27. - 2 Jan.: Drive to Durban and flight to Port Elizabeth

Very unusual breakfast with chicken liver and omelette. Good and hearty, enough proteins to carry me through to dinner time. My trip mates look at me with a mixture of disgust and disquiet. Yes it's not what Italians are used to eat for breakfast, but the strangeness of it all and their a priori rejection of anything new makes the food more tasty and the whole experience, if one can call a breakfast an experience, more satisfying.

At about 10:00 am we hit the road toward Durban, which unfortunately we won't have time to visit. Our friendly driver drops us off at the airport, and probably sighs of relief as he managed to complete his tour without driving into any black township. Maybe he is right. Again the disturbing sight of everyone wrapping their checked-in bags in plastic. Just after I spend 60 Rand on mine I read a sign that our airline would have provided this service for free. Apparently it costs them less to pay for the wrap than to follow up on complaints from passengers about nags being pifered by the handlers.

Uneventful flight along the Indian ocean coast of South Africa. Looks beautiful from up here, too bad we don't have time to drive along it. It's apparently very lush and not yet invaded by mass tourism operations or luxury hotels. So it must be quite enjoyable for those willing to accept some lack of comfort in exchange for a more direct contact with the people and nature of South Africa. Maybe next time...

In Port Elizabeth we are picked up by Petrus, an outsize Afrikaan with a warm and direct personality. Drop our bags at the hotel and off to the beach. I've been here a few weeks ago but it's a great pleasure to have a chance to walk along the beach in the late afternoon, waiting for the sun to settle. Best for pictures anyway.

I ask to be dropped off at the far Western edge of town, by the water. It is here that a long walkway starts, all wooden planks and railings. It is like a long snake, several kilometers long, and it zig-zags up and down the dunes that separate the ocean from the town of Port Elizabeth. Just inland of the walkway, by the first road that runs parallel to the water, not a few groups of friends and families have set up temporary camps and braai. It's not really a camping site, though it does look like quite a few people spent a night or two here. I ask a friendly guy who wanted to share a beer and he said they are just here for the holidays. I suppose they are sufficiently well off to afford a trip from their township and meat on the grill, but not so well off to patronize hotels and restaurants in town.

It's still holiday time, and thousands of people crowd the beach. On the western side, away from town, the holiday makers are all black. They are all, as usual, quite friendly and in an excellent holiday mood. Again a few new Facebook "friends" are added to my list and this time it's quieter than at the St Lucia beach so I can actually make contact on my phone and exchange pics very smoothly. One big guy of Indian origins is fishing with a rod that must be six meters long, and explains the trick is to drop the bait into a hole that's about forty meters offshore, let it sink, and wait. A group of three ladies has had one too many to drink but they do love to pose anyway.

 As I move east, toward the commercial center of town, it gets more mixed. Almost all the whites seem to stick to the more central part, just a stone throw from the Boardwalk. Same beach, same setting sun. But somehow the atmosphere is not the same. As the color of the skin of the sunbathers becomes fairer, so the warmth and smiles cool down and die out. Funny isn't it?

Dinner is at the Boardwalk, a Disneyland-type melee of casinos, restaurants, sound-and-lights displays, shops and pubs.

26. - 1 January 2014: New y\ear's day at Saint Lucia

Morning spent walking leisurly in town. Several ladies sell a bit of everything along the road: the same stand will have fruits and vegetables by the roadside and also sell curios on the sidewalk. Some graceful paintings and some tacky T-shirts, all mixed together with the inevitable Mandela paraphernalia. Just behind the displays, I can barely see simple small houses where they live, I think.

Not far, next to the pumps of a gas station, a half dozen teenagers are celebrating the new year in the street, dancing, singing and performing some remarkable acrobatic rap dance. They are most excited when I stop to take pictures and quite happy to adjust their routines so I can take my best shots.

This started as a cloudy day but by noon the sun is high in the sky and it's rather hot. Decide to skip lunch and spend the rest of the morning by the pool of our hotel. No one is around and it would be very peaceful were it not for the manager of the adjacent restaurant who is yelling at a waitress because she has not tidied up properly after breakfast. He is actually doing the cleaning himself now but keeps screaming that this is not the manager's job. She sits in a corner, silent, motionless, looking straight ahead of herself into a bush.

