The Boy and I have been traveling together for almost 12 years now. We have seen so many places, met so many people, and snuggled so many animals. There is, however, one animal who has evaded us. No matter how far we traveled and how hard we searched, we have never been able to locate a wild pink flamingo.

It started on Anegada in the BVI’s — 14 square miles of white beaches and salt flats, perfect grilled lobsters, and the claim of FLOCKS of flamingos. We drove (almost) every inch of that island seeking the bright birds and they were no where to be found. Apparently there are just a few miles of salt flats that are completely inaccessible and that is where they decided to camp out of our entire stay.

Two years later, we went on safari in the Masai Mara. Flocks of flamingos dot the lakes of Kenya…and while we witnessed the overwhelming site of the wildebeest crossing and basically drove into the Circle of Life scene from Lion King, there was not a single funny bird to be found.

The Chilean flamingos were not, in fact, in Chile when we toured Santiago and drove around the end of the continent in Punta Arenas.

The flamingos on the Nile River chose the week of our Egyptian cruise to scatter away from the shores.

The last ice age removed flamingos from the Australian outback, so while we’ve had 2 trips down under over the past 12 years, we were still a few years late to find them.

Finally we had a perfect plan — the salt flats in Madagascar were littered with flamingos and our 2 weeks in the country would allow ample time to find the birds. Since Madagascar is already a ridiculous terrain and all driving there is considered off road (routes by the travel company were noted to take 2 to 8 hours for the same distance depending on the mudslide status of the week. We were weeks from departure when bad news came from our tour company…our planned stay on the side of the island needed to be changed. There was a concern of the current increase in pirate activity along the African shores.

It seemed futile. We may never find these birds outside our local zoo. And to add insult to injury, the flock of 50 flamingos in our local zoo were the first exhibit inside the gates and the de facto meeting point when going to the zoo with friends. Thanks to Mini, we now visit the zoo and these mocking flamingos monthly…for 3 years…

It was our last chance. Our safari ranger guaranteed we would find flamingos in Port Elizabeth. He said we would drive down the highway and just see them on the side of the road. Not trusting this to chance, the Boy did exhaustive research and found the images of the exact power plant smoke stacks that should be in the distance behind the flamingos as we drove.

We loaded the rental car with the kid and the zoom lens and set off on a 20 minute adventure. Winding around the curving overpasses heading to the salt flats, our eyes were glued on the windows to spot the anticipated pink hoards across the water. And we drove…and we drove…and we tried to pull over on the side of an active highway to scan the fields, which felt ridiculously unsafe regardless of how many people were simply walking the same shoulder. There were no flamingos. We were kilometers past the smoke stacks, so we turned around and tried a side road…which was just dirt lined with barbed wire fences…and still no birds.

The Boy was losing faith. He would forever be mocked by the flamingos in the zoo. We took one last ditch effort to go to a different side of town and the little noted salt flats and as we slowly drove up the shoulder suddenly we rounded a bend and both shouted in glee — FLOCKS. OF. FLAMINGOS!!

Mission Accomplished. [Ed. Note: I have thoughts on this. My son draws me flamingoes and thinks they are my favorite animal – they aren’t. I had honestly about given up on finding this fairly common pink bird, chalking it up to bad luck. But they were there! And real!]

Next goal: Aardvarks.

When going on safari, you often hear people seeking “The Big Five”. This is actually a hunting term that referred to the 5 hardest animals to hunt and kill. It includes Lions, Elephants, Rhinos, Leopards, and Cape Buffalo. Each of these animals are beautiful and interesting in their own right, however it ignores some of the most fun animals to find on a safari! So here are some of our other encounters and photos of the Big Five…and Friends.

Giraffes and Zebras

Mini’s very favorite stuffed animal is a giraffe. A close second is a big headed zebra. So obviously many of our game drives were spent seeking out those two friends together and up close. We even managed to find a two week old baby giraffe one day — but Mini didn’t believe it was a baby considering it was already taller than the Boy! [Ed. Note: So cute!]

