I'm still updating about family vaca. So sue me.

My family vacation took a turn in Johannesburg.

I was in the bathroom of my hotel room looking at my stubble in the mirror. I knew that it wasn’t enough for a beard…but just maybe. Various angles and five straight minutes of staring were starting to convince me that a beard was becoming a possibility, or was maybe just a few years away.

My mom came into the room. She was buzzing around the room picking things up, but we were leaving that day for Kruger Park so no surprise. She did seem a little stressed, or pale, or something like that.
“Hey mom, do you think this is enough for a beard?” I said, pointing at my sparse neck hair.
“Huh?” She replied, breathless.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, probably with the we’re-just-going-to-another-hotel-don’t-freak-out tone in my voice.
“My dad died.”

We made plans to go home. I didn’t expect to go home in my two years, and I wasn’t happy about it. I wanted two years of retreat, to grow or change or develop some enlightened perspective and then come back and give it another shot with my newfound amazingness. Not to be. Mom was initially open to discussion of the topic, but her relief when I suggested I may indeed jump the pond cemented my decision.

In the meantime we did go to Kruger for a couple of days. At first Kruger is amazing, we saw animals as we entered the park, including a giraffe (an impressively monstrous animal), right from our car!

Then Kruger seems a little touristy, like a zoo. I mean you don’t even have to leave your car to see animals? How fat and lazy have we become that we design nature’s greatest beasts to be seen from the comfort of our air conditioned asses? And the accommodations—the “camping”—was considerably nicer than my home. The hotels are expensive and all inclusive. The “Tent cabins” that we stayed in featured spacious, well lit rooms with great warm showers and tiny hotel shampoos. We saw a bull elephant, herds of zebras, wildebeest and impala from the porch. On the first afternoon. The words of caution about the dangerous animals from our guide started to feel like the words of caution from the tourguide at the beginning of disney’s jungle cruise.

Then you realize how outrageous it is that you can see elephants from your porch. We saw elephants, rhinos, hippos, huge herds of various game, enormous lizards, tarantulas (the guide found it, far from the tent cabins), and my bro’s personal favorite, the baboons. Baboons hang out in huge groups (packs? Herds? Gangs? Gaggles?), and unlike the impalas that do the same they are constantly interacting. The impalas just stand next to each other, and besides for the occasional overhyper baby impala leaping around for no reason (which is funny) they mostly just breathe on each other. The baboons play and poke and preen, they seem to laugh and they look back at you quizzically as they scoop up their babies with their humanoid hands. It was once in a lifetime: we even got to see two lions mate (which was cacophonous and lasted maybe five seconds).

Then Kruger gets boring. Another bull elephant? Another super rare something now mostly extinct found only here? Big deal I’ve already seen four of those. Kruger’s wildlife is so plentiful and accessible that you burn out on it. Absolutely worth a visit, but only for a few days.

And before I knew it I was on a plane to Heathrow, where we did get our luggage back despite British Airway’s best efforts to employ the most sparsely witted and aggressive idiots I’ve ever had the pleasure to hate. And in a blink I was on a plane to LAX.

We got off the plane like zombies, screwed up beyond jet lag and limped through customs with the bags we never got to open. Uncