South African Safari

             Today marks the half waypoint of my time on Semester at Sea, and my physical location of being half way around the world on the map. I cannot believe how fast the time has gone, and after visiting only 4 ports, the next ports are going to fly by.

            We are now on are way to Asia, where we visit a different port at least twice a week, which is a refreshing change from being between 8-10 days between each port in the past.

            South Africa was an amazing experience…once we actually got to Capetown. We were delayed by a day because of the wind, and I was disappointed that I had to miss my wine tour as a result of this, but I was still able to do some informal wine tasting once I got to land. 

            The first day a couple of my friends and I headed to table mountain to hike it to the top. It was one of the most intense hikes I have ever done, as it was more rock climbing than hiking. On average it takes 3 hours to hike, but we had to get to the top before the “table cloth,” clouds covered so we did it in 1-hour. Intense. The view at was amazing, and to celebrate our arrival at the top, we popped a bottle of champagne.  

Top of Cable Mountain. Celebrating 

            The second day in Capetown I headed to Kruger National Park, one of the most famous parks in the world, for a three day Safari.  The first day we got up at 4:30am, because that is the best time to see the “Big 5.” The “Big 5,” are the 5 most dangerous animals in the park; the Elephant, Lion, Rhino, Water Buffalo, and the Leopard. I was able to see 4/5, but spotting Leopards is hard because they hide in trees, and there are only 100 in the whole park. The last day of my Safari we went to a place to ride elephants. The elephants were all trained and could respond to over 100 commands, and could identify over 10 people. It was the coolest experience. The trainer would ask the elephant to talk and he would raise his trunk, and then after he completes the command, they get a treat. The trainer threw a hat on the ground and asked him to pick it up and hand it to a guy named “John,” and he knew exactly who to hand it too. I was lucky enough to ride “Timba,” the biggest elephant weighing 6 tones, that’s over 13,000 pounds! The Safari was a blast.

Lions, Kruger Park

            The last day I went on an “Operation Hunger,” trip and visited a local soup kitchen in a township. We went in the morning and many of the local moms of the village were already gathered around when we got there. Once we arrived, we weighed all the kids to compare their weight to the average and record it as a z score. The scale shows that if a child is above 0 they are over fed, and below they are under, up to 3 points each way. Most of the kids were -3, which means that the child needed to seek medical attention immediately. It was a heartbreaking but informative experience.

 Next stop. Mauritius.