We planned to get up early and make a break for Windhoek(Namibia) to catch our flight to Jo’burg(So. Africa) to catch a connecting flight to Durban(So. Africa).  We read in the little manual that the was left in our room to check out the night before if we were paying by credit card.  So, we figured we would try.  The night before we wanted to leave, we went to the reception desk and said we wanted to settle our bill before checkout.  They said it wouldn’t be a problem, and that we could do it when we checked out.  Well, we got up early the next day and tried to check out.  They couldn’t get the card to run, not that it was declined or anything, ‘it just didnt work’.  Of course, they tried for a half hour before we finally had to bail, otherwise we would miss our flight out.  They took an imprint, and we got out of there as fast as we could.  Luckily, we made it on all our flights and made it to Durban as planned.


 We ‘hired’ another car(which means rented another car) and drove into Durban for the night.  Driving in Durban was pretty crazy for me, I hadnt had that much experience driving in serious traffic on that side of the road, and I got a good dose of it coming in from the airport.  Traffic is a strange combination of people driving too slow, and people driving aggressively.  Overall, I think I manage to do pretty well, I didn’t hit anyone or thing, and we got where we needed to go.  Jane is quite the navigator.  We stayed at a cute little Bed and Breakfast called Chelsea Villa Guest house.  It was owned and run by a friendly gentleman named Neville, who really answered all of our questions we had about the area.

 We were off the next day to drive up the coast to Zulu Nyala, the safari that we had bought that had brought us to Africa in the first place.  Its located roughly 3 hours north of Durban, and we just took a major highway to get up there.  An interesting driving factoid here is the use of 2 lane roads with large shoulders.  These two lane highways quickly become 4 when slow cars move to the left shoulder and allow faster moving cars to pass.  Once the fast moving car has passed, it flashes its hazards as a thank you, and the car behind flashes its lights to say you’re welcome.  Seems like a lot of coordination that you wouldn’t see back in the states.  Then again, this is something I just learned through observation, but it seems to hold up to my guess.

 We made it up to Zulu Nyala, which is a private game reserve with lodge. The name consists of the Zulu tribe and a cousin to the Kudu the Nyala, which is just a long haired Kudu(looks like a striped deer).  We missed the evening game drive, but made it to dinner and met the people who would be in our safari group.   Everyone seemed fun and like a good set of people.  It always sucks when you get a set of people that you just dont get along with.  After feasting on a buffet of various food for dinner, we headed back to our room, to find that it was infested with mosquitoes.  I hate mosquitoes, and they seem to love me…. or at least the taste of me.  The next several days would consist of a raging battle between myself and them.  The end tally after the swatting and bug bombing would be over 40 mosquitoes dead and Jane and I bit over 20 times.  Im glad we are taking our Malaria medicine even though its a pretty low risk area.

 The reserve has 4 rhinos, 3 elephants, a couple cheatahs, a pod/herd(depending if they were in or out of water) of hippos, a bunch of giraffes, zebra, and other various antelope.  We pretty much saw everything that they had in 1-2 days of ‘game drives’, and Jane and I had already spoiled ourselves by going to Etosha.  The safari at Zulu Nyala just didn’t compare to our experience up in Etosha.  Our guide was named Peace, and he was very friendly.  I don’t envy his job of constantly having to try to spot game, and keep the vehicle out of the big ruts that were on the roads.  It was just nice that I didn’t have to drive anymore, although I experience getting smacked in the face by a large beetle while riding in the open car.  No one told me that I had black bug guts all over my face for the rest of the game drive.

Our guide Peace, holding up buffalo skull.

Cape Buffalo

2 Rhinos relaxing in the mud.

Baby elephant.

 

We tried our best not to be constantly mentioning how we liked our time in Etosha so much more.  Im sure we probably gave off that impression more than we should have.  If we had come and only done the Zulu Nyala safari, we probably wouldn’t have known any differently.  After two days of game drives, we decided we had seen all the animals and that it was time to head down to a nearby place called St Lucia with another couple on Safari with us named Larry and Ronna from Florida.  We navigated our way down to the nearby St. Lucia estuary and spotted a ton of crocodiles and hippos swimming in the estuary.  We then headed to the nearby beach on foot and everyone but myself enjoyed standing in the Indian Ocean.  The pictures I had taken of the hippos weren’t all that satisfactory to me, so we decided that we would call it early on Zulu Nyala and start heading south to Durban early.  We stopped in St. Lucia again, and did a boat tour to try to get some better pictures.

Crocodile resting on shore.

Mamma and baby hippo playing.