Our Last Days of Safari in South Africa: Poop Spitting Contests and the Importance of Reading “The Memo.”

 We are currently sitting in yet another small, non-JFK-like airport waiting to fly to and spend one night in Johannesburg before a flight tomorrow to Botswana. We had so many amazing adventures at the Phinda Game Reserve which included seeing hippos, cheetahs, leopards, male and female lions, zebras, giraffes, wart hogs, just to name a few. We saw rhinoceroses-both black and white—which of course required us to ask about the difference, as they both looked the same to all of us.  Besides, seeing a “tower” of giraffes standing together, the most exciting thing we saw was a tense-filled 30 minutes watching a pride of female lions trying to take on a herd of buffalo…unsuccessfully. It was like watching a safari episode on the National Geographic channel.

The trip so far has reminded me that regardless of age and success, men can immediately divert back to being children. The four of us spent two days in an open-air jeep with a couple from Johannesburg.  They had previously been on several safari adventures and knew a lot about the animals, including their dung.  The husband picked up a few pellets of the dung of an Impala, a small African deer and told Bob and Mark that it was a right of passage to take a pellet in your mouth to see who could spit it the furthest. In the interest of full disclosure, the pellets had become hard as rocks, but along with the game initiator, our two husbands immediately put a pellet in their mouths and started spitting.  Let the games begin. I looked on in horror and said to Bob, “What are you twelve?” He seemed non-plussed as he was the victor of the first round.  He makes me so proud. When I told the guys that I was including that story in the blog, Mark said that I better not because no one would believe it.  I told him that any woman with a husband would definitely know that it was a true story.

I know that I have already talked about safari clothing but the story goes on-and-on.  When we arrived at Phinda, we looked around at our fellow guests and no one was dressed like us.  While Judy and I continued our quest to look like Jane Goodall wannabes, other women were dressed as if no one told them that they would be driving around in a mud-strewn, open jeep, often with dust circling around you like a small hurricane. One woman was wearing an orange (she clearly did not get the color memo) , floor-length sundress with sandals.  Unlike the four of us, she did not have the stylish LL Bean bug-proof socks.  There were two young women who arrived the first morning, ready to go out on safari wearing tiny shorts and even tinier spaghetti strap tee shirts. Judy and I looked at each other and spoke the ancient language of all middle age women: “the look,” which includes heads down and eyes and eyebrows up that translates to “Are you kidding me?” Judy and I looked a bit different. While we were both wearing tee-shirts,  our ensembles also included bug repellent shirts and pants, vests, jackets, hats and “bufs” which are neck protectors. Our drives all began at 6 am and besides the actual temperature, driving around in a jeep without a top can be really, really cold. Plus, we knew this because WE had read the memo and actually were aware that we were going on a safari. We passed the girls in their jeep later in the day and they were all wrapped up in blankets…..

Tomorrow, onto Chobe Reserve in Botswana….