Christina Ward Photography » Authentic. Warm. Classic. Bright.

If you missed Part I, you can catch up here.

Our time in South Africa on safari was only four days, but it felt (in a good way) like so much longer.  It really was just the right amount of time for us.  The days were long (again, in the best way possible) and full of sights and sounds to take in.  We went to sleep gloriously exhausted each night (not just because of the jet lag) and were woken up by our ranger with  a stern rap to our tent at 4:30am each day.  The animals wait for no man.  We were ready to sleep in and reduce our daily threat of being a lion’s snack by the time we bid our bittersweet farewell to Chapungu Camp.   The thought of another 18 hours traveling to our next locale sounded pretty miserable, but we knew the final destination would be worth every second in the airports and squished coach seats.   Next stop:  the Republic of the Seychelles.

But, first, a little background:  When I said in my last post that this was a trip I’d been dreaming of my whole life about, that wasn’t just a turn of phrase.   Sometime when I was a young child, I came across some photos of the Seychelles beaches, probably in an Encyclopedia (i.e. Google for the 80’s child) or National Geographic.  Most likely Anse Source D’argent or Anse Lazio, two of the most photographed beaches in the world — the bulbous granite outcroppings and freaky blue water looked like nothing my little mind had ever imagined, having grown up on vacations to North Carolina’s outerbanks (not knocking them, love the Carolina beaches, just two very different kinds of oceans …).   And from then on, the Seychelles have been this larger-than-life, not-quite-to-be-believed place in my mind, that I have long dreamed of seeing just once before I die.

When Dan and I first began planning this big two week trip somewhere in the world, when we didn’t yet know where, we tossed out all kinds of ideas.  But I never mentioned the Seychelles.  It just seemed like a place I dreamed about, not one that I would actually go to.  I’m the practical sort (to put it mildly).  But after weeks of digging around online and mulling over every continent in various permutations, we still couldn’t settle on where to go.  A safari in Africa was high on our list, but we wanted to couple it with something else, another week someplace different.  Finally, after much indecisiveness (very unlike like me), Dan looked at me and said flatly, but not unkindly, “Christina, just think … if you could go anywhere in the entire world, if you could only go to one last place on earth, where would would it be?”.   I didn’t even have to think about it, and responded in a heart-beat, “Easy — The Seychelles”.   Dan expressed shock that this hadn’t come up sooner, but I shrugged and said, “It’s so expensive and far, I never thought it was realistic or possible” (see what I told you about my pragmatism? Also known as “being a major kill-joy”).  He volleyed back with, “Why not?  Isn’t this the big trip we’ve been saving for and dreaming of for years? Aren’t we already considering every other corner of the earth? Why wouldn’t we go to the one place in the world you want to go more than anywhere else?”.  I had no good answers to those questions, and from that moment forward it was pretty much a done deal that we were going to the Seychelles.  To this day, even now that I’ve been there and back again, I can still hardly believe it.

So, that’s the background on our decision to fly from South Africa for another week in the Seychelles, land of my lifelong dreams.   Our flight path (for the travel curious among you) went a little something like this: Nelspruit to Johannesburg >> three hour lay-over >> red-eye from Jo’burg to Mahe >> capped off by 7am puddle-jumper to the tiny island of Praslin.  The van ride from the airport wound through heart of Praslin and spit us out on the other side at Hotel L’Archipel.  Where we, every so weary but still incredibly buzzed on the trill of just being there at all, were greeted by this:

The week was a perfect combo of intense laziness, marked by bursts of activity.   So for all the hours of laying about reading and bobbing in the warm waters of the Indian Ocean, we also hiked in the Vallee de Mai National Park, snorkeled in the crystal waters and cavorted with the giant turtles on several teensy islands dotted around Praslin.

Okay, fair warning, I’m about to get a little schmaltzy.  I had some fears before we got to the islands, what with the long lifetime build up to actually going there, that the Seychelles could never going to live up to my expectations or dreams.  Sometimes, I think we all have a tendency (or at least I do) to romanticize things in our minds, both in retrospect and in advance, that real life can’t possibly live up to.  I’ve butted up against my own wild expectations a number of times and felt that crush of disappointment, whether its fair or not.   I can honestly say, through teary, grateful eyes, that the Seychelles not only met but exceeded my wildest dreams.  How often does that happen?  If it had been only as wonderful as I’d dreamed of, I would have had the best time ever.  But the Seychelles and my time there blew so far passed those dreams, that its difficult to recall or describe without getting a bit emotional.    It’s unimaginable to me that a more beautiful or serene place could exist on earth.  In a strange way, I almost feel sad that I’ve been there at such a young age — like, for the rest of my life, no place else will ever be able to compare.   On the bright side,  I am more than okay with exploring the rest of the world in the meantime to find out if I’m wrong :)

One thing did change though from my thoughts as a child.  The Seychelles is no longer a place I dream of going “just once before I die”.   I now can’t imagine living the rest of my life without ever going back.  I want to bring my children there, and then my grandchildren, and show them their mother or grandmother’s favorite place in the world.  I want to take them there and encourage them to not only dream big about where they most want to go in the world, but to seize the moment and really go there.  Just like I did — because my husband loved me enough to ask “Why not?”.

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 ….