Brazilian Travel Diaries

After a week in Brazil, I have made it to the airport in preparation for my departure back to home.  The trip has been relatively busy, plenty of work but I have still had some time to get to absorb some of the beautiful Brazilian culture and to see some of the breathtaking landscape that this fantastic country has to offer. 

Day 1: Monday
The alarm went off a touch to early for my liking (3am), so I could get some excercise in before my flight, seeing as I figured that after a 6 hour flight, and a 2 hour drive I wouldn't be in any mood on my arrival to Brazil to hit a gym.  Mario, my ever reliable and friendly taxi driver successfully negotiated the Santiago early morning vaccuum of traffic and got me to the airport in time.
I was luckily pretty tired, and was able to grab a couple of hours of shut-eye on the plane before I watched "The Ugly Truth", to tell the truth I didn't really care what the movie was about, as soon as I saw it had Katherine Heigel in it, I wasn't interested in anything else ;)  Getting through customs was a breeze, after hearing some horror stories from friends who have had realy difficulties getting into Brazil I expected some trouble.  The only trouble I had was when I said "Bom dia"  I receieved a bombardment of rapid Portuguese, which I had no possibility of understanding.  After explaining that I only spoke Spanish, we had a delightful conversation in slow Portunol, before finally getting my papers stamped.
2 Hours later, my colleague and I arrived in Lorena, where we checked our emails, and made some plans to the following few days.
That night, I had my first parmagiana since leaving Australia - the deliciousness of a schnitzel that was so tender it was able to be cut by a spoon along with the rice and salad was great. 

Day 2 - Lorena
Tuesday was a pretty busy day, exclusively work before going to a nice and quaint little restaurant in the township where I had a nice steak, followed by probably my favourite desert - Creme de Papaya, a puree'd papaya and ice-cream dish with a blackberry (I think) liquor.  I will make sure that I bring the recipe back home, its amazing!

Day 3 - Lorena
Once again, a day at the office and then a brief nap before trying to get in touch with my new graduate friends to see if we could meet up for a beer.  Alas not, so I grabbed a quiet one on my own before having a rather delicious Sushi dinner at the hotel restaurant.

Day 4 - Lorena-Rio De Janeiro
Once again, another early morning start - however this time, it was to prepare for the long drive from Lorena to Rio de Janeiro.  The drive is rather spectacular, particularly early in the morning with the fog rolling over the hills/mountains as you drive past.  A few business stops at vendors along the way broke the drive up sufficiently and it was nice to meet people whom I had heard about but hadn't actually had the chance to meet yet.  Our arrival into Rio however was easily the highlight for me, the outskirts are extremely interesting, with a lot of extremely poor areas which don't have power or water and are quite dangerous (to the extent that traffic cameras solely operate as extra street lighting at night... nobody actually stops).
There are effectively two cities in Rio located right next to each other.  There is the poor side of the city, and then the rich areas - these two dicotomies are located immediately adjacent, and its as though there is a line drawn through the landscape which defines them.  One side you have nice new buildings, and on the other is rather obvious poverty.

Day 5 -Rio de Janerio - Santiago
Today, I am currently in the airport after another early start.  This time however, it was totally self inflicted.  I decided that given I was staying at Cobacobana beach I should take the opportunity to go down for a sunrise and drink a coconut for breakfast.  Whilst it wasn't quite what I was hoping for, in that the sun rose from behind some hills to the left of the beach (looking out across the water) It was still a magnificent site and I cant believe I was one of so few people out there!  Hopefully there will be a next time, so that I can go around to Flameingo and get a pproper sunrise, and find the time to get to the Sao Cristobal (La Cristi - as the locals call it... we know it as the Giant Jesus).

Anyway, hopefully my flight isn't delayed any further and I will get back to Santiago only slightly later than planned.  Boa Tarj amigos!

Confusion reigns supreme in South America

I like to think of myself as a reasonably sharp individual, and so consequently when I get completely and utterly confused by something it really throws me.
Speaking a second language however, it happens every single day - especially when it comes to grammar and sentence structure.  For example, my self-proving attempt to say "I undertsand Spanish better than I write it" which was "Yo entiendo español mejor que me escribo".  It turns out it should be "Yo entiendo español mejor que lo que escribo" (direct translation is "I understand Spanish better than it that I write")  which I just couldn't work out how to get it.... I am sure there is a rule around it, and I understand the idea of using "que" as a comparison word - but using it twice in the one sentence is really difficult for me to understand.
What it did do though was make me think about things which have confused me, or do confuse me.

