South Africa- Wild animals at their best and racism at its worst- sunscreen required

January 28, 2008- 20 hours from take off in Atlanta to touch down in Johannesburg is definitely the longest non-transferring commercial flight there is out there. My trip to South Africa was planned a week before I departed (not unusual for me) with a friend of a friend I happened to meet who had lived in Cape Town for 2 years after high school as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. We swapped numbers and spent the next week randomly texting out the details of our trip. I was very happy to have this nice young man escort me to a country ranked by the U.N. as second highest in murders and first for rapes. Besides being a body guard, my new friend (Seth) could also speak a little Xhosa (pronounced: ~tongue click~-0sa) , which I usually just call, "the clicky language". Such a bonus because even though we are white, Xhosa is only spoken by the black South Africans. The white South Africans speak Afrikaans, and luckily both groups speak English. While I witnessed hardly any physical crime in my week over there, the racism is, in my eyes, just as terrible and much worse than anything I've seen in the States. I saw NO inter-racial casual association between the locals, and I mean absolutely none at all. No inter-racial couples, groups of friends, families, even in the work place, an establishment seemed to only higher one color or the other. Obviously I didn't meet all 47 million people there and hopefully some of them are a little more open minded than that, but as you'll see it is disfavored by most.

We landed in Jo-burg around 5:30 pm and set out in our white boxy two door rental to Krueger wildlife park! It took a bit to get use to driving on the left side of the road and right side of the car, so I'll blame the following incident on that, plus the fact it was 3 am local time when the death occurred...
After having endured 25 hrs of flight/airport time followed by 7 hours of European style driving, Seth and I were on an unfamiliar road in the middle of the "bush" (African wilderness), when out of NO WHERE a small creature runs full speed, like a ball of fury out of the sage and right into the car! I started screaming, "I killed it! I killed it!" but it was pitch black outside and I was going 120 km/hr so I had no clue what "it" was. After about 45 seconds we turned around, so curious to examine our poor little victim, and I hate to say this, really- I am an animal lover through and through, but it was... oh gosh... a... baby leopard. So sad! I love big cats the most, and when we pulled up next to its motionless spotted carcass I wanted to get out and attempt to revive the small furry suicidal kitty, but Seth reminded me that it's mom was probably watching us right now and she would not hesitate to settle the score an eye for an eye style. So I drove away feeling terrible inside, like a murderer.

Here's the really great directions Seth got us from the Internet that we were still trying to following at 4:30 am-
"Turn at the Excel gas station (didn't say which way)
follow the road through the mine. The road turns to dirt and we're located on the banks of the Olifant River. No physical address"

Since we never found the Excel station its needless to say we never found our hotel, but that's the greatest feature of a rental car, it doubles as a sleeping quarters- even though I really just laid in the drivers seat until I saw the sun rise on the horizon and the sky turn fire red. Seeing my first African sunrise sent excitement through my soul, I couldn't believe I was a few miles away from starting an African Safari, another one of my life long dreams about to come true! So I woke Seth up offering to drive if we could get our excursion started right away, which he happily agreed. We drove around with out a guide and made our own way through the bush. Signs everywhere forbade us from getting out of our vehicle for any reason what so ever due to the fact that there were lions, cheetahs, leopards, rhinos, alligators, hipos, snakes and more surrounding us. The spiders were so big you could see their body and each of their 8 legs from the car 15 ft away from them.


After a couple days in the park we headed to the coast. We stayed in an incredibly nice lodge (considering the location) for $390 RAN a night, which is about $55 US. It was surely the nicest hostel I've stayed in to this day. The room was huge with 2 full size beds, a vanity, a bureau, 2 night stands, a coffee table, chairs and a T.V. The receptionist was a cute African woman probably in her late 20's. Seth said something to her in the African clicky language and she LOVED it! She gave him a high-five and said that she thought it was so great he put effort into learning their native tongue. The British came down here and wanted to convert this precious country into a little Great Britain; naturally the Africans didn't like that at all. The receptionist said the whites not only refuse to speak to the blacks, but wont even touch them. We asked her directions to the closest super market to buy some groceries and I brought her back a coke.


Jan 31- On our long but beautiful drive through the lush green mountains headed toward the coastal town St. Luica, close to Durbin and quietly nestled on the Indian Ocean, we heard on the radio that the "Natural Healers", or witch doctors, have now been recognized by the government as official health care professionals soon to be covered by health insurance. The citizens tax dollars will be wasted on these psychotic spell casters who tell people to cut off a lizards head and drink it's blood in order to win the lottery.





















February 2- There's two guys about our age next to us here at the beach. One's in a rastafari beanie, yellow Volcom T shirt and Billabong board shorts; the other in a Metallica T and Rusty Board shorts. They're speaking Afrikaans and digging a hole for their beer cooler. Seth befriended them out in the shore break body surfing, while I opted to watch from the sand. Its incredible how this serene beach blows any continental US beach out of the water with its gentle hills and white sand and yet no one was here except the 4 of us. Later the skinny boy in the Billabong shorts was venting to us about how corrupt his country was. He was shocked, almost appalled that Seth could speak Xhosa. "Us white people don't bother to learn the black, I mean Native language," he said. Then he tells us the guy next in line to be President of their country can not read or write at all, and has a criminal record of rape, abuse and fraud. The chubbier guy tells us, "Don't mind him, he hates this country and I love it. At least its not as bad as Zimbabwe." The skinny one gets even more worked up as he tells us about his last trip to Zimbabwe. He said there was absolutely no fuel anywhere available to anyone, and no food. "A huge super mart would be desolate except for a single shelf of food, and it was JAM!" The inflation rate rose 26,000% in January. Which is near impossible for us to even relate to that. The other one adds, "Its mainly the crime that is bad."
"You have to have a big gate and a big dog," Seth joked. The angry one was quick to correct Seth, "They'll cut your gate and poison your dog."

Seth forgot to re-apply his sunscreen after playing in the waves and the next day a yellow blister the size of half a ping pong ball rose from his right arm, full of fluid. He slept for almost the rest of the trip which we decided to cut short due to his severe sun burn and sun poisoning. I told him he should start getting chemo therapy immediately to counter act the massive burns all over his body.





















South Africa was beautiful. The majestic landscape, the people dressed in bright colors and happy smiles, the wild animals and the peaceful beach all contributed to me ranking this amazing land as second on my list of favorite places I've ever traveled to. I can't wait to go back and see Cape Town!