Hippos on the Zambesei

Today we've flown to Zimbabwe where we'll experience the magic of Victoria Falls.  After a full day of travel, we finished the day with a boat ride on the Zambezi River. For almost two hours we cruised along the riverbank, passing swampy islands while watching Hippos at play, before enjoying a spectacular African sunset.  This is clearly a popular activity. Our boat was joined by a flotilla of others, each packed with tourists like ourselves. 

Pretoria

Today we explored two extremes of human history.  Our day started with a tour of Sterkfontein Caves , 60kms northeast of Johannesburg. The caves are famous for the discovery of early humanoid fossils found inside them. This includes “Mrs Ples”, a fossil skeleton at least 1.5 million years old and “Little Foot”, an almost complete Australopithecus skeleton dating back more than 3-million years.

Mum loved the caves.  They're huge with large spacious caverns.  We even saw an archaeologist examining the rock face and could see an active excavation site carefully mapped out in an orderly grid. A small museum at the entrance houses some excellent exhibits on early humanoids.  Its artifacts include some replica skulls cast from the original fossils found here.

We then made our way to Pretoria.  We spent almost two hours at the monolith Vortrekker Memorial standing on a hill overlooking the city. We also visited Church Square and looked inside the old Parliament Building before making our way up to Union Hill.  This is home to the nation's Administrative branch.  Outside in the gardens can be found a new, giant statue of the late Nelson Mandela.

Soweto

A quick photo essay of our day tour around the streets of Johannesburg.  We began the day at 8am and continued sampling the city's many faces until after 6pm. It was ten hours of the most extraordinary contrasts. We saw wealth and poverty in equal measure. History also came alive as we watched videos of riots and security forces shooting into crowds at the Apatheid Museum before later standing in the same location ourselves.

We drove past the city's wealthiest suburbs where the locals live hidden behind five-meter-high security walls crowned with deadly electric wires. We stopped in Soweto and visited the shanty town hut of its poorest residents. It was rather shocking to see inside one of these temporary structures. Its owner and six other people had lived in this humble two-room shack with its leaking corrugated iron roof since 1994.

We stepped inside the Constitutional Court to see where the world's most inclusive constitution is constantly debated and upheld. We drove through the rapidly rejuvenating suburbs of Downtown Johannesburg and, as noted earlier, delved deep into the roots of racial politics at the Apartheid Museum.

More details in the days ahead.

Dodging ghost crabs after dark

Mum and I have enjoyed the most extraordinary experience.  Our turtle safari struck gold last night. Less than 15 minutes after driving on to the beach at Sodwana Bay we stumbled across a Leatherback turtle laying eggs above the high tide mark. The animal was enormous.  Our guide estimated she was at least 2 metres from head to tail with a flipper span of a similar size.

We found the turtle just as she was extracting the last few scoops of sand from her nesting hole.  The hole itself is surprisingly deep - at least 80cms.  We then knelt behind her and watched as she laid a large clutch of perfectly round white eggs at its base.  Our guide was almost beside himself with joy. He hadn't seen such a large animal on the beach for quite some time.

As we watched the Leatherback covered the hole, then created a series of decoy "hole impressions" before slowly making her way back down the beach into the Indian Ocean.  Our guide was incredibly conscientious about the animal's welfare throughout the experience.  We were shown how to keep our torch lights away from the turtle's upper body and flash photography was forbidden until the animal had finished laying and covering its eggs.

The ghost crabs were a final highlight of our late night excursion.  The beach we drove on to was relatively narrow.  In places less than ten metres separated the receding tide from enormous coastal dunes and crumbling cliffs.  This narrow fringe of sand was brimming with thousands upon thousands of stark white crabs scurrying madly in the beam of our headlights.  The sight of these dazzling white crustaceans darting about was most unexpected.

Ghost crabs are incredible creatures. The largest crab is rarely more than a few centimetres wide. They hide from predators by burrowing themselves in the sand during daylight hours. Then, as darkness falls, they surface in their millions to scavenge for food. Despite their tiny size they're incredibly agile. Until now I'd never seen one beyond an occasional television image.

I'm still in awe of the entire experience. We both agree that it was well worth staying up to 2am. The turtle was so large and so solid it's hard to describe what we witnessed. It was honestly one of the most incredible natural events I've ever had the privilege to see. Mum was simply blown away and said afterwards it was one of the highlights of our entire trip.

Earlier in the day we'd taken our final safari drive in Africa.  We were rewarded with an extraordinary viewing of a large male lion watching over two equally impressive lionesses. Then, as the sun sank low over the African landscape, Mum and I toasted the success of our safari experience.  We're now off to Johannesburg to witness life in one of Africa's largest cities.

Out of Africa - our way

Our African safari is still delivering a menagerie of animal sightings. Since my last post we’ve added hippos and cheetahs to our list of successful photo opportunities. We’ve also watched a lion snacking on a dead giraffe carcass. This morning’s highlight was the dung beetles. They’re much larger than expected and are fascinating to watch as they roll dung into large balls with their hind legs.

It’s been amazing to see just how close we get to the animals. They’ve clearly become use to humans and seem generally unfazed by our presence. To date, only the hyenas and leopards seem nervy. We’ve spotted one hyena in the distance but have yet to see a leopard despite finding fresh tracks last night.

To date the only real disappointment has been the turtle spotting expedition. Two nights ago we drove 45 minutes to the coast to go searching for turtles. The weather was overcast but dry when we left Phinda. However, as we neared the coast torrential rain began falling and never let up. We waited for a break in the weather until our guide eventually decided it really wasn’t worth venturing onto the beach.

Incredibly, the rain soon vanished again as we returned inland. It seems that only the coast was inundated with rain. In fact, since arriving in Phinda we’ve enjoyed dry weather. Our first full day here started with the occasional light drizzle patch and that was about it. Any fears that the wet season would spoil things have proved unfounded. We’ve also had regular cloud cover so the intense Summer sun hasn’t been unpleasant. All in all it’s been ideal safari weather.

The safari team has agreed to take Mum and I back to the coast this evening for another attempt at spotting turtles. It’s going to be a very late night as low tide is about 1:00am. We’re only allowed on the beach two hours before and after low tides. We probably won’t get back to camp until close to 4:00am. Fortunately it’s our last night. Tomorrow our day is largely taken up by transferring from Phinda to Johannesburg. We arrive at our hotel around dinner time which should give us plenty of time to catch up on lost sleep