South Africa part 3

There were ostriches that had been tamed and will eat out of your hand. They are not very bright so they will bite your hand while feeding from it. Since they don’t have any teeth if feels like a clamp coming down on your hand.  

We stayed at a place called Backpacker’s hostel called Kama Soul. This is where I took the sunset pictures in the links. This place was quite nice, clean and we didn’t have to share the dorm with anyone. Just to make sure the place was secure I used my Herculean strength to pull one of the bunk beds in front of the door so that no one could surprise us at night. Many places in South Africa like to have two faucets, one for cold and one for hot. Both faucets are very short like 3 inches so you really have to get close to the basin edge to use them. This is a similar phenomenon that I saw in New Zealand, I am not sure why they would inconvenience themselves this way because I would not think it is cheaper to install 2 faucets instead of one that mixes hot and cold.  

Day 7 (Friday)
We woke before the sunrise to go out to greet the meerkats. A researcher (Grant) has befriended meerkats so that they do not see him as a threat. He takes pains to let the meerkats know that he is not a threat and also that he is not a meerkat. In previous research when the meerkats thought the Grant was a really big meerkat sentinel they let down their survival instincts and ceased setting up sentinels. They quickly became snacks for the real predators. We accompanied Grant to the burrow that the meerkats slept in that night. You can see from the picture links how close we were to them as they were warming themselves up from the morning sun. Were actually a bit closer as we followed them through their foraging run. Almost on cue the rain started at the time when we were supposed leave the meerkats.

We then drove to Monkeyland which were most of the pictures of monkeys in the photo links were taken. It was a cold day so there were not that many out. The white monkey and black monkey in the pictures are extremely stupid monkeys. These Lemurs will forget where they leave babies.  

Right next door was Birds of Eden. My host had a grand time letting two of these birds climb all over him.  

A large roadblock stopped us on the N2 highway. The officers without guns requested to see our passports, this was not a port of entry. Why would they need to see our passports if we were just driving? South Africa is known to have a corrupt police force and for fake roadblocks. The driver showed the identification page and paged to the entry stamp but refused to surrender the passport. After while of discussion the officers instructed the driver to pull over to the side at which point the driver “calmly drove away.” A few minutes later a tiny hatchback with police markings forced our vehicle off the road. The officer snatched the driver’s passport and demanded we return to the roadblock, speeding away leaving only one option of we wanted that passport back. A quick analysis of the situation: told me that if jail time was in the future valuables would have to be transferred out of reach of the corrupt police force. A quick plan was forming for alternative lodging, a replacement driver, removal of all valuables from the driver, the main hope was that they did not impound the car because there would be no way to protect all the luggage\valuables without a vessel to carry them. Some may see it is as cold way of thinking but it is also the most effective way of thinking. If the driver was going to be arrested was almost beyond our influence at this point. The focus was on the solution not the panic of worry; the type of thinking that is needed at the time of crisis.
 
Boy the cops were mad. The police threatened to throw the driver in jail for the weekend. After repeated threats we were released and drove merrily along. Which tells me that that the police had some underlying precondition that prevented them from executing the threats. They were disrespected at that level and then just let the offender go. Very few people would allow their prides to that heavily offended and do nothing about it if they had the authority or power to do something about it. In the US the driver would have been arrested when he was chased and forced off the road. I will come back to this discussion later in the blog when I recount my conversations with the ex-volunteer police officer and stories from the locals.  

The rest of evening is spending on very dark highways driving toward Addo. There are pedestrians all along the highway. Most are black people in dark clothing (non-reflective and usually not white), making the practically impossible to see until they are 20 yards in front of you. Traveling at 120 km/hr, you do the math on how quickly a car would be upon these practically invisible people. We decided that was the last time we were going to drive at night.  

The Aardvark backpacker’s hostel was quite nice, with an all you could eat breakfast for 20 rand (~$3), laundry service for ~$3 a load and an electric fence to protect the property at night.  

Day 8 (Saturday)
We drove to Addo Game Reserve, arriving around 7 AM. Throughout our trip in South Africa we would seen many herbivores that resembled deer. After a while of this they were no longer exciting and being the sophisticated people we were we only noted there was another “deer-like” or “grazer” instead of expending the effort of looking in the books to identify the creatures. There were lots of ostriches, warthogs (they are really ugly) and Kudu (a deer-like). The highlights of the morning drive was a huge herd of elephants that were approaching a watering hole. These are the elephants depicted in the photo link. We timed it just right, the elephants were just arriving. They drank all the water in the hole (until it was dry) and then moved on. Our car happened to be in the path that the elephants wanted to take. The driver shut off the engine and we watched as the whole herd of elephants walked around the car. Elephants spend 14-16 hours a day eating and sleep on their feet.  

In the distance we saw a jackal, the pictures on the links are with a 48x (12x optical, 4x digital). I was told it is very rare to see these animals because they flee from the first sign of humans.  

We saw a large family of meerkats that is where most of the pictures came from. We were not allowed to take pictures while with Grant. I was told these animals are pretty rare.  

Since my host had told me how hot it was in South Africa I did not have any warm cloths for the evening drive through the park in an open jeep. I prepared myself with a tee shirt, two long sleeve shirts, two borrowed sweaters and my windbreaker. The cold still started penetrating by the end of the drive. Don’t let anyone fool you South Africa gets cold! The evening drive was pretty uneventful although I did get to try the local beef jerky, biltong.  

Day 9 (Sunday)
We arrived at Port Elizabeth and inquired what there was to do interesting in town. Our analysis was that it was not a very exciting place. We did see some interesting wake boarders using giant kites to pull them through the very cold waves. I did get to see giraffes and zebras too. Eventually I practiced my stick shift driving.