If we haven’t posted for over a week, it’s because we’re: A) having a great time and are too pooped to post B) have little/no internet access C) both. In this case, it’s C. Option D will be revealed at the end of this post.
We’ve had a great couple of weeks since leaving Capetown, from horse back riding and viewing ancient cave art in Qambathi to scuba diving and boogie boarding in the Indian Ocean at the Rocktail Beach Camp. But we know all anyone wants to hear about are the safari stories at the Phinda Reserve. We have 15-20 good stories (with two more treks still to go), but we’ll just share three of the best. “Best” meaning either a Carpenter or one of its contractors was seconds from being shipped home with a toe tag.
1) Our guide Martin and our tracker Abel are awesome at their job and fun to be around as well. It’s probably because they love their jobs so much. One day we were tracking lions, when we came by another jeep. “No lions this way… sorry” their guide told us. After they drove off, Martin said, “No patience! We’ll find a lion. We’re the A team”. After 20 minutes of fruitless tracking, Martin yelled “LOOK!” And in the distance was the MALE lion (one of only two in the camp) sitting far away atop a rock like Simba, surveying his entire domain like he was the King of the Jungle or something.
Our guide cackled with glee. We raced toward Simba Sr. and got about 100 feet away when he started to turn and walk away. Martin said, “let’s follow him and see what we can find!”. OK. The male loped down the back side of the mountain and laid down under a tree. As we pulled up next to him, we saw, one…. two… three… FOUR large female lions waiting for him. The whole pride! Apparently this is a very rare and big deal. We sat in our jeep 30 feet away half -petrified half-exhilerated while they lazed away, occasionally yawning or swatting a fly with their tail (which caused us to jump out of our seats every time.). Meanwhile Martin was radioing every other guide in the reserve to come check out what HE found. Probably our biggest Oh Shoot Moment so far. But boy are they beautiful.
2) The guide drives the jeep while the tracker (Abel) sits in an elevated chair above the left side of the hood of the jeep so he can look for tracks. One day while we were tracking a leopard we saw our tracker LEAP out of his chair onto the hood and point repeatedly at the ground, shouting at us in Zulu. As it happened I saw a flash of green falling almost in slow motion away from him and back to the ground; a 6 foot Forest COBRA (very poisonous) had risen up and sprang up from the road and tried to strike Abel. He felt the snake on his leg, but luckily wasn’t bit. I asked him if that happened often. He said, “Not very often. But that’s still too often.” Chris actually got all this on video with his GoPro (screenshots below). We all scooched towards the middle of our seats the rest of the day. And now we all know how to curse in Zulu!
The Snake…. 
The Reaction… 
3) One morning we were driving along a dirt road with a lot of sharp turns, limiting our visibility. As we made a particularly sharp turn, Martin slammed on the breaks; a huge herd of ELEPHANTS were on the road walking toward us less than 15 feet away once we stopped skidding. Abel jumped out of his tracker chair and into the front seat (standard operating procedure when multi-ton animals are within reach of your skull), and we started slowly backing up the vehicle. They didn’t charge, so we slowly backed up at their pace as they took their time munching on trees and dropping “chocolate biscuits” (the technical term for elephant dung), all without a care in the world. It was beautiful, intimidating, and made us very grateful for our jeep’s Reverse gear.
We asked for adventure, and we are certainly getting it! Wish us luck on our final two treks out into the wild. If we don’t post for another week it could be because of option D (for demise/death/dinner)…. again, wish us luck!!!
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