throwing things, breaking things, hitting things.” The predominant continental opinion, apparently. Or so they said.

“What about the twins,” I countered, referring to the two English girls already on the tour. They weren’t twins. They weren’t even related. But they dressed the same every day. If one wore a black T and khaki shorts, so did the other. It was almost like they had shopped together for this trip.

“The twins are BBC English. You wait and see: Island Monkey.”

Goodbye Dolphin Coast. Hello Cape Coast. Hello Garden Route. We flew to Port Elizabeth from Durban. No bus, thankfully; I don’t think any of us could have endured another fifteen-hour marathon. We arrived at our hotel and met the new people. We met the English guy. At first glance, he seemed BBC. He was polite. He was quiet. He was a little shy. I felt sorry for him. It’s hard to break into a close-knit group, and we’d had a week to bond and close ranks. Stepping into that can be a little daunting. That said, he’d had a few by the time we rolled in. I didn’t hold that against him, though. I’d had a few too many my first day a week ago, and no one held that against me.

The weather was foul. A hard rain fell, colouring everything a steel grey. We huddled close, watching a few souls brave the surf on their boards despite the weather, maybe because of it. The surf was high that day, we were told. It looked high too, or so we told ourselves. The breakers were a ways away, hazy at such a distance, mottled by the beads cascading down the picture window in ribbons.

Our new people wanted to hear about our first week, so, we told them about it. There was a prevailing theme: beer, bus, excursions, beer, bus, excursions, etc. The new, quiet English guy thought it all exciting. He must have expected a party that evening, but he was disappointed. We were all lightweights that evening. Too much booze, too many late nights, no little sleep, too much fatigue. He, on the other hand, was fresh. He proved himself to be less than a lightweight. He outpaced us in no time. He called us a bunch of wankers and pussies, not winning him many fans.

I arched my eyebrow at him.

“Easy,” I said, my sympathy ebbing faster than any riptide.

The German girls arched their eyebrows at me. "See," those eyebrows said: "Island monkey."

Apologies to all you well-behaved Islanders.

Afrikaans

Safaris compete, we disembarked for Durban, stopping first in Kruger for a night, then through Swaziland before arriving in Durban on a Dolphin Coast. It was a long haul, two days all told, fifteen hours of that on the road.

The first hour hour brought us to Kruger. We saw none of it. The sun had begun to set as we entered the Park, and was but a memory when we rolled into the Park Lodge. We booked in, collapsed into our cabins, and caught up on much needed sleep. If Karongwe had been dark, Kruger was utterly black. We did not roam.

We were on the road to Lesotho first thing, leaving the bushveld behind and climbing higher and higher into the sky, arriving five hours later just before lunch to the welcome of monkeys howling from the high canopy. We found our bunks and were to congregate in the camp common first for lunch, then for our excursion. I was the first to arrive, lingering outside for some fresh air and a smoke, and thus, the only one to witness Jan’s deeply grained racism. He called out “Hey boy,” to one of the groundskeepers before realizing I was present. He started when he saw me. I knew then that he’d broken the rules. I suspect Contiki Tours had little tolerance for racism. He stammered some, trying rather unconvincingly to smooth the moment over by explaining that “those older Africans expect that,” he said, “they don’t know any better,” ending with, “he doesn’t mind,” as if that made it all alright. I didn’t respond, not liking what he’d said, but I didn’t interrupt him either. I offered him a cigarette, instead, as a peace offering. We both knew that were I to complain, it would cost him his job. And what would that have accomplished? I’m not stupid. I know the ways of the world. I understood that it would take years, if not generations for Apartheid to be exorcized from South African society, if ever. Were Jan sent packing, another just like him would take his place. And Jan was far more progressive, I’d discover, than other Afrikaans I’d meet. If anything, both of us being slightly older than everyone else on the tour, Jan and I got on. Jan was alright.

I’d begun to hang out almost exclusively with the English and the Germans on the tour. The two Albertan engineers and I didn’t get on much, and those Aussies along for the ride seemed to prefer their own company over others. The exception to this was Tanya Jesberg. A petite, short-haired blonde, she had an extra-large personality. She spoke her mind, voiced her opinion, drank like a fish, and took no shit from anyone. Her family owned the White Horse Tavern in Charters Towers, a rough and tumble outback town five hours from anywhere; that might explain how she came to be; that might explain why she and I got on so well. I came from that same town, half a world away.