Elephants

For some game drives, we let Mini guide us on what to search for. The last evening, he was in the mood for elephants — up close! No problem, they are very large beings, how hard could this be?! We spotted some along a ridge line and the ranger suspected they were heading down towards the river to drink. The reserve only allows “off roading” for cats, so we were navigating away from them in order to find a path in when on a whim the ranger decided to go away from the river direction. [Ed. Note: Seriously, the dude was like “the light sucks looking at the herd this direct, let’s dip all the way over here for better light and maybe they’ll walk this way” – and they did. 5 minutes before he and the tracker were agreeing they would walk a different direction.] What luck, we ended up in an empty field watching a parade of elephants file in before us. They began surrounding the car and eating their dinner. Even the seasoned tracker pulled out his phone to take pictures of this site!

Water Buffalo

I can’t look at this creature without thinking of the College Basketball coach, Tom Crean. [Ed. Note: Google “Tom Crean coach” and you’ll understand. Spitting image.] They really are just goofy, and huge, and when they want to take a drink, they immerse themselves fully into the water for some reason.

The Bravest Little Rhino

On our last safari, the Rhino was the one animal we regretted not seeing. Our jeep saw one on the morning we elected to take a beautiful hot air balloon trip instead. It was always a mild regret to have missed that. Due to the crazy poaching that occurs for rhino horns, they are becoming so endangered. We were hopeful to find at least one on our week in South Africa…however due to some very aggressive security measures and conservation efforts, our reserve was honestly littered with them! We began to see 3 or 4 at a time and continue driving without so much as a photo in search of something “more exciting”! The one rhino we did stop and watch for a long, long time was the bravest little rhino.

We stumbled upon a mom and baby rhino grazing in a field surrounded by Cape Buffalo. [Ed. Note: First we saw two buffalo on a hillside. We followed them for a while, and then found the herd they were walking towards – awesome! So we roll up on this herd, and boom, a rhino hanging out. Cool! Then all of a sudden this baby rhino shows up that the rangers had never seen before!] The baby rhino, who was less than a month old, felt very brave that day and would charge towards a baby Cape Buffalo repeatedly…then when the baby Cape Buffalo didn’t back down, both would retreat and hide behind their moms. It was the funniest game of chicken I’d ever seen.

Leopard

The regal leopard was probably my favorite cat of the trip. [Ed. Note: Meow.] Hard to spot, it became a mission of most of the rangers to find her each drive. We joined the search one morning across the river, high up on the cliffs. Two cars roamed across the shores below and the radio was buzzing with possible sightings. We were luckily to have a tip from across and sped back in the brush to find her slinking along the edge of the cliffs, right alongside our car.

Cheetahs

We saw many cheetahs during our safari. The very first instance, a female cheetah was in the field of impala and water buck on the hunt. Her luck was looking pretty good as she chased the impala along, however in a rare turn of the hunter becoming the hunted, a male water buck turned on her and chased her off up to a hill to find a smaller foe…[Ed. Note: That cheetah was totally embarrassed]

Having had a long game drive in the morning with our bush breakfast and fishing adventure included, we decided to give Mini an afternoon off from more game drives and brought back the babysitter. He had a busy afternoon ahead of play and going into the lodge kitchen to bake his own pizza dinner. The Land Rover free of small humans allowed us to venture to far North side of the reserve and seek out the rarer Black Rhino last seen out that way. [Ed. Note: As I said, we’ve been super lucky with rhinos on this trip. Most of them have been white rhino – rare and awesome, but not critically endangered. There are only ~6,000 black rhinos in the world.]

The terrain was rough and the drive was fast to cover the greater distance. We bumped up and down the river banks and cliffs, but didn’t spot much of what we were hoping for. Instead of heading back to the lodge disappointed, we were reveling in the quiet (three year olds talk a lot…) for an afternoon. As we made a turn around a bend, in the road ahead of us stood two Black Rhino, just waiting for us to arrive as sunset neared. We spent a few moments admiring the beast and then picked up speed again to have dinner with our kid.

