by Marcy Gordon
No one is spared his avian obsession. In the middle of a tennis match with my mother he overhears a stranger in the adjacent court identify a bird flying overhead as a peregrine falcon. My dad doesn’t see the bird but doubts the accuracy of the strangers call. Off court, approaching the other birder he asks “are you sure that wasn’t a merlin?” With a confidence that comes from birding since he was six, he adds, “Peregrines are rarely seen here.” Before the man can answer, the same bird flies overhead again, this time chasing an egret, proof to my dad that the stranger’s identification is correct. They become the best of friends, traveling the world in search of birds.
There are two kinds of people who sign up for an African safari. Most, myself included, want to see “The Big Five”—lion, leopard, rhino, buffalo, and elephant. If those large predators are engaged in a chase, or a kill, that’s even better. The other people are … the birders. So when my father announces he wants to join me on a trip to South Africa and Botswana I have planned for myself, I am delighted, but feel I must clarify. “Dad, you know this is not a birding trip.”
“Fine by me,” he replies. “I won’t even mention my interest in birds to anyone so I don’t interfere with any part of your trip.”
True to his word, for the first part of our journey anyway, he doesn’t mention it. He doesn’t need to. My dad is never without a pair of binoculars hanging from his neck, and a pencil and local bird list sticking out of his back pocket, ready to identify any flying species.
At our first stop we meet up with a group of my friends at a private reserve near Kruger National Park. An undercurrent of excitement flows through my body as we hike within yards of zebra, giraffe, baboon, and the large antelope—kudu and red hartebeest. Some of the animals snort, warning us we are a little too close. Others flee, almost touching us as they gallop past. It is a special treat to walk in the African bush without an armed guide, but my father’s thrill comes only from adding little bee-eaters and black-eyed bulbuls to his birding list.
“Where is your father?” becomes the group’s mantra, and I am sure to find him, off on his own, whispering the identifying characteristics of the bird species he’s filming, into the microphone of his camcorder. In the Northern Transvaal, my friends and I climb among rock cliffs where we discover fresh leopard prints in the sand. Meanwhile, Dad, wearing his favorite khaki flop hat that is one size too big, stalks lanner falcons, red-breasted hornbills, and gray lourie’s. The group cooks stew and bread in a three-legged “Potjie Pot” over an open fire, while under the stars our guide talks about the history of the area, and dad checks off boxes on his birding list. He is especially excited by “lifers”; those birds he has never seen before. Near the Limpopo River, I crawl into caves to look at paintings of elongated giraffe like animals, and funny faced distorted bodies drawn hundreds of years ago by the earliest bushman. My father videos brown snake eagles, red-winged starlings, and violet-eared waxbills.
For the most anticipated part of my itinerary, Dad and I fly alone to Botswana to visit two different lodges chosen because of their large populations of my favorite animals—cats and elephants. Wrapped in blankets against the 5:30 A.M. chill, we climb into the open Land Rover for our first wildlife drive. Impatient to get into the bush (I haven’t been to Africa for ten years), I hardly hear Tim, our driver guide, recite the do’s and don’ts of safari etiquette. I wish he would stop talking so we could get going as not to miss any early morning big game sightings.
Finally, Tim finishes his spiel. “So let’s push off,” he says.
“Yes,” I concur, with an enthusiastic clap of my hands.
But before he starts the engine, he turns again toward my father and me in the back seat and asks, “Are either of you birders?”
Why do they always ask that?
“I’m not,” I respond with an I’m in charge attitude, hoping Tim realizes I am speaking for my father and myself. “I want to focus on mammals, especially lions and elephants.”
Then my father murmurs something about … “birder,” followed by: “But this is my daughter’s trip and I don’t want to ruin it for her, so lets focus on large animals.”
As I’m thinking how sweet it is of him to say that, I hear him add, “But if we see a bird or two that would be great.” A bird or two? Is he joking? Birds are everywhere, they’re inescapable.
