Spring Break! (Part Two)

The first megafauna we saw were the two horses, that were attached to the two carts that we had hired through the community. Basically a platform and two wheels and a harness and a horse, and a driver. Five on one cart and six on the other, sitting around the edges with our feet hanging off, my toes clinging as best they could to our flipflops as we bumped and jostled not on the road, that’s not smooth enough, but next to the road, and luckily I was facing the right way and the whole time got a wonderful view of fields of cracked dry earth and evaporated salt and what during the wet season is rice but now just sort of mud, dried scrubby brush and the occasional bird too far away to recognize besides the hawks. Gradually the ground got less dry and by the time we arrived at the park the landscape had completely changed. Halfway there the other cart got a flat tire, they kept stopping and trying this old bicycle pump but eventually coming up over a ridge the horse kind of stumbled and the cart since it was balanced on just one axle kind of tipped and the horse looked like it fell over and we decided to go on ahead and then our cart and driver would come back for the others.
When we got there, then, it was still going to be a while until the tour-thing started, so we just sort of sat in the shade and waited for the hottest part of the day to pass.

That being said, we sat in the shade in front of what can only be described as your classic idea of the Great African Watering Hole. Think, Lion King. No lions, actually, but the landscape, etc. Also, boars. Lots and lots of warthog boar animals, I’m not sure of the exact terminology but we started singing (quietly) Hakuna Matata because when you’re surrounded by pelicans (who, by the way, are freakin’ HUGE and look like old airplanes when they fly and all dive in groups so it looks like synchronized swimming) and tiny long legged waterbirds that run around and you’re scanning the water for crocodiles that the French tourists from this morning said they saw... it’s not really priority to be politically correct.

It was a very very long boat ride to be sitting on the same seat, but it was worth it- we saw a crocodile. And a baby crocodile? Or a smaller lizard-thing. I forgot what he called it- the guide, I mean. We also passed by the island where all the pelicans raise their young. I posted pictures on facebook, if you’re interested. Heading back to the hotel it was the same two horse carts, this time with a fixed tire.

There was some confusion, though, when it came time to pay the drivers. See, we thought we had paid for transportation before we left- we paid that at the same time and to the same people that we paid our park entry fee. It was at a tiny building next to the tourist information center, right at the edge of the park. We had paid, and then the horse carts had showed up from the community/village, and off we went. However, what we were told on the way back was that what we had paid for was a car to take us there. We had chosen on our own to hire the horse carts which were not officially offered by the park, just the community. So we needed to pay them now. What we had paid the park for was a car. We asked, where then was the car. They said that since we left before it arrived, they cancelled it. We asked why then had they had us pay for the car. They said that when we paid they asked if we would also like to “pay for transportation” so we said yes- how were they to know we meant that we were hiring from the community and not from the park? We replied how were we to know that the carts that the park had arranged to pick us up weren’t actually connected to the park?
We paid the carts so they could leave. A few in our group stayed to argue the case. Why couldn’t they refund us the money since it had already been a misunderstanding? No. Why? Because it was already on the records that we paid such-and-such an amount. If that amount wasn’t in the till, it would look like they had pocketed the money. It’s the government’s fault for making them do so much paperwork and keeping track of the funds. Of course, pocketing the money is exactly what happened there, just by the government and not by the individuals. I decided not to worry about it, it just amounted to three dollars more per person tops, am ul solo. Instead, I went back to the hotel and ate one of the apples and some of the coconut and peanuts we’d bought in St.Louis- all the hotel food was expensive, and they got grumpy if you didn’t tell them a day in advance if you’d be ordering dinner. So I sat by the pool eating coconut and let others get worked up over the impossible beaurocracy of a developing country.

The minibus came again to pick us up and take us to the dunes. It was a long, dusty ride- Kelsey, Laura and I played the “Celebrities game” the whole time. The Whole Time. (this is where you think up one celebrity, like Donald Trump. Then you take the first letter of the last name, and make that the first letter of the first name of another celebrity- Tina Fey. The next person starts with F. If you say a double letter- Tina Turner- the order reverses and you switch direction.)