We had our excursion. We had a sumptuous dinner. We partied into the night. There was a great deal of hooking up that night, I discovered, afterwards. I was oblivious. And I had a room to myself. I was excused the discordance of snoring for once.

Another five hours brought us to Durban, or just outside Durban. North Beach? South Beach? Selection Beach? I don’t know. I loved it there. Our Cabins were right on the Dolphin Coast. The sun baked the beach. The surf rolled in. Again and again. The monkeys howled and screamed and barked.

When I unlocked the door to my treehouse cabin a monkey barrelled past me, almost knocking me over the rail and off the ramp in his haste to escape. He was a brown blur to me, a fairly solid blur, but little more than a streak until I regained my balance and saw him race up the nearest tree. He stared back down at me, fear, loathing and anger in his eyes.

“Well, I didn’t lock you in there,” I said, before giving the room a once over to see if he’d broken anything while captive.

We stripped, threw on our bathing trunks and hit the beach. It was glorious. Until then, we’d had to wallow in tepid baths, otherwise known as pools. We wondered how well they were filtered, how current the chlorine might have been. I tossed a fouled ball cap that got drenched and wouldn’t release the reek it had absorbed. Not to worry in Durban. The ocean was clean. The ocean may have been full of sharks for all we knew, but that didn’t stop us from diving into the high breakers that crashed down onto us.

We didn’t see much of Durban. We went to a shopping mall. I discovered that toilets in shopping malls in Durban aren’t graced with seats, or at least those weren’t. They aren’t particularly graced with paper towels, either.

I got face to face with a few Afrikaans that evening who had the good grace to call me a fuckin’ Yank while I was buying a round for Tanya, the English girls, and the Germans. The Afrikaans were brave while I still had an armful of beer, less brave after I handed them off to the girls, braver still when the Germans resolved behind me. I jest.

“What you call me?” I asked.

“Yank.” Not fuckin’ Yank, anymore; just Yank.

“Idiot,” I said. “I’m not a Yank.”

“No?” they said. Apparently, my having three Germans at my back made my being Canadian better than my being a Yank. They even offered to buy me a beer. I can’t say my opinion of them improved much.

There was no formal dinner that night. We had a barbeque on the beach beneath a bonfire that launched streams of red flares into the swath of Milky Way that glowed overhead. Jan brought out a boom box and a box filled with cassettes. It wasn’t a guitar, but we were thrilled just the same. We sang, we lay flat out of the cool sand.

We thanked our lucky stars.

Or at least I did.

 

Karongwe

There was quite a lot to see in Karongwe, and not a lot of time to see it, so the days were full. We’d breakfast, pile into the Forerunners, and hit the game trails till lunch. We’d stuff ourselves, then do a walking tour before once or twice being shuttled off to some other “zoo” to see hippos or rhinos, respectively. There was so much wildlife within the reserve, I might have missed sighting a few of the 299 species of mammals and 858 species of birds, not to mention the myriad millions of insects; I didn’t even see all of the Big 5. I didn’t see a leopard. I didn’t even see a rhino, and we went to a “zoo” that specialized in rhinos. The problem with wildlife is that it’s wild. It’s not just hanging about waiting for the tourists to arrive so that it can put on a show.

What I did see were impala. They were everywhere. The locals called them bush burgers. Everyone ate impalas, they said. Even grass ate impalas after the lions and hyenas had their fill of them.

I was rather surprised to stumble across a dung beetle on one of our walking tours. Nobody else saw it. Nobody else was looking. It was a Contiki tour, after all. I’ve been on two Contiki tours, and I came away with the impression that the under 35 set doesn’t seem that interested in wildlife or history when on tours dedicated to wildlife sighting, or ancient history viewing. What I found was that the under 35 crowd was more interested in partying, drinking, and hooking up. That said, I saw a dung beetle. I also spotted a Greater Kudu as it crossed the path we were following. I’ve no idea how they missed it (granted, if you blinked you’d have missed it), but if you’re more interested in gabbing and sourcing out your next hook-up, you’re bound to miss a lot.

Some things are hard to miss. Hippos, for instance. One charged me while on a causeway. The others scattered, running the last stretch to be away from it as it lunged through the water at me. I did a quick calculation. I considered how tall a hippo might be, I considered how high the pool could possibly buoy it up once it finished charging me. Lastly, I surveyed the height of the causeway. It was a pen, after all. I crouched down, watching its approach. I watched it rise up. And I watched it fall back without having reached any closer than eight feet from the lip of the causeway. I stood as it bellowed, then walked back to the others who were watching me throughout. “I thought you were engineers,” I said to the arrogant duo from Calgary who’d led the panicked rush. We were never on very good terms after that, but their being engineers and I being a lowly miner, we were never on good terms before, either.