Not two minutes down the road, we stumbled up on three lions resting in the grass. A young male and his sisters seemed to be lazily enjoying the sunset and beginning to nap. We pulled up close to them to admire their beauty and as we watched them pillow on top of each other getting comfortable. Suddenly, they smelled or saw something and all 3 heads perked up at attention.

We were about to witness a hunt. In the brush behind our car was a kudu that they pegged as dinner. The sisters took the lead, using us as cover. One crept left to around the front and one behind to begin slithering the 50 meters to the grazing antelope. The brother lion smartly stayed at attention but behind us, as his impatience would surely ruin things.

For ten minutes we sat in silence observing this dance. The lions are young and still learning, so in the end the kudu passed too far away and the opportunity was lost. [Ed. Note: it was funny to listen to our ranger and tracker talk about what the lions should be doing to ensure they get a kill – move a little closer there, creep over there, etc. If only the lions listened to the advice!] Thankfully, the lions did not turn their eyes onto us as plan B…but I kept a sharp eye on the brother one foot in front of our bumper to be sure until we escaped.

After a few days of 5 am wake up calls and 2nd breakfast after a few hours on a game drive, we decided to mix it up one morning and have our breakfast in the bush. The perfect place to stop was along the dam where the hippos cooled in the water and the lodge stored fishing equipment on the shoreline. While the ranger and tracker set up an elaborate camp stove to make crumpets (aka pancakes…), we got the chance to cast a few lines on the banks and hope the bass were biting.

The Boy enjoys fishing quite a lot. Having spent lots of time on Colorado rivers and Wisconsin lakes, he is seasoned in the art and has a collections of rods and lures to prove it. [Ed. Note: I got to fish! In Africa!] Anyone who is seasoned in fishing knows what this means. He did terrible after talking it up on the drive out there! I, on the other hand, have cast about 5 lines in my lifetime and in the past refused to use his fancy rods instead electing for a $20 Walmart special that was guaranteed to catch a fish out of sheer, dumb luck.

Approaching the shore, I got a refresher course on how to cast and quickly let the line fly. Quickly because Mini was bopping around the shoreline behind me and I wasn’t 100% sure I wouldn’t snag him with the hook while swinging back. I began the process of gently reeling in the line and almost immediately it pulled back — I had a bite! I yelled for help as there was no way I would actually touch this fish. The Boy begrudgingly reeled in his 3rd cast, still empty, to come help me and Mini grabbed the net he preferred to a rod to see what the commotion was. The fish was in, a photo was taken (however we’re clearly out of practice on this blog as we have none without our faces directly next to the fish…), and he was thrown back into the water for another shot at freedom.

Having observed that Mommy caught a fish and was not required to touch or kiss it as the Boy kept teasing him, I convinced Mini to give fishing a shot with me. I cast my line for the second time that day and handed it over to Mini to begin reeling it in. Only a few seconds later, the line pulled taught once more! Mini was not prepared for actual effort or proximity to a fish, so he fled from the shore as I snagged the rod and brought my second bass on my second cast. This one was even bigger than the first, an impressive accomplishment by our tiny wanderer!

At this stage, the Boy was losing his street cred. Even the tracker had wandered over with a line and almost immediately snagged his own bass. The Boy moved into my “honey hole” where I snagged both fish before retiring a champion, but all that resulted there was a line snagged in the bush. The ranger let us know that breakfast was almost ready and our tea was poured. Wandering down to the small dock, the Boy cast over again until finally there was a bite. He reeled and reeled and pulled in…a tiny little sardine! But at least he caught something! [Ed. Note: It was not a bass. It did not have shoulders. But it was a good two-hands long, so it wasn’t super tiny…]

The Boy loves to climb all the things and hike all the things and generally be outside doing and seeing all the things.   In the past 3 years, those things have been a bit tamer thanks to Mini, however we’ve still strapped him in a backpack and ventured out.   However there are still some times where we simply should not bring him along.  One of those was on a walking safari to trek for a rhino. [Ed. Note: We’ve been super lucky with rhinos this trip. Every drive – rhinos everywhere. But they said we could go for a hike and get up close and personal with a rhino! Sounds like fun!]

