Crying in the Rain

Our friend Nicole went off on a "walking safari" through Kruger park and the surrounding area the week after she visited us earlier this month.

She may have had a bit of bad luck in trying to hit the tourist attractions in and around Cape Town, what with everything being either closed or sold out, and she may have encountered some difficulty in trying to cut butternut squash in our kitchen, but her real nightmare was just beginning.

Poor Nicole. She's a Brooklyn girl at heart. She was not made for the bush. Especially when it's raining in the bush.

Here's what she wrote to us yesterday:

To put things simply, I was so miserable during the safari trip that I would have given up several key teeth to be back on the beach with you guys, a bottle of Riesling and a squishycooler full of tuna-and-pickle sandwiches and olive chips. I would have offered the contents of my backpack, hypoallergenic tampons and all, to be able to curl up on your futon for a relaxing night's sleep. I would have run six miles on full-bore cankles for an ice-cream-coated fudge brick at the Spur.

When we left Johannesburg for the five-hour drive to the game park, it was pouring rain. When we got to the game park, it was pouring rain. The entire first day, it was alternately cloudy and pouring rain. And freezing cold. And windy. The next morning, when we woke up, it was overcast and windy and freezing cold and fucking pouring rain. It rained while we drove around in the land rover. It rained while we ate breakfast. It rained while we went to the bathroom. (It rained in the bathroom.) It rained while those of us who were able to brave the cold for a shower (not me) took a shower. And it rained while we walked, which was not often, due to the rain.

I had no rain gear.

I literally spent the first two days walking around Kruger wearing a black plastic garbage bag into which I had cut a head hole. Rain came through the head hole. When I was not wearing the bag, I had to hang it up to dry. But I was mostly wearing the bag. I ate brunches while wearing the bag. I searched around the open camp kitchen for apples while wearing the bag. I peed while wearing the bag. Doing this kept my solitary fleece relatively dry -- if it had instantly become a green sponge, I would have been screwed -- but my sneakers got soaked on the first day and never dried out. Eventually, there was so much water in the bottom of each one that stepping down on them sent a small flood out through the mesh air vents on the sides. This may sound like a process that would gradually improve their condition, but no. They refilled quickly enough that there was always more water to squeeze out.

There was nowhere to go where the water wasn't. And it drove me to the brink.

This general condition went on from Monday afternoon, all the way through Tuesday and into Wednesday. I'm not an outdoorsy camping-type person to begin with, and the relentless wet took its toll pretty fast. Tuesday found me sobbing alone in my damp bed in my leaking tent into towels that were too humidity-saturated to effectively absorb tears. (They kind of moved the tears around, and that was about it.) I began contemplating means of escape. Things looked slightly more promising on wednesday morning, when the skies lightened up enough that our group could actually begin a drizzly walk with some measure of confidence that we'd stay dry. But when we'd already ventured three hours away from camp in search of lions that never materialized, it started downpouring like a bastard. The roads turned to mud, my sneakers became lace-up ponds, and a continuous river of water invaded my bag's head hole. Our guide acted like nothing was wrong and was still stopping to look for snakes as we became more and more drenched. I reached my breaking point just then andwas in full-scale freakout by the time we finally trudged our soggy way back to camp. I had been wet and cold and unprepared and miserable for 48 straight hours, and I was not having any fun at all. Grayish skin was peeling off my feet from being in the waterlogged sneakers sixteen hours a day. I hadn't been able to shower for two days because of the cold. Everything I owned was wet. I slept in a wet cot that smelled like it came from a hostel without a washing machine. My primary piece of clothing was a trash bag. I was unable to stop myself from hysterically crying. I ended up telling the guide and our tracker that I couldn't take it anymore, that this particular city kid had way overestimated her ability to tolerate the great outdoors and needed to be returned to Brooklyn immediately. That was clearly not possible, but they radioed for one of the office managers to help. She sped out in a silver Isuzu Trooper with actual windows that rolled up and a dry interior. I think they could tell that I was on the verge of being homicidal.

Four hours later, I had abandoned the Kruger entirely and had taken up residence in a bed-and-breakfast in Hoedspruit. I showered. I got myself dry with a dry towel. I laid down on a bed that didn't feel moist. I thought I was going to die of happiness.

It was a once-you-leave-you-can't-come-back situation, so I missed the entire second half of the trip that I'd paid for, but I really didn't care. It rained the entire rest of Wednesday and into Thursday morning, and I know that not getting out of the safari camp when I did would have cost me my sanity. It finally cleared up and became sunny and warm after lunchtime on Thursday, so the seven others who stuck it out had good weather for the final 24 hours of the week, but I'm glad I wasn't around to see it. I spent my nice warm thursday afternoon strolling around boring old Hoedspruit, taking out-of-the-sun breaks to stalk candy bars at the Spar, and reading the bed-and-breakfast manager's copies of South African "Shape" magazine in a patio chair next to their little swimming pool. I didn't care that there were no elephants, because my sneakers had dried. That was pretty much the best thing that could've happened to me at that point.

Fortunately, I did see some cool animals during the half of the safari that I was present for. We spotted impalas, kudus, elephants with one tusk, elephants with two tusks, male elephants in heat (gross), giraffes, hippos, zebras and dung beetles. Oh, and dungloads of dung. We went tearing off at like 80 km/h (in the rain) in our Land Rover in search of some reported cheetahs, which we never saw, but in the process discovered the amazing capacities of the Land Rover. (I have a whole new respect for the brand.) We listened to billions of frogs and toads making wacky noises at night. We saw how nature made fuzzy biltong out of the side of a slain giraffe. It was just that three days of it was all I could take when it had to happen in sopping conditions.

That's pretty much my second week, in a nutshell. I repeat, I had a fabulous time visiting you guys. FABULOUS. That will be the part of my South African adventure that I try to focus on. I am going to try to pretend that Week Two never existed. All of this makes it seem kind of hilarious that at the time, we considered it a major bummer that we couldn't get into Madame Zingara. Hah.

It was our own karma that backfired on Nicole. The good luck that all the rest of our friends and family enjoyed during their visits here came back to haunt our last visitor. Sorry, Nicole.