Tim’s face lights up as if he just caught up with a long lost friend, “Oh wonderful, I’m a birder too,” he says. From the detail with which Tim and his new best buddy then compare binoculars, I realize I’m doomed.
It’s known amongst safari tour operators in Africa that drivers are happiest when they have birding clients. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because although birds are everywhere, they are difficult to get a good look at, so the drivers have to work harder, and they get tipped accordingly. Or, after years of pointing out mammals, complacent drivers find a rewarding challenge in pointing out a rarely or never seen bird from the hundreds of species on this continent. But I really don’t know the exact reasons that drivers love clients who are birders because I always avoid those vehicles in favor of the groups looking for “real” wildlife.
A few minutes into our drive we stop. I scan the area, but see nothing. Tim is pointing and to the left of us I catch a glimpse of purple, green, yellow, orange, and blue feathers shimmering in the first morning light. This is a beautiful bird, I admit to myself. O.K., I’ve seen it, let’s move on. The lilac-breasted roller is a lifer for my father, and he wants to see the male roll earthward from the sky in his mating dance. Oh great, now we have a specific goal for the day’s outing.
During our two-hour drive we stop more than a school bus full of kids. We halt and stare at every brown, blue, yellow, big, little, flying and sitting bird. I listen to discussions of wing-spans, beak shapes and throat colors, and I learn new names like Hammerkop and Bateleur.
An hour and a half, and twelve lilac-breasted roller sightings later, we see a pride of seven lion, sleeping belly up, their baseball mitt-size paws facing the sky. Finally! I rest my elbows on the edge of the vehicle’s door for a more comfortable viewing position, and focus my father’s hand-me-down binoculars on their blood stained, fly covered fur. The lions’ twitching whiskers, and the way their full bellies move up and down with each breath, are riveting.
After a few minutes, Tim interrupts my big cat trance, “They aren’t going to do anything, so let’s push onward.”
So we can find some more birds which are doing so much, I think to myself. I would rather spend the rest of the day watching these lions sleep.
Our remaining four wildlife drives at Chitabe Camp follow the same pattern. My needs to see things larger than an eagle are accommodated, but lack the obvious enthusiasm that accompanies any and all bird sightings. I have practically become a birder myself by osmosis alone, so at our next lodge, with only two days left before we go home, I am not taking any chances. I explain to my father, “It is probably obvious by the name of the lodge, Savute Elephant Camp that I really want to focus on elephants here.”
“Yes, of course,” he agrees. I’ve heard that before. For added assurance I find a private guide to lead us on a big-game walking experience.
“We have no interest in seeing birds,” I tell Clive when I hire him. He mentions a rogue bull elephant in the area. “We will try to find him,” he says.
“Perfect,” I agree. This man has my interests in mind.
In single file I follow Clive and the shotgun slung over his right shoulder; my father behind me. When we catch up to the massive gray young bull, Clive hand motions us to go slow, be quiet, and stay close to him.
He whispers, “Adolescent male elephants are ousted from the matriarchal herd to find a new group where they can mate, so they can be unpredictable and dangerous.”
Clive signals us to stop; any farther and we would be too close for comfort. The bull moves from one mopane tree to the next, snapping branches like twigs and stripping the red leaves, seeming
ly oblivious to his audience of three. As I turn to share this adrenaline pumping moment with my dad, the massive creature begins to walk away. At the same moment, Clive and I realize Dad is nowhere in sight.
“We can’t follow the elephant until we find your father; I don’t want him getting lost out here,” Clive insists. I know he is right, but I’m reluctant to let the elephant get any farther away from us.
Turning around I can see my father in the distance, half hidden behind a thick bush, video camera leading him in the opposite direction from the elephant and us. His lens is focused on a tree branch, on top of which sits a lilac-breasted roller.
