the luckiest player

267 points for "luckiest"

i’ve been on a roll lately with lexulous, playing 2-minute games with 0-second increments. the rounds are high speed and filled with intense pressure thus giving me my daily adrenalin rush. i recently beat my previous record for most points with one word (230 for THERAPIES) when my opponent played HOOD and left open the triple word spot. i had LUCKIEST in my rack, so with the K on the double letter, and the 8 tiles spanning two triple-word-scores, i got a grand total of 267 points.

the sheer luck of having those tiles in my rack was not lost on me.

gorilla tracking, bwindi impenetrable forest

gorilla tracking, bwindi impenetrable forest, originally uploaded by suddenly.

the distance from kampala to bwindi isn’t far but when you’re traveling on a two-lane “highway” ridden with satellite dish-sized potholes then driving over dirt paths, what should’ve been a 5-hour journey spins itself into an 11-hour bumpy ride.

our entire reason for the trip was to see the endangered mountain gorillas in bwindi. you might know them from the movie gorillas in the mist starring sigourney weaver as diane fossey.

there’s a reason why they call it the “impenetrable forest.” the entire mountain is covered in dense thickets of trees, vines, and stinging nettles. we had no path to walk on; the trackers chop down the vegetation with machetes as they go and try to point out the big drops underfoot so we don’t sprain an ankle. and even with a hired porter to carry my backpack and drag me up the 70-degree inclines, the trek is kicking my citified urbanista butt. oh, and did mention that the air is like a warm vat of mayonnaise? my newly-purchased safari shirt is drench from collar to tail.

our group of 8 trekkers endure nearly two hours of this before we sight the gorillas. (we were the “lucky” ones because the other group took 10 hours.) there’s the big papa silverback, the mama and her bebe, along with the crazy uncles swinging in the trees and lounging beneath the ferns. they are relaxed, having a family moment while we can barely contain our excitement. the gorillas are oblivious to us except for the baby who is curious. she (i think it was a she) turns and turns her head to look at each of us snapping pictures wildly.

we got to have an hour viewing the gorillas but is the quickest hour i’ve ever spent. yay! we saw the gorillas in the mist!! and then we had to make the trek back down the mountain.

green bananas

green bananas, originally uploaded by suddenly.

after a couple of days we got out of kampala. we were on our way to bwindi which is in the west towards the D.R. congo and rwanda borders. our driver picked us up at 6:30 in the morning and i slept most of the way but when i was awake i managed to take a few photos. here’s one of the many trucks carrying green bananas or “matoke,” the staple food of uganda. they eat them boiled, mashed, served with peanut sauce, roasted, etc.

kampala, uganda

fruit and the city, originally uploaded by suddenly.

next, we moved on to kampala; a city more congested and more polluted than nairobi but at least you don’t have to worry (too much) about getting mugged.

usually when we arrive in a new city we like to explore the area on foot, you know, get the lay of the land. big mistake in kampala. it’s right on the equator which means searing heat all year round. i spent the first part of our walk lathering myself in sweat; the second part coating myself in black exhaust from old cars manufactured in the 1970s; and the third part crumbing myself in the dust kicked up from the dirt roads. yup, it was like an unintentional recipe for chicken-fried suddenly susan.

getting around in a taxi is also out of the question because the traffic simply does not move. instead, we opted to take the motorbike cabs they call “boda boda.” they zip you around town at breakneck speeds weaving in between vehicles. they’re supposedly not safe but they do get you where you want to go and you can feel the wind on your face.

view some scenes from kampala here.

buffalo: before and after

buffalo: before and after, originally uploaded by suddenly.

zebra at lake nakuru

zebra at lake nakuru, originally uploaded by suddenly.

zebras are cool. i love their stripes and sweet faces. do you see how bloated the zebra is? a ranger told me that zebras eat so much they’re full of gas and they fart when they run.

seeing pink at lake nakuru

something pink in the water, originally uploaded by suddenly.

we finally get to lake nakuru national park and pay the exorbitant entrance fee: $60 per non-resident. compare this to the $15 entrance fee for international visitors to kruger park. (remember what i said about nairobbery?) anyway, our first stop is the actual lake. this is what it looks like from the distance. as we get closer, we can make out what all that pink stuff is. FLAMINGOS! like a gazillion of them. they’re attracted to the algae in the water.

pink flamingos, originally uploaded by suddenly.

as you can see, these birds are pink from head to toe. even their eyes are pink.

more flamingos!, originally uploaded by suddenly.

i don’t know if it’s the fish they eat or their poop (or the fish in their poop) but these flamingos are pretty darn smelly.

more flamingo fotos here.

on the way to lake nakuru

on the way to lake nakuru, originally uploaded by suddenly.

