Extreeeeme Whale Watching

After our day with the elephants, we thought it would be nice to go and visit the elephants of the sea... aka whales. We went on a cruise along the St Lucia estuary where we saw a few crocodiles hanging our along the shore and then we pulled up reasonably close to a whole bunch of hippos resting in the mud and giving us nasty looks. Apparently, in a battle between a hippo and a croc, the hippo will win by ripping parts off of the croc (we saw pictures) so the crocs tend to leave them alone.

After the cruise, we went whale watching, but this wasn't your namby-pamby east-coast oceanography-intern, "aren't they magestic?" whale watching. It was extreeeeme whale watching, bordering on whale harassment. There are no jetties out into the Indian Ocean at St Lucia, so we started from the shore on a boat that was then pushed out and we were given very specific instructions for how to hold on to the seat followed by "make sure you hold on tight, or this is going to hurt." The skipper guns the engine and we start flying out across the big waves coming in to the shore, trying to hit them fast enough to fly over them and he did that - we spent several seconds airborne before we made it past the breakers. Leslie lost her grip and nearly went over the side but she was able to grab on to another passenger until we slowed down and she could get a better grip. Finally, we were off at full speed to look for the whales. At this point, I figured that I was not going to take any pictures since the salt water would really mess up my camera (turns out, it wouldn't have mattered, but that's a different post...)

In the distance, we saw a humpback breaching and we zoomed over toward the site where he had jumped. The skipper was careful to not approach too quickly or get too close - at least in the beginning. We soon found 3 humpbacks swimming near each other and we followed them for a while. They would spout a couple of times, then dive deeper, then come back up and spout a few times. Soon the skipper was bored with this and brought us in very close to the whales - about 30-40 feet from them - which made them dive a little deeper to get away from us. After about 30 minutes of this, we spotted some more whales in the distance and we zoomed off after them.

This time, there were five humpbacks in a small group. One was doing fin slaps on the surface every once in a while and after a couple of minutes, one of them leapt out of the water and fell ker-splash just on the port side of the boat. Too bad I was looking out the starboard side trying to keep my lunch in its proper place. I turned around in time to see the large splash, but I missed the breaching. At this point, the skipper was ready to play as well so we were either right next to the 5 whales or about 10 feet behind them as they swam along. Once, they all came up and spouted at the exact same time - five whales in a row. It was like the Blue Angels, except, well, it was actually very different, but you get the idea.

After another 20 minutes of zooming up right on top of the whales, we headed back to shore. Coming in over the breakers is much easier than going out though any time that the boat comes to a stop by gunning it up onto the beach, you're going to have an sudden stop. In the end, we saw plenty of whales but unless you're really into fast and jerky boat rides, I'm not sure I would recommend it. The salt water would really damage any camera equipment so unless you have some sort of protective case, you can't really count on getting good shots. Hence, no pictures. Interesting stories though :)

Elephant Encounter!

On our third day in South Africa, we went to the Hluhluwe Umfolozi National Park to get a wider variety of animal sighting opportunities. Not long after we arrived, we saw a couple of elephants behind some bushes on the right side of the car and the driver pulled forward some and stopped. We said, "look, on the right!" but he just laughed and said "check out the left side." Not 20 yards away there was a herd of maybe 10-15 elephants, slowly working their way through the trees towards the road.

One by one, they passed a short way in front of our truck, usually stopping to flap their ears and look at us as if to say "Hey, don't mess with me!" and then they crossed into a giant muddy area where they started rolling around, and in some cases playing with each other in the mud. A couple of adorable baby elephants joined in the fun, one of them got some mud in his eye and was trying to remove it using his trunk the way we might use the palm of our hand to mush something out of our eye.

A couple of younger elephants were playing off to the side. Chasing each other around, mock-attacking each other and pushing them to the ground. They looked like they were having a blast. I swear one of them looks like he's smiling in this shot...


After about ten minutes of watching this, a young bull came up the road and right up to our truck. Armand clapped his hands once to tell him to chill out and then the elephant just stood there, right at the end of the hood and ate some grass for a few minutes -- just a few feet in front of us! Now, with the long lens on, you're not going to get any full body shots of this, but it was a great time to get the closeups to see how amazingly textured their skin is. He raised his trunk once to tap the top of our truck and Armand said "ah.. ah.." to him, then he wandered off to play with the other elephants. It was really reamarkable to have them so close to us, but even cooler to watch a person who is so experienced with them communicate with the elephants and keep them from getting too frisky.

We saw a variety of other animals in the park over the rest of the day, including a white rhino that was quite the poser but the highpoint of the day, and perhaps the week, was watching the elephants just playing and romping in the mud.

South Africa - Zulu Nyala

42 hours is a long time to fly. In fact, as mentioned previously, it is about as long as we could expect to fly to anywhere from Seattle, Oh sure, much of that time (about 1/2) was spent in airports, waiting for flights, or rebooking from missed flights (thanks alot, British Airways...) the net elapsed time from when we left our house, until we were at Zulu Nyala in South Africa was 42 hours. So we slept.

On Tuesday morning, we went out on our first safari ride around the grounds of Zulu Nyala. We stopped at our first sighting of warthogs and we were snapping away. Our guide told us that soon, we would be seeing warthogs and thinking, "oh... just another warthog" but for those first few minutes, these were some cool, armed pigs. We went out for about 3 hour rides in the morning and in the afternoon for each of the first two days and had some amazing opportunities to view warthogs, nyala, impala, giraffes, zebras, cape buffalo, wildebeest, monkeys, rhinos, hippos and a couple of somewhat obscured views of the elephants on site.

The best way to sum it up has been "WOW!" I mean, here are these animals you've seen in zoos many times, but it is totally different when you see them on their own home turf, roaming freely. They are all simply gorgeous to watch and learn about. The terrain here is mostly rolling hills and we were driving in safari vehicles with the driver up front and eight of us in the back, either two or three to a seat. As we bounce along the roads, knowing that there are all sorts of amazing animals nearby but just out of site, we all turn into novice trackers, looking for clues as to where the buffalo have gotten to, or where the elephants are today. If only I had the beast tracking ability that my hunter in WoW has - man that would rock!

Oh, and the rides are bumpy! Leslie and I were riding in the front seat of the vehicle (behind the driver) and I was holding my camera in my left hand wrapped around the base of my Canon 70-200L 2.8 IS lens. We hit a particularly deep hole in the road (dug by a warthog for protection) and the lens banged against one of the metal support poles on the truck, well it would have had my hand not been sitting between the lens and the pole. More accurately, my wedding ring was between the lens and the pole and it was squished between then into more of a thin oval than its traditional ring shape -- while still on my finger. It took a few minutes of work with a Leatherman to get the ring back into a shape that would let me take it off of my finger. When we get back home, we'll need to do some work to make it round again, though it seems to me that if I can get a small hammer and a rhino that will hold still for a while, I could probably fix it here...

The sunsets here have been stunning -- probably due to all of the dust in the air. Each night around 5:30, the sun turns wonderful shades of orange and progress to pink and red as it slides behind the hills. We shoot photo after photo, hoping to find the right way to capture the amazing colors and vistas though I'm not sure that digital photos can quite do it yet, or maybe it's just me...

This is George. He is very tall :)


Next up: Hluhluwe National Park and the Elephant Encounter...

btw, posting from South Africa is quite slow, so it might be a while between posts. More pictures will come when we make it to London.