Since Dan and I have been married – actually, since we’ve known each other – we have never taken an actual “away” vacation together for more than 4 days at a time. Trying to find time for some honest-to-goodness time off between the schedules of two law firm attorneys has been a challenge. For a really long time now, we have been dreaming and planning with all our might to take two whole weeks off work and go somewhere more or less “off the grid”. After a ton of research and debate, we put down the deposit and firm confirmations on all the tickets an reservations necessary for a 4 day safari in South Africa, following by a week in the Republic of the Seychelles. At last, this March, the big trip was finally upon us — the vacation/trip I have, literally, been waiting my whole life for. I got a little teary going through security at Logan, just from the sheer excitement that THIS WAS IT. I was finally seeing the wider world, as I had dreamed about for so long.
We flew from Boston to Washington, D.C. then boarded a South African Airways mega-jet to Johannesburg, with a brief re-fueling stop in Dakar, Senegal. Nineteen hours (!!) later we touched down in Jo’burg, fetched our luggage (got hassled big-time by some shady local swindlers … ) and spent one quick night an inn near the airport. From there we took a short flight to Hodespruit airport in/around Kruger National Park, and were greeted by an emissary that drove us the rest of the way to our camp — Chapungu Tented Camp, in the Thornybush Reserve.
There are certainly more posh safari camps/lodges, but we could not have been anywhere more perfect for what we were going for, a slightly more natural, “down-home” experience. I would go back to Chapungu again and again, for the warm and friendly staff (shout to the best ranger ever, Rexson!), for the camp grounds and yummy food, for the wilderness and, most of all, for the animals. I never did get used to the 4:30am wake-up calls or being escorted to my tent after dark by an anti-poaching officer carrying a rifle that could take down a cheetah, but everything else felt strangely like home after just the first 48 hours.
Here’s just a tiny snippet of some of what we saw on our almost nine hours a day of game drives (you’d think maybe that many hours of driving around might get boring? Nope, never did.):
I hope that for the rest of my life, I will always be able to close my eyes and quickly transport myself back to South Africa in my mind, and still feel the wind in my hair and hear the chirping beetles. As the days wound to a close, I felt that I never wanted to leave and began to give serious thought to starting a new life as an animal tracker. A safari in Africa is truly a trip of a lifetime and something I’d encourage anyone with the opportunity to do at least once. I am now thoroughly entranced by Africa and long to return and explore more countries and terrain in the future, the Good Lord willing.
But our trip wasn’t over yet — with the Seychelles still waiting just ahead of us, we said a very fond farewell to Chapungu camp and all our new furry friends and set back out for Jo’burg and a connecting flight to Mahe, Seychelles. To be continued ….
