Articles by Jennie

And all too soon, it was our last day in South Africa

We had a long drive ahead of us and wanted to have time for last minute souvenir shopping in Cape Town, so we had an early breakfast and loaded back into the van.

One last group photo before we left. We made sure to get the kloof staff in this picture – there’s Malcolm, the house manager, Roman and Simone, our guides, and a couple you haven’t seen before: Sandra, the cook, and Dalene, her helper. I thought that, coming home, I’d miss Sandra the most (I definitely missed her during the 36 hours we spent eating airplane and airport food) but actually, back in Seattle, I most miss Dalene. I don’t mind cooking, but cooking AND cleaning up after myself?!?! A rude awakening after those four days of resort life.

The drive back to Cape Town was uneventful. No bus breakdowns this time! We were a pretty subdued group, as most of us were flying out late that night.

Joel and I headed back to the V & A Waterfront to shop and eat a good meal before our departure.

We must’ve walked over the swing bridge every day during the week we’d spent in Cape Town and never saw it swing. At long last, here it is opening. It felt even unsteadier walking across it after we saw it swing.

And our trip ended back where it started, at the clock tower.

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And that’s a wrap on my recap posts! I’ll be back to regularly scheduled posting soon. In the meantime, here are the links to you can catch up on any South Africa recap posts you may have missed:

Cape Town
Day 1 – Table Mountain and V&A Waterfront
Day 2 – Houpt Bay, Boulder’s Beach, and Cape Point Reserve
Day 3 – Cape Town Aquarium
Day 4 – Robben Island Museum
Day 5 – Slave Lodge, Castle of Good Hope, and Green Market
Day 6 – Aquila Safari

Bushman’s Kloof
Day 1 – Our arrival
Day 2 – Cave paintings
Day 3 – Fly fishing
Day 4 – Sneaking up on animals

Remember how I mentioned in my post a couple of days ago that during our stay at Bushman’s Kloof, we made our own schedule? Not only that, we could pretty much do whatever we wanted. Our requests got a little more outrageous every day, from “can we have vegetables with breakfast?” to “can we swim in the lake?” to “hey, we dared Phil to make espresso. Can he use (and potentially break) the coffee maker in the kitchen?”

Also, “can we get out of the car and sneak up on animals?”

The answers were, “we’ll make sure to have some at breakfast tomorrow,” “of course,” “sure, why not,” and “yes, in fact, I’ll go with you!” You see, unlike the Aquila Game Reserve that had the “big 5,” Bushman’s Kloof is a predator free park, so we were allowed – nay, encouraged – to roam the property freely.

And that’s how the theme of our last, most adventurous, day at the kloof became sneaking up on animals.

But it started, first, with another cave painting site.

This is one in a line of Bush-ladies. Women were always painted with large hips and legs, but Roman told us it’s rare to see painted women with breasts, as these women have.

And the space where the knee should go isn’t unpainted – the women would have been painted with jewelery, a black band with white beads, but black and white were the first colors to fade.

Most of the group went canoeing at the lake before breakfast, but Simone offered to take those who didn’t want to canoe on a morning game drive. We quickly discovered why the game drives were usually in the evenings when it was cooler – there weren’t many animals to see! Most were out in the hills eating, so they could spend the day lying around and ruminating.

We did find this herd of bontebok. Simone explained that they’re used to seeing the vans, so they were pretty disinterested in us. One thing led to another, and pretty soon, Simone, Joel, and Rand got out of the van to see how close they could get to the bontebok.

Short answer: not very. The bontebok, as soon as they saw humans coming, moved over and went back to eating. Feel free to joke about how imposing this trio looks.

After breakfast, Joel and I decided to walk down to the smaller lake near our lodge. It was about noon and exceedingly hot, so we did not use the canoe that was set out for us.

And walking back to the lodge, we found this tortoise. Joel was very excited – he’d been waiting to see a tortoise since that first day when we went to Table Mountain!

The tortoise was much faster than we thought – we moved him to a sunny spot to try to get a picture and he scampered away. Phil had to hold him still for pictures (and then we put him right back in the shady spot where we found him — the tortoise, I mean.)

Later in the afternoon, we went on another game drive; this one much more successful. Here are the zebras again. Simone told us that the zebras are the most skittish of all the animals they have at the kloof – they ran every time they saw a van coming.

Mom and baby.

Here’s the other half of the group on their game drive (I suspect Geraldine has the compliment to this picture, of our group in the van and me taking a picture.)

That’s Rand hanging out of the back of the van, challenging Phil to sneak up on some animals, which led to …

This.

Simone advised us not to try sneaking up on this guy – an oryx, or gemsbok. Their horns are about 3 feet long!

And we enjoyed our last night at the kloof by another beautiful lake, under another beautiful sunset, drinking more tasty sundowners. And wearing our matching safari t-shirts

Well, hello. I am, as promised, trying to get back into the habit of blogging 3-4x per week, but work and … life kept me away for the last few days. I have about a week’s worth of posts left recapping my trip to South Africa. Then maybe I’ll get back to talking about food.

Anyways, we left off a couple of days in to our stay at Bushman’s Kloof.

The day started with another visit to cave paintings (unfortunately, I missed this one as I wasn’t feeling well.) Here’s Joel’s picture:

This is the only known buffalo painting at the Kloof. Black was painted with charcoal, so it was the first to fade. A black lichen grew over this one, preserving the painting. Pretty cool, huh?

After breakfast, we headed out with Phil and Meredith for some fly fishing. Here’s Roman, one of our guides, teaching the boys how to cast. They did not catch anything – Roman said the fish weren’t out that day, and didn’t blame it on their fly fishing skills. It was very kind of him.

