Posted August 29, 2022: I left you in the last post whining about cold South African mornings. Getting ready for meerkats—and, it turns out, one of my favorite mornings on the trip….almost as good as safari-time out in the Mara’s cold dawn back at Basecamp. But first, I do ask myself, why? It is early, dark, cold, no coffee. Surly, am I surly again? Isn’t there a meerkat show I could have watched on Nature? And then—how is it that before we even arrive at the meerkat valley, before we leave our vehicle and are handed extra blankets and a chair on which to sit and wait for the little beasts to decide to get up—I’m happy. But let me stop with the naval-gazing (omphaloskepsis!) for now and simply tell you what we did.

I’ll begin by cheating. The following piece, taken verbatim from southafrica.net, is perfect—and meerkats deserve perfect—you do remember the excessive cuteness of Timon (Lion King) don’t you?:

“There is something magical about watching a meerkat greet a new day in Western Cape province’s Little Karoo. Go out before sunrise on De Zeekoe Guest Farm outside Oudtshoorn on Route 62, and you’ll encounter meerkats in a non-invasive way, gaining a real insight into their lives within their natural habitat. Meerkats hate the cold, so they’re only up once sunlight hits their burrow. By then, you’ll be seated on portable chairs in a semi-circle, and you’ll have had had a full rundown on meerkats and their intriguing lives.

“Actually, only one meerkat will come up initially – the sentinel. She’ll face the sun, arms at her side, absorbing heat through her ‘solar panel’ – the dark patch on her belly. You’ll see her head swivelling, her dark eyes moving ceaselessly back and forth. She will study the people, then the surrounding bush, then gaze at the skies, on the lookout for the meerkats’ most feared foes – birds of prey. Then, one at a time, she will be joined by the others, and as sentinel she’ll give a quiet, regular chirrup, reassuring them that all is well. Zoologists call it ‘the Watchman’s Song’. They will all line up to greet the sun and warm up. Meerkats don’t have much fat at all, so they rely on the sun to rev up their metabolisms…

“This colony of a dozen or so meerkats at De Zeekoe is habituated to humans. So while they won’t necessarily scamper up to you, they won’t run for the hills either, as a normal wild troop would. After the warm-up, some of the younger meerkats will start to play. The adults will start digging here and there for grubs, and the meerkats will disperse into a loose group (still guarded by the sentinel, still incessantly scanning the horizons and skies). And you’ll follow them for a while, learning something about a day in the life of a meerkat troop.

When it’s time to go, you’ll leave them to their mad scrabbling and insect hunts, and soon they’ll be all but invisible behind the short Karoo shrubs.”

And then it was on with the road trip. It’s about 220 miles from Oudtshoorn to Addo Elephant Park, our destination for the night but, with the oh-so-scenic Klein Karoo to gaze upon and oh-so-many South African stories to hear, it would take awhile. We made only one important stop at Birds of Eden, the world’s largest domed bird sanctuary, spanning a gorge of indigenous forest, and home to over 3500 birds of 220 different types. They are mostly previously-caged pets, unused to living in the wild.

“Many of the birds we home have never encountered other birds. Therefore the main rehabilitation process involves socialization with other birds in large outdoor pre-release aviaries. Here they are given the chance to build up flight muscles, flight control, i.e. practicing landings, change of direction etc. The rest of the release process is based on instinct and it is rather remarkable, all the birds instinctively know which area of the aviary suits their needs, how and where to look for, and find food, water and shelter from the weather. The winning factor of Birds of Eden is its sheer size. The volume particularly, allows for the creation of habitat niches for the large variety of species that find sanctuary here.”

I apologize for all of other peoples’ words (including the last paragraph from an on-line description) but the days were long and my energy-level didn’t encourage my usually fairly-extensive notes.

The next two nights and a full-day were spent at Addo Elephant Park which was absolutely fine—but I played my ‘old-lady’ card and took it a bit easy, missing the night-time game drive. Addo had been Celia’s idea, because according to her, one can never ever get tired of elephants. I may have doubted that but when a huge elephant looms over you, directly over you, along a dusty road in a wilderness park, it’s still a humbling experience.

AND, I’ve said this before, don’t ever be even one iota impressed by the derring-do of those extremely-creepy insecure low-life’s who claim to be brave and manly big game hunters. Donald Jr. comes to mind. Why I don’t believe in any god of any stripe is because if there were such a wise all-powerful creation, she would place the weaselly D. Jr. on a hot sandy ant-ridden field to be first trampled by an annoyed elephant and then eaten slowly by hyenas. There, I feel so much better having written that.

Then, there’s the bravery of little-old-crones when they’re not tired. Our first stop the next day was near the coast for the Tsitsikamma Canopy Tour, the first of its kind in Africa, the tour involves zip-lining from one platform to another along a steel cable suspended up to 30 meters above the forest. I had focused on the words ‘canopy tour’ and imagined gently gliding through a leafy green refuge, filled with bird song and magnificent trees to be viewed slowly and thoughtfully. After all we were in the magnificent Tsitsikamma indigenous rainforest, the zip-line platforms built around giant Outeniqua Yellowwood trees that are up to 700 years old!

Well, it was all okay—however, you know, there’s no time as one ‘zips’ along to think a lot about the natural environment. You suit up cumbersomely, dread the 3-seconds of terror as you step out into space, zip along for another 10-seconds or so…and you do it over and over. Oh sure, the guides are funny and charming, and the forest grand, and you’re complimented on participating at your extreme age, but no biggie so far! However, I then had to climb up a long steep hill to our vehicle—uphill in the burning sun. Not allowing myself to be carried as I suffered moderate heat stroke symptoms was my real victory over—over wisdom and frailty. I never have to do it again.

Soon enough we were heading back toward Cape Town, already missing Dirk and that most interesting of countries and people. At least I was. As stated ad nauseam, whenever I’m about to leave South Africa, I’m terrified I’ll never return. We’ve gotten use to load-sharing and it is good practice for Americans to live in a ‘captured state’ since the U.S. is so very close to that condition. Last stops, a penguin colony and best of all, a rainy hour at Cape Agulhas, the southernmost point of the African continent where the Atlantic and Indian Oceans meet. It was wild and dark and stormy and glorious.

Winding down…winding down…. I am relieved that there are only ten days to go (cannot believe I’m saying that but whatever is wrong with my stomach seems to effect energy and enthusiasm and good cheer rather dramatically) and they are to be spent in the ease of luxurious riads in enchanting Moroccan cities…and I’ll never be cold in the mornings.