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.