The Big Trip Well as promised, here's our trip report (from June '96). It's very, very long and probably boring, but I decided to write this to keep in my "files" anyway so you get to read it, too. I hope to add links to some of our pictures soon.
Background: My MIL left her home in England and planned to spend 6 months of each of her remaining years with us in US and 6 months in S. Africa with my BIL's family. An excellent plan that basically guarranteed that she'd never have to experience an English winter again -- summer here, summer in SA ;-). Just as she was due to come back to us, it was discovered that she had cancer (esophogus) :-(. My DH travelled to SA to spend time with her while the kids and I waited until school was out. Then we travelled, 2 kids and I, alone, to SA to join them and spent 3 weeks there. The kids and I also returned alone because DH's travel arrangements were separate (due to the urgency in arranging the trip).
This was originally written for some email pals of mine, who are also parents, so the descriptions of travelling logistics were written from that perspective.
Then we were off! Our flight to Amsterdam was at 9:30PM, so after getting on board, getting settled and having the first beverage service, the kids crashed out. We were on KLM all the way -- they are terrific!!!! The FAs were very attentive to parents and kids and genuinely nice -- no fake "this is what I learned in FA school" attitudes. They have sleeping mats, so we got one for the floor in front of our three seats and the Girl ChildTM slept there all night -- the Boy ChildTM and I shared the seats as best we could. The flight was uneventful (really smooth!) and we arrived in Amsterdam at about 4:40PM (and 11 hour flight). We had almost 4 hours at the airport, so we wandered around all the duty free shops, spent some time in the children's play center, had frozen yoghurt and tried out every moving walkway or escalator there. The children's play center is a terrific idea, BUT the play structure is geared to 1-2 year olds, the Lego/Duplo tables allow for *quiet* play for all ages, they have a VCR that plays cartoons, all in Dutch (the nerve, eh? ;-) at about 300 DCBs and they had Nintendo which is really for 8YO and up. What they *really* need is a huge Discovery Zone type of place so that the kids are completely exhausted and physically challenged, with attendants so that parents can check the kids in to the play center and then check themselves into the terminal hotel to veg out/shower, etc. before boarding time.
I don't ask for much -- really :-).
The next flight was pure hell. It was at 8:10PM, a night time flight, but of course my kids have only been up from the previous night time flight for 4 hours. And of course, most of the passengers were just beginning their travels there so it was their night time and they planned to sleep. Oy! I was tired, frazzled and out of patience (as were the kids, obviously). So we opened the presents occasionally, ate, watched the movies. The Girl ChildTM did sleep for a couple of hours but when awake spent most of the time wingeing, screeching, crying, jumping up and down, going to toilet (I counted 20 times), etc. The Boy ChildTM was much more reasonable and was quite happy building different Lego configurations and playing the computer games (until the battery gave out!). We arrived in Johannesburg at 6:50AM (another 11 hour flight!).
The drive from Jo'burg to Pretoria is about 40 minutes. The scenery really reminded me of parts of Texas or California, straight roads, gentle rolling hills covered in golden grasses. No sign of lions or elephants along the way so J's apprehension dissappeared. I could tell he was really looking for the animals, but didn't want to admit it :-). [Hey, everytime we saw an African wildlife video or show, DH would say "That's where Grandma lives -- that's where we're going!" No wonder the poor little guy was worried!] We arrived at my BIL's house and after getting thru the locked gates to the driveway, the locked gate to the yard and the locked gate to the front door, we went straight up to see MIL. She looked fairly good but had to have the oxygen tubes in her nose. The kids didn't seem to be intimidated by the contraption at all. The first day there was a complete blur.
The rest of the week was just spent in MIL's room, going out to lunch, entertaining the kids and helping my SIL out with the cooking, clearing up. When we first arrived MIL was getting up to make her own breakfast (she has a kitchenette) and going to the bathroom on her own. She'd just had 2 weeks of radiation therapy to keep the tumor size down a bit. By Thursday evening she took a turn for the worse, requiring complete bed rest and almost constant attention. We were all very worried but the doctors had said the radiation would do that and that she would improve. By Sunday she was better although too weak to get out of bed yet. She sent us off to the Krueger Park on Monday to enjoy ourselves, but if she hadn't been better, we would have cancelled. We had to arrange to get malaria tablets for all of us which we took for several weeks -- horribly bitter things. The only way I could get them down the kids was to poke them down their throats and have glass of juice at the ready -- thank god for my cat's thyroid problems as that trained me on the proper technique of pill-poking ;-).
Krueger Park, the bright spot of an otherwise sad, stressful trip. We stayed at 3 different camps and saw more animals than I could imagine. Everyone had warned us that we might not see anything -- many of our friends/family had been and only seen impalas (of which there are many!). We saw Giraffes, Impalas, Zebras, Kudu, Wildebeasts, Warthogs, Impalas, Meerkats, Lions, Cheetahs, Impalas, Vervet monkeys, Hippos, Crocodiles, Impalas, Waterbuffalos, Bats, Genet(a wild cat), Impalas, Rhino, Baboons (even outside the car ;) and Impalas, all up close and personal. Oh, did I mention the Impalas? We were threatened by a Bull Elephant, too (story below). We stayed in a nice 2 bedroom cottage the first night, a Rondavel (circular, thatch roofed hut) the second, and a brick bungalow the last. At each place we could hear the animals at night, just outside the electric fences! We ate in the restaurants at each camp which were very good and inexpensive. It was truly magical and the kids thoroughly enjoyed it. Unfortunately, the only pics we got were the ones from the Boy Child's F-P camera (110!)! DH's camera had been stolen out of the locked, alarmed rental car in front of my BIL's house, so we'd borrowed my SILs camera and zoom lens. Unfortunately, her camera was not auto-wind on and not realizing we were using such an ancient relic, I never loaded it correctly -- so the 5 rolls of National Geographic quality photos I took never materialized :-(. But we did get the majority from J's camera and from some strange angles. We also got some great shots of K's nose, the back of the driver's seat, a baboon's butt, the sky, the sky, the sky, the floor of the car and a headless giraffe.