• How the flag on the moon blew in the moon landing video.  I'm not one of those conspiracy freaks, and I think it was genuine... I just am puzzled by it.
• How something can be New & Improved... surely if it is improved, it isn't new and vice versa!?  If it is new, it hasn't been improved upon yet?
• How a fat chance and a slim chance are the same thing?
• Why do our noses run, yet our feet smell?
• The difference between Bueno and Bien.  I have decided it is similar to the difference between nice and well.  However, thinking about it "good" is an equally difficult word to understand in English.. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother from 1km away, I would say he is a good shot.... just not a good person
• Why the QWERTY keyboard was designed the way it was.  Look I understand the history that the keyboard with the letters in an alphabetical order resulted in extremely rapid typing on type writers, and combined with common letters (e & d, t and s etc) being close together resulted in lots of jammings of typewriters,  What I don't understand is why the letters "d" and "f", along with "r" and "t" have to be so close to each other.  I will never again write in an email "I am just ducking off somewhere" of "Regards, Tristan"
• 99% fat free.  What is 99% fat free, how big is the original amount??  I sincerely hope that 1L of milk is has less than 1% fat.  1% of 1L of milk is about 10g of fat...
• Who decided to drink milk?  Did they try a bull as well??
• Why are women crazy about Russell Brand?
• Why companies insist of using voice recognition, and if you fail to speak in the way it expects... for example Spanish with an Aussie accent, it hangs up on you.
• Why do you use artificial flavouring in Lemon Juice, yet real lemons in detergent?
• If firefighters fight fire, whats the go with freedom fighters?
• The concept of "assassination", at what point does the person become too important to have been murdered?
• Best before dates and Used by dates... whats the difference, how long after best before can I keep it before it becomes poisonous!?
• Predictive text... particularly on the Iphone... at what point did somebody decide that automatically correcting words without asking was what we wanted.  On a slight aside, I'd be interested to know if Aunt is the most used word texted using 2868.
• Why does the MCG has a smaller capacity than 20 years ago after all the developments??
• Why, given that break is square - is all sandwich meat round?
• If I get asked a "Penny for my thoughts" and I "Give my two cents worth", where does the other penny go?
• How come man walked on the moon before we got wheels on luggage?
• Why, in all fridges is there a light.... but never one in the freezer???
• Why do doctors call what they do "practice"?
• Why do people stick pistols down the front of the jeans?  If I was to get shot, heaven forbid, outside of a fatal wounding I know where I would want to get shot least.
• Why is the sporting team that polarises opinion the most, almost always the team that wears Black and White?
• At what point did we decide to drink coffee that had been digested by animals?
• Given the idea that bright colours generally mean danger in nature, how did we end up with a garden salad with lettuce, cucumber, cucumber (red, yellow and green), carrots and tomato?

Hopefully some of you have answers to these questions.. bonus points if you can tie in the number 42!

Cause? There is no cause for this. What cause?

One of my favourite scenes from a movie is the scene in the Matrix Reloaded, when they meet the Merovingian and discuss finding the Keymaker.  The Merovingian discusses his love for everything French, the wine, the language (in particular how sexy it is to curse in French), and proceeds to go on a philosophical rant about causality.   After having watched the movie recently, it made me ponder further the concept of causality, and specifically choices which I have made throughout my life, and some critical momentswhich have strongly influenced where I am now.

If I was to travel back in time 10 years, to when I was 15 years old, have a chat to myself and tell him/me that most of my closest friends are chess players, that to this day I continue to study chess, and that I travel a lot to play in tournamnets, I'm sure that the younger me would think that my life had taken a majorly wrong turn somewhere along the line.  The truth is, that nothing could be further from the truth... The fact is that I am extremely happy, and through Chess I have had numerous wonderful experiences and a large portion of my precious memories have come through chess tournaments or with friends I have made through chess.  I am extremely lucky to have had a hobby play such a big part in my life for as long as I have, and for it to have had such a profound influence on me.  But the question I asked myself, how did I actually get to this point?