Being challenged by an elephant was another matter. I stood my ground as it charged me, but only because I was frozen in place. He rushed me, his ears a-flair, his jaw thrust out and bellowing. Then he stopped, bellowed again, and his point having been made, sauntered back to his harem. I could have pissed myself. I suppose I looked brave; the English girls commented on my being so; so, I didn’t bother to correct them on that point.

Being face to face with and no more than 6 feet from a lioness is another thing altogether. We’d been chasing a cheetah that had been stalking and chasing an impala when we came across a pride that had already made their kill. Their muzzles were still red with having gorged their selves. We’d always been told: “Don’t stand up in the Forerunner. So long as you remain seated, the animals will think you are part of a big petrol smelly beast; but if you stand up, they’ll know that you’re not some big petrol smelly beast; they’ll know you are lunch.” A girl behind me stood up to get a better picture just as the lioness was opposite me. She, the lioness, snapped to, her eyes catching mine. My sphincter pulled up into my throat. The guide pulled his rifle into his shoulder, the driver pulled the stick into reverse and we were twenty feet back in a shot.

“What…the fuck…did I say about standing up in the Forerunner?” the Afrikaans spit at the girl once he was sure that the lioness had settled back down.

“You’re lucky,” he said. “I almost had to kill her, just now. I’ve never had to kill any of my girls, and I don’t have a mind to do it now. So, once again. Bums. Seats. Got it?”
I think she got it.
Later, we were on our way back to the lodge. I got the seat right behind our Afrikaans, as close to shotgun as one got. The sun had plummeted below the horizon and the world became as black as pitch. We were clipping along at a nice pace, the Forerunners headlights cutting a near panoramic swath before us. Supper was nigh and we were a little late, having got wind about a leopard in a tree, and we’d yet to see a leopard. Leopard sightings are rare. You’d think they were solitary, reclusive, and stealthy. You’d think they didn’t want to have a bunch of tourists about, scaring away their quarry. We arrived too late. She’d moved on and we were still shy a leopard sighting. Almost back at the lodge, we caught wind of a scent. It was strong. It smelled like shit. I’m not being allegorical. The heady aroma of feces rolled over us. And as we rose over the next rise we found out why. We were tracking a hyena. She was lopping along the cleared track just ahead of us.

Our lights became high beams. The flood lights above them flared up, as well. It was brighter and whiter than a welding bead.

We closed with her, she looked over her shoulder at us, and without seeming to, she picked up speed. We kept pace. She dove from left to right, each time tossing a look back at us to see if we were still with her.

She decided to lose us. She dug in, leapt right, and entered the bush at high speed, not losing any speed as far as I could see.

“Follow her,” our guide ordered, and the driver cranked the wheel, almost spilling half of us from the truck as we bounced off the track after her.

I held on tight. We all did. There wasn’t much else we could do under the circumstances.

She looked back, marked our pursuit, and I suppose she decided she’d had enough. Either we were in hot pursuit of a meal, her, which must have scared the wits out of her (she did live in a kill or be killed world), or we were just having sport with her, which we were, and either way, she was having none of it, anymore. She tore off like a bullet. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen anything move that fast above water.

First she was there. Then she was a low burst of speed. Then she disappeared. She was indistinguishable from the bush, lost to sight in the black beyond our high beams.

I’ve got to hand it to our driver. When he received an order, he followed it. We went crashing into the bush after her. Branches and foliage spun around us, snapping off like the crackling of a bonfire.
“Whoa,” the Afrikaans bellowed.

We whoaed.

We laughed.

“That was so cool,” I said.

The Hyena

I don’t think I ever slept so well in my whole life. I must have had about eleven hours of uninterrupted sleep.

I woke, disembarked, collected my bags, got my passport stamped and stepped out onto the soil of Africa, and was shuttled to my hotel in Sandton City, a suburb of Johannesburg. I checked in, collected the envelope left for me informing me of the planned meet and greet at such and such a time. Suppertime, I thought. I had something to do before that, though. I checked the time, discovered I still had a couple hours before the meet and greet was to begin, so I deposited my bags and made my way up the hill to the shopping mall a block away.