It was on the second afternoon there that we had the most exciting encounters. As we left the camp at daybreak, we had to stop for about an hour because a lion pride had decided to rest on the only road. They lounged there for quite sometime before they finally wandered off (there must have been about 12 lions). They caused quite a traffic backup.
At one point on our way to the next camp, we stopped at a T junction and argued about which way to go. We were alone on the road and DH was just about to *get out* (!) to look closely at the road sign (which was faded). The kids were saying "Mom, Dad, a lion!", but of course our "discussion" was more important, until what they were saying finally registered. Then we saw her, a beautiful lioness, who circled the car and sniffed at the bumpers!
The Cheetahs were by the side of the road having just eaten and we stopped the car to gaze at them for about 10 minutes -- they got bored and got up and sauntered off. Now we understood why about 2 minutes before finding them, a herd of Impalas had come running *toward* our car -- normally they run *away*.
Then we had three huge Hyenas cross the road in front of us -- the last one came back to look at us. The kids decided that they were Shenzi, Banzai and Ed -- Ed being the stupid one that came back for a look. For all of these sightings, we were the only ones to witness them!
Later we were threatened by the Bull Elephant! We came upon his family as they were having an afternoon snack (the bull, 2 females, a young male and a baby). I had just seen movement out of the corner of my eye and thought it was a maintenance crew trimming trees, but it was elephants stripping the trees bare for a snack. They started walking alongside the road, so DH crept along beside them in the car. Turned out they wanted to cross the road but we were preventing that. So the Bull came out into the middle of the road about 20 feet in front of us and flapped his ears, shook his trunk and told us to bugger off. I was hissing at DH to "PUT IT IN REVERSE!!!" We'd just seen the big picture in the last camp of the car that had been trampled by a bull elephant, killing the occupants (the elephant had to be shot!). We were all fairly well terrified. But once his family crossed, the bull went after them (and defecated as he left the road to tell us what he really thought!).
The same day, as we were moving our stuff into the bungalow, the kids and I turned to find a monkey on our kitchen counter, checking out our gear. The kids were quite amused when I shouted "Get out of here, monkey" and he did.
On our last day, we saw a herd of waterbuffalo and saw an elephant push over a big tree so he could get to the tender top leaves at which point J decided that we should "just go home"!
K never seemed scared, but J did on several occasions -- I guess with age comes wisdom?
On the way out of the park (of which we only saw about 1/10 of the area in 4 days), DH decided that we should return to Pretoria via Swaziland (oh boy, another stamp in the passports!), in order to show us the *real* Africa. He had painted this picture of idyllic little villages of brightly decorated Rondavels with Africans sitting outside smiling and scratching their bums with pointed sticks. We did drive thru some decent little villages with African women walking along with boxes of Bananas (and various other goods) balanced carefully on their heads, babies strapped to their backs and children doing the family's laundry in a little stream, hanging the wash on tree limbs to dry. DH wanted to stop in Mbabane for lunch as he said it was an interesting town with one stop light. As we approached Mbabane, we noticed 2 skyscrapers, a huge Mall and decidely more than 1 stop light. We ate lunch in a place that served Fajitas, burgers, kids meals and Escargot -- Thanks for bringing me to the *REAL* Africa, Dear Hubby ;-)! [It's been 27 years since he lived in Jo'burg, afterall!]
We returned to my BIL's house and MIL was still doing better. She did seem to get stronger everyday and was very, very happy to have us there. Some friends of my BIL's came up from Capetown to see MIL. That was really nice -- we felt as if we had known them forever. We took another day off to go to Sun City which is a cross between Disneyland and Las Vegas out in the middle of the high desert. We had a good time there. After returning, we spent some time with MIL going thru all of her paperwork, so that the sons will know where the will is, deed to her house, what needs to be done, etc. and MIL divided out her trinkets to the DILs and the grandkids -- very wierd doing that. Thru all this, she was in such great spirits.
A few more days and then it was time to come home. Where did the time go? It was unbelievably fast.
On our flight from Jo'burg to Amsterdam, J cried for the first hour because he: missed them; wanted to go back;loved it in Africa;didn't like America any more. It was a night flight so the kids slept almost all the way. The rest of the trip was much the same as the first flights but in reverse. When we were just about to board in Amsterdam for home, the kids pretty much melted down and were behaving atrociously and I, being extremely tired myself and short on sense of humor, just let them. I got some nasty looks from a woman who had a 4YO boy sitting quietly on her lap, coloring. I asked her if it was the start of her journey and of course it was. So I said, knowingly, "Yes, my children were angels for the first *14 hours* of our trip, too!" Bitch.
It was wonderful to arrive home safe and almost sound.