Catching up to him, I plead, “Dad, you have seen hundreds of lilac-breasted rollers already, please can you walk with us, the elephant’s getting away.”
“You’ve seen a hundred elephants already,” he retaliates. We stare at each other for a tension filled moment, and then we both start to laugh. The noise startles the bird and it flies off, while my elephant disappears into thick bush.
Back home in the States my father sends me a gift for including him on my African journey. I unwrap the package to find a two-by-three-foot poster of a lilac-breasted roller.
He will make a birder out of me yet.
When she isn’t traveling and leading safaris in Africa, Lori Robinson lives in Santa Barbara, California. She writes and blogs about her thirty years of traveling to eleven (so far) African countries. Find her online at www.AfricaInside.org.
KIRSTEN KOZA
Easter Island and the Chilean with the Brazilian
Travel is so broadening and occasionally eye-popping.
My obsession with easter Island’s mysterious monolithic stone statues started when I was around five-years-old after I’d seen the film Chariots of the Gods. In the movie, aliens had helped the natives of Easter Island erect stone monoliths called Moai. Of course I now know that aliens had nothing to do with the Moai—I mean, come on, if extraterrestrials could build a space ship to fly across galaxies, surely they’d do something else with their spare time besides helping scantily clad Polynesians carve rudimentary cement-truck-sized statues on one of the most remote inhabited islands in the world, 3000 miles off the coast of Chile.
Finally, forty years later, I was hiking up Rano Raraku volcano, the birth place of the Moai, with my seven-year-old son, Rigel. I pulled my collar up to protect my neck from the ruthless sun and pulled my hat down over my face to hide my already blistered lips. No shade in sight, the Rapa Nui natives had eviscerated the island of trees to transport their statues across the volcanic terrain. I recognized individual Moai from Thor Heyerdahl’s book. I was about as close to Nirvana as I could get. Rigel and I continued up slowly.
“Can we go to the beach now? It’s hot,” Rigel gasped.
I looked at his little scarlet face and then the giant Moai lying stacked upon one another, still in the midst of being carved out of the volcano’s walls but frozen in process by an outbreak of tribal war, which was followed by despair and cannibalism, and then an invasion of slave traders in the 1800s. “Yeah, O.K.,” I agreed. We had three weeks here, so no rush. I’d hang with Rigel. I looked around for my husband, Malcolm, and my friend Karen who’d gone ahead.
Rigel and I descended the dust-slick rock path. We ended up stuck behind two Chilean women in high-heeled beach sandals (stiletto flip flops). Their skirts were flapping in the strong breeze and their tight-jeaned man, equally encumbered by his attire was failing dismally at helping either lady down the slope.
“Excuse me, excuse us,” I said as Rigel and I skidded past the traffic jam of frills and girly-girls clutching their cologne soaked he-man.
As I helped Rigel climb down a steep rock below one of the Chilean princesses, her dress blew up like Marilyn Monroe’s—except this wasn’t family rated. I saw Rigel’s face blanch and his pupils dilate.
Rigel leapt towards me, grabbed my hand, and pulled me down the steep incline at break-neck speed. “Why did that woman’s vagina look like that?”
Oh, God.
“Her vagina hair was just a thin black stripe,” Rigel said in shock.
I hoped this was not going to be his first journal entry in his Easter Island Diary that he was bringing back to his grade one teacher and class. As it was, the teacher disapproved of me taking Rigel out of school for a three week trip. She thought his life might be adversely affected by missing that much cut and paste and carpet time.
“Did her hair on her vagina grow into that shape?”
“No, she’s had it waxed.” Shit.
“Like a car?” Rigel asked. “Is that why her vagina was so shiny?”
“No, that was tanning oil or something.”
“Why would she want a wax and tan on her vagina?”
“Rigel, you see that Moai over there. His name is El Gigante and he weighs over four hundred thousand pounds.” I pointed to the resting giant. “He was someone’s real great great-great granddad, as all the Moai were shaped and carved for real Rapa Nui people.”
