Day of the Cat: Okavango Delta

The Okavango is truly a special place, a major river delta that spills into a web of inland waterways, ponds, and seasonal lakes.  More on our trip there in another post, but this one is about a very special day, a day of great cat sightings.

It started with stumbling upon this cheetah on a morning game drive..

He had clearly had a "kill" just a day or so ago, as his stomach was fairly distended.

We watched and followed him across a "pan" (a flat grassland) as he marked his territory by spraying succeeding trees. 

And we saw home the later that day, still quite satisfied and lollying about like a tabby. 

That same morning, we came upon this trio of lions, likewise satiated and lying next to a small lagoon.  It was a mother (on the left) her son and daughter.  They were quite relaxed, though mom constantly eyed the water on the lookout for crocodiles. 

As we sat in our truck watching these great cats, first momma got up and walked right by the back of our truck!  Our guides seemed quite calm about it, so we tried to be, too!

Then her son did the same ... it was hard to just sit there as he walked by not six feet away. 

And then the coup.  Our guide, TJ, said he saw leopard tracks near our camp, so one was known to be in the area.  After seeming the cheetah and lions, we had a nice sundown drive and, as we drove back to camp, heard that another guide had found the leopard hiding inn thick brush.  We were able to just see it for a split second in the truck's spotlight ... see the spots?  You've got to believe! 

Proof was the next day when we returned to the same area and found the leaopard's kill - a reedbuck - half eaten and hanging in a tree (to protect it from hyenas). 

It as a VERY exciting day.

Cape Town

Cape Town is iconic, in many ways.  It's the cosmopolitan seaside city of South Africa, modern, chic, bustling.  It's the place - well, Robben Island, anyway, just outside the harbor - where Mandela spent years imprisoned and was released, which began the transition to democracy.  It's the site of the origins of the European colonization of Southern Africa, where the Portuguese set up a "refreshment" station in the 1600s for ships the carried on trade between Europe and Asia.

For us, Cape Town was a four-day sprint of a visit.  We arrived from the wine region and walked first down to the picturesque, if rather touristy, waterfront.

We took a short sail around the harbor to get a good look at the city and its stunning back drop: from left to right, Devils Peak, Table Mountain, Signal Hill (cannon goes off every day at exactly noon), and Lion's Head.

We spent a day on a tour to Cape Peninsula, the Cape of Good Hope, first "discovered" by the Portuguese.  It's an impressive rock ...

... with an impressive ecology.  In fact, the Cape and Table Mountain environments form one of the six floral kingdoms of our planet - and its smallest.

We visited a colony of Cape Fir seals. 

And a breeding colony of African penguins, cute little guys.  In the photo below, they're all facing one way because the strong winds would otherwise sandblast their eyes, as it did ours!

These guys look kind of dejected, don't they?  Breeding season blues, perhaps.

Our tour included some biking (fun, but remember the gale-force winds!)... 

During which we saw some awesome coastline. 

And we got to hike to the Cape, itself

Back in the city, we took a cable car up to the top of Table Mountain.  It's a very touristy thing to do, we waited in a long line to go up, but nonetheless, the views are fantastic.

The thing is, when it gets too windy - and it was VERY windy our whole time in Cape Town - they close the cable car.  Sure enough, after we had waited in that line, taken the cable car up, and walked around a bit, the very loud alarm sounded announcing things were closing down due to winds, and we got to wait in another long line to get down.  Fun times!

The Eastern Cape to the Wine Country

The Eastern Cape, whose coastline forms much of the Garden Route, is amazingly varied in topography, geology, and ecology.  We left Storms River and the lush forests of Tsitsikamma National Park (where we hiked along its rocky shores to a waterfall and swimming hole (see previous "Swimming Holes" post)), and drove west into increasingly dry farmland, always with a spine of rugged mountains to the north.