in cape town and nairobi, the cabbies are always angling for a bigger fare. shuttling you from your hotel to a restaurant then back to your hotel is just chump change for them. instead, they’ll ask, “so…ms. susan, what ELSE do you plan to do in nairobi?.” hoping that you’ll hire them to drive you someplace far and unload some of the shillings in your fat tourist pockets.

the driver who picked us up at jomo kenyatta airport in nairobi who’d been pretty sullen and taciturn the whole trip, all of a sudden became mr. chattypants when we mentioned we’d like to go to lake nakuru, a national park that’s a 2-hour drive from nairobi. his initial quote was 150,000 khs for the roundtrip. that’s almost $US 200. holy cannoli! (did i mention that they usually expect a tip on top of the fee?) is this why they call the city nairobbery??

we eventually talked him down to 110,000 khs and set off at 7 a.m. the next day, leaving behind the thick black clouds of exhaust in exchange for thick gray clouds of rain. along the highway, we saw swarms of kenyans walking into the nairobi city center. apparently, most people in nairobi start their workday at 8 a.m. to avoid the intensifying heat as they walk to work. according to the travel agent at our hotel, the locals must make a choice: (a) either walk to work so they can eat lunch or (b) take the bus and skip lunch; they don’t have enough money for both meals and transportation. hearing things like this makes me feel like an a$$hole. i begin to examine all the dough i’ve spent on non-essential items over the last year: shoes, nice bottles of wine, 100 euros a kilo for jamon serrano. all wasteful, indulgent purchases. when you’re here, every mother’s proclamation, “but there are people starving in africa!” becomes all the more poignant. it’s true. unfortunately, mom was right.

soon the swarms dissipated and things got rural real quick. the air is not so black any more, there are cows on the side of the road, and people living in wooden or tin shacks. our driver turns to us and says, “put on your seatbelts. the police look for something small. do you know this, ’something small?’” something small = bribes. we saw road blocks every half hour with cops looking for “something small.” one officer stopped our driver but let him go when he peered into the back seat and saw two smiling tourists strapped into their seatbelts. nothing small for him today.

our driver continues the drive to lake nakuru.

see more photos along the way.

giraffe centre, nairobi

giraffe centre, nairobi, originally uploaded by suddenly.

the next stop on the freakishly big-and-tall animal petting trail was the giraffe centre in nairobi. the giraffe centre was established for the endangered rothschild giraffe, yet another example of white people setting up a sanctuary to save animals in africa.

as soon as you walk in, the friendly staff will force some green pellets into your hand and instruct you to feed the giraffe one pellet at a time. the best way to feed them is to lay the pellet flat in your palm so that the giraffe laps it up with the tongue or drop a pellet onto the giraffe’s outstretched tongue — otherwise they may accidentally bite your fingers. being herbivores, their teeth aren’t sharp but still, those are some monster chompers.

giraffes are fairly gentle creatures but if you don’t continually give ‘em some grub, they may headbutt you on the feeding platform. and seeing as how a giraffe’s head is as big as a grown man’s torso, you’d best keep the food coming or get out of the way.

the staff will also encourage you to kiss the giraffe, i.e., put a pellet between your lips and let the giraffe lick it out of your mouth but that just seemed gross to me.

unless you’re a resident of kenya, you’ll have to pay the inflated foreigner rate of 700 kenyan shillings (=US$9) for the admission fee.

baby rhino

baby rhino, originally uploaded by suddenly.

this is a baby rhino named maalim at david sheldrick’s. he was named after the ranger who found him when he was just one or two days old. apparently, he had become separated from his mama who may have been injured, killed, or poached for her horn. (trying to hold back the tears as i write this.) he was just 25 kilos and only about 8 inches tall when he arrived at the sanctuary. at 5 months old and after careful feeding, he looked a lot more robust when we met him.

we had seen a full-grown rhino during our safari at kruger; it was H U G E, and quite frankly, lacking in personality. maalim on the other hand had personality up the wazoo. he bounded out to greet us, practically wagging his tiny rat-tail as he ran around soaking up the spotlight. it’s clear that this little attention monger loves when people pet him and all of us were happy to lavish him with affection. we got our hands all over him — and he got all over our hands.

i’m not sure what kind of rhino maalim is but he could one day grow up to be 3000 kilos (that’s 6600 pounds!).

feeding time

feeding time, originally uploaded by suddenly.

nairobi is one big, polluted, congested city but boy, they’ve got some cute animals. when i found out that we could visit baby elephants in an orphanage, i had to go. they’re at The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, a haven for elephants and rhinos. feeding time is from 11 a.m. to 12 noon and that’s the only time you can visit. the admission is 300 kenyan shillings per person (=US$4). the elephants were led out in a row and squirmed their way to the big milk bottles. when they were done, the workers paraded them around and let us pet them. their skin felt the way i’d imagined it, like an old crackly football in need of a good oiling. some parts have thick, bristles of coarse hair.