My mum tells me that she taught me to play chess at a young age, but (sorry mum) unfortunately I don't remember it.  In fact, my first memory of Chess was when I was in primary school, and had been on the receiving end of regular kickings by my classmates in the schoolyard.  One day, the school principle came and grabbed me and said he would like to show me something in the school library.  He took me into the "restricted" section of the library - normally (from memory) it was where the teachers would take select groups from classes to watch documentaries, etc.  Anyway, it turned out that at lunchtimes on some days the chess club met to practice.  I played the school board number 1, and although I was relatively soundly beaten I remember bragging afterwards that I captured three "prawns".  I was then allowed to play another relative newby and was able to win, and thus was my addiction born.  To me, this is the first of what I believe are the critical moments in my life - I went on to become absolutely infatuated with the intricacies of chess and went on to play at a high level for my school team, and later in several junior national championships.  I was extremely fortunate to have the parents which I did, where I was given unending support, never wanting for anything (outside of a structured program that wasn't available in SA) in my chess development... and most importantly, they never put the same pressure on me which I have seen, and continue to see applied to chess kids these days.  I am forever grateful that I never needed to play chess, or needed to play well, and at all times have been allowed to play the game purely because I love it.

The second of these turning points came in late 1997 - I had gone through a series of ravens tests, literature reviews, mathematical tests and interviews as part of the applications for the SHIP program.  I remember vividly one morning, my parents sat me down on the couch, and all serious said "Tristan, we need to speak to you about something".  I had no idea what was going on, and remember thinking that there was something seriously wrong - a family member was sick, I was in serious trouble, Matthew Richardson was retiring.  My parents, however couldn't control their excitement for too long and told me that I had been accepted into the program, and I would be starting at Glenunga the following year - the feeling of excitement which I felt is still one of the biggest highs of my life.  The opportunity to be in a class full of Students with High Intellectual Potential was extremely exciting, however looking back on it - I am undecided on the merits of the idea.   Whilst my academic education never wanted for anything, and I was continuously intellectually challenged, the idea of putting a group of intellectually gifted, yet mostly socially lacking children into the same classroom tends to leave some rather large emotional gaps.  I was fortunate in that I was able to kill a couple of years at the end of high-school to allow my emotional development to catch up a touch before I headed to University.  Whilst I don't think, given hindsight, I would repeat the acceleration of high-school (certainly not to the same extent) I made some wonderful friends along the way, had some fantastic experiences, and who knows how my life would have been without the opportunity I was afforded.
During highschool my chess interest had waned, and was basically only playing school chess when in 2003 the school team won the state championship.  As a result I ended up going to Brisbane and playing for Glenunga at the national championships, where I had life-changing-moment number 3.  I met two guys, who I thought at the time were nice enough, but certainly didn't anticipate how integral they would end up being to my life.  These two young gentlemen were playing board 1 also for their respective states (Queensland and the ACT) and both gave me rather sizeable pastings.  I remember that after my game against Dave, during the analysis he told me that I should go to Sydney to play in the Australian Juniors.  Unfortunately, this didn't end up happening, however this tournament was the inspiration for me to returning seriously to the Chess scene.  Once again, something which in the grand scheme of things seems to be a relatively insignificant event, I didn't win, no amazing event, yet without it, few years later in Dave Fitzy and would not have ended up being the good friends that we are, and my life would have been all the poorer for of it.

Each of these moments have had significant flow-on affects to my life, and are part of the river that is my life.  I have found it fascinating, speculating about what would have happened if any of these potential forks had been different, the possibilities really are endless as to how my life could have evolved if the school didn't have a chess team, or the principle didn't introduce me to it etc.  Ultimately however, I do know that if any of these moments were removed from my life, my life would be significantly poorer for the absence of any of the experiences I have had and friends I have made.

The final moment I have decided has been critical to my life is a lot more recent - the phone call telling me I was being offered the job here in Chile.  There is no way I can not include this in the list of moments which have had a defining influence in my life, and I am extremely excited about what I am going to attribute to it in 5 years time when I look back on it.  Given the way this experience has shaped me already in the first four months, I have this feeling that there is no way for me to possibly predict where I will be when I review it in 5 years time.... I do know I am looking forward to the journey!

Commonwealth Championships Part II - Tournaments B&C take over...