The mountains form a coastal barrier on whose north side is the Great Karoo, the vast country's interior desert.  We stayed one night in Swellendam at a B&B that, thankfully, had a swimming pool. We arrived in 95 degree heat, so it took us almost no time to plunge!  

For us, the main attraction of the area was Bontebok National Park, a small, arid expanse with a stunning antelope as its namesake.  They were easy to spot and relatively unperturbed by humans.

From there, we drove down into the peninsula whose terminus is Cape Agulhas. Contrary to popular understanding, it is Cape Agulhas, not the Cape of Good Hope (to be discussed in a future post), that is the southern most point of Africa and the claimed meeting of the Indian and Atlantic Oceans.  As one local told us later, the only way to know if you're at the great oceanic collision is if you go out in a boat, put your feet in the water on either side and, if one side is appreciably warmer (Indian) than the other side (Atlantic), you know you're there! 

Anyway, advised that main attraction of Cape Agulhas was the idea of it, not its beauty, and because we had a long ride ahead of us, we cut across the peninsula north of the cape.  It was an odd terrain, grazing land and hay fields clearly planted on sand dunes; couldn't have been more than a few inches of arable land for seeds to germinate.  But farming was happening somehow. 

Our destination was Franschoek ("French quarter," as it was the French Hugonots who established the area's wine industry back in the last 1600s), part of the large wine region east of Cape Town. We approached the Franschoek valley from a beautiful mountain pass.

Franschoek, itself, is a Napa or Sonoma-like town, lots of wine tourists and wealth, with the workers housed in the outskirts.  High-end restaurants, art galleries, and, of course, tasting rooms.  But first we had to find our AirB&B, which turned out to be at the far end of a crappy road nestled in a steep mountain ravine. It was a chiropractic adjustment-induced drive at 5-10 km per hour.  

But the pain was worth it.  Oh my, the views of the mountains behind and the valley below. 

  

And great hosts!  Estelle and Pieter were wonderful, engaging, and generous.  Here we spent an early evening drinking some wine and talking; Kate is showing her art work and explaining the various media she uses. Pieter, a retired university and corporate economist, was especially intrigued. 

Of course, we were in Franshhoek to task wine, and we did for much of one day.  We visited two wineries, Boschendal and Babylonstoren ("tower of Babel" founded by Dutch settlers), both of which were very large estates with restaurants, gardens, lots of things to occupy a family for most of a day.  And some great shiraz s, pinotages, and even a drinkable Chardonnay. 

Check out the huge beanbags for lounging in the winery's garden.

Our mountain home also gave us lots of bird sightings, including this brilliant Southern double-collared sunbird.

Swimming holes

We've enjoyed swimming holes on a number of our travels - Australia, Fiji, among others - something basic, pristine, raw about them.  During our stay in Storms River (near the beginning of the Garden Routh, we got to plunge twice.  The second one was at the end of 6km hike along a very rugged coastline.

Our AirBnB host, Robert, told us it was quite rocky ("the park rangers hate this hike because of all the injuries") and gave us some stout hiking sticks to take along.  The first half hour or so seemed rather tame - your normal Pacific Nortwest trail of roots and scattered rocks, but nothing too awful. Both Kate and I thought about ditching the poles.

Then things got interesting...

Most of the rest of the hike was like this; constant calculations about which rock to step on, which to avoid, which series of rocks led in the right direction, where to place that pole to provide decent assurance against a broken ankle.  All the while, of course, twenty-something's passed us, hopping

 along like effing gazelles!

We were exhausted and weak-kneed when we arrived at the waterfall, our destination.  Gorgeous! 

And jumping into the cool waters was SO refreshing.  At least momentarily, anyway, as we still had to retrace our painstaking steps. Note the copper color of the water - from the roots and decaying leaves.  The water itself is very clean and drinkable.

That was the second swimming hole Robert sent us to; the first was this one on a small river, also quite enjoyable.  