Here Joel, looking like a pro.

Twins!

Us ladies skipped out on the fishing – we took pictures and drank instead. Here’s Meredith, enjoying an adult beverage. It was about 11 in the morning

Since there weren’t any fish to be caught, we got bored and headed down to the main lodge for a swim. This is not the swimming pool, it’s the lily pond nearby. I didn’t want to swim in it, for fear I would ruin it. So pretty.

Later on in the night, we headed out for another game drive.

I was finally feeling well enough to enjoy a sundowner that evening: a vodka and dry lemon (kind of like lemonade, but very tart and not sweet).

Our guide Roman, you may recall, is a descendant of the Bushmen, and speaks a couple of native dialects. Here’s Geraldine trying to learn a sentence (and Courtney laughing at her attempt.) the dialects were very complicated – think lots of glottal shock and tongue clicking.

Another beautiful sunset over the Kloof.

I’ve decided that for the sake of consistency, I’ll keep recapping my South Africa trip by day. It’s a little odd, because unlike our time in Cape Town where we did something different every day, our days at Bushman’s Kloof were all pretty similar. In the mornings, we went to see cave paintings, then had a fun after-breakfast activity, and in the evenings, went for a game drive. But there’s a huge chunk of time in the middle of the day that goes unaccounted for — that was when we hung out in the pool, or took a long nap, or got massages in the spa. Or all of the above.

I’m not saying this to make you jealous — although, I’m getting a little jealous, myself — but to give you an idea of how we spent our time. And also so that I can remember how amazing the kloof was.

One of the awesome features of the kloof? The rock art. The paintings date back to the native Bushmen (between 6000-2000 years old.) This is Simone, one of our guides during our stay, telling us a little about the history and how the paintings were made. This one is orange ochre.

And this is our other guide, Roman, who is a descendant of the Bushmen and told us a bit about the cultural significance.

After breakfast, the boys had a little archery practice out in the yard. Here’s Malcolm teaching Joel how to hold the bow.

And here’s Joel letting an arrow fly.

After tea, we headed out for a game drive. Remember how I told you to look at the stripe pattern on the zebras we saw on safari? See any differences? The zebras at Bushman’s Kloof are Cape Mountain Zebras – the only zebras with black and white stripes (rather than brown and white.)

They are endangered (it seems like most of the animals we saw in South Africa are endangered. Except for the baboons.)

A bontebok, another type of antelope native to South Africa (we didn’t eat any of these.)

Halfway through our game drive each night, just as the sun was starting to set, we’d stop for drinks — aptly named “sundowners.” On this particular night, we stopped by one of the dams. Here are the ladies doing lady things (gossiping.)

And the gentlemen, doing gentlemanly things (having a rock skipping competition.)

A week or two before I left of South Africa, one of my coworkers and I were talking about our respective travel experiences, and she said something along the lines of “the times when everything goes right make great memories, but the best stories are when things go wrong.”

I mulled it over, and decided she was probably right, and told her the story about the time my mom and I almost got thrown off a train in Italy (I don’t think I ever actually blogged about it, but it’s definitely the best story from that trip.) She told me a story about accidentally entering a sailing competition in Mexico. We both laughed. It’s funny when things go wrong!

If you haven’t already guessed where I’m going with this, this is the post about the day in South Africa when things went wrong.

After our week in Cape Town, we were headed up north to Bushman’s Kloof, a resort in north South Africa. Depending on who you ask, it’s either the best hotel in the world or the best hotel in Africa.

Joel’s boss had arranged transport from Cape Town, so early Monday morning, we checked out of our hotel and boarded a luxury bus for what was expected to be a four hour drive. I’ll start this by saying I had no idea the drive would be that long – I figured it would be a couple of hours, tops. But I had a fully charged iPad and some snacks, so we settled in.

About an hour outside of Cape Town, the driver pulled over at a rest stop. Rest stops in South Africa do not have bathrooms or coffee or vending machines. We happened to be at a nice one with a picnic table and some shade.

“I’m so sorry, but the bus has overheated,” the driver told us. “I’ll let it cool down for a few minutes and see what happens, but I don’t know if it can even make it to the next town.”

The bus driver called for a back up — from Cape Town. And we waited at the shaded rest stop in The Middle Of Nowhere, South Africa for the next hour. Finally, we were rescued by a much smaller and less luxurious van. We asked the driver to stop at the next rest stop we came to (the kind with a toilet, I mean.) And we did. After another hour of driving.

And that’s the story. I know, it’s not that exciting (trust me, the one from Italy is better.)

And even if it were a better story, the amazingness that was Bushman’s Kloof negates any trouble we had getting there. We were taken on a tour of our private lodge and the grounds, and kept joking to each other that maybe we’d perished at that rest stop or the van had gone over a cliff on the way down the mountain because “this place must be heaven!”

Here’s our private pool at the lodge.

Since we arrived much later than we expected to, tea was all laid out for us. The house manager, Malcolm, on the left here, asked if anyone would care for something to drink – tea or coffee or maybe sparkling wine? Yes, sparkling wine, please. We ate with our feet in the pool.

We had time for a quick game drive (and more drinks) before dinner, and we spotted this group of springbok and a couple ostriches. The ostriches kept pretty well hidden at the kloof, so we were glad to have seen them. Also — they are HUGE. I’d guess about 8 feet tall, from feet to head.

We saw some spectacular sunsets at the kloof, and the first was the best. There was a huge wildfire just a few days before (it had actually gotten to the edge of the resort and all the guests had to be evacuated.) Thankfully, it burned out/was put out in the night, but the lingering smoke made for this beautiful sunset.