Into Africa, Day 3: Mabula Matata

April 2, 2010: Since everyone slept early last night we were all up pretty early, especially AiAi who dragged 3-Ku up at 6:30AM for more picture-taking around the hotel. My head was still glued to the pillow at the time, but 2 hours later TinTin and I had breakfast by the pool deck, trying out the strawberry smoothie and passion fruit juices, and checking out some TV magazine host interview the head chef for their program. One odd thing about the dessert buffet was that it wasn't being buzzed around by flies, but bees. Literally. Managed to get a strudel w/o getting stung. And their apple mangoes were incredible.

Thanks to AiAi's meticulous nature (got that from her mom), not only were we all up bright and early, but we checked out of The Palace and made it to the front entrance to meet Peter w/ time to spare. Many a time I toured w/ Pinoys/Tsinoys that either cut too close to the meeting time or are just plain-@$$ late. Now comes to 2-hour drive to the Mabula Game Lodge.

The fates seemed to be against us (and my tummy, still) as we arrived to a wet and rainy game reserve. That pool would've been nice to swim in if the water wasn't freezing. I didn't know what to expect from our rooms, but some of us apparently thought we were getting into a tent or hut with a cot, and hopefully a working toilet. One out of three isn't bad. No, we had modern accommodations, w/ each "hut" unique in design and bed arrangement. All the doors used old-style keyhole keys, but no lock for the bathroom. No cable, either, as 10 lonely channels on the TV would attest. Rooms also lacked some floor mats, w/c made entering w/ wet shoes pretty messy. (On the other hand: split-type air conditioners, oooh...)

Lunch thankfully was a buffet that offered vegetables, while their shepherd's pie used ostrich meat. The Olivans had an unfortunate extra-spicy encounter w/ the salsa that had more sliced peppers than diced tomatoes, but fortunately there was milk by the drink bar to counter its effects. And they had fresh ice cream! Wasn't expecting that.

We got to rest for an hour and a half before our afternoon game drive, during w/c I caught the last part of Melanie Griffith's movie Crazy in Alabama and what was apparently (after some IMDB research) the first part of a miniseries about Jesus and the Passion, w/ James Nesbitt (Jekyll) playing Pontius Pilate. I liked how the show humanized both Jesus, Pilate and the Pharisees, giving the latter more depth and a credible reason to think Jesus was a threat to them, something that wasn't exactly delved into from watching episodes of The Flying House, w/c basically made them a cookie-cutter villainous organization. Jesus is still prescient like a sunnuvagun, though, and when placed in modern context, comes off a bit of a nutter.

The rain still wouldn't let up and it kept on drizzling for our afternoon safari. We were met by our game drive(r) Rudy, who handed us rain ponchos, because this time our jeep didn't even have a roof. Aside from all of us looking like the ensemble for the musical version of Unbreakable, at first I thought that the plastic poncho (from yesterday) I was already wearing was going to be redundant, but turns out later on it was crucial in preventing the rainwater that seeped through Rudy's ponchos from reaching most of my clothes. Unfortunately what didn't seep through just trickled down to my socks, shoes, lower pants legs and boxers, apparently not being part of the "most of" category.

At least this game drive was more educational than yesterday's. Rudy was very informative and led us to see a mostly eaten rhino carcass (w/c Rudy said was struck by lightning), as well as our first crash of white rhino (looking all black from the rain, but then again Rudy explained the name was a English mistranslation of the Dutch word for wide, referring to the creature's big mouths). We also drove to a nearby pond where a crocodile's eyes peered at us, unmoving, and saw more giraffes, zebras and gnus (Rudy called them the clowns of the Savannah because their physical features seemed to be derived from several other animals, like a bastard child of a horse gang-banged by other animals), but no luck on lions nor elephants. Plant-wise, the oddest thing we saw was the white-thorn acacia. Without flowers, the plant looked like it was growing those white bamboo toothpicks you get at restaurants.

When we got back to our rooms, first thing we did was take a shower (irony intended). Second thing was to made good use of the room's hairdryer on the my sneakers and pants, and in 3-Ku's case, his wallet.

Now 3-Ku is old school about the "2 guys sharing a room" thing, in that not closing the bathroom door when doing twosies, or even bothering to do something about the afterstench was normal. In lieu of Lysol, never was my bringing a bottle of Tommy Sport as an afterthought to this trip been so helpful.

During the buffet dinner some of the staff (presumably) performed a song-and-dance routine, w/ one them going around tables offering face-painting services to guests (mostly black or white stripes and dots, nothing too artistic).