Our AirBnB, hosted by Robert, Carmen, and little George (Robert and Carmen met in Florida where they were both working cruise ships), was a very nice oasis.  We work up each morning to Storm Mountain and the songs of all sorts of birds, which - along with some good coffee - was a great antidote to the ills of the world.

New Species Found!

We've discovered a new species of songbird here in Storms River in the Tsitsikama national reserve.  It must have just evolved in response to certain political events, as it's call sounds exactly like "weeeak charac'cter."  So, we've dubbed it the Trump Bird!

(Formerly known at the Sombre Greenbul)

River Ride

While staying in St. Lucia on the North Coast, we took a classic, two-hour boat ride into the iSimangaliso wetlands (whose list of rules includes "Never try to push elephants off the road").  It was billed as a "hippo" tour, and it didn't disappoint.  Hippos galore. Hippos everywhere. Kinda of like those "African" rides at Disneyland.

They seemed to tolerate us, though sometimes only barely, like this gal.

We checked in on several families - usually meaning a female and a few young, like the pair below.  The males tend to be out fighting for dominance - a many-species malady.  Alpha males tend to get displaced about every 5 years, a good habit to keep the gene pool diverse.

Patience sometimes grew short, and we got a few of these toothy displays; basically "I've got bigger teeth than you do, so shove off!"

But the boat trip also gave us good views of birds, like this majestic African fish-eagle.

And this Yellow weaver protecting (or maybe admiring) is workmanship.

And a whole tree full of these Yellow-billed kites.

And, of course, a crocodile lying on the bank, luring you in with those ever-hungry, ancient eyes.

Humans, Hubris, and Mother Nature

Four days ago, we drove down from the Drakenburg mountains to the "North Coast," that is, northeast of Durban, to St. Lucia.  We passed endless fields of sugar cane and tree farms as far as the eye can see, pines and eucalyptus.  The former has been cultivated for a long time here, as the first South Asia Indians came as indentured servants to work in the cane fields.  Trees are a relatively new crop, since the early 1950s we were told.  

European settlers planted the fast-growing trees as cash crops, but pines and eucalyptus suck up huge amounts of ground water.  The result was that the water level of Catalina Lake (named for an English seaplane that crashed in this brackish water), a critical part of the local estuary system, dropped dramatically.  To compensate, the then-aparthied government dredged the mouth of the estuary to let more seawater in, which didn't do the indigenous plants and animals any good. At the same time, the Europeans tried to raise cattle in the grasslands, but it was too hot, too dry, and the cattle all died.

With the end of apartheid, the new Mandela government set out to right the ecological inbalance by cutting down as many of the non-native trees as they could.  The result was South Africa's first World Heritage Ecological site, a now-healthy reserve comprising 5 distinct ecosystems, from the marine of the Indian Ocean to the grasslands that support hundreds of mammals, birds, even 80 species of dragonfly.  Policy matters, and as we know and are going to experience under he-that-shall-remain-unnamed, bad policy destroys.

We explored the area as much as time and heat would allow (it hit 104 yesterday).  Yesterday we spend the day on a self-driving safari in Hluhluwe-iMfomosi Reserve at whose entrance stood this memorial.

Quite an amazing memorial, with etchings of the main tenets of the world's major religions (although the claim that Judaism's is  "I am that I am" would no-doubt  be fodder for Talmudic scholars for a long time) and pleas for the supremacy of love.  Most impressive was the plaque below, a memorial not to fallen war heroes, but to those who died for conservation. Imagine that on US soil!

 

We saw a lot, especially from a blind above a waterhole.  When we arrived, a few other humans were there and just this lazing black rhino.

 

Then the Cape buffalo came (and all the humans left). 

 

Then a family of giraffes came and drank deeply.

 And of course, with water, lots of bird activity, including Blue-cheeked bee-eaters skimming the pool...

 

And this Mocking chat, who seemed as curious of us as we of him.