Honeymoon Recap
Long overdue but here goes...
Our honeymoon was so incredibly fantastic and memorable I don't regret for one second the fact that we paid through our noses for it and that it cost like half of the rest of the wedding. I don't think anything could have topped this trip. I mean, Thailand would have been cool but definitely not as unique, IMO.
There were only 2 negative aspects to the whole trip -- the 24 HOURS it took us to get there, plus the annoying hotel director in Mozambique (more on that later). But basically I CANNOT WAIT to go back. I've always said that you should honeymoon in a place that you will want to go back for for a 10 year anniversary, but I can't wait that long! Maybe we'll go back for our 5 year...
Sunday, April 23, 2006 and Monday, April 24, 2006:
We woke up and frantically packed up our backpacks. Given the debacle of dinner the previous evening, I simply wasn't in shape to pack up when we got home, so we left it to the morning. Normally I get shafted with packing both our bags since C. putzes around forever and just doesn't put stuff into the bag, but this time he had no choice. I didn't have time to pack his, so it was either do it himself or go without stuff. Originally we were supposed to be ready to leave the house by 11 to go to his mom's to drop off the cats, but since that clearly was not going to happen, we had his mom come down to Milan to take us to the airport then to pick up our cats and take them to her house for the 2 weeks we were gone. This was actually great bc it meant we didn't have to rush and could get all the other stuff done that we had to (like pay a bill at the post office, send a wire transfer to the photographers, etc). We left for the airport at like 2 for our 3:15 flight which was a record for us since we are normally running for the plane. We ended up meeting up with Cindy at the airport. His mom tried to force feed us like 5 slices of cake (this is the women who constantly says she eats nothing yet cannot manage to lose weight) while we were waiting for our planes, then we were finally able to leave her to go through security. Yay!
The flights were pretty uneventful. It would have been nice to get the upgrade to business but oh well. All our flights were packed! I never knew the London-Johanessburg flight was that popular. The food was actually pretty decent and I even took pictures for that airline food website :p. When we landed in Jo'burg we got screwed over royally by two porters who insisted on taking our bags "as part of airport services" with the excuse that their was a detour to domestic departures. Then they asked us for 10 euro each! OK that is not totally true... basically I had 3 $1 bills, a handful of $20s and the rest in $50s and $100s (in addition to large billed euros). So I tried to give them $2 figuring $1 per bag... I mean, in the US it's like $2-3 per bag so I figured in Africa $1 per bag was fine. They look at the USD and are like "mininum is 10 bc of the commission when exchanging". So at this point we hadn't slept in like 36 hours and didn't think to ask "10 what?" and basically handed them 20 euro! When we went to check in we asked what the normal porter fee was and the agent told us max 10 RAND. That's like oh... $1.50? So that was an expensive lesson well-learnt. I felt no qualms being downright rude with porters after that! Anyway we checked in for our flight to Kruger Mpumalanga which is the closes major airport to Kruger National Park. This was our plane:
And this is the airport:
The entire thing is made of local eucalyptus trees which is supposedly an extremely hard wood. Euclayptus trees are one of the local industries for the area. They are used for building and paper.
When we got out of "baggage claim" (the entire airport is like 2 rooms), we met up with our driver who informed us that the drive would take us 2 hours and 45 minutes, then she basically did not say anything for the entire drive which was fine bc we fell asleep after a while anwyay.
Kruger National Park is the size of Italy more or less. It's also gated... so it's like a gigantic zoo almost. Shame to say it, but that's just how it is. They can protect the animals better this way. That said, the park being so large, there are hundreds of gates. The gate to Sabi Sands, which is the private game reserve of Kruger, just happens to be that far away from the airport.
So why is it a "private game reserve"? Basically, once upon a time, Sabi Sands was gated off from Kruger. They allowed off-road driving and the animals got used to the presence of cars near them. The gate around Sabi Sands no longer exists, but the animals, being territorial creatures, have stuck to the areas where they were born and are still used to cars coming extremely close to them. They will not attack a car (or anything in it) but they will attack you if you get out of the car (so you just never do). You cannot go off-roading in the rest of Kruger as the animals there are not used to it and they WILL attack. So, basically, if any of you are going to go on safari in Kruger, go to the Sabi Sands area as you can get closer to the animals.
This is the first thing we saw upon entering the gate:
Then this... a little bit more African:
In hindsight, I don't know why he was alone. I never saw impalas alone other than this one time.
