A slight detour

Sunday 7/12
Distance: 0 miles

Saturday 7/11
Distance: 0 miles

Friday 7/10
Distance: 0 miles

Thursday 7/9
Time: 58:01
Distance: 8 miles

Yes, I've been slacking on the running thing recently. Fortunately nothing to do with injury and all to do with adventure. And exhaustion. But mostly the former.

On Wednesday night a little wine with dinner turned into killing a whole bottle, which put me in a pretty good mood. Somehow I managed to wake up at 5:45 the next morning and put in a solid hour's running. Definitely not sober for the first 3 miles or so, but I actually felt great by the end. That feeling unfortunately did not last and sometime around 9am I temporarily lost the ability to communicate coherently with people in the office.

On Friday I left work early with the other student interns and got a lift to the airport to rent a car. We were heading up to St. Lucia, a town about 3 hours up the road from Durban on the coast. St. Lucia is a tourist haven famous for the hippos, crocodiles, and birds that live in the enormous estuary right next to the town.

To get there involved my first experience driving on the left hand side of the road, which, it's important to note, is much less difficult than avoiding hitting people, livestock, and other cars in South Africa. Rhode Island may have the worst drivers in the U.S., but it pales in comparison to South Africa.

After a relatively smooth ride, we arrived in St. Lucia and prepped for a night drive of the St. Lucia game reserve. For 3 hours, the 4 of us from Durban and 4 friends spending the summer in nearby Mtubatuba had a sweet guided tour of the area. While we failed to see any leopards, we did see (and hold) some sweet chameleons, bush buck, zebras, and hippos. The highlight by far was chilling next to an enormous bull water buffalo grazing about 15 feet away.

Early Saturday morning, the Durban crew drove about an hour to another enormous game reserve called Imfolozi Hluhluwe. We drove by ourselves through the park until the early afternoon, fueled by candy and bacon, banana, and cheese sandwiches (edible, but not as good as the bacon and banana pizzas they love out here). Some highlights: coming up on 2 skittish rhinos a little too close to the car for comfort and hoping that they didn't decide to spear our car; watching a spotted hyena trot down the road toward our car, stop and pose, then hurry off into the bushes; pulling up within feet of several giraffes feeding with a little one in tow; and watching a white rhino jog across the road in front of us less than 30 feet away.

In the afternoon we headed back to St. Lucia and walked around the estuary, where we saw a group of hippos hanging out on the shore and a few crocs sunning on a sandbar. Exhausted, hungry, and sober, we met up with the Mtubatuba crew and some Brown-linked Capetown visitors for drinks and dinner in town before an early night.

Early this morning a few hardcore souls got up and drove to the beach to watch the sun rise over the Indian Ocean. Despite the wind, the cold, and the early wakeup, it was worth it several times over. Here's to summer in RSA.