Initially I was worried.   The lodge promised babysitting when we booked which seemed like  good back up plan 2 years ago not knowing the temperament of a toddler…Mini is the ultimate trooper and so as the trip drew closer we didn’t expect to utilize this service, but since the walking safari would only happen during nap time, it felt like a fair trade off to be able to go ourselves and hope the majority of the time resting trumped stranger danger.   

I should not have worried.   Mini was elated to have someone new to play with after a week and a half traveling with us and a week and a half lockdown before leaving to ensure we could actually pass negative COVID tests and leave (plus the tiny matter of his surprise head wound with stitches we had to add in there).  We had barely caught the nanny’s name and given her instructions on nap time when Mini quite literally shoved Boy out the door to leave.  Okay, so we’re off on an adult only adventure walk for the first time in at least 4 years…what do we talk about?!

The ranger drove us far into the bush and then got us out of the Land Rovers for instructions: don’t talk, don’t shout, definitely don’t run, stay behind the men with exceptionally large rifles, and try not to die.   Suddenly I felt sure I was back in Australia where everything wants to kill you, but having heard the jaws of those lions tear into the eland yesterday, I had a much healthier sense of fear.  

We trekked single file down the side of the brush, stopping every few minutes to find a bird or a plant or a bug.  While these are interesting to learn about and see up so close, I had 2 hours of babysitting to maximize here — I wanted to find the good stuff!  Onward we continued, winding along the South bank of the river where the rhino was last spotted.   I learned about the elephant dung (which the rangers just picked up in their hands and examined…yuck, and MORE plants and bugs, until suddenly we had a sighting!

In the clearing, very quietly, we all crept up and circled him to have a better view.   Everyone was silent so you could hear his sounds of distress.   The wild hissing tortoise had been spotted and we were only feet away. [Ed. Note: cuddly, but not as cuddly as some other animals…]  We crept in close for a photo while one ranger across from me scanned the brush, rifle in hand to avoid any surprises.

Suddenly, I felt the sharp claw behind me and froze.   It was too late however.  I had backed right up to it stepping away from the other guest’s shot.   I would suffer this consequence for sure.   And as we trekked back to the car from here, walking safari over with no rhino, I walked a bit slower thanks to the large thorn stuck right into my butt. 

Our ranger slammed the Land Rover into reverse and floored it backwards down the road we just traveled.   Every single person in the car saw it at the exact same moment – the perked up head of a female lion mid-kill in the bush just feet ahead of our bumper…and therefore feet away from the feet of our tracker sitting atop the lookout seat!   While the eland was tasty, surely a carful would be even more delicious! [Ed. The lion was not happy at all. Our tracker was not happy at all. Everyone needed some space to chill out.]

We were on a quest for some elephants at the request of Mini, who had another stuffed toy to match today, and had just passed this intersection minutes before seeking out the trail of a bull elephant.   So much can change instantly in a second out in the bush and this was an important lesson for even our seasoned ranger and tracker: just because the path was clear a minute before, the wild animals move fast on the hunt and are fiercely protective of what they’ve worked so hard to procure.

Once our tracker was safely in the back of the car, catching his breath and accepting numerous apologies from the ranger for almost ending him, we inched forward again to see the show. The narration of the 3 year old wasn’t quite David Attenborough’s level of documentary, and he got bored easily returning to his Sesame Street mini figurines. The show for the rest of us was a spectacular and graphic display of the circle of life. [Ed. Note: I may have been humming a tune from The Lion King in my head as I watched the lions rip this eland apart…] The eland was still struggling when we returned to the shrub and while one lioness retreated to a separate spot to catch her breath, the first stayed nearby to suffocate the giant antelope.