In the afternoon we all take a cruise n the estuary to see hippos and crocs, plus a lot of other wildlife.The eight hundred hippos who live here, we are told, eat 40kg of grass every day each. Actually every night as they spend the day in the water, whence they come out after sunset to graze the fields. All together they produce some 32 metric tons of dung per day! Which is apparently the favorite food of prawns, a local specialty. Well now I know what's in my plate when I order delicious South African prawns.

Just thinking as I disembark from the crowded ship and make my way to the pier: hippos are the biggest killer of humans in Africa, more than any other big fierce animal like lions or leopards, and second only to malaria carrying mosquitos. And now they turn out to be a major feeder of humans, if an indirect one. Who would have guessed?

After the cruise, Valentina, Luca, Rosella and I head to the beach. We've been told there is a huge party there every year on New Year's day. I've seen some packed vans driving around yesterday and today, but there do not seem to be more people in the streets that one would expect during a holiday. Talk of understimating...

We need to walk for about 2 km from downtown S. Lucia to the beach. It's about 4pm and the sun is already beginning to set behind out backs. As I hold my two cameras, I can see thousands of people who are walking away from the beach we are heading to, and beging to snap away at their cheerful and satisfied expression. Their party is over and they are heading home. I try and walk faster to reach the beach while there is still good light to photograph and the people are partying. I am afraid I am late, party must be over with so many thousands leaving, but hopefully some stragglers will still be there.

But I need not have worried at all. As I approach the beach, and can actually see the blue horizon in the distance, the long line of people leaving continues, but the source of the flow is an infinite crowd that strolls to and fro, swims, eats, drinks (no alcohol is allowed though) and makes merry. Everyone I meet is happy to chat, exchange happy new year wishes, take pictures together and exchange Facebook friendship on our cell phones.

I have never seen so many people together in my whole life, and probably never will again. Unless I come back for another new year celebration at the Saint Lucia beach, that is. Hundreds of thousands of people as far as the eye can see, for kilometers on either side of the spot where we reach the water's edge. All are blacks except my three fellow photographers, a few albinos and me. I can't of course be sure there were no other whites, but I won't see any for the following three hours.

A few policeman and policewomen patrol leisurly but no sense od tension or conflict. The only exception is three drunk guys holding beer cans who talk to me with a clearly hostile attitude while I am exchanging Facebook nicknames with a lady I have photograped. It is strictly forbidden to take any alcohol to the beach today, I have seen several signposts to that effect, but how do you check hundreds of thousands of partying youths?

She insists on typing her name on my Facebook app and they give up. Then another small man maybe twenty years-old wearing red and yellow sunglasses comes forward and asks if everything is OK.

Everyone is quite happy at being photographed. Many ask for it. Several offer their Facebook address to receive their photos. Only the three or four albinos I meet don't want their pictures taken. Maybe they are ashamed, maybe they fear that circulating their images might put them in harm's way. Though not as bad as in other parts of Africa, superstitions on the powers of albino body parts exist in South AFrica as well.

On the way back to town I notice many people with large jars, maybe 5 liters, full of sea water and some sand. I ask why they take sea water away and the disarmiblgy simple answer is that they mix with tap water and make salt bath at home!

Dinner time: it's hard to find a restaurant, many are closed and those which are not are booked solid and often have a long line of people waiting outside. Even the restaurant of our own hotel is overbooked, the kitchen closes early and there is no way they can feed us.

We consider going to a fast food someone we talked to mentioned might be open in the township of Mtubatuba, some 25 km away. We have little reliable information and might be just wasting time going there. I make some phone calls to numbers provided to me by a seller of curious who is hoping to exchange a zebra skin currently in his shop with some of the notes in my wallet. But the chances of us driving to Mtubatuba and finding an open restaurant seem to be considerably below 50%.

Moreover, our driver, who last night had supported my hypothesis that it would be safe to visit a black township as a group, bulks at the idea of actually taking us there tonight. He says it's not Soweto. It's not welcoming, crime is high. He fears for our safety and the car's. This makes me more rathr than less eager to go so he calls the company headquarters to ask permission (or at least he says he does) and the answer is no. So much for the township experience, for tonight anyway. But we still need to eat.