Rounds 5-9 didn’t really yield too much, as the top seeds started playing each other, and drawing.  Dave unfortunately suffered a loss to one of South Africa’s strongest players, Nick Van der Nat who played some fantastic chess but unfortunately faded in the last 2 rounds, while top seed GM Nigel Short who had fallen half a point off the pace pulled out some important victories to move back into equal first.  Gawain continued to play well, despite not capitalizing on some fantastic positions (one against Grover as white, and then against Nigel as Black) which would have seen him clearly in the lead at this point.

During these rounds however, the social life of the tournament really turned on.  The Wednesday in particular offered one of the highlights of the tournament.  Graham had organized a wonderful night at a local Indian restaurant where we enjoyed ourselves doing what it is that to me really makes going to these sorts of events worthwhile.  Exchanging stories, getting to know your fellow competitors and newfound friends a little better, consuming more than the recommended amount of cider and generally just having a relaxing night away from the need to prepare for opponents and trying to remember reams and reams of opening theory.  Nights such as these really challenge the stereotypes that are associated with chess players, we just hung out, drinking beer, eating nice food and being slightly too raucous for an Indian establishment.  The lowlight of the night came when I received a completely unrejectable challenge…. A Flaming Lamborghini contest (for those who don’t understand, Google it… the only thing I will say is that most menus give this drink a health warning).  This time however, there was national pride on the line, with South Africans questioning Australian drinking credentials…

After the Flaming Lamborghinis were done, we then got into discussions about our next social night, which was decided to be on Friday (weren’t we taking this tournament seriously?), and one of our new friends was generous enough to throw a Braii and Beer at his place.  We played some blitz; smack talked and generally had a good time, although for me the absolute highlight was beating my childhood chess idol, GM Nigel Short.  No need for details about how it happened, or if it was indeed he who got himself into the lost position, but he was generous enough to offer me two rematches (one of which after getting myself to a pawn up and probably a completely won endgame he played Nf5 and said “Now I #&/% you” at which point I horribly dropped my bundle).  Playing against my childhood chess hero made the whole trip worthwhile and Nigel was extremely giving of his time, stories and his seemingly irrepressible cheer definitely added to the tournament atmosphere.

The last three rounds really stepped up, with some scintillating play in the GM enclosure (aka the Playboy Mansion).  It was fantastic to see the higher seeds really pushing for wins on the top boards, and whilst the Swiss system has its problems, having such aggressive play at the end of the tournament rather than the drawfests you tend to get in round robins, is certainly an appealing characteristic.  Dave, despite his earlier poorer results recovered well to score 3/3 in his final games to get himself to a respectable 9/11 and score himself a Commonwealth Bronze Medal – Congratulations mate.  GM Gawain Jones on the other hand, didn’t falter in the slightest, continuing his good form from earlier in the tournament to finish on an extremely impressive 9.5/11 to tie with his countryman GM Nigel Short.  Fortunately for Gawain, who went into the last round with slightly (staggeringly, having played all the top rivals as outright leader for several rounds) inferior tiebreak’s, his opponents outperformed Nigel’s which resulted in Gawain becoming the Commonwealth Champion!  A super result, so once again, congratulations. (On an aside, I wonder if people are aware of the consequences of their games in a tournament such as this, taking rapid draws in the last round because they don’t feel like their game means anything.  Games on board 70 turned out to be critical to the outcome of this tournament… could be an opportunity for an enterprising 1200 in the last few rounds perhaps?!)

The last night of tournaments like this are always ones to remember (or not, as the bodies limits may dictate) and for me, it was an opportunity to celebrate the fact that my two friends performed well and also to thank those who had been extremely helpful and hospitable to me.  Such events are always touched with a tinge of sadness, as it invariably means saying goodbye to newly made friends.  The night may, or may not have included body-shots, lots of pan-galactic-gargleblasters, a bottle of tequila, trash talking blitz, a rendition of “You Raise Me Up”, some drunk dials, excessive amounts of Springboks (my new favorite shot, peppermint liquor with Amarula) and one wayward soul getting to partially live his dream as he clutched to the thigh of the local Statue of David.

To all my new friends, it was lovely to meet you all – I look forward to seeing you again a lot sooner than I had originally planned, sorry to Fitzy (the recipient of his second drunk dial).  I also need to, in particular pass on a big thankyou to MER, not only are you an extremely eloquent writer (check his blog out) and provided some great coverage of the tournament you are just a top bloke, so thanks for your hospitality and assistance when it was needed (this assistance included doing three travelers washing at one point).  Much appreciated.