We circled the car around for a better viewing angle and as we were on the move, the teenage lion cubs who heard the calls of the kill came strutting down the road to join the feast. Suddenly, we were 4 feet away from 6 feasting lions and my only instruction was to keep Mini quiet and from making sudden movements. We were toast. Why did we ever think a toddler on safari was a good idea?! [Ed. Note: Definitely a good idea.]

As the boat pulled away from the marina, our rusty currency conversion skills finally kicked in.  We just boarded a boat with our 3 year old to enter the foggy open waters around Cape Town for the alarmingly low price of 14 US dollars, total…is it too late to put on a few more life jackets?

It was a few days before our safari, but just because we were in “the big city” didn’t mean we couldn’t find snuggly wildlife, right? On Christmas morning, we loaded into the car seeking out the end of the world. Just an hour South of Cape Town lies Boulder’s Beach, a tiny spit of sand where African penguins live and squawk to their heart’s content on the sandy shores. Having visited their cousins in Antarctica, I can tell you these guys are the smarter of the crew. Their days are filled shunning tourists and splashing in the warm ocean, not dodging hungry seals and calving glaciers with 80,000 of their cold friends.

The Boy, of course, attempted to lure one our way to pet, however Mini seems to have a healthy dose of my skepticism and refused to help in this plot. The signs along the walk noting the penguins WILL BITE did not dissuade the boy. I knew this was the trip I should have finally insisted on the rabies vaccine for him…[Ed. So cuddly! Penguins on the beach!]

Our ill plotted boat trip from above was a few days later — just a few kilometers south of where we were staying was Houts Bay, where a colony of seals live just off the shore. The stinky rock (Duiker Island) a 15 minute boat ride away was home to about five hundred of the slick animals, sunning themselves after realizing the boat wasn’t going to deposit them some fish, or tiny boys, for a snack. The seals didn’t get close enough for the Boy to pet any, much to his displeasure, however as we returned to dock, there was a seal on shore happily beside a local man feeding him fish. And for the low, low price of 10 Rand (or 66 cents US…) you could come beside it for pictures and a little pet. [Ed. This kid was not impressed by the seal.] Definitely getting us all the rabies vaccine before our next trip…

So much has changed in travel over the past few years.   While we haven’t been completely removed from the game, we did bring a kid into the Wandering crew and it has caused us to slow down our pace.  Add in the surprise global pandemic and it’s really a wonder we made it abroad at all.   But we’re here, on our favorite continent, dragging the world’s most accommodating little ginger along with our poor choices and testing his tiny legs to climb all the things. [Ed. Note: It is important to start early to instill a sense of climbing everything.]

Day one kicked off, of course, as high as we could get.   There’s a very large mountain that Cape Town surrounds the base of.  You can climb to the top, but considering the aforementioned tiny human with tiny legs and the small matter of stitches in his head last week (he is his clumsy mother’s child…) we decided to take the speed route up top on the spinning cable car.   The summer winds were gusting off the two oceans and rocking this red orb around the basin.   The surprise open windows with safety railings just above Mini’s head didn’t do a thing to appease my long standing fear of edges (not heights, I can go as tall as you want, I just need to be safely 20 feet inside the building with closed windows to breathe easy…)

Once we landed safely on the flat top of Table Mountain, the Boy scouted ahead for hikes to take.  His ambitious travel self likely hasn’t aligned with his real dad self quite yet and he proudly told me of the 45 minute (each way) trek that would take us the full route along the edge of Table Mountain top.  It was already 10 am in the summer sun for a jet lagged 3 year old, but we were giving this a try! [Ed. Look, the goal was to get to the highest point on the mountain top. We had made it this far, so time to get walking!] One hiccup to note — we gifted Mini our 11-year-old ‘point and shoot’ for Christmas to take his own photos along the trip…and his current subject of choice was rocks.  Every. Single. Rock. atop Table Mountain.   Fifteen minutes later, the Boy was not so patiently waiting at the trailhead while I wrestled the camera away from Mini and into my pack to have a few uninterrupted steps along the way.   

