O is for O'Connor: November 2016

Day 1 and 2 - The Beginnings
The trip starts at 9:30am on October 4th when I take the van to pick up Kim O'Keefe, Ellen Welti, two other PhD students in my department, and Jesse Nippert, my adviser. We got to the Kansas City airport by noon to check in and go through security. Our flight left to Atlanta, GA at 2:15pm-ish and we arrived at 5:00pm. We then had a slight layover until 7:45pm where we ate, wandered and I got a new book which is excellent called "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman. We boarded at 7:45pm and left for a 16 or 17 hour flight to Johannesburg, South Africa. Plane food is ok, not great but not bad. But for the first time in my life I couldn't sleep really well because I had the middle seat, so I watched something like 7 movies and dozed a bit. We landed in Johannesburg at 7:00pm on the October 5th and made it through Customs, luggage and car rental in 1 hour. Then we were off to find our sweet pad that Jesse found on-line. We got to our place and it was ... awesome, very comfortable apartment style place with full kitchen and your own laundry machine, 2 bedrooms, nice bathrooms and Wifi. That night we went to a neighboring hotels restaurant and the food was good. I had a really good biltong (a type of dried meat, similar to jerky but made with good cuts of meat) wrap.

Day 3 - Cradle Of Humankind And The Sort Of Botanical Garden But More Like Central Park
We woke up and went to a corner grocery store to get some breakfast items for two days as well as some juice and snacks. Then we were off to the Cradle of Humankind, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, for a little anthropology, archaeology, evolution and genealogy (haha). We drove about an hour out of Johannesburg to the countryside and went to the Sterkfontein Cave were two very famous hominid fossils were found, Mrs Ples and Little Foot both of which are Homo australopithecus. We got to go into the cave were those fossils were found and saw a couple of the dig sites. This cave is still an open archaeological dig site, so cool. After going through the cave tour we went to the learning center near by which also has a hotel inside. Although there were none of the famous hominid fossils there were some of the extinct animals. The hominid fossils are at a nearby university museum, did get to visit because of the universities being closed during the student strikes. After going learning about our ancestors we drove back into Joberg and went to what we thought was supposed to be a botanical garden. When we entered it was not well kept up, granted winter was just getting over down there and they are in the middle of a drought but it was kind of depressing. But we walked around through the vast gardens and saw a huge event being setup, it looked like it was going to be a concert. After walking through the park we went back to our apartment and got ready for dinner. Dinner was an amazing Indian restaurant where I had lamb curry and I about set my mouth on fire, it was delicious. If you didn't know the British empire brought Indians in as indentured servants to work and so now there is a very large Indian population in South Africa.

Catwalk above Sterkfontein Cave, this is only used by researchers now. All of the hominid fossils found in this cave have been because they fell in, only recently has the cave had an easy accessible entrance.

Pink blossoms in the Shakespearean part of the botanical gardens.

Egyptian geese at the lake attached to the botanical gardens. These geese are everywhere and are the equivalent to mallards at our parks.

Day 4 - Touring Savannas Of Northern And Eastern South Africa
This morning we checked out of our apartment, drove back to the airport and joined a group of fellow ecologists going on a pre-conference field tour. Our field tour was set up by Tony Swemmer of the South African Ecological Observation Network, and good friend of my advisor Jesse. The purpose of this field tour was to see several different savannas, veldts (grasslands) of South Africa and discuss the science and ecology that has been done and should be done to help improve or preserve. However as it turned out my group that I traveled with from the States were the only grassland ecologist on the trip besides Tony. So it was a fun experience to discuss the importance of grasslands with the other 7 people who's scientific professions ranged dramatically from ecosystem ecologist to oceanographer to data management specialist. Any way we headed north from Joberg to the Nylsvlie Nature Reserve which was about 2 hours away. There we talked about the water issues of South Africa as well had our first real sightings of African wildlife. After 2 hours in the reserve we continued in a Northeastern direction to Magoebaskloof where we stayed the night at a hotel that was up in a rain forest. The place was beautiful and very British in its bar and restaurant. I checked in to my room to find some very nice chocolates on my pillow from house keeping and a reminder to not leave my windows open because monkeys will come in and make a mess.

Eucalyptus plantation on our way to Magoebaskloof.

