I awoke to my alarm at 4:40AM and battled my way out of the mosquito net to go wake the people sleeping in the other bedroom. We scrambled into our layers of warm clothing and grabbed our cameras on the way out the door, where we met up with the rest of the group at 5:00 under a fluorescent light by the lodge office. Even though we’re on the opposite side of South Africa, we’re still in the same time zone, and the sun rises about an hour earlier than in Cape Town. So as we pulled out off the bumpy dirt driveway in the safari trucks, there was already a glow on the eastern horizon.
The trucks were the quintessential African safari vehicles – beige and green with four rows of bench seats each stacked a bit higher than the ones in front of it, a square frame canvas roof but open sides, a fold-down windshield, and coolers of food and water packed under the seats. In the semidarkness and midnight cold, we shivered against the wind that whipped through the open truck, huddled under blankets and hoods. The sun rose at our backs as we sailed along the rural road to the game reserve about a half hour away, and the clusters of circular, thatched-roofed huts became more numerous along the green ridges we passed. The traditional villages dotting a vast rolling landscape were reminiscent of the Native American reservations in the western US, while the cattle that meandered across the road in packs reminded me of stories about sheep on the roads in Ireland.
The chill and the anticipation kept everyone wide-eyed and awake until we reached the entrance to the game reserve, where we drove beneath an arch indicating the north end of the reserve and started down a long road into the park. The landscape remained largely the same, but the huts were gone and the hills and greens that surrounded us were of a much grander scale. With the sun still rising over the hilltops, our vans stopped first for a hyena skirting along the side of the road and then a pack of buffalo lounging in the tall grasses about fifty meters away.
We had to learn quickly how to use our “quiet excited voices” so as not to scare away the animals, and as the sun warmed us up a bit, we grew more animated and engaged in scanning the landscape for four-legged fauna. (The situation produced some seriously laugh-worthy lines, like when Jordan exclaimed that we’d just passed “a donkey!” when in fact it had been a buffalo.) For the next two and half hours we bumped and jostled along the winding, rutted dirt roads through the bush, descending the hills into valleys with dense, lush thickets of tropical forest, and then climbing again into the dry, grassy hills. In some places, the twisted trees and dry, gnarled brush vegetation lined the narrow roads, and we’d occasionally turn off onto other trails and overlooks as we came upon them.
Between 7 and 8AM, there was a dearth of activity on our safari route. The air was slightly warmer and the wind didn’t race through the vehicle with the same intensity, so unavoidably, people started to doze off. When we’d heard stories about last year’s students falling asleep during the safari, we’d never understood how that could have been possible, but I’ll admit that even my eyes had begun to droop by the time we pulled off into a little picnic area for breakfast. The guides emptied the contents of the coolers onto a picnic table under a low-hanging tree (which several people promptly climbed), and we tucked into egg, ham, or cheese sandwiches, chicken, and chocolate muffins. 
The leafy, Afro-tropical environment and the lack of white noise on the game reserve made the place seem almost mystical, but we couldn’t help but feel disheartened by the fact that we’d seen so few animals. The warmer and sunnier it became, the less likely we were to come across any animals, so we set off after breakfast with low expectations. But just minutes after leaving the picnic area we came upon three zebras munching on the tall grass by the side of the road. Excited to have found our first well-positioned group of African animals, we scrambled to get our cameras out and craned our necks to get a good view around the front of the van, only to have our driver pull up right beside them moments later. The zebras didn’t seem bothered by our presence (or our shutter snaps) at all, despite our close proximity, which allowed us to take pictures and softly chuckle at the way they blatantly ignored us and went about their morning meal.
About twenty minutes later Jill gave a shout after noticing a group of giraffes standing in the dense forested area on the side of the road, and as the van pulled over, we did our best to contain our ecstatic outbursts of good fortune. Though they were largely concealed in the brush, we toppled over one another in the van to get pictures of the gangly creatures – usually just a disembodied head or a section of neck between the leaves. If we’d only known what scene was in store for us over the next hill, we might not have bothered with all of the mediocre snapshots.
There was nothing particularly unusual about the hilltop mudflat and watering hole at which we stopped about ten minutes later, except that it turned out to be the gathering place for half a dozen different species of African wildlife. This perfect safari microcosm included two rhinos, a sleepy buffalo, a pack of grazing springbok, a thirsty giraffe, three zebras, and a family of warthogs, all standing or lying in uniform groups several meters apart, minding their own business and enjoying the sunny autumn morning. Ben seemed to capture our disbelief best with the rhetorical question, “Did Disney come by and stage this for us?”
