21 Mar 2009 – Flight to Durban, Drive to Hluhluwe

When traveling with fifteen students and three program leaders, it is a feat just to get everyone together and in the right place at the right time. So the fact that we all made it onto the plane to Durban this morning made Ben a very happy person. Though I’d packed the night before, I was racing the clock to shower and get out the door after the run to the Rhodes Memorial this morning, but we managed to have everyone in the van by 8:30 with the luggage packed into the open trailer in the back. The check-in at the airport was a complex process given the size of our group, and we had only about a half hour to grab something to eat before boarding the plane at 10:20. The generally slow service in South African restaurants – even in the airport – put us in a bit of a time crunch, but we all managed to get through security and onto the plane without any problems.We flew on Kulula Airlines, presumably a domestic-only airline, on a two-hour flight to the eastern coast city of Durban. Several people took advantage of open rows of seats, which they commandeered to stretch out and nap for the quick hop across the country. Upon our arrival, we all agreed that the flight had been almost comically short after our 18-hour flight two months ago. We grabbed our bags and walked out into the hot, sunny afternoon air, where two vans and one luggage trailer were poised to take us the last three hours of our trip to the town of Hluhluwe (pronounced sort of like “kloo-kloo-ee”). Climbing into the vans, most of the group embraced the hot dry air that had been missing in Cape Town for almost a week. I immediately chose a seat with an open window and shed my long-sleeved layer.

Our drivers, Themba and Moses, drove us out of Durban along a highway surrounded by green hills and tropical flora. The geography appeared more quintessentially “African” with the patches of red dirt and endless grassy hills spreading out in all directions. We stopped at a rest stop for a quick lunch a little after 2:00, eating at the rest stop staple, Steers. The restaurant has come to elicit heavy sighs from the group whenever we face buying a meal there, but the fast food burger joint was satisfying enough to hold us over for the next two and half hours in the vans. (Note: During the excursion, our meals are covered by the trip fund, which is essentially comprised of the money we paid upfront for the term abroad. Nevertheless, it still feels like a treat not to have to pull out our wallets at every meal.)

During the rest of the drive, most of the van slept or read, often doing so with headphones in their ears or while watching the scenery pass by. Rolling fields of corn gave way to patches of woodlands made up of tall, straight Eucalyptus trees and broad ferns. The expansive land and sky was ever constant, however, dwarfing the circular, thatched-roof huts that squatted on the sides of the hills in small clusters. The appearance of these little traditional homes only added to the feeling that we’d entered a region of South Africa that had not been touched by time or Western culture to the same extent that Cape Town has been.

It was growing dusky when we pulled onto the dirt drive into Sand Forest Lodge around 5:30. We’d been traveling through rural, isolated Hluhluwe and then on empty two-lane roads through the fields for about twenty minutes when we finally reached the game reserve in which the lodge was located. We immediately noticed the springbok grazing in the brush just outside the lodge houses, which stood unassumingly beneath a bunch of tall canopy trees near the drive. We unloaded the vans as the lodge owner doled out the keys to our rooms, and then we explored the lodge houses and settled in before dinner.

There are between 2 and 6 to a house for the two nights we’re staying at Sand Forest, and the rooms are absolutely the picture of an “African Game Lodge”. In addition to a large kitchenette and living room area, our lodge house has two bedrooms and two bathrooms. The floors are a raised stone and tile with woven throw rugs, the muted tan walls are filled with African art, landscapes, and animal prints. The rustic wooden frames of the furniture compliment the earthy tones in fabrics that cover the chairs and beds, and the side tables resemble carved chunks of tree trunks. Elephant and zebra figurines also adorn most of the items in the room and decorate the rest of the lodge. To top it off, the lamp shades are wicker, the large drape-framed windows look out on the game reserve, and the beds have mosquito nets hanging from the ceilings. It certainly has the appropriate African eco-lodge ambiance.

After we’d sufficiently taken in the bucolic atmosphere, we made our way out onto the grounds to view the springbok, wildebeest, and zebras that roamed in the lingering daylight. There were no partitions to stop us from walking right through the fields in which the animals were grazing, and we got awfully close to the zebra and wildebeest before they took off at a startlingly fast gate towards the lodge houses. Their breakneck run took them straight past the pool and open-air dining room (complete with thatched roof and kerosene lanterns), where about half the group was sitting and staring in shock. With the lodge to ourselves for the night, we lingered on the brick patio and on a set of swings as the stars appeared overhead and the bats and bugs came out around us. Sitting together in the quiet, windless night, Vernon told us about previous trips he’d taken to the Durban area and about the differences between this rural, traditional part of South Africa and Cape Town.

Around 7:00, Dan, Kevin, and I walked around to the eastern side of the dining hut to find a darker spot from which to view the stars. It only took a few moments of gazing skyward to realize that the view topped Plettenberg – and perhaps even the planetarium. We stood transfixed for nearly fifteen minutes before we walked back for dinner, which we ate by lantern-light around several sturdy wooden tables inside the three-walled enclosure. The three-course, buffet style rice and curry meal was quite good, and we finished off with a dessert of peaches and fresh cream. Of course, most of us couldn’t pass up the chance to stargaze some more before turning in for the night, and given the relatively early hour (about 9:00), seven of us opted to walk back to our viewing spot in the middle of a field about a hundred meters from the lodge. We stared up at the night sky and mused over the sheer number of stars, universes, and possible extraterrestrial life forms (and on and on) until we got tired of craning our necks and standing in the cold.

Though the weather is more humid here than in Cape Town, the change in temperature between the sunny afternoon and the dark evening hour was significant, and the cool air and the bugs drove us inside by 10:00. We’ll all be waking up before 5AM to head out on safari tomorrow morning, and we’re all incredibly excited for the event, so no one in my house seemed averse to calling it an early night and heading to bed around 10:30. I, for one, will be perfectly content to fall asleep in my comfy queen bed to the faint chirping of crickets out my window. Not even the mosquito net draped over my pillow could detract from the serenity of the atmosphere we’ve encountered so far at Sand Forest Lodge.