Finally, there is no way I can sign off without a special “Dankie” to Graham, mate you ran a smashing tournament – and spared no effort in making sure that all of us foreign participants had an absolutely sensational time at the tournament.  Mr Jurgensen I look forward to beers at a Boxing Day test in the not too distant future!

I declare my 2011 South African adventure closed, your shores are once again one less obnoxious Aussie better off.  Dit was Lacka.

Chess, The Universe and Everything - Commonwealth Championships Review Part 1

So I realize this blog is going up relatively soon after the last one, for some reason I decided not to click the “Publish” button on my rather large safari review.  I have now returned home from South Africa, and have successfully negotiated my first day back at work (IMHO the day immediately after a holiday is always the worst).

The Commonwealth Championships were a truly wonderful tournament – I have heard some rather disparaging remarks on some forums and blogs about the tournament, particularly to do with the coverage on the internet of the top games.  This happens at plenty of tournaments, so any criticism leveled at the organizing committee, or any of the people who devoted their time to this tournament is completely unwarranted and ridiculous.  For me, this tournament was the best run tournament I have attended (with the possible exception of Queenstown, both tournaments are fantastic events) – nearly 700 players would be a nightmare for any group of organizers, particularly when the target for entries was somewhere around half that, so for the tournament to go off with as few hiccups as it did is a real credit to the professionalism, dedication and tireless work of all the people behind the scenes – I tried to get to all of you after the tournament, but I know I missed some of you, so please take this as my thanks.  If it wasn’t for you, there wouldn’t be nearly 600 players leaving such a tournament with such good feelings (I need to subtract the usual 15% who just are disappointed and disillusioned about chess after a tournament).

So onto my tournament review: both a review of my tournament, and some more general thoughts on the results and the social side.  For those of you familiar with the concept of tournaments A, B and C I will try and cover as much of the latter two without giving too much away.

Day one: The first round managed something that resembled an on time start.  Given that it seems to be traditional at chess tournaments for the first round to be somewhere between half an hour (in this case) or 3 hours (as was the case in a tournament I played here in South America) late starting I need to give this tournament a massive “tick” (in-joke).  The opening ceremony was well run, with some notable speakers – some well written speeches (they sounded like they had been prepared by an eloquent friend of mine, but perhaps that’s just coincidence) and the seemingly obligatory microphone to the mouth got everything going nicely.  It was rumored that Kirsan, FIDE’s fearless leader was to be attending, but alas was a no-show… perhaps the aliens came back?  Or perhaps he was still slogging out an endgame against Gaddafi?

I fortunately had a reasonably comfortable win against my first round opponent, although he played rather well, until one unfortunate slip up meant that when he blundered the pawn his whole position collapsed around him.  Pretty much all games (as is generally expected in a Swiss) went according to seed, and Gawain, Dave and I managed to catch up for some beers prior to the Blitz championships.  Dave and Gawain didn’t appear to suffer any ill-affects from these, however I ran into significant hurdles from round 4-7 losing 3 games in a row (2 of them on time completely won, and blundering a queen in a won position due to somehow ending up with 30s on my clock in a closed middlegame) and then managing to checkmate with 4 seconds remaining.  I thought that perhaps the positions on the board were a good omen for the main event and my speed was simply a result of not playing the same amount of Blitz as I used to.  I can´t let this tournament go without touching on the type of chess that was played – for me, Blitz tournaments are always a good aside to the main event, and are generally a casual affair.  This certainly wasn’t the case on the Saturday night – I have never seen the amount of “dirty” chess as was present during this tournament.  Knocking the queen off the table when someone is about to promote, pushing pawns two squares, claiming wins for an illegal move for promoting and not replacing the piece (to me it’s just bad sportsmanship, regardless of whether it is technically correct) and offering draws every few moves with clearly no other objective than distracting the opponent.  Nonetheless, clearly the best blitz player in the field GM Gawain Jones took home the bickies with an awe-inspiring 9/9 performance.