When we got to the Chitwa Chitwa Game Lodge the first thing that I noticed was that we were at the GAME lodge and not the SAFARI lodge, where we were supposed to be. So I asked if there was a mistake and they said they closed the safari lodge and that we were moved here. Supposedly the game lodge was nicer than the safari lodge but I have no idea since I never saw the safari lodge. Anyway, by this point we really just wanted to take a nap, but no... we had to go over the rules with Moses (a ranger) who promptly told us that we would be woken up at 5:30AM everyday, go to the breakfast area to have coffee/tea and biscuits/cake, then leave for a morning safari at 6AM. We would return from morning safari around 8:30 AM then have breakfast, then be left on our own to rest until 1:30PM when they would beat drums to let us know that it was lunch time. After lunch you could rest until 3PM at which time everyone was to gather for cake and coffee/tea, after which you would leave for your evening safari. At this point I asked him what if we did not want the cake and coffee/tea and his response was "You WILL eat the cake." So OK... we ate the cake... Evening safari lasted until 8PM upon which you would be returned directly to your room, guided by your tracker or your ranger. Since it is dark by 6PM there you cannot ever walk alone in the camp bc animals can and do roam the camp. At 8:30 your ranger or your tracker come to collect you for drinks in the lounge, followed by dinner. After dinner you were returned to your rooms for the evening.
After the low down, we were forced to eat lunch and it was only then that we were allowed to go to our room to nap. Let me tell you... we passed out as soon as we got there. This was our room:
The door was behind the bed. It was actually pretty interesting how they set up the room (actually it was a free-standing bungalow). They made a small entry-way and put up a half wall between the door and the bed so that anyone entering the room would not be able to actually see into the room.
This was the view from the bed:
At 3PM we were awoken by more drums for the infamous cake and tea/coffee and evening safari. Naive as we were, we just brought something long sleeved with us. No jackets or anything... BIG MISTAKE! Safari is f-ing FREEZING once the sun goes down. I ended up getting tracheitis (ie. nasty swollen trachea with a hacking cough) and had to buy myself a fleece scarf for the next 4 days. Anyway that first night was the best safari out of all of them IMO. We were with one other couple and one old guy who was packing some VERY serious camera equipment. We saw:
Giraffe: (hmmm...I don't seem to have the pics on photobucket. Oh well.)
A venemous snake that had been hit by a car and was only waiting to be picked up by some bird for dinner:
More Impala (that's a termite mound next to it):
Short-Tailed Eagle:
Elephant: (sorry no good pics from the first night)
Kudu:
Leopards:
Apparently LJ won't take the HTML code to embed a video so here's the link:
http://s26.photobucket.com/albums/c142/tlew12778/Africa/?action=view¤t=090-Mondayeveningsafari-youngfemale.flv
Lions: (sorry no good pics from the first night... it was already dark and they were on the hunt so you cannot use flashes or shine lights on them too much)
When we got back to our room the first thing we wanted to do was just defrost in the shower. Then it was time for dinner. Our ranger, Patrick, would come to get us at 8PM every night and bring us to the lounge for drinks. Dinner that first night was Snouk and beef. Snouk is a big African fish... very mild... sort of like sea bass.
Tuesday, April 25, 2006:
Patrick woke us up at 5:30. We got up, got dressed and somehow, by the time we got outside, everyone was waiting in the cars already! So no coffee for us. That morning we saw:
Milliepede:
Giraffe:
Wildebeast:
Yellow-Tailed Hornbill (aka: Zazu from the Lion King): (sorry, the photo is not up on photobucket)
Dwarf Mongoose: (the smalles mongoose in all of Africa... maybe the entire world, I forget)
Lilac-Breasted Roller: (bad pic... you'll see a better one later)
Male Leopard Prints:
Water Buck:
Hippo:
Lion Pride eating Wildebeast:
Video:
http://s26.photobucket.com/albums/c142/tlew12778/Africa/?action=view¤t=175-Tuesdaymorningsafari-lionpridew.flv
Crested Franklin: (they also call these road runners bc although they can fly, they don't like to)
More Leopards:
More Giraffe: (sorry no pics on photobucket)
Crocodile:
Back at the lodge, they served some sort of Impala pot pie for lunch. Impala tastes like beef. If they hadn't told me it was Impala, I would have thought it was beef.
On our evening safari we saw:
More elephants:
Lions:
More leopards (actually these are the same leopards as the previous night... we saw this mother and her female young probably 7-8 times at least):
Rhinos: (The pics were really bad so I didn't upload them)
Chameleon: (I have no idea how our tracker saw this thing... we were driving pretty quickly and suddenly we short stopped bc he saw this thing in the tree)
And just for reference, this was our tracker Noel (left) and our ranger Patrick (right). They were following some tracks:
Time to split up this post!
