“One who possesses virtue is like a newborn child:
poisonous insects do not sting him,
wild beasts do not harm him”
— Taoist saying
To be honest, there wasn’t really any danger, because they are still just “babies”. That was in Port Elizabeth, from where I had planned to visit Addo Elephant Park, but the next morning I woke up late and there was no way to get there anymore, so I gave up.
In the end, it’s as if I’m “pulled” toward the sea: every time I decide to go a bit inland, something stops me (the Drakensberg from Durban, Hogsback from Chintsa, Addo from Port Elizabeth, etc.).
The hostel in Port Elizabeth was run by a white couple who lived upstairs. There was a lot of tension because just a week earlier their son had been arrested. I didn’t want to ask more, but I think it was a drug-related story. He’s probably a good kid who ended up in some kind of mess. The lady was always very kind to me, especially after she found out I was Catholic. I’m not really Catholic, but I was still in a kind of “awakening phase,” she had just filled my head with her son’s story, and when she found out I was Italian she asked me enthusiastically: “Ahh, so you’re Catholic?!” I didn’t want to disappoint her, nor get into any theological discussion, so I just hinted that I was. She was happy with that, and showed me various Madonnas and crucifixes around the house, and said her mother had personally met the Pope John Paul II.
Then, as an alternative to Addo Elephant Park, she suggested a park near the prison where she was going with her sister to visit her son.
So we took a taxi together to this big prison, and afterwards the taxi driver and I went to the park, which was actually more like a zoo: there were some animals roaming freely, but the dangerous ones were behind fences where you either couldn’t enter at all or could only enter by car (like the photo of the lioness licking her lips), or accompanied by guides after signing a waiver stating, more or less, that in case of losing an arm or a leg, they accepted no responsibility.
And so I ended up among white lion cubs. In the end they’re just like giant kittens: same behaviour, same movements, and they love being scratched under the chin. And because they are small they want to play. But while kittens give you little scratches, lion cubs give you proper gashes, and in fact the guides had their hands and arms badly scratched up, full of scars! But it was a very fun experience anyway.
They were about nine months old. I asked the guide how long they would stay there, and he said they would remain until they behaved well enough with the handlers or visitors. So, in practice, for every lion, at least one person will experience the moment when the little one “doesn’t behave well enough”. Ok...
On the way back, the taxi driver was more excited than me. He often took his hands off the wheel to mime real or imaginary lion movements, especially the sudden paw strike to the leg that I had skilfully dodged (from the one on the right in the photo with me in the middle), and the moment when the big lion, while eating, suddenly jumped up, making the woman at the gate yell for us to close the car windows. He was also constantly asking me if lions in Italy are that big, and there was no way to make him understand that we don’t have any (although, thinking about it afterwards, he was right: in the end it was a zoo, so in a way there are lions in Italy too).
Then we went back to the prison to pick up the women. For bureaucratic reasons, those bastards of prison guards had not allowed the mother to see her son. Only her sister had been allowed to speak to him for five minutes, through a glass panel using a phone. Moreover, almost everything they had brought him the previous time had been stolen by the prison guards! Bastards!!
After Port Elizabeth I ended up spending a couple of days in Buffels Bay near Knysna, where there was practically nothing, and I only met a young Norwegian couple and a guy who claimed to come from Mars. And tonight I arrived in... Cape Town! But I’ll tell you about that next time.
Ah, unfortunately I can’t stay here long because my two friends have moved the meeting from here to Windhoek, the capital of Namibia, so I have to meet them there as soon as possible (it’s basically as if, just three days before, an appointment in Rome were moved to Amsterdam… but anyway, when you’re in travel mode, it’s not that dramatic).
And after this, for dessert... a fine “dekaro à la cru”.
Window
With this simply delicious girl, Mika, I won a “body shot”: she lay down on the counter and her mouth was filled with alcohol, which I drank straight from her mouth! Probably, the sweetest kiss of my life! :-)
Chintsa.
Buffalo Bay.
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