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Charm - Richards Bay



Richards Bay is fantastic!  The Zululand Yacht Club is everything you could want in a marina.  It’s in a rural area, with grassy grounds, a kids’ playground, a small swimming pool, a bar and restaurant, and easy access to good shopping and game reserves.  The people are incredibly kind, helpful and welcoming, and we are sad we are leaving tomorrow.

 

When we first arrived almost two weeks ago, they met us at the dock with champagne and gift bags for the kids.  This is the first time any marina has acknowledged the kids on board and it was a very kind gesture.

 

I thought we would have to spend the night on the boat since we had arrived in early evening when most countries would not clear us through customs and immigration so I had already thawed meat for dinner.  But they said we could get off the boat and we wasted no time in making a beeline for the restaurant.

 

The next morning, I took advantage of my body still being on Reunion time and left early for a run.  I discovered that I could run down to the beach and see the place where we had entered the bay the previous afternoon.  The swells and surf were still quite high – we were glad they were pushing us in and not working against us. 

 

I walked out an opening in the dunes and came upon three black African men with their shirts off and a splash of clothes on the sand.  Since arriving the evening before and realizing that we had finished one of the most challenging passages relatively unscathed, my mood had ranged between ebullient and giddy.  Having found a decent place to run did nothing to dampen my spirits and I found that the three young men seemed to be feeling more or less the same. 

 

Upon seeing me, they all smiled and greeted me warmly.  All of them were dripping wet and had clearly just come out of the crashing waves behind them.  One of them said, “Can you teach me how to swim?  Because I need to learn!”  Since he had clearly just been in the water, I wasn’t sure how to respond.  We chatted a bit and I told them we had just come on a boat and were from the USA.  They were delighted about that and I told them I loved Africa so far and one of them showed me his tattoo of Africa and told me that he loved it too.  Then they said they were just passing through from Johannesburg and had stopped to see the Indian Ocean.   

 

I watched them as they ran back into the water, diving and splashing.  Then they stood up and started dancing and waving to me as I continued my run.

 

I think that will be one of my fondest memories of Africa.

 

Since that moment, I spent several days helping the kids prepare for a school show that went amazingly well.  In addition, I polished up a script that I was inspired to write while listening to an SSB broadcast on the crossing to Richards Bay.  We picked my mom and her childhood friend, Kay, up at the airport, exchanged rental cars, gave them a quick tour of the boat, then put on a kids’ variety show.  We created a brief intermission to welcome one of the last boats of the fleet, Footloose, to Richards Bay, and then finished the evening with a performance of the skit by the newly created World ARC Players.

 

As usual, we packed it in.  Poor Joe continued to pick up the pieces from the crossing and set up and worked on the never-ending boat maintenance list.  Thankfully my mother brought over some key parts like a new auto-pilot as well as new wardrobes for the girls, school books, and loads of Kraft Original Mac and Cheese for Cobin.  Carl finished off his stint on Charm with some vigorous cleaning and assistance with boat projects, then left for his African adventures. 

 

The show really was a coup for the kids.  My original plan was to have an audience consisting of my mom, Kay, and one or two loyal boats that would show up to support anything the kids did.  But, the stars aligned and there was nothing else planned for the day so I think we had 100% attendance from the World ARC fleet as well as some of the staff and local people who stopped by to see what the fuss was all about.  I had begged the sound guys from the live music performance to come back and set us up with microphones, which made all the difference in the show.

 

All the kids rose to the occasion and it was really fun to see them blossom on stage.  I’ll post some videos to the website – charmof5.com – now that I have decent internet for the foreseeable future.

 

After the show, we went on a safari to the Hluhluwe-Imfolozi park which I think is the oldest game reserve in Africa.  Thanks to the advice of Cayuse, a friend boat that did the World ARC last year, we had made reservations at the Gqoyeni Lodge (very fun to try to pronounce as the Zulus make a clocking sound for the q’s which involves flapping the tongue down briskly from the top of the mouth).  It’s a series of four little houses and a common area in the middle of the wilderness, overlooking a river. 