Our honeymoon was so incredibly fantastic and memorable I don't regret for one second the fact that we paid through our noses for it and that it cost like half of the rest of the wedding. I don't think anything could have topped this trip. I mean, Thailand would have been cool but definitely not as unique, IMO.
There were only 2 negative aspects to the whole trip -- the 24 HOURS it took us to get there, plus the annoying hotel director in Mozambique (more on that later). But basically I CANNOT WAIT to go back. I've always said that you should honeymoon in a place that you will want to go back for for a 10 year anniversary, but I can't wait that long! Maybe we'll go back for our 5 year...
Sunday, April 23, 2006 and Monday, April 24, 2006:
We woke up and frantically packed up our backpacks. Given the debacle of dinner the previous evening, I simply wasn't in shape to pack up when we got home, so we left it to the morning. Normally I get shafted with packing both our bags since C. putzes around forever and just doesn't put stuff into the bag, but this time he had no choice. I didn't have time to pack his, so it was either do it himself or go without stuff. Originally we were supposed to be ready to leave the house by 11 to go to his mom's to drop off the cats, but since that clearly was not going to happen, we had his mom come down to Milan to take us to the airport then to pick up our cats and take them to her house for the 2 weeks we were gone. This was actually great bc it meant we didn't have to rush and could get all the other stuff done that we had to (like pay a bill at the post office, send a wire transfer to the photographers, etc). We left for the airport at like 2 for our 3:15 flight which was a record for us since we are normally running for the plane. We ended up meeting up with Cindy at the airport. His mom tried to force feed us like 5 slices of cake (this is the women who constantly says she eats nothing yet cannot manage to lose weight) while we were waiting for our planes, then we were finally able to leave her to go through security. Yay!
The flights were pretty uneventful. It would have been nice to get the upgrade to business but oh well. All our flights were packed! I never knew the London-Johanessburg flight was that popular. The food was actually pretty decent and I even took pictures for that airline food website :p. When we landed in Jo'burg we got screwed over royally by two porters who insisted on taking our bags "as part of airport services" with the excuse that their was a detour to domestic departures. Then they asked us for 10 euro each! OK that is not totally true... basically I had 3 $1 bills, a handful of $20s and the rest in $50s and $100s (in addition to large billed euros). So I tried to give them $2 figuring $1 per bag... I mean, in the US it's like $2-3 per bag so I figured in Africa $1 per bag was fine. They look at the USD and are like "mininum is 10 bc of the commission when exchanging". So at this point we hadn't slept in like 36 hours and didn't think to ask "10 what?" and basically handed them 20 euro! When we went to check in we asked what the normal porter fee was and the agent told us max 10 RAND. That's like oh... $1.50? So that was an expensive lesson well-learnt. I felt no qualms being downright rude with porters after that! Anyway we checked in for our flight to Kruger Mpumalanga which is the closes major airport to Kruger National Park. This was our plane:
And this is the airport:
The entire thing is made of local eucalyptus trees which is supposedly an extremely hard wood. Euclayptus trees are one of the local industries for the area. They are used for building and paper.
When we got out of "baggage claim" (the entire airport is like 2 rooms), we met up with our driver who informed us that the drive would take us 2 hours and 45 minutes, then she basically did not say anything for the entire drive which was fine bc we fell asleep after a while anwyay.
Kruger National Park is the size of Italy more or less. It's also gated... so it's like a gigantic zoo almost. Shame to say it, but that's just how it is. They can protect the animals better this way. That said, the park being so large, there are hundreds of gates. The gate to Sabi Sands, which is the private game reserve of Kruger, just happens to be that far away from the airport.
So why is it a "private game reserve"? Basically, once upon a time, Sabi Sands was gated off from Kruger. They allowed off-road driving and the animals got used to the presence of cars near them. The gate around Sabi Sands no longer exists, but the animals, being territorial creatures, have stuck to the areas where they were born and are still used to cars coming extremely close to them. They will not attack a car (or anything in it) but they will attack you if you get out of the car (so you just never do). You cannot go off-roading in the rest of Kruger as the animals there are not used to it and they WILL attack. So, basically, if any of you are going to go on safari in Kruger, go to the Sabi Sands area as you can get closer to the animals.
This is the first thing we saw upon entering the gate:
Then this... a little bit more African:
In hindsight, I don't know why he was alone. I never saw impalas alone other than this one time.
