My Polar Bear Story

I have a friend, Mali, who went on a very long and intense canoe trip in Northern Canada with a group of amazing women.  Toward the end of their trip a polar bear came into their camp and stalked them for over 24 hours.  It is an incredible story.  A story that I make Mali tell at parties frequently and when she isn’t there, I go ahead and thrill people with the story myself.  It is a story that keeps people on the edge of their seats (literally, a rugby guy I know sat on the edge of our couch for an hour while Mali told this story once).  I am proud to say that after visiting with my long lost cousin Charlotte Hanks, I finally have my own polar bear story, so I won’t have to steal Mali’s any longer.  But, I will let you sit in anticipation of that story while I give you the intricate and significant details that lead up to such a story.  But you can bet your smuggled ostrich feathers (an other story) that I will get there!

For about three days there I got into this routine where I would drink about a half a bottle of wine or so and wake up in a different country.  It all started last Thursday when I was packing up my hotel room in Ethiopia and I had some wine left over from…whatever…and I drank wine and watched the traffic of Addis and woke up the next morning (not so surprisingly) in Ethiopia.  The next night I drank wine and watched wildebeest graze and woke up in South Africa.  The following night I drank wine and watch baboons at a watering hole and woke up in Botswana.   So how did I get here (there)?  Well let me tell you!

The end of my thrilling data collection in Ethiopia was anti-climatic to say the least.  I finished up my work Thursday and my ever so kind and thoughtful mentor offered to pick me up Friday morning at 6am to take me to the airport.  It was Friday the 13^th and I kept trying to convince myself that I was not superstitious, but when you have a father that survived a firey plane crash and an uncle that was on the plane that crashed into the Hudson river, you can’t help but wonder…so I check in and the woman gladly puts me in the emergency row, hands me my ticket and wouldn’t you know I am in row 13.  I mean…come on!   

As “luck” would have it I survived, but not without denouncing the thought of ever having children thanks to the ill-attentive mother and her 3 heinous children that ran into my legs for 5 hours – straight.  Woah is me.  At any rate, I arrived in Johannesburg and had told my cousin (whom I have never met before, we are actually maybe 2^nd or 3^rd cousins…we have the same great-grandmother maybe?  Whatever, the point is we both have the last name Hanks and we are facebook friends and she lives in a cool place that I wanted to see) to take her time as I was going to try to change my return ticket home.  An other story that you do not want to hear.  As I was standing at the counter trying to change said ticket I hear a voice behind me say, “Are you my cousin?” I turn around to find…a Hanks.  I don’t know how to describe a Hanks to one that does not know our family.  There is something about a Hanks that reeks of mischief and fun.  Something that tells you, “I am going to get into a lot of trouble with this person, but have a hell of a good time doing it.”  I immediately knew I was in for an adventure. 

After figuring out the ticket situation we piled into her car with her husband Brevis.  Nerdy sidenote – for those of you who have had the pleasure of studying the anatomy of the hand or foot you know that there are many muscles that are short and long and named as such – pollicis longus and pollicis brevis.  Adductor longus and adductor brevis.  Brevis’ mother was a medical student and liked the sound of Brevis.  That made me happy.

At any rate, we drove about an hour outside of Jo-burg to the nature reserve where Charlotte and Brevis live.  I mean…wow.  Just…wow.  The view, the house, the wine.  All, just stunning.  We had a glass of wine and watched the sunset over the hills.  They live on the top of a hill where you can see (as before mentioned) wildebeest grazing as well as whatever other wild animal comes along. 

That night we went to dinner at Uncle Nick Hanks’ house literally down the dirt road.  Uncle Nick is Charlotte’s uncle and my….relative?  Whatever, same last name, so I am in.  2 other couples living on the nature reserve joined us.  One couple was a British man and his French wife who runs a spa that serves only raw foods to her visitors for 5 days straight.  Charlotte says they live in the castle down by the river.  We were invited to hang out while I am here and I can’t wait.  Dinner was a trip.  I learned what “vee” means in French and it is incredibly inappropriate. 

The next morning I woke up in South Africa and still hadn’t showered from my travels.  We were trying to leave for a gaming camp in Botswana, but Charlotte said, “Oh you must have a bath and watch the sun rise over the African hills.”  Ugh…I guess if you say so… She drew me a bath and it was pretty much a life changing experience. 

After having my life changed, we loaded up the car and drove for 5 hours to Botswana.  When we arrived at the border (and I should mention that for whatever reason I am incredibly skiddish of any border police or customs or what have you) we are walking up to the office when Brevis does a deep intake of breath a la Ethiopian agreement sign and looks at Charlotte with wide eyes and says, “we forgot the car papers!”  Keep in mind we have already driven across South Africa for the last 4 hours.  The game camp is just 30 min across the border, but trying to get across a border with out registration for the car you are driving kind of makes it look like you stole the car.  Oh well, thought I, Botswana would have been nice.  To my surprise, Charlotte looked worried for all of half a second and then giggled and said, “Oh well we have gotten out of worse situations at African borders.”  Dare I ask?  Probably not the time.  Charlotte then turned to me and said, “Open your eyes very wide and smile very big and laugh and say thank you.”  Uh-huh, whatever you say cousin Charlotte.   So we got all the way through the passport part and we finally walk up to the car part of the deal and here I am standing with what had to look like the scariest, biggest grin and eyes popping out of my head, behind a cool, calm, collected Charlotte and Brevis.  We walk up to the window and this Botswana man jerks his head up and says, “What?  No you didn’t just catch me sleeping!  What can I do for you?  I am awake you see!”  I let out a, very likely, much too loud laugh as Charlotte bashfully giggles and says we are headed into his beautiful country for the weekend.  So much smoother than me.  Must be the cool Hanks side, obviously.  We get all the way through the process without him ever asking for the papers for the car, we pay him for our ticket to get in and start walking away.

