The Game Reserve

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The next day I went on a SAS trip to the Aquila Game Reserve which is the biggest/closest game reserve to Cape Town, and it’s still about a two and a half hour drive away.  The tour guide pretty much let us sleep on the way, only saying about five things and telling us when beautiful views would be coming up.  I took pictures because I had a new camera that day.  It was nice, although I didn’t think the pictures were that great.

When we got there we signed a waiver saying we wouldn’t sue them if a rhino charged the car and they gave us water or wine or grape juice depending on what we wanted, and then we got right into the cars to go.  Amy sat in the front and all four Simmons kids from PSU (Will, Drew, Brian, myself) sat in the back right corner.  Our driver was Gabriel.  He stopped when we saw some hippos in the water soon after taking off and we asked, “What happens when you throw a rock at a hippo?”  He said they would charge.  There were three cars stopped and we asked, how would they know?  And he said, They know.  There were other little animals, including some sort of bird and a little deer-like pretty thing called a spring buck.  “What happens when you throw a rock at a spring buck?”  That became the default question for every animal we saw.

 

We saw elephants.  “What happens when you throw a rock at… an elephant?”  There were only two and they were sort of small and both males and we wondered if they got lonely.  One of them was “excited” later on in the trip and our tour guide told us that it could weigh up to 120kg or something which is hard to believe but okay.  Brian was talking about some pretty inappropriate stuff related to elephants which I won’t relay here, except to say that our whole van and tour guide were totally cracking up at all of it and couldn’t believe he was saying it.  Brian’s amazingly cool and I’m sad that I wasn’t friend with him when he was at Penn State.

 

We took a break in the middle of the reserve.  We were allowed to go to the bathroom and two girls did and then a guy went to go to the bathroom not knowing and saw them and felt really really embarrassed and they just laughed at him and it was okay.  He went to Penn State but not one of the Simmons kids.  Will and Drew did this really cool thing where one bends their knees and leans back, and the other puts a foot on the other’s knee and the other behind their neck and stands on them and then puts their hands all the way out.  It’s really cool and I’m going to make Tarik do that with me when we get back to Penn State.  Brian took pictures and they came out awesome.

 

There were eland roaming around which aren’t dangerous.  Brian got a glass of sparkling grape juice and then started walking after them, and then got carried away a bit and followed them a few hundred yards and Will filmed it and then said “Hey Brian, how about a toast!”  And Brian smiled and turned toward the camera and held up his sparkling grape juice in the African mountain desert landscape while chasing eland and it was just kind of ridiculous and great to see.

 

We didn’t see any lions or leopards or giraffes in the wild but it’s okay.  Our driver was pretty badass and took us offroad because he could tell we’d like it.  Brian encouraged him a good amount.  We did see lions and leopards and cheetahs in cages but that wasn’t terribly exciting.  We had food afterward and that was pretty good and there were other people from SAS staying at the place on their own and not with our trip and so we talked to them.

 

When it was done some kids went to the grassy part of the hotel area and played Frisbee.  They kept throwing it into the pool by accident and having to quickly fish it out before it sank.  Then someone was doing cartwheels, I think Will, and they were taking pictures of it, and then the same for Brooke.  Then they got the idea of taking diving-for-the-frisbee shots and they started doing that.  They would throw it in front of someone and they’d run a few steps and lay out for it and they’d try to take a picture.  Will threw one to Brian while Brooke was laying on the grass taking a picture and she snapped it at JUST the right moment and it came out AWESOME.  Brian really did dive for it, and he hit the ground with his whole body all at once, but the shot is incredible and he’s in the air just laying flat catching the Frisbee.  It’s pretty ridiculous.

 

There was another two and a half hour ride home.  I remember I had a vtext conversation with Gina for some reason and that I listened to a lot of Astronautalis and Radio Times because I downloaded two episodes when I was brooding in the club that one night.  It was good.  I tried to sleep but couldn’t.

 

I had bought chocolate earlier that day and left it in the bus thinking I’d eat it later.  It had melted but it stayed in the metal wrapping.  I figured I’d just leave it alone and let it solidify through the busride, and by the end it was a thick creamy texture and I ate it and it was amazing.  I should melt and semi-freeze chocolate more often.  Note to self.

 

I didn’t want to do anything that night really so I arranged with Neha to go to that Thai restaurant right on the waterfront.  Some other people were supposed to come with us but they never showed up, which was okay.  We had a nice conversation about med school and her brother and the trip that we’d both been on that day and stuff like that.  I also told her that some friends and I were seeing The Cove later that night – a documentary mystery thriller about dolphin slaughter in Japan – and she sounded legitimately interested and I told her she was more than welcome to come if she didn’t feel like doing anything actually fun that night.  So we finished dinner at about 8pm and went to the theater in the mall and waited for Bridgette, who said she’d be there at like 8:05.  She wasn’t there, so we bought tickets and, not knowing when the movie would start, waited as long as we could before we felt we had to go or that she had backed out.  Theaters in SA make you pick your seat before you go into the theater.  No one checked but still, that was kinda weird I thought.

 

I went out later to check on Bridgette, if she was there, and she called my name.  I think I’m mixing up details.  In either case I told her what seats to get and then went back to the theater, and she still hadn’t come like five minutes later.  She had a lot of trouble with the auto-ticket machine and I was like, go to the ticket counter dude.  So she did that and joined us later and Brian came too, which was nice.  The movie was good, it made their operation out to be like Oceans 11 or something, but I don’t want to talk about it too much.

 

After it was done they were sort of ready to go to the ship, but I said I was totally feeling some ice cream and there was  Haagen Daaz right there so they just came with me, even though I said they didn’t have to.  I just got a small scoop of caramel vanilla or something.  Brian wanted some very specific concoction of ice cream and toppings that the menu made seem possible but we weren’t really sure.  He talked to the girl behind the counter and kept having a hard time communicating it to her, but finally after like five tries he somehow got through and it was clear she was understanding and then Brian said, “No nevermind, I just want some cookies.  Gimme some cookies.”  It was very Brian.  We sat and talked for a long time, and Bridgette told us about when she was a bartender and old men would hit on her and sometimes they were nice to her and how she’d make big tips and how anyone could be a bartender and stuff like that.  Brian said he could be a bartender but only at a place where he could build a relationship with locals.  I told about when I considered bartending school but stopped ‘cuz I knew ZERO drinks.  They said I could have done it anyway if I just studied for it, which apparently a lot of people do, but eh, no big deal.  We went back to the ship pretty much right from there I think, and I had nothing to do, so I made another bracelet.  This time it was the prime numbers and composite numbers.  Each bead represents a number in order from 1 to 88, and if the number is prime then it gets a red bead, and if it’s composite it gets a blue bead.  I made the number 1 black to show where it starts and stuff.  I found out today that I made two mistakes which is sad but not a huge deal.  And so now I have math and music tightly around my right wrist wherever I go.