When we got to the Chitwa Chitwa Game Lodge the first thing that I noticed was that we were at the GAME lodge and not the SAFARI lodge, where we were supposed to be. So I asked if there was a mistake and they said they closed the safari lodge and that we were moved here. Supposedly the game lodge was nicer than the safari lodge but I have no idea since I never saw the safari lodge. Anyway, by this point we really just wanted to take a nap, but no... we had to go over the rules with Moses (a ranger) who promptly told us that we would be woken up at 5:30AM everyday, go to the breakfast area to have coffee/tea and biscuits/cake, then leave for a morning safari at 6AM. We would return from morning safari around 8:30 AM then have breakfast, then be left on our own to rest until 1:30PM when they would beat drums to let us know that it was lunch time. After lunch you could rest until 3PM at which time everyone was to gather for cake and coffee/tea, after which you would leave for your evening safari. At this point I asked him what if we did not want the cake and coffee/tea and his response was "You WILL eat the cake." So OK... we ate the cake... Evening safari lasted until 8PM upon which you would be returned directly to your room, guided by your tracker or your ranger. Since it is dark by 6PM there you cannot ever walk alone in the camp bc animals can and do roam the camp. At 8:30 your ranger or your tracker come to collect you for drinks in the lounge, followed by dinner. After dinner you were returned to your rooms for the evening.
After the low down, we were forced to eat lunch and it was only then that we were allowed to go to our room to nap. Let me tell you... we passed out as soon as we got there. This was our room:
The door was behind the bed. It was actually pretty interesting how they set up the room (actually it was a free-standing bungalow). They made a small entry-way and put up a half wall between the door and the bed so that anyone entering the room would not be able to actually see into the room.
This was the view from the bed:
At 3PM we were awoken by more drums for the infamous cake and tea/coffee and evening safari. Naive as we were, we just brought something long sleeved with us. No jackets or anything... BIG MISTAKE! Safari is f-ing FREEZING once the sun goes down. I ended up getting tracheitis (ie. nasty swollen trachea with a hacking cough) and had to buy myself a fleece scarf for the next 4 days. Anyway that first night was the best safari out of all of them IMO. We were with one other couple and one old guy who was packing some VERY serious camera equipment. We saw:
Giraffe: (hmmm...I don't seem to have the pics on photobucket. Oh well.)
A venemous snake that had been hit by a car and was only waiting to be picked up by some bird for dinner:
More Impala (that's a termite mound next to it):
Short-Tailed Eagle:
Elephant: (sorry no good pics from the first night)
Kudu:
Leopards:
Apparently LJ won't take the HTML code to embed a video so here's the link:
http://s26.photobucket.com/albums/c142/tlew12778/Africa/?action=view¤t=090-Mondayeveningsafari-youngfemale.flv
Lions: (sorry no good pics from the first night... it was already dark and they were on the hunt so you cannot use flashes or shine lights on them too much)
When we got back to our room the first thing we wanted to do was just defrost in the shower. Then it was time for dinner. Our ranger, Patrick, would come to get us at 8PM every night and bring us to the lounge for drinks. Dinner that first night was Snouk and beef. Snouk is a big African fish... very mild... sort of like sea bass.
Tuesday, April 25, 2006:
Patrick woke us up at 5:30. We got up, got dressed and somehow, by the time we got outside, everyone was waiting in the cars already! So no coffee for us. That morning we saw:
Milliepede:
Giraffe:
Wildebeast:
Yellow-Tailed Hornbill (aka: Zazu from the Lion King): (sorry, the photo is not up on photobucket)
Dwarf Mongoose: (the smalles mongoose in all of Africa... maybe the entire world, I forget)
Lilac-Breasted Roller: (bad pic... you'll see a better one later)
Male Leopard Prints:
Water Buck:
Hippo:
Lion Pride eating Wildebeast:
Video:
http://s26.photobucket.com/albums/c142/tlew12778/Africa/?action=view¤t=175-Tuesdaymorningsafari-lionpridew.flv
Crested Franklin: (they also call these road runners bc although they can fly, they don't like to)
More Leopards:
More Giraffe: (sorry no pics on photobucket)
Crocodile:
Back at the lodge, they served some sort of Impala pot pie for lunch. Impala tastes like beef. If they hadn't told me it was Impala, I would have thought it was beef.
On our evening safari we saw:
More elephants:
Lions:
More leopards (actually these are the same leopards as the previous night... we saw this mother and her female young probably 7-8 times at least):
Rhinos: (The pics were really bad so I didn't upload them)
Chameleon: (I have no idea how our tracker saw this thing... we were driving pretty quickly and suddenly we short stopped bc he saw this thing in the tree)
And just for reference, this was our tracker Noel (left) and our ranger Patrick (right). They were following some tracks:
Time to split up this post!