As we are reaching the door Charlotte whispers in my ear, “I can’t believe we just got away with th-“

“WAIT!!”

Damnit.

The man is yelling for us to come back and all 3 of us simultaneously slump our shoulders and walk back, knowing what must be coming.

“You for got your change.  Have a great weekend in my beautiful country!”

Unreal.

So we make it to Mokolodi lodge where we are staying in a chalet overlooking the watering hole.  Mokolodi is a nature reserve of 8000 hectares with all sorts of animal that basically just hang out and don’t have to worry about being poached.   When we pull up to our chalet there are bunch of baboons just chilling at the watering hole.  So we more or less joined them with our wine.  After that Ranger Brevis took us on a game drive through the park where we saw countless kudu and impala.  You pretty much just drive through these dirt roads and there are animals everywhere and they are not behind cages or captive or anything gross like that.  Just hanging out.

After the game drive we had dinner at the lodge.   Charlotte had been raving about Botswana beef so I ordered a fillet (pronounced Fill-Let in Africa apparently) with the Mokolodi sauce, which consisted of Camembert cheese and cherries.  I will have dreams of that dinner for the rest of my life.

The next morning we wake up around 7 am, enjoy a cup of coffee and pile into the car that informs us that it is 4 degrees Celsius.  Apparently it gets cold in Africa.  We meet up with 2 guides at the registration office for our rhino tracking tour.  This basically involves sitting on benches in the back of a truck freezing your ass off for 2 hours.  To be fair, we were driving through the bush and it was pretty awesome.  Finally, we spotted some fresh rhino tracks (are you paying attention?  Because this is the where the “polar bear” part of the story comes in).  Our 2 guides tell the 3 of us to get out so we can start tracking the rhino on foot.  I was pleased to see one of the guides pull out a very large shotgun from the truck as they tell us this.

We then proceeded to play a little game I like to call, “follow the gun.”  Both guides were tracking the rhino, but there are 7 rhinos in this reserve, hence many different tracks, so often the 2 guides would split off in different directions.  I would always “follow the gun,” for obvious reasons.  Finally the guide with the gun tells us that we have walked quite far and he is going to go back and circle around with the truck so we don’t have to walk so far when we come back and he hands the gun off to our female guide.  He leaves and she leads us further into the bush.  I should mention that we are walking through sandy Kalahari bush that is laced with Acashia thorns, which are (no lie) 2 inches long.  These thorns kept ripping off our hats and tugging at our jackets.  At any rate, we are walking along and all of the sudden our guide says, “wait…I think he was…and then he went…there!”  And she is pointing to what appears to me to be a bunch of thorns and bush.  “You see him?  Right through there?”  I see thorns.  But then…maybe?  And then I realize there is something very large not 20 yards away from us.

I pull out my camera and start trying to snap some pictures.

“That is the male that protects the herd,” our guide was saying.

“Oh yeah?” snap, snap.

“Yes, he cannot see very well, but he can hear us and smell us,” says the guide.

“Yeah?”  Snap, snap.

“Yes, he is not a very nice rhino…”

“Really?” Snap, snap.

“Yes, he has heard us.  He is not happy.”

“Wait…”

“Ok, now we run.”

Pardon?

“RUN!!”

Have you ever had a gazillion pound prehistoric creature with a horn that could skewer you in an instant, come charging through the bush in your direction from 20 yards away?  I have. 

I don’t even know what happened next, but we were running.  The 2-inch thorns were not helping, but next to the blind, angry rhino behind us they looked like child’s play.  Basically we darted left and rhino went straight and we avoided him for the most part.  When we finally came to a clearing it appeared that we had escaped the most immediate threat.  I was, obviously, still shaking and trying to catch my breath.  I turned around expecting to find the same of my compatriots only to find Brevis calmly smoking a cigarette, Charlotte looking at me with this huge grin saying, “I don’t know about you, but I love this sh*t!” and our guide banging the butt of the gun on the ground and pointing at me and howling with laughter saying, “Woooo!  You should have seen the look on your face!  I said, ‘Ok now we run,’ and you say, ‘Where?!’  Hoooo!! Hahaha!” 

Ok, first of all I don’t remember saying anything except for running.  Second of all, really?  No kidding I was scared!!  Then, she pulls out 2 shotgun shells from her pocket and says, “You don’t have to worry.  If anything serious happens I put these in the gun.”  Wait.  You are telling me that gun isn’t even loaded?!  Then it dawns on me that I am standing in the middle of the African bush with these 3 loony toons, an unloaded shotgun, and a very pissed off male rhino somewhere in the bushes.  Excuse me while I go change my underwear…