In the end, and at the end of a long wait in the street in front of the curio shop, with the owner still looking my way hoping for a deal on his zebra skin, we eat at the Reef and Dunes restaurant, which is right next door to it. Warm welcoming and pleasant atmosphere under their thatched roof. Lots of good beer and their fried butterfish is excellent! I did not know at the time that it can be less than healthy to eat it, but it did no harm to me. Time to hit the sack, it's been another long day.

At night I can hear the grunt of several hippos that have walked ashore. They can be dangerous. Several signposts in the streets and in the garden of my hotel warn everyone to be careful with hippos. And even more careful with monkeys who roam around private property and take pleasure in grabbing anything that strikes their fancy.

25. - 31 Dec.: Kruger through Swaziland to S. Lucia

Again wake up at dawn and the adrenaline starts pumping. Breakfast is devoured faster than usual as we try and get back on to our vehicles and out to the lions. They probably have not moved much since last night and it might still be busy with their mating procedure. It usually goes on for a few days, 20 to 25 times a day. So the chances of seeing them in action again are reasonably high.

But first we need to check out, as we'll be leaving Kruget today. I take my packed bags out of the room and onto the balcony on stilts that overlooks a thick bush, and go back into the room to double check I did not leave behind any chargers, razors, slippers, hats etc. As I come out again and definitively close my room's door behind me, there come my three ladies of two days ago: they must have been waiting in the bush for me to appear and of course they make it clear that they are going to take my bags down to the waiting van. They hardly speak a word, and I don't either, but we all know what we have to do. OK fair enough, the sevice is worth twenty Rand. Once in the parking lot, we all leave our bags in the van and head out with the safari vehicles for one last tour of Kruger.

After the usual check-in procedure at the park's gate we tell the driver to head straight for the location where we saw the lions the previous evening and sure enough there they are, they have just moved across the road, a few meters, not more. However, unlike last night, when we were alone, there are lots of cars now. The word about "ngoni fagapagati" spread quickly. Not so the news about the British car being overturned I guess. No one seems to be in the least apprehensive when we later drive by a couple of elephants.

There are rules of the road in national parks, one of them being to keep a safe distance from the animals and not to get in between the anumals and a car who got there first, But not everyone respects the rules and there is not much the rangers can do: they have to power of enforcement. Too bad, they should. After a while it gets crowded. We are lucky to have gotten near the lions first, and keep a safe distance of a good twenty meters or so but soon a big white SUV drives in front of us. All it takes is one rude driver to spoil the sighting for everyone else. Most drivers are polite and line up behind the first to arrive at the scene of a sighting, but some must think that if they don't get ahead first, someone else will. Anyway, after a few minutes the lions move on and some thirty cars turn on the engines and disperse around the park. The magic of last night was not to be again today.

It's clear that the lions are not afraid of people but still: why not just move out some and get away from noise, polluted air and large obstructive vehicles? Apparently they enjoy the warmth of the tarmac as compared to the cool grass.

At about nine o'clock we must give up and head back to the camp. It's time to bid farewell to our rangers, get on our van and head South: we have to hit the coast at Saint Lucia by tonight.

Borderland

Swazi beauties

At around noon we go abroad. Yes, we do, as we drive into Swaziland, a small landlocked independent kingdom wedged between South Africa and Mozambique.

Our T.O. somehow was reluctant to get us here, they said we needed a special permit, then they said we would waste hours at the border, then they said it was not worth it. None of which is true as it turns out.

The country is famous for its polygamous king, who won't be among the friendly people we met along the way, and for lush green mountains, which we'll see a lot of during our five-hour crossing of the country.

Much of these mountains are covered in thick woods grown to make for timber, a major export and source of revenue for the country.

At a gas station I strike a conversation with a few youths who are loitering around, with seemingly nothing much to do. It is a holiday of course, and schools are closed. They speak good English, seem educated and are eager to strike a conversation with foreigners, of whom they must not see too many if one excludes South Africans.

Swazi timber makes good export

Arrive in Saint Lucia at sunset. It's a pretty posh vacation retreat for wealthy (and therefore white) South Africans, and there are many expensive cars with blond Afrikaans and English speakers to be seen. However we do see a lot of blacks with less fancy clothes and much less fancy cars around. Apparently they sleep and dine in the nearby townships, and only come to town for an evening stroll and a drink.