“Where is she from?” Rigel inquired.
“Huh?” I looked at El Gigante. It would have taken an entire tribe or clan a whole year to carve this.
Rigel tugged my arm. “What country is that woman from?”
“She’s Chilean,” I said.
“Do people from different countries have pubic hair that grows in different shapes?”
Oh, great. “No, she’s had most of her pubic hair removed.” I stopped myself from going any further. We were at one of the world’s greatest archaeological wonders and I wasn’t about to give my son a lesson on bikini waxing styles.
“Can you pick the shape you want your pubic hair to be? Do you ever do that to yours?”
“No!”
“Hers was a zebra.”
“It was a Brazilian,” I said.
“Why would a Chilean want a Brazilian on her vagina?” Rigel asked.
Later, my friend Karen and I stood in the soft white sand below the Moai, at Anakena beach, while my husband took over cooking lunch in a large Rapa Nui woman’s beach kiosk. Anakena was where the Rapa Nui canoes had first arrived, after their treacherous 2,400 mile paddle across the South Pacific, from the Marquesas Islands. Rigel ran around impatiently as we took pictures.
“I can’t believe we’re here,” said Karen. “It’s incredible. I never fathomed the size of the monoliths or how hard it must have been to transport them around the island.”
“Karen,” I whispered. “It’s a good thing you educated me all the varieties of pubic epilation the other day. It came in handy at Rano Raraku.”
“Why?” Karen asked, moving her sunglasses down her nose to look at me.
“A couple of Chilean women were going commando and Rigel had frontal view of beaver.”
Karen laughed. “So which style was it?”
“It was a Brazilian beaver.”
“Full? As in the naked Sphinx?” Karen inquired.
“No, there was a landing strip.”
Karen laughed even louder. “Hey Rigel,” Karen called. “Did you know that one of the statues’ hats weighs as much as two elephants?”
Rigel ran over. He was excited. “Mom, Karen, guess what?”
“What?”
“That Chilean woman is here!”
Kirsten Koza is the author of the memoir, Lost in Moscow. She is a Canadian travel writer, playwright, speaker and humorist.
KATHLEEN K. MILLER
Why You Worry?
This was not the Jungle Cruise she had in mind.
Every now and then, my mother will ask me what I actually did in the two years that I spent in South America. The scene that immediately pops into my mind is an image of me sitting in a canoe in the middle of the night in the Amazon jungle, surrounded by strange men, while our tour guide (wearing only an orange Speedo and completely inebriated) waved around a deadly poisonous snake that he had tied to a stick. So I smile and tell her that I spent a lot of time in nature reserves.
I
thought I loved nature. I love hiking, I love being outdoors, I love animals (especially of the cuddly variety, like puppies and baby goats—you know, petting zoo animals). I think mountains are spectacular and I love the ocean. I thought a tour in the Amazon would be beautiful. Get back to nature, spend some time outdoors, escape from the stress of modern-day living for a while, and maybe try to break my addiction to Facebook for a few days. So when the smooth-talking travel agent told me that the best way to really experience the jungle was on a five-day tour, I said, “That sounds excellent!” A little pricey, perhaps, but surely it was worth it to really experience the Amazon? The stuff of National Geographic and BBC specials, up close and personal. What an experience! Bragging rights for a lifetime!
I forgot one crucial, crucial detail: the Amazon is no petting zoo. The closest thing to a “cuddly” animal is a wild sloth with surprisingly sharp claws. The Amazon, while it does boast beautiful birds and river scenery, is also the home of the bird-eating tarantula, glow-in-the-dark beetles, deadly spiders, ants whose bites will leave you temporarily paralyzed while they eat your eyeballs, and hordes of dengue-and-malaria-ridden mosquitoes. The climate is not particularly pleasant either, unless you’re a fan of one hundred percent humidity and have a penchant for pit stains.