Table Mountain, and Cape Town, are simply stunning.   The juxtaposition of the pocket beach towns surrounding the base of a series of rocky cliffs mix some of the most interesting terrain I’ve encountered to date.  We managed to summit on the clearest day of our trip, so we could point out our Airbnb and the waterfront we’d visit later in the week, as well as scenic areas across a 360 view. While we couldn’t make the full path along, we did get farther along than I expected and didn’t have to carry Mini once! So far, an African adventure was looking good!

[Ed note: this will be it for a while, and there was a lot happening in Madagascar…so be prepared for a lot of photos]

Some quick thoughts before I do a bunch of lemur and other Madagascar pictures – some will be awesome shots, some will be “is that a wet blurry lemur in a tree, or just a smudge?”.  They can’t all be winners, but we saw a bunch of lemurs!

• Lemur species total count: 16
• Total lemur types (ordered by appearance):
  • Red-Bellied Lemur
  • Black and White Ruffed Lemur
  • Diademed Sifaka
  • Indri
  • Goodman’s Mouse Lemur
  • Eastern Wooly Lemur
  • Common Brown Lemur
  • Eastern Grey Bamboo Lemur
  • Red Fronted Brown Lemur
  • Coquerel’s Giant Mouse Lemur
  • Hubbard’s Sportive Lemur
  • Verreaux’s Sifaka
  • Ring-Tailed Lemur
  • Golden Bamboo Lemur
  • Milne-Edward’s Sifaka
  • Red Mouse Lemur
• The best way to describe lemurs is they are a mix of cat, monkey, raccoon, sloth, teddy bear, and large mouse.  That’s a lot to mix, but there were so many different types of lemurs, they mainly fell into a a couple of categories…
  • Small and fuzzy
  • Mouse faces
  • Slothy and big
  • Tree cats
• They took over in Madagascar when it broke from Africa and filled every available niche they could.  There used to be GIANT lemurs wayyyy back in the day, now the largest is the loud-mouthed Indri
• Trekking through the rainforest is really fun, even if you don’t see lemurs (but we did every time we went out!). We’ve been to a bunch of rainforests, and each one reminds me why I love them so much – they are incredibly….alive. Green, lush, with so many different plants and flowers and ferns and trees and crazy vines and giant leaves and yeah.  Every direction you look it’s awesome, and spending hours and hours hiking up and downhill really is fun.  But then you get to see lemurs too? Totally worth it.
• We got incredibly lucky in that in all of the rainforests and all of the hikes we’ve been on over the years, only the final day’s hike was it actually raining. It more than made up for every other dry day with the buckets and buckets of water the sky unleashed.
• The spiny forest desert and dry lowlands were awesome too! I didn’t even know a spiny forest was a thing until I started learning about Madagascar, and they’re awesome.  Octopus trees with their many many branches-things, that all point south.  Giant spikes on every plant. And they’re very much alive, even without the rainfall!
• And Isalo…what a crazy-awesome place that is. Giant mesas and canyons – we only did a small portion of the massive national park.
• All that being said, Madagascar was absolutely the “most third world country” we’ve ever spent a long amount of time in. Infrastructure, villages, everything. Zebu meat and dark stringy chicken is a luxury there, and it really stood out to me.
• It was great to learn about each region’s different tribes and peoples and their various histories and traditions though – all in one Madagascar.
• Visit! Despite the leaches and the roads and drives and traffic and rain and hike and whatever else, it was an awesome place to go. It truly is like an 8th continent (or like a 7.5th) in terms of 90% of the flora and fauna is endemic to only there.  You’ll never see and experience anything like it.

 

And then I have NO photos of a Red Mouse Lemur – it was pouring down rain, in the dark, I spotted him, then by the time I got to enjoy his company for a bit, he scampered off.  Sometimes you just need to say hello to the lemurs and not photograph them – this was one of those times.