I would like to go and have dinner in one of these townships, but our driver steadfastly refuses to take us there. Too dangerous for us and for the van, and he would be in deep trouble with the agency's boss if anything should happen to either. Disappointing, I will have to try and find a way around this. Most South African live in townships, it would not make any sense to spend over a month here and not see one. I mean a black township. Of course even the exclusive pockets of white wealth that we have seen are strictly speaking "townships", that's just a name for an administrative division of the country's cities. But in the common jargon "township" has come to mean "black township" and also implies poor, dirty, unsafe. Or does it? Some South Africans even told me that Soweto is "no longer a township" because, unlike during the times of apartheid, it is now developed, reasonably safe, home to a growing middle class and a "must do" tourist destination. The borders of the meaning of township are changing. I'd like to find out. But not tonight.

We finally have dinner is at the "Ocean Basket", a chain of fish restaurants that is very popular across South Africa: good quality fish, informal but usually effective service, inexpensive. This restaurant is very busy tonight, this is a holiday town and the Christmas break is in full swing, but in ten minutes a table for twelve is available on the terrace and we can sit down with our driver. Most patrons are white but there are a few blacks.

Ocean Basket immodestly prides on being "the sole provider". Well... a bit ambitious perhaps, but I decide to take their word for it and order their "famed cape sole". It is perhaps not the sole sole around but is indeed quite tasty. The happy new year's eve dinner is made merrier by a few bottles of Sauvignon blanc from the Cape region. Maybe they are not the "sole" provider of good fish, but their formula is a successful one and they have opened shop in several other African countries as well as, for some reason which is not immediately obvious to me, Cyprus.

Back at the hotel we get a couple of bottles of bubbles and pop them at midnight. It's 2014!

24. - 30 Dec.: Alarms and mating lions at the Kruger National Park

I wake up just five minutes before 5:30, which is when my alarm was set to go off. I hear this happens to a lot of people. I am always amazed at how our body clocks can know when to wake up so as to save its owner the trauma of an alarm. Ever since I adopted my smart phone to perform this thankless function, I set the ringtone to a gentle Buddhist bells chime, so as to minimiza the pain. Still, when it goes off, it makes for the worst moment of the day. I suppose our body knows that it is not good to start the day at its most unpleasant, so it tries to avoid it by preempting the alarm. Well, one could argue it might actually be a good thing, as things would only improve after that. But waking up to an alarm is always a traumatic experience, bound to cast a negative shadow on the waking hours to follow. On the other hand, waking up just a few minutes early provides the immense pleasure of waiting in bed, yawning and stretching, aware there is still time before one has to get up. And I derive a sense of accomplishment in killing the alarm before it has a chance to go off at all. I hate the big snooze button, it is cruel torture, I much prefer the smaller "dismiss" option. So I am profoundly grateful to mother nature for having made us evolve over the last few million years to anticipate our own alarms. I can't explain how, also because we evolved over countless thousand generations while even the most ancient alarms are only a few decades old. Two game drives today: the first starting just after sunrise at 6 am and the second ending at sunset, at 6.30pm. With a one hour break for lunch. It's going to be a full day. We set off to a good start with a very full breakfast: sweet, savory, hot, cold, juices, you name it, it's there. Great, we'll need the energy to face rain and wind in our open vehicles.

It's not the best safari day of my life really. At least until we start driving back toward the camp. Then it becomes the single most exciting one, ever!

We are driving along a straight road, a bit sad and despirited as the weather has not given us a break and our sightings have been rather few and far between. OK well it'a part of the game, these are wild animals after all and Kruger is not a zoo, not even one of those super-managed parks where "wild" animale are more or less programmed to appear at artificial water holes.

It could be worse: today an English couple did have a close sighting with an elephant, but one which they wish they never met. They were on a self-drive tour just a few kilometers from us and met a single bull with a limited sense of humor. As they approached, it turned around and flapped its ears a few times. Elephant flap their ears when they are not happy with you being in their way, and it is usually not a good idea to try and argue with them. The Brits decided to stick around a bit longer and the next thing they saw was an elephant tusk piercing through their wind shield, while the trunk flipped the small car over as if it was a pancake.