On the second day of the tournament it turned out I was wrong about my blitz results being due to not playing much fast chess, instead I was just out of form.  Round 2 the following morning saw me win a game rather easily where my opponent blundered a piece and then proceeded to force me to checkmate him (a rather frustrating experience, given that when he had blundered the piece he had used 10 minutes, and then proceeded to use a further 1:10 excluding increment to get to the final position).  I then had a nap and some lunch in News Café (a regular haunt of us chess playing folk for our preparation) and saw that I was playing a 12yo FM – A really nice kid, Daniel played extremely well and despite me winning a pawn basically straight out of my preparation, he played extremely accurately and punished my various inaccuracies to hold onto an extremely impressive draw.  My only gripe with Daniel is his ELO of 1600 being so far below his strength that the draw cost me more points than a win over a 2100!!  At this point, there had been quite the stir in the hall as a few of the top seeds faltered, with an extremely impressive performance from the young WFM Ivana Furtado from India drawing with countryman GM Abhijit Kunte whilst Tanishe Tafira held GM Laxman to a draw as well.  There was significant controversy with one GM having to play an extremely distracting opponent who had been on a bender the night before and was fumbling, making distracting noises and generally being a jerk at the board.  It turns out that this opponent was stoned and was barely in physical shape to walk, yet somehow managed to play some rather good chess.

Round 4 was when everything seemed to happen.  As we were preparing for our games all the top seeds in wimbledon seemed to be falling like flies, riots began breaking out in Syria and Greece and the only thing in worse shape than the Greetian economy was my position after 20 moves – I played a really disappointing game against my opponent who just didn’t seem to make a mistake, and whilst I played passively I didn’t feel like I made a huge blunder… Damn juniors!!  All the undefeated top seeds managed to continue their winning form going, with one exception - one of my new mates Anant Dole had an extremely impressive draw with black(!) against German Champion IM Huschenbach. 

That concludes the review of the first half of the tournament - I will finish it up tomorrow (provided my internet and electricity are working - running off battery and a really dodgy free wireless connection atm that isn't as reliable as I would like!9

Safari's, Braai's, new friends and the Number 3

Well, as there seems to be a relatively strong general concern for my safety, I figure it would be timely to write a quick post to let you all know that I am in fact in one piece, and have not been eaten by any of the big 5 animals available for viewing at the Kruger National Park.  This is not through a lack of trying, or threats from my fellow travelers, I am just convinced that the buffalo pictured below was much tastier prospect.

The first day in South Africa was certainly an eventful one, with me getting a rather nasty feeling at the counter in Sao Paulo when they said that they didn’t have any record of my baggage.  I did however take them on their word that they would have it on the flight – perhaps my general cynicism should have prepared me for the inevitable event of landing in South Africa without a change of clothes, toiletries or virtually any of my chess books for the tournament.  Nonetheless, my lovely and extremely hospitable host Judy met me at the airport, took me back to my lodging for the night to allow me to freshen up before we went to go buy the essentials that I would need for my Safari.

After an eventful evening where I played a few games of chess, learnt some Afrikaans and had a really nice evening with Judy and her family.  The following morning, bright and early we headed off to meet the first of the Indian contingent to arrive.  Eisha, Harika and Meenashki (who spent the remainder of the tournament trying to shrug the various nicknames which were attributed to her), had all arrived slightly early to join us on the Safari and definitely appeared to be more than slightly apprehensive about being in such close proximity with dangerous animals… they were pretty excited about the safari though!

I took this opportunity to go and collect my luggage from the airport, as it had arrived just under 24 hours late before the group of us rendezvoused with Graham Jurgensen and Dave to grab a traditional South African lunch and finalize plans for heading up to Kruger National Park the following morning.  After a reasonable start on the Monday, we headed along the N4 at what would, to me 3 months ago have been an alarming fast rate.   Having experienced similar speeds and much worse driving recently, all without a seatbelt I felt “perfectly comfortable” (well that’s a slight exaggeration) knowing that this was the most secure I will probably be in a vehicle in the next 12 months.

A quiet evening ensued, in which a few beers and a rather good curry (thanks Dave!) were consumed, and we got ourselves into Savannah mode in preparation for going Lion spotting in the morning.

An early start meant that basically as soon as we entered the park we ran into a herd of giraffes crossing the road looking for an early morning feed.  Whether it was the way they chew their food (which is simply awesome) or the fact that I figured that all African wildlife feels the same way about early mornings that I do, but I was rather glad that the first group of slightly disgruntled animals we met on Safari were herbivores (or as some of our fellow travelers affectionately described them “vegetarians”).  Having these majestic creatures walk at some points comfortably within 5 meters of the cars was definitely the perfect start to a Safari.  Literally 3 minutes afterwards, we got waived down by a passing vehicle directing us to an area where we could go and view Lion.  We sat there, in awe for a good period of time as one extremely lazy male lion, and two female lions chilled out sleeping and giving us the opportunity to really soak in the beauty of one of the true beauties of the African savannah.

In awe of the luck we had just had, Dave and I were enjoying the regular banter that goes along with being stuck in a car with a good friend – especially when you have very different expectations of the wildlife you want to see.  For me, everything was amazing - at this point, Impalas, small birds, warthogs and native mice were still exciting.  However, Dave had seen all this and more having experienced three days safariing at the Pillensburg.  I did however get his nod of approval when I successively spotted Kudu and Giraffes one after the other…. Well that was until Graham, our wonderful host who was in the lead drove back and yelled at us something like (seeing as this is a pg blog I can’t repeat verbatim) “You silly damned Aussies, as if you are here watching flipping Giraffes… There are flipping elephant up ahead, and I don’t think you flipping well want to be you if we flipping well miss them!”

Fortunately, as Dave and I do generally feel attached to our limbs and appendages, we managed to get to see two adolescent male bull elephants (don’t ask how we know they were male; let’s just say it was rather intimidating).  The experience was quite fascinating, the guys just eat and eat and eat some more – we were feeling pretty good about ourselves, as we were the first cars there and got to spend a good 5 or so minutes enjoying the site all to ourselves.  Not too long afterwards, other cars did arrive which began to ruin the tranquility of our moment – it also made us a little more wary of our surroundings, as most of the late arrivals weren’t as cautious about giving the animals (which were 3 times the size of the Audi) their due space.  In particular we decided that should Mummy Elephant show up, we probably didn’t want to be there. 

A few minutes later we hit the local watering hole, where we got our first sightings of Crocodiles, and Hippo… once again we got called “silly” Aussies as Dave and I were in awe of what we were seeing, completely ignorant of the fact that 20m away there were 3 leopards chilling out.  Fortunately, we arrived just in time to see one of them, albeit fleetingly as it ran into some bushes – it staggered me how small it was.  Sure, it was a juvenile animal, but it not only had the capacity to kill me, but also carry 3 of me up a tree, whilst being about 2/3rds of the size of me!  The assassin of the Savannah certainly was impressive, and seeing its sleekness and grace as it moved off was something to truly behold.

So far, we haven’t even had lunch, yet we have seen 3 of the Big 5 (Elephant, Leopard, Lion, Rhino and Buffalo).  We had lunch, looking out across another of the watering holes and, whilst seriously considering what life would be like if I lived here really I just soaked in the atmosphere.  So close to some of natures finest specimens, enjoying a cup of coffee with good friends seemed so close to paradise for me that I really didn’t want to leave.  On the way back to our accommodation that night, we completed probably one of the luckiest days of Safariing, by driving past two groups of White Rhino.  They were a long way off, and somehow – whilst driving – Graham (our wonderful host) managed to pick both of them on the horizon. 

This completed what I thought was the perfect day of Safari – I turned out to be wrong, when we arrived back at our wonderful pad, our good friend Gawain Jones had arrived with Heindrich, and we proceeded to have a Braii (South Africans do claim to chuck on a god BBQ, as it turns out they don’t have misplaced confidence in their abilities on that front!), and listen to the African night.  The sounds of lion roaring, general chatter amongst the animals turning in for the night and the sunset is something I will never forget.  So to Graham for organizing it, Heindrich for his help throughout the trip and to my fellow wayward travelers from (literally) all corners of the globe, thankyou the trip will be something I will never forget

A young bull going in for a fight.  One, two, three, four... five?? ooohhhh

Zebras and Giraffes chilling out.  Bridging fact: Giraffes have a heart which weighs 20kg, and only sleep around 20 minutes per day!

The lion cubs stole our Braai meat, we figured we'd let them be!

Whats the scarier prospect.  A lap around the car, or sitting across the board from this guy?  Right now, im closing my eyes and running!

The piercing looks these guys gave us made it extremely difficult to believe the driver when he said that they are unable to distinguish us, and only really see the larger mass of our car. Can you believe this was 4m away?