 

So that’s the 16 lemur species.  Now for some Madagascar photos – rainforest craziness, BAOBAB TREES!!!, chameleons, etc.  We spent 11 days exploring a crazy world.

Finally, where we explored (and Tana, the capital):

 

Until next time…

I think in any long trip you are bound to hit a breaking point.  A moment when all you want is to be home in your familiar surrounding with identifiable food and the ability to brush your teeth safely with tap water.  For me, that moment arrived as I was none too patiently waiting for our guide to detach a leech from my forehead in the backseat of our jeep, lest I morph into a deranged version of a unicorn…[Ed. note: I saw it, and had him remove it.]

So we’ve established that it rains in the rainforest.  At this point it had been raining almost continuously for 3 days and 2 nights.  The drizzle was not relenting, but it was our very last day to find lemurs so we had to (obviously that argument was placed by the Boy…) go forward with the planned hike.  We decked out in every piece of waterproof gear we packed, tucked our pant legs into our boot socks in the ever styles backwoods Payne Stewart look, and began our 3 hour tour…

And then for 3 hours we trekked up and down the muddy slopes of the secondary rainforest seeking lemurs.  How do you spot lemurs in the forest?  You watch the trees for movement as the lemurs leap about and eat fruits and leaves.  But when it is pouring rain in the winter, the lemurs are cold and they stay put, so basically you walk through the flooding forest trying not to fall down the muddy slope while also looking upwards into the trees to determine if that small, wet lump is an ant’s nest, a ball of leaves, or in fact a huddled lemur. [Ed. note: I thought it was fun, albeit quite wet. Lots of neat rainforest plants to see! Like tree ferns!] May the odds be ever in your favor…

Miraculously, we found 3 lemurs on this hike and as soon as we saw the sad, cold sifaka, I told our local guide that my waterproof clothing could not possibly absorb any more water and we needed to head back to the car.  The problem was, when you are on a 3 hour circuit loop in the wet rainforest, there isn’t really a shortcut you can take to escape the wet any faster.  The local guide tried to ease our minds by saying we were about 1.5 kilometers from the car.   I know my metric conversion skills could use some work, but I thought he also said something about an hour, then 15 minutes, and since I was pretty sure 1.5 kilometers was around 1 mile 15 minutes made more sense to me and I trudged on, sloshing with my waterproof hiking boots now full of a half a cup of water each…about an hour later I realized something was clearly lost in translation as now he was saying the car was about 30 minutes away.   We were never getting out of this forest and the rain just kept coming down harder.  [Ed. note: this isn’t embellishment. As a side conversation with our guide, we both agreed we thought it’d stay at a steady drizzle. Instead, it kept raining harder. And harder. And harder. I felt bad for the wet lemurs, hugging the trees.] Nothing like a dose of pneumonia to end a vacation before a 12 hour car ride and 17 hours of flights…

The real reward of our final hike came once we were safely back to the car: leeches.   The first one was on my sock.  Innocent enough, the guide plucked and killed it and tossed it out the window.   Then one fell on the Boy’s hand from his raincoat, but again: pluck, kill, toss. [Ed. note: right on my thumb, it started eating.]  Okay, we’re safe, right?  Nope, the Boy is yelling, and swatting at my face, the guide is pulling, and I am panicking as something is in the middle of my forehead, sucking my blood…

If only that was the end, crisis over, pack up, head back to summer in Atlanta…nope, back in our room we had the bonding moment no married couple needs.  We got to shed all our saturated “waterproof” (apparently there is a limit to that word,…) gear and check each other for leeches,..and then unceremoniously kill the bastards we found for the next hour.  [Ed note: I had three new bleeding holes on my ankles – somehow they managed to get in my socks. Killing them caused a bloody wet explosion. While drying our boots, I killed another six or so….]   

On that note, I remembered once again why I do most of the vacation planning instead of the Boy.  See you next time on a very peaceful beach with someone serving me endless cocktails and no need for hiking boots…