the blankets on their backs are to help prevent pneumonia but i think they just look darned adorable.

oh, and the charming part of the feeding is that they went potty on the ground afterwards. and then a dung beetle came along and rolled off with a piece of poop in the dust until it looked like a cocoa-dusted truffle.

queens of the jungle

queens of the jungle, originally uploaded by suddenly.

we stayed at nkorho bush camp, a swanky lodge in sabi sands that’s pricey for sure but well worth the money if you want an expert ranger and tracker to help find all the game you want to see. rangers are allowed to drive off-road to track animals–something you can’t do self-driving in kruger park where you get traffic jams around any game sighted on the paths.

for the steep price at nkorho you get accommodation in a gorgeous room, gourmet meals prepared by a trained chef, and two game drives a day in an open-air vehicle. each game drive is 3 hours long. on our first morning drive (starting at 6 a.m. – ouch!), we saw a pride of lions headed by lionesses. these ladies are so fierce they don’t need any males around. in fact, they successfully kicked the butts of some males who tried to threaten their cubs. you go, girlz.

the pride had just come off an impala kill. and often when one has food, one searches for a drink. they gathered around a watering hole and began lapping. you could see their distended bellies full of impala steaks, chops, and offal. the lioness lay on their sides to keep the weight of the meal off of their internal organs. apparently, digesting such a big meal really gets a kitteh fired up and hot. you could hear the heavy panting of the lionesses as they tried to cool themselves down.

after recovering a bit from their food coma, some of the lions and cubs ventured out toward our vehicles. it’s amazing how the animals don’t give a second thought to our presence. they’re pretty used to seeing the vehicles and don’t perceive them as a threat.

the cubs in the pride were around 10 months old. just like kittens they play and nuzzle with each other while their mamas lick them clean. it’s crazy to imagine that by the time they’re two years old, they’ll be full grown and strong enough to take down a full grown buffalo on their own.

safari mosaic, kruger national park

safari mosaic, kruger national park, originally uploaded by suddenly.

omg. we had the awesomest time on safari at kruger park in south africa. within three days we saw all of the big 5 (lion, rhino, leopard, elephant, and buffalo–so called because these are the five most difficult animals to hunt on foot). we also encountered a pack of wild dogs twice during our game drives which is apparently one of the rarest things to see in the bush.

our ranger was hard core. no people skills but he knew his animal shit — literally. he’d eye some poop on the ground and several minutes later, boom! we were face to face with a pride of lions.

the leopards are apparently the hardest of the big 5 to spot (har-har) on safari but we happened to be in an area with a high concentration of them (sabi sands, a private game reserve that shares an unfenced border with kruger). we saw a leopard each day we were there. the one in the photo named “white cloth” by the rangers was injured as you can tell by the big gaping wound and hanging flesh around it. the rangers think she either had a run in with a warthog or got snagged on a sharp branch during a kill. poor kitteh i think seeing leopards in the wild was the highlight for me because they slink around like butter on a hot roll but with raw animalistic power in each step. they’re just beautiful to watch.

we also sighted a slew of zebra, wildebeest, and a few giraffes–considered lesser animals by the rangers but still cool to see for us city folk. every day, herds of impala roamed our lodge property. i love seeing them run.

viewing these animals in the wild is such an exhilarating experience. they move freely and some of them come right alongside the vehicle. you’re like “wow. it’s so cool!” while at the same time thinking, “holy crap. this animal can kill me with one swipe.”

i definitely have the safari bug. can’t wait to view more animals in the wild.

the end of the world (almost)

cape point, originally uploaded by suddenly.

we drove down to cape point and the cape of good hope – the most southwestern point on the african continent. it was an ominous, rainy day but we braved the wind and precip to view jackass penguins and ostriches.

speaking of ostriches, i am a big fan of ostrich meat. i marinate some ostrich filets for two days in a mixture of red wine, soy sauce, garlic and olive. sear it on the stove top then finish them in the oven for tender mignon-like steaks that are leaner and more eco-friendly than their bovine counterparts.

i pet this cheetah

enigma, originally uploaded by suddenly.

at cheetah outreach, a sanctuary for injured or abandoned cheetahs in the stellenbosch area, about a 25-minute drive outside of cape town. our cheetah’s name is enigma, he’s 4 years old, and just one lean body of muscle. the animals there are hand-raised and quite tame but the handler is there the whole time holding onto their leash, you know, just in case kitty gets grumpy and wants to disembowel you.

after your stroking session, you can walk around the compound and look at the other cheetahs.

all in all, an awesome experience.

more cheetah footage here