Tsessebe

Ostrich

Roan antelope

Day 5 - On Our Way To Enter Kruger National Park
Before breakfast I went on a small hike to a waterfall down a ravine near the hotel. It was a beautiful and tranquil place. My oh my are full English breakfast to die for: bacon, sausages, fried eggs, biscuits, potatoes, fruit with custard and fresh fruit juice. Needless to say I had several helpings. After breakfast we loaded up the bus and headed out. We passed more pine and eucalyptus plantations, then tea plantations, the nut orchards, banana, mango and citrus orchards. After driving a bit we stopped at one of the largest trees, girth wise that I've seen. It was a huge baobab tree and I got to climb it. After hanging around for a bit we we drove off to the Phalaborwa gate entrance of Kruger National Park. After signing in we entered Kruger and thus began seeing the wondrous animals of the African veldt. That night we stayed at the Mopani rest camp and watched the South Africa vs New Zealand rugby match, SA lost. Some things to know about staying in Kruger is that once its dark there is no leaving the rest camp until the gates open again in the morning. Also there are things that can eat you in the night time out side of the fence.

View outside of my window in the morning.

Waterfall on the 1.5km "treacherous and strenuous hike" but it was a nice stroll, I guess no one really hikes in South Africa.

Flowering tree at lovers point.

The birds of South Africa are extremely beautiful. This is a sun bird and they were flitting through the canopies near the hotel.

I got to see a baobab tree and it was this big! This tree is one of the oldest baobabs supposedly in South Africa and yes I climbed up to the top of it.

Elephants or in Afrikaans "Olifants"

Mopani veldt, the mopani is a tree seen here. All of the white mounds in the back are termite mounds (15-30 feet tall).

Rough scaled plated lizard

This is one of the brightest lizards I've ever seen.

Impala the animal that every predator eats

Transition to the acacia veldt from the mopani veldt near the Limpopo river.

Cape Buffalo

Waterbuck

Herbivore exclosure, don't touch the fence it is hot and is for zapping elephants.

Cute spotted hyena pup, there were 4 others.

Steenbok

Back of the house we stayed in at the Mopani rest camp.

Day 6: Last Day Of The Tour
We left Mopani rest camp and headed to the Satari rest camp where we stopped to look at an elephant museum and for those who wanted a coffee. The museum was pretty cool they had a bunch of old elephants that had died of natural causes. After taking a bit to go through the museum we left to go to one of the longest fire treatment experiments (50 years and counting). After talking with some of the researchers who work on the experiments we left for Skukuza rest camp to start the conference. That evening the conference started with some African tribe dancers and a dinner.

Weaver bird

I loved this sign and yes sausage fruit trees are real.

View from the restaurant and yes I had a full English breakfast.

Elephant heart

This elephant had some of the longest tusks in the museum.

Days 7-10 - The Conference

At the conference I set up my poster at position #26, this year I decided to try fabric poster printing. Basically, you have your poster printed on a piece of fabric, it looked really good and I didn't have to travel with a stupid poster tube. Then I went to listen to the some great and not so great talks. In the evening I stood by my poster for 2 hours and talked with people as they passed by, its all about getting their attention. Then it was all over I left my poster up for the rest of the conference. Each day I attended many sessions and learned a lot. I also got to meet a lot of great researchers and I hope future collaborators. Each day at the conference they fed us morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea and dinners. Tea times generally had sandwiches, no crust, or pastries. Lunches were very starchy but had excellent fresh desserts like fruit and frozen custard. Dinners where large buffets that were good. The conference started each day at about 8:30am and go until 6:30pm. So from 5:30am until the start of the conference I would go either on game drives or game ranger walk abouts. I got to see a whole lot of animals and plants those mornings. Then after dinner I would go on night drives from 8pm to about 11pm. The night drives are a hit and miss for seeing animals because you have to spotlight them from the game rangers safari vehicle. Although I did get to see a bush baby and they are probably the fasted things I've seen jump through and from trees. The last night of the conference a huge braai was held, big bbq, where we were driven out into the bush and with lights, tables and guards roaming about we ate and listened to native music. There I got to eat kudu and impala steaks as well as chicken and lamb. To quote Pumba "I ate like a pig" but it was soooo good.

Vervet monkey running across the road

Nyala antelope

Serrated hinged terrapin

Lilac breasted roller, these are everywhere I looked and beautiful.

Malibu stork, ugly looking birds

Blue headed tree agama - this guy turned these colors in the matter of a few minutes, he used to be the same color as the tree bark his on.

Klipspringer's are apparently very territorial of their boulder mounds.

Big kitty also known as a leopard and he was just 10-15 yard from where we were parked one morning

Never saw one of these crocodiles move or try to eat anything

Huge giraffe walking near our car

Sable antelope, kind of rare to see.

White rhino, we were lucky enough to see a lot of these animals

Lion and lioness lounging around after a hearing Elton John's "Can you feel the love tonight", at least that is the G rated version from what the park ranger told us.

Zebra

Pumba!!! An old warthog

Impala lily (Adenium Obesum), beautiful flower bush.

On my morning ranger led walk about in the bush. Didn't see any animals up close but did get to see lots of plants and learn some excellent ecology from our guide Lucky. But we did hear lions roaring near by.

Wild dog from a pack that was passing through the area.

Braai night, trees lit up, native music and dancing. Fun way to close the conference.

Days 11-12 - Kruger National Park to Swaziland
We stayed a part day in Kruger after the conference site seeing but then we headed out to stay in Swaziland for a night. We drove from Skukuza south to Malelane which was the exit gate for us out of Kruger. We bid Kruger goodbye and drove on to Swaziland to check out the mountain grasslands. We wound though mountains and valleys of mango plantations and sugar cane fields until we made it to the boarder town of Jeppes Reef where we would go through customs and enter Swaziland. Once running through the boarder to beat a tour bus full of old American's we were in the Kingdom of Swaziland. To get to where we were going to stay for the night we had to go over a mountain range on the King's highway. So up and up and up on a curvey road with the clouds misting on us we went until we got to Pigg's Peak (true name not a pun on Pike's Peak) and came down the mountain. We made it to our lodging and checked in at Hawane Resort. This place was awesome, we got our own grass hut room in a sort of eco-touristy village of grass huts. After checking in and getting some lunch we went down to Ngwenya to visit the glass factory. This glass factory takes all of the recycled glass from the kingdom and turns it into art, very cool! After visiting the glass factory we went to what we thought was the Malolotja Nature Reserve where the mountain grassland is located but instead it ended up being the old iron ore mine where from 1960's-70's all of the iron was sent to Japan for the auto industry. We had a guide named Shopman, who had worked at his post as a park ranger for 9 years and loved it, he was one of two people at that gate entrance. He didn't have a vehicle to use so he climbed in with us and gave us a tour or the mine site and it was huge. Then he showed us a historic mine site that was saved for preservation. This mine was called Lion's cave and it is a 40,000 year old iron mine used by the indigenous people to make spear tips and other tools. It was perched precariously on the edge of a cliff because the 1970's mining company had mined all around it. The wind had picked up and it started misting so we decided to go, we dropped Shopman at his post and thanked him for the informative tour and left to go and eat some dinner. Dinner was scrumptious, I had a Francolin bird, think Cornish game hen, rubbed in a berbere seasoning. It was good especially since we were eating dinner next to a roaring fire. It was actually cool but the mist made it cold. The next day we got up found the mountain grassland and went for a walk in the Malolotja Nature Reserve. There are no large beasties anymore in that park. So we hiked for several hours in what I can only call one of the most beautiful mountain grasslands I've been in. The park does prescribed fires and so they have a great patch burn mosaic. And we were walking past large granitic boulder fields in a hugely diverse wildflower field with bright green grasses. I would definitely go back to spend a week back packing in this area or staying in their back country cabins. But all good things have to come to a close. We needed to catch our plane back to the States that night and we still had a 4 hour drive, so we departed. We drove and drove and drove. Ate some gas station savory pies with ginger beer and made it back to Johannesburg in time to start the plane ride home. Oh and yes we were slightly smelly from our morning hike but that's ok sitting on a plane for 16 hours makes everyone smelly so we just had a head start. Made it though the airport fine, watched a ton of movies again and talked to a nice doctor lady who studies HIV prevention in South Africa. She was headed to Chicago to a big convention to present some of her findings. We landed, got through customs and drove back to Manhattan.