I needed hiking boots. I know what you’re thinking. How could I come to Africa for a safari vacation and not bring hiking boots? There’s a simple answer to that. I forgot. It’s as simple as that.
I found a shoe store and wouldn’t you know it, it being Africa, and right next to a fairly large hotel, they had an abundance of them. I tried on just about every type they had before I found a pair that satisfied me. Before I found the one pair that actually fit me. Almost fit me. Beggars can’t be choosers.

I walked back to the hotel, just a block away, and had to walk past a newly formed pack of young toughs that hadn’t been there when I scaled the hill. My hackles rose. I’d read more than a few dire passages in my trusty Lonely Planet Guide, warning of potential violence in Jo’burg. Don’t wear jewelry, they said. Don’t carry money. Don’t walk the streets by night. Don’t walk the streets by day. Don’t be alone. Lock your doors. Don’t carry a gun. Do carry a gun. Kill anything that moves before it kills you. Run away. Don’t come to Jo’burg! I exaggerate only slightly.

I was not mugged, despite the scrutiny they gave me. The fact is, they probably only gave me the old up and down because I, the pasty white boy in shorts and golf shirt, was obviously a regular curiosity, a tourist. I tried not to look back as I passed. I tried not to hurry past. I tried to keep my cool. I think I did. But they could probably smell the fear radiating from me. Note to self: try not to read scary shit in travel books before arriving at your destination.

The meet and greet was fun. We were supposed to eat, or so I gathered, it being held at what I considered suppertime, but we didn’t. What we had was cocktails. Too many cocktails. When I say we, I mean me, others as well, I imagine. Long story short: no food. Some of the others decided to head up to the mall for dinner and shopping. It turns out I was not the only one to arrive sans hiking boots. I wanted to go; I wanted to get some food in my belly; but jetlag had taken its toll and I was too drunk to do anything except go to bed. Which is what I did, getting another twelve hours of sleep before boarding the bus for the first leg of out journey around the Cape.

We had a long haul ahead of us before arriving at Karongwe Private Reserve game lodge, our first and one of our primary destinations. It took us the better part of the day to get there, steadily climbing into the rising rocky terrain of the Drakensbergs. We stopped for a quick lunch in Witbank (some fast food chain, as memorable as any other), arriving at the Reserve about six hours after departing.

It was a hot ride despite our bus being air-conditioned, arid hot (it took a little while for the air to fully condition the space, but dry is dry, cool or not), necessitating our need to buy water along the route. My still being somewhat jetlagged and a little hung-over had little to do with the decision; everyone had need; everyone clambered off the bus to buy some when the opportunity arose. The time passed quickly, though. There were thirty or so of us to meet, in spite of the meet and greet. One can only absorb so much in a couple of hours.

We arrived and were shown to our cabins. I couldn’t have asked for better. They were modelled after kraals, the round thatched huts the Zulus lived in. Exteriors aside, they had all the necessities: bathrooms, porcelain washbasins and ewers (if one were inclined to use them and not the working shower), and mosquito netting. The rooms were air-conditioned, but air conditioning has never been much a deterrent to mosquitoes, and there were mosquitoes. We were camped along a tributary of the Koronge-We and Olifants rivers, and wetlands were aplenty about. I discovered that mosquito netting doesn’t breathe as well as one would hope. I used it that first night, but thereafter I tempted fate and trusted in the screen windows and my malaria shots.

Don’t get me wrong. It was quite posh. I loved it. But there were few lights illuminating the yards. We had to be guided from the common hut to our rooms by a groundskeeper, who invariably looked like he’d have rather been abed rather than escorting we inebriated tourists to their rooms.
We needed to be escorted, though. There were no fences. There were no walls. Anything could wander on through the Lodge at any time, as we would soon discover.

We were drinking with the staff. And when I say staff, I mean the white staff. Apartheid was alive and well in South Africa despite it being put to rest. The Blacks were still kaffirs. And the Blacks still held all the menial jobs, where the whites held the better paying guide positions. After a few hours of drinking games, we were all a little askew, the staff even more so than we were. Two Aussie girls left to go to the loo, strategically placed outside the front door. They weren’t gone for long.

They hurried back in yelling, “Hyena! Fucking hyena!”

“Where?” we asked.

“Literally right outside the door!”

The staff leapt up and ran to the entry, fumbling with the snaps holding their pistols in place. The guide behind the bar fished out a rifle with a scope before following, careening off the doorframe as he passed through it.

“Where was it?” I asked. “What was it doing?”

“It was just sitting out there, like a dog, right beside the loo.”

I’m not sure what worried me more, the hyena running loose out in the yard, or the guides running about looking for it, pissed to the gills and armed to the teeth.