We spent about twenty minutes sitting quietly in our van, watching the scene unfold – the baby warthogs running over to jump in the mud, the rhinos nudging one another and then rolling over to nap, the springbok jumping through the grass. And then we turned around and saw the giraffes.
At first there was just one of them, bent awkwardly forward in a pose evocative of a praying mantis, slurping water out of the muddy pit. But soon three others appeared over the hillside, emerging from the trees and gliding regally through the golden grasses like some kind of prehistoric creatures. We watched in awe and amusement as they stalked towards the water, stooped to drink, and then posed for our pictures with their heads held high. We also were literally tossing ourselves over one another along the bench seats to get in pictures with the giraffes in the background.
After all of the excitement, it was unlikely that any other animal sightings could have elicited such a giddy response from our group, save a lion or leopard spotting. But before the end of the safari at 11, we did see several more giraffes, zebras, buffalo, and elephants on a distant ridge. The last hour we spent driving back towards the entrance gate, and cruising over the tops of the green, sunlit hills, our van inevitably broke into song (The Sound of Music and several songs that included the word buffalo.) When we jumped out of the vans at the curio shop at the end, we all seemed quite satisfied with our safari experience.
The group stopped for lunch at the Protea Hotel on the way back to the Sand Forest Lodge. We were thoroughly exhausted after the early wake up and the safari excitement, so it was a relatively quiet meal around the small wicker tables in the hotel dining room. While we waited for the bill, I sat down at a baby grand in the hall and played (as quietly as possible) the few songs I could remember after two months away from the piano.When we got back to the lodge, many people took naps or jumped back in the van to visit a craft market down the road. I took the memory cards out of my camera and started uploading, editing, deleting, and labeling the hundreds of pictures from the morning. I’d gotten through about half of them from the first camera when I started to feel overwhelmingly tired, and then it dawned on me that I was in absolutely no rush to do anything; I could just close my laptop and fall asleep where I lay, stretched out across the big bed.
I awoke to the sound of dozens of birds twittering outside the open windows and the voices of my three lodge house mates. Kevin walked by the window a few minutes later and jumped inside so that we could make a plan for running that evening, and from that point on, the big, swing-open window in my room became the primary mode of entry and exit for the house, out of pure convenience.
Four of us decided to run a little after five, and we decided to take one of the lodge’s paths through the bush towards the woods on the far side of the property. We ran for about half an hour through African forest and grasslands, dodging vines, giant red ant hills, and piles of springbok droppings. While racing along the winding path through the trees, we also just nearly missed running into a fist-sized (probably poisonous) spider that was hanging in its web at face-height across our path. At the end of the trail we emerged into an open field and loped through the tall grasses flanked by the wildebeest, zebras, and springbok that lived on the lodge reserve. We stirred up a bit of a frenzy as we ran past them, scattering the exotic menagerie in our path. Later we laughed about how we’d imagined ourselves as African bush people, running amongst the wild animals.
We ended the run by jumping into the pool, which was empty in the quiet, half-dark yard. We spent a lazy half hour cooling off and generally just enjoying the atmosphere – the sunset, the wildlife chirping and chattering around us, the refreshing temperature of the water. A few nappers began to emerge from the lodge houses around 6:15, and we took that as our cue to get ready for dinner, so we showered and returned to the dining area at the side of the yard. Dinner was an array of vegetable and pasta dishes, with meat options and cake bread for desert, but the conversation over dinner managed to top the delicious food. While waiting to sit down for the first course of vegetable soup and rolls, we’d struck upon the topic of religion and ethics, always a hot-button issue. The discussion had morphed into a debate that drew in most of the group at one point or another and had us squeezed together around one of the larger tables, two-to-a-seat for a brief period of time, as the opinions of the ultra-left clashed with those of the group’s centrists.
The debate rambled on over the next two courses (and as many hours), and went off on tangents from time to time. Marita joined the fray after a while, and other people dropped away from the conversation as they grew weary of the topic or finished their dinners. I decided to head back to the room around 8:30 to sit down and finally finish working on the safari pictures and the day’s blog. People popped in and out of the room throughout the evening – mostly through the window – and the whole group spent at least part of the evening packing so that we could get an early start in the morning. Around 11:30 I pulled the mosquito netting around the pillows, again, and went to sleep.
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