My Africa Adventure – Lions and Elephants and Birds… Oh My!
This marks the first of several blogs that chronicle my trip of a lifetime experience to Africa. I’ll start at the beginning, my arrival to South Africa and the amazing adventures at Kapama.
Kapama Private Game Reserve
My travels to finally arrive in South Africa were long and uneventful. I had a short connecting layover in Amsterdam where I grabbed a coffee and did some people watching in the airport, this included a guy pacing around talking on his iPad as a phone. Did he realize how ridiculous he looked?
I arrived in South Africa late in the evening and only had a chance to get to the airport hotel, have a quick shower and go straight to bed because we were up and at ‘em again the next morning for our trip to Kapama Private Game Reserve, just on the border of Kruger National Park.
This marked the first day of our week long stay here with StuVac Seminars for Diane Lee’s 20 hour course entitled “Treating Pelvic Girdle Pain, Pelvic Floor Dysfunction and Diastasis Rectus Abdominus New Perspectives”. It was a jam packed schedule while we were there. The wonderful staff at Kapama had us up at 530 am every morning to start our 3 hour morning safari game drives. Our driver’s name was Doc and our tracker, Brian.
Doc (Ctr) and Brian (Rt)
The two of them took such good care of us all week to make sure that we had a chance to see all that the reserve had to offer and educate us on all the animals. Doc was determined for us to see “The Big Five” the 5 most dangerous animals to hunt in Africa – the Rhino, Cape Buffalo, Elephant, Lion and Leopard.
Their passion for their work was plainly evident and infectious with Doc exclaiming “Let’s go get ‘em!” or “Well spotted!” when we came across a a group of zebras or herd of impala.
After our morning safari, Doc would bring us back to camp for a quick breakfast then it was off to the library for a few hours of interactive course work with Diane Lee. After our classes were finished for the day around 4pm, it was another quick change of clothes then right back on our trucks for our 3 hour afternoon/evening game drives.
It is winter here in South Africa right now. Although the daytime hours in the sun were nice and warm, the early morning and night-time rides in the back of an open Land Cruiser were windy and cold and required full on winter gear. Doc and Brian even treated us to hot-water bottles for our lap in the mornings, calling them “our babies” and instructing us to take good care of our babies while we drove around.
We were constantly changing in and out of our warm clothes to our cool clothes for class, fondly calling it our quick costume change.
Kapama Highlights
The highlight of the week for me was a mid-week morning drive where we ended up completely surrounded by a herd of elephants close enough to touch all around our truck. We sat in silence at the wonder of it all. One of our truck mates gripped my hand in fear but I was completely mesmerized and would have been happy for the elephants to come even closer.
Karen with Jambalani, a teenage elephant
It was a herd of maybe 20-30 elephants of all different sizes and their calm and gentle energy spoke straight to my heart. Definitely a moment that I will never forget and one that I was so sad to end. This was followed closely by an extra excursion that I participated in on our one day off of course work.
Several of us chose to do an up close elephant encounter. We were brought to Kapama’s own elephant rescue sight where they accept orphaned and injured elephants from around Africa for rehabilitation. Here I had a chance to feed and pet Jambalani, an elephant teenager of the reserve. He was a friendly elephant with mischievous eyes, a friendly trunk and soft leathery skin behind his ears.
Our allotted petting time was definitely not enough for me! The ranger told us neat facts about elephants including that they have a dominant tusk. You will often see an elephant with one tusk shorter than the other, this is their dominant tusk that they would use to scrape bark off of trees.
African elephants also have much larger ears than their Asian counterparts, as well as six sets of teeth in their lifetime. As they wear their teeth down by chewing on bark and leaves, another set is ready to replace their teeth. Sadly this also means that an elephant does not die of old age but of starvation once their last set of teeth are gone.
They are unable to feed themselves enough to get the nourishment that they need to survive. The same would happen if their trunk were to get badly injured, as it is the only way that an elephant is able to bring food to its mouth. It’s flexible and dextrous lips can hold a hand full of peanuts and blow off any dust or dirt before placing it in its mouth! So amazing.
Other highlights included finding the elusive leopard, a member of the Big Five that is often missed by those on safari. We arrived in time to catch our leopard come out of the dense brush and walk right behind and beside our truck! It was awesome!
Both Brian and Doc were equally excited about this sighting, pumping their fists in the air once the massive cat walked by. We also witnessed giraffes “necking”, a way that two male giraffes will fight in order to stay warm in the early winter morning hours as well as exert dominance between them.
They wave their heads around and thump each other with their head and horns to give a loud THUMP and aim to stop the opponents heart! Doc would cheer at every thump, yelling “Knock him down!” while I winced in the back.
Physios from Around the World
My time at Kapama was made even more special with the chance to spend another week being mentored by Diane Lee as well as meeting so many talented physiotherapists from around the world.
I now have new friends from Japan, Australia and the US. It was such pleasure to spend time with these amazing women and get to know them on both a personal and professional level.
Kapama Hospitality
Our hosts at Kapama were beautiful and friendly. Greeting you with a friendly smile and on a couple of special occasions, treating us to outsanding outdoor dinners around a large fire in what they called their BOMA – British Officers Meeting Area.
Our whole truck at a BOMA dinner
On these special nights, the staff would sing and dance for us around the fire, belting out beautiful music in their native tongue to the beat of a hand drum and flashing their white teeth as they smiled wide while they danced for us. It was a sight that you could not help but smile at when watching.
The pure joy that they had on their faces as they sang and danced, you could tell they felt wonderfully free. It was sad to say goodbye to our hosts and many hugs and kisses were given to each of them when we were leaving. Kapama is a place that I would return to in a heartbeat and if you find yourself there, make sure to hop into Doc’s truck and tell him I said hello!
For more pics of my adventure at Kapama, check out this link to my Facebook album.
Karen’s Safari Adventure 2015
