Hippo & Croc Boat Cruise| South Africa, Day 11

Tuesday, September 25, 2018
We had both gotten prescriptions for malaria medication before leaving on our trip since part of the Kruger National Park is in a malaria zone. Since you should start taking your meds just a couple days before your trip and we weren't visiting Kruger till the tail-end of our vacation, we decided today would be an opportune day to start our Doxycycline regimen. The two main side effects I was aware of were increased sensitivity to the sun and nausea. I was most worried about the nausea part, especially since you're supposed to take on an empty stomach. Everything was going fine, until about 20 minutes into our drive when Francisco pulled over and announced "I feel like I'm going to puke." He took a minute to collect himself, felt better, and he pulled out into traffic again. Not much further down the road, he pulled over and effectively threw up all over the interior of the car. He pulled over and went behind the car to finish vomiting, and then we tried to clean it up with what we had in the car. I had no ill reaction whatsoever to the medicine, but Francisco ended up having to take the meds with a meal going forward so it would be more gentle on his stomach.

He had also never actually picked up his prescription for malaria, so we were essentially sharing mine for the duration of the trip. The instructions indicate to take for around 4 weeks, so we would have enough on hand for the trip and he could finish off the regimen once we were back home and picked up his prescription. He didn't actually end up following the prescription plan with the medication, so I just ended up finishing off my bottle of pills over the course of the weeks following our return home.

Um, you know what's perfect when you're feeling nauseous! Bunny chow for breakfast!

At least Francisco's stomach had about an hour to get settled before we arrived in Durban to try this South African fast food dish consisting of a hollowed-out loaf of white bread filled with curry that originated among Indian South Africans in this region of the country. We actually pulled up to a casino restaurant location with a more full-service menu, and they ended up redirecting us across the street where there was a more traditional fast food location for Hollywood Bunny Bar.  I had a Quarter Bunny with both Sugar Beans and Broad Beans that's served with carrot salad. The portion size was huge! It was spicy, but I had psyched myself up to expect extra spicy so it wasn't too overwhelming. Let me tell you how I would never recommend getting this type of meal to go - it was near impossible to eat in the car!

We had a Hippo & Croc Boat Cruise booked at 1:15, so we actually swung by our hotel to drop our luggage off first and then got checked in for our cruise in St. Lucia, which boasts the largest hippo population in South Africa.

I took a picture of Francisco standing on the edge of the dock,

and then he turned around and took a picture of me walking up to him.

Getting ready to climb aboard

We could hear a noise from the dock that I suspected was hippos, but we weren't able to see any as we scoured the shoreline.  

We got settled on the boat with our guide, and he started with some informative facts about the area. It was very windy as we pulled out into the river and headed over to the opposite bank. And then we got our first glimpse of real life wild hippos!

However, he almost immediately redirected our attention to the African Fish Eagle sitting in the tree above.

At first, I thought he was talking about this bird I had spotted resting on the hippos, but as he described how the bird would swoop down from its perch and snatch the prey from the water, we realized he was talking about a much larger bird.  The African Fish Eagle is a large species of eagle found throughout sub-Saharan Africa wherever large bodies of open water with an abundant food supply occur.

The smaller bird resting on the hippo was a sandpiper.  

They're a little hard to make out, but there were a couple of hippo flies resting on the back of this hippo. This is a species of biting horsefly found around southern Africa. One tried to bite our guide, and he caught it and showed us up close.

We spotted a pied kingfisher, a water kingfisher and is found widely distributed across Africa and Asia.

These Cape weavers were really neat.

These birds are endemic to South Africa, Lesotho, and Swaziland. The males build and defend multiple nests within a small territory. The females test the quality of construction of the nest by pulling at the interior material. Their nests looked so well-constructed, and there were so many of them.

We also saw a couple of crocodiles, but our guide had a knack for pulling up slightly too close to them and startling them away. It was too warm for them to be on the shore, so they were mostly in the water and a lot harder to find.

The best part was watching a couple of juvenile hippos play-sparring in the river.

We were busy watching them, and off to the side on the river bank, there was another hippo making his way in to the water.

Another boat on the river

Taking a pic of the croc on my small camera

After the cruise, we started driving to Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park, which was rumored to rival Kruger in beauty and landscape variety. However, we were about to run into a worrisome low fuel situation, and there didn't seem to be any chain gas stations in sight. We would occasionally pass very rural-looking gas stations that we weren't too keen on, but we realized we were running out of options. Since we weren't sure when we would next come across one, we ended up having to turn around and drive back several miles in the other direction. Francisco felt very bad for costing us extra time and concern.

When we did finally pull up at the park, we were denied admission. It was 4:30, and the latest admission they would allow is 3:00 since their gates closed at 6:00. We were very disappointed because we had driven a fair way to get out there. Our return trip to fill up on gas probably added a half hour to the drive, so even without that issue, we wouldn't have made it in time.

There were some Cape weavers working on their nests by the parking lot, so I made up for my disappointment with lots of pictures of them.

Defeated, we headed back to the Protea Hotel Umfolozi River that we had swung by early just to get checked in and drop off our luggage. This location was a little weird in that it seemed to only be accessible via a fairly rural dirt road.  

We checked out the pool before heading back to our room. It was a sizable property, so it turned into its own mini-adventure. 

Our previous Protea stay had been a lot nicer. This hotel did not offer in-room Wi-Fi, but it was really the bathroom area that was most questionable. The toilet was not fully enclosed. There was an opaque glass door concealing the toilet, but it was completely open at the top.

The shower area was directly next to the beds, and the glass shower door would leave you completely exposed to anyone casually walking through the room. This was definitely a consideration as we discussed ordering room service!

We always welcome two beds when traveling to give us an opportunity to spread out more. :)

The view from our balcony was decent.

Francisco didn't want to go back out for dinner. Because every place we stayed at was fairly well-protected, there was a gate guard that we had to interact with to enter or leave the property, which added an extra level of annoyance. We checked on food options, and the buffet dinner was $20 USD a person, which is definitely not a good value for us. We checked on room service options, and Francisco had the most frustrating conversation with the guy on the other line. Apparently, some of the menu items weren't actually available anymore, which was the first piece of confusion, then there was a long drawn out conversation about chips v. crisps as we tried to determine whether we were getting what we would commonly know as french fries or not. Francisco was about to ask him to describe the shape of the potatoes lol.  

I made sure to finish showering by the time the room service guy showed up with our vegetarian penne pasta, chips with ketchup and vinegar, and fruit slices with ice cream. Somehow there was confusion, and we were brought double ice cream, but we made sure that was taken off our bill.   

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