South Africa Day 1: A shower of fire and ice

(NOTE: This diary was largely written during my stay, but has been filled in and edited later. I am posting them retroactively to the day they "happened".)

So, I went to South Africa on a whim. Well, I'd been there last year with mah San Diego crew and fell completely in love with it, so when I discovered in late May that there were cheap tickets and available lodgings in the actual Kruger Park this summer, I booked. Flew from Oslo to Frankfurt with no worries. The Krauts have wisely organized the transit hall so that just about every sitting space available was in a dining place. Clever, clever Krauts. As an extra special ignominy, at the McDonalds where I had my lunch, I was sat next to an Argentinian girls' soccer team. Hate, hate, hate. Anyways. I flew on to Johannesburg but for some reason couldn't even get the usual few winks of sleep all night.

My insomnia probably dulled the panic over left hand driving and I managed to make all the correct turns that Google had told me to. I had lunch at a place called Lowveld Oasis, a rundown little place out in the middle of nowhere. The burger however turned out to be both good and cheap, just as I remembered South African cuisine from last year. Little transpired on the rest of the drive; I stopped to buy some overpriced gifts from an elderly lady and saw a baboon run across the road and that was it.

The Lowveld Oasis.


This meal & a soft drink cost me about what the small order of fries would in Norway.


My place for the night turned out to be not so great. It was called the Wild Olive Tree Camp (it wasn't a tree camp but a wild olive tree, as if that made anything better) and it was one of the worst places I have ever stayed at. My lodgings was a canvas structure with wooden beams inside; tent they'd advertised it as. The first disappointment came when I tried to take a shower. I'd been instructed to let the water run a little to give the gas which powered the heater time to work. So I waited. And waited. And waited. The water didn't change one degree from its default setting of liquid ice.

Rather than get all dressed again and then slouch through the darkening woods up to reception (the cabins all lay appx half a mile into the bush), I took a quick shower, dancing in and out of the water and whimpering curses the whole time. Halfway clean I went up to make a complaint and they sent maintenance down to check. Turns out the valve on the gas canister needed to be completely open to produce heat. Perhaps this is the time to tell you that the gas canister was on the outside of the tent and that during no point in the instructions given was the existence, much less the placement and operation of said canister mentioned to yours truly. Did I get so much as a "sorry"? Nope.

Disappointment #2 came a couple of hours later, when we (the camp also held a Belgian couple) were supposed to have dinner in an eating area just below the reception area. I'm not sure if it was misleading advertisement or just something my fevered brain had cooked up (see what I did there?), but I had envisioned a proper South African BBQ, perhaps a juicy steak or pulled pork or chicken; I'm not picky. But no. Instead, we were served spaghetti and some unidentifiable meat sauce; all of it so bland that I didn't finish more than half. And if you know anything about me, you know that's bad.

The final disappointment, which may have killed a weaker man, was the temperature of the tent when I got back. Now I know it can get chilly in Africa once the sun goes down, but this was almost like going to bed in a freezer. The only thing that saved my life was a couple of blankets, which I tucked between my shivering self and the heavy but ice cold duvet.

I got up at 5AM to a cold room and ventured out to the shower. It wasn't cold this time, instead it was boiling hot; so hot I could barely stand to stay under the water for more than a second or two at a time. After about a minute of this in and out dance, it turned ice cold again and a flame shot out of the gas apparatus with a loud bang. Between the prospect of finishing with a repeat of yesterday's frigid dance and risk being blown to pieces by an exploding gas canister, I wisely decided to just fuck off outta there.