 

One of its selling points is that the animals come right to the river and you don’t have to go anywhere to see them.  But the region had record-setting rain the past two weeks, which meant there were mud puddles everywhere and the animals did not need to trek to the river.  We still saw them – just not in front of our sitting area.  Guy, the designated ranger for the lodge, took us on bush walks and a night drive and we learned all kinds of things about tracking, footprints, rhino toilets, songololos (cool centiped-y things), dung beetles, plants, birds, and a fun game/trick involving spitting antelope pellets.  

 

Just because we didn’t get quite enough of the African bush, we took a day trip through the beautiful countryside to a private reserve that is known for taking in a herd of rogue elephants several decades ago.  It’s called Thula Thula and we had an absolutely fabulous time driving around with the ranger who took the potholes and curves at speed, making a game drive more of a thrill experience than we had expected.  This had the added benefit of disrupting the wildlife so we got to see the herd animals (zebras, impalas, nyalas, etc) boinging off into the bushes rather than sedately staring at us while chewing as they did at our last wildlife experience.

 

Since it was primarily an elephant reserve, I thought an elephant sighting was a given.  What we were really there to see were the giraffes, my mother’s favorite animal.  We had seen two (I contend it was the same one twice) at the unpronounceable place but it only whetted my mom’s desire to see more.  We had heard a rumor that Thula Thula was a good place to see them but I swore the kids to secrecy in case it didn’t happen.  Tully said something about seeing giraffes (although technically she didn’t reveal anything) and my mom’s radar went up.  So she was primed and ready with her camera when we came upon the first of several herds of giraffes.  I was so elated that we could finally quit searching for them that I didn’t realize the drive was almost up and we still hadn’t seen any elephants.

 

At that point, our ranger/driver, Muzi, said that elephant sightings weren’t a guarantee and that he needed to have us back to the lodge in 45 minutes for lunch.  We told the kids to start thinking elephant-y thoughts and Cobin suggested we just try to remember things since elephants are known for that.  Unfortunately, everyone kept remembering giraffes and zebras so that’s what we kept seeing.

 

Muzi chattered a bit on his radio in Zulu and I imagined that he was asking if there were any sightings.  Nothing.  We went up big hills and down the other side.  We crossed ridges and splashed through puddles.  I started seeing elephant shapes everywhere.  Then, we crested a hill like all the others and Muzi said, “Elephants.”  And we saw three.  Then four, then five, then the entire herd of 29!  Muzi stopped the car, turned off the engine, and they gradually ambled over to us and walked right by, most of them within inches.  Several stopped and interacted with Muzi.  One seemed determined to put its trunk under the front (possibly to lift up the truck?) but Muzi kept talking to him by name and asking him to stop doing whatever he was doing.  He punctuated his requests with short bursts of the engine, occasionally putting it into gear to move the truck away from the pesty elephant.  

 

Muzi hastily moved us forward several feet when one elephant started coming towards us at a brisk pace.  He said she doesn’t like him and always tries to harass him so he just moves away.  One large elephant sent its trunk in to investigate on Marin’s side and snuffled her knee a bit.  The rest of us were very jealous but told Marin she had been blessed.  It was truly a fantastic experience and, of course, we have much of it on film!  We had so many up-close elephant interactions that I actually quit filming and, for once, just enjoyed the experience. 

 

The interesting story of Thula Thula and its history and founding are documented in books written by the founders.  Called The Elephant Whisperer, and An Elephant in My Kitchen, they are available via normal book-acquisition channels.  I will be reading them soon now that I have finally finished Nelson Mandela’s biography! 

 

We’ve had all kinds of other daily-life type experiences and some great interactions with the people in South Africa.  Driving around in a large van has afforded us the opportunity to pick up two different sets of pedestrians (not really hitchhikers), both of which have been great experiences.  Once we gave four men a ride through the rain (somehow they squeezed into a seat for one person) and another time we gave four ladies a ride up a long, hot hill.  Both times, they were incredibly grateful and appreciative – just what you would expect from hardworking people who rarely get a break.  The ladies in the van told us that when they were little, they used to wave to the white people in the cars and tell them (in Zulu), “Hello white people!!” and sometimes they would get candy.   Unfortunately, we didn’t bring any candy.

 

Tomorrow we plan to check out and head to Durban.  From there, we will fly to Victoria Falls and then return to Durban, see my mom and Kay to the airport for their return flight and then we will continue around the Cape of Good Hope to Cape Town.



Richards Bay_3959
Richards Bay_4093
Richards Bay

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