Day One in Intibane

I lost ten years off my life last night, no joke. Not only is there a window at my head that lets light shine in from the lit path outside, the wind raged all night causing branches to constantly scrape against the tin roof of our cabin. Once again I awoke around 5:00am and dozed for another hour and a half before everyone started to get up. Originally, I had decided to stick it out one more day and avoid the disgusting shower, but this morning when I woke up I was too greasy not to be embarrassed. To my surprise the freezing cold shower helped me snap out of my zombie like trance, and to improve my mood even more a herd of wildebeest took a stroll past our windows this morning. At 7:30am, dressed in my finest safari clothes and hiking boots, I made my way to the main lodge for breakfast. This turned out to be a complete letdown. Only two varieties of toast and...well that was it, there wasn’t even any jam. Our group of 14 (12 girls and 2 guys) was split into two groups (A and B) and we headed out in the Safari Ranger while the other group attended a bush training lecture. For the next three hours we traversed the reserve to spot wildlife, take pictures, and become accustom to the terrain.

Pictures are worth a thousand words, but in this case even the Canon Rebel couldn’t come close to capturing the extraordinary environment. I also realized that you can never appreciate African wildlife until it is actually in the wild. Sure, you can go to the zoo and see all these animals up close, but when you pull up near a small herd of zebra on the trail and they show genuine curiosity in your presence the experience in unbeatable. We saw seven species today including giraffe, zebra, antelope, warthogs, red duikes, impala, and more wildebeests.

After we returned from our amazing outing we had some down time to have lunch (consisting of last nights leftovers...). Before our group lecture began I was on the phone with Vodacom trying to work out the problems with my dongle. Without it functioning properly I wouldn’t be able to access the internet, which explains the delayed blogs. As it turns out customer care in S.A is just as much a pain in the ass as in Canada! An hour later the problem still wasn’t fixed so I had to wait until later to call back.

Our group headed to our designated classroom for our lecture on how to avoid being mangled by wild game. The four hours we spent going over poisonous spiders and snakes, and large game, are four hours of my life I will never get back and may have resulted in reducing the longevity of my life. It also added to my collection of useless knowledge I have managed to obtain. Sure, knowing to stand still when a rhino charges at you could be helpful, but I really didn’t need to know what method of screaming is most effective in discouraging game from attacking you... I think if I were ever in such a situation the type of noise I am making will be the least of my worries. 

Dinner consisted of farmer sausage, squash, some coleslaw mush, steamed cabbage, and rice... that said, there is a fairly high chance that I will be skipping lunch tomorrow. It has only been two days and I am already sick of the very bland food. The diet they are feeding us lacks any normal amount of sugar so I have resorted to drinking abnormal amounts of tea to compensate. This may lead to future problems involving late night runs to the deluxe outhouse despite my previous training in the art of spending long periods of time immobilized.