I am a bit disconsolate and I try to protect my cameras from the sharp bullets of rain that are flying across our seats, pushed by the wind. Then all of a sudden Henry, our driver/guide today, a towering but boyish Xhosa in his early thirties, slams on the breaks and points to the right: a male lion on the grass, only a few meters away from the road. OK not a bad way to end the day, I think. But then Valentina sees a lioness, almost completely hidden in a bush. Ah ha! They are obviously a couple, says Henry, and turns off the engine. The other 4x4 with our travel mates arrives after a few minutes and stops just behind us. We wait. When lions mate, they do it many times every day, so we have a good chance.

Fifteen minutes or so go by and nothing happens. It's getting dark, we have perhaps another hour of sunlight. The other car decides it's not worth waiting longer and moves on. We stay put. Another ten minutes pass and the lion gets up. Now Henry is visibly excited and warns us to be quiet: they are likely going to mate.

 

 And sure they do: the male jumps on the female who got up and is walking around. He gently pushes her to the ground with his big paws and mounts her from behind. The actual penetration is quick, maybe fifteen seconds in all. No prelims, really. But then again they will have done it twenty times of more by night fall, so it's not bad. During the intercourse the female is crouching on the grass, and look straight into my camera, as if to say: "What, you have never seen a lion mating?" No, I have not, in fact!

Ngoni fagapagati!

Can't believe the lions keep going at it in front of everyone. Actually, come to think of it, all animals seem to be perfectly happy to do it in front of any other animal, except for humans. I'll have to do some research and find out why.

"Ngoni fagapagati!, Ngoni fagapagati!! Hahahaaaaaa" Henry can't hold back his enthusiasm as he explains in xhosa. "Ngoni" means lion and fagapagati is the F word which Henry translates by hitting repeatedly and violently his clenched left fist with the palm of his right hand...

The evening is a happy time. At first we don't tell anything to the others who left early, but when the time comes for everyone to show the day's pictures there are a few screams at the sight of the big cats embracing in amorous activity!

23. - 29 Dec.: Mbahoko Ndebele village to Kruger National Park

Breakfast and good byes to our Ndebele hosts. Even though this has been a brief and obvously superficial encounter, I will miss the casual smile of these ladies as they prepare breakfast for us. They are all by the door of the communal hall to wave us away.

We slowly make our way to the Kruger National Park. Our driver is Paul, a chubby white Afrikaans speaker who tries, really hard, to be funny and crack a new joke every five minutes. I can sense from his talk he really yearns for the days old South Africa, he rarely misses a chance to complain about the post-Apartheid system.

When we arrive at the camp we are welcomed by a row of colorfully attired black ladies who line up next to our parked bus. They don't really speak any English so it's not clear what they are there for and whether it's got anything to do with us. It did: they want to carry our bags to the rooms. In my case, my rooms is a good 300 meters away, a comfortable wooden construction on stilts. To get there, there is an easy paved path and I try to just grab my trolley and roll it to destination by myself. No way: they stop me and gesticulate profusely to make clear they are carrying my bag. Well OK they want to earn a tip, it's not really necessary as I could easily do it myself but I appreciate the effort and agree to let one of them carry my bag. yes, carry, on her head, as whe refuses to just grab the handle and roll it. I try several times to explain it's heavy and there is really no need to put all those 25 kilos or so on her spine but to no avail. Then as I grab my camera backpack another lady comes forward and very politely takes it from me and puts that, too, on her head. Allright, so we just move together to the room, where I give them a good tip, they smile and walk back to the parking lot to way for the next arrivals.

In the afternoon we go for a game drive from 4 to 7 pm. Cold rain is whipped against us by the relative wind as we are in open vehicles. We use special open safari vehicles. Our driver is Tommy, a friendly big guy who enjoys explaining all he knows about the park. It is cold and windy and before sunset we decide to head back without any major sighting under our belt.

Kruger camaleon

Dinner is at the huge buffet of our camp, lots of meat and veggies and of course South African wines. It's been a long day and the cold, rain and wind have taken their toll, so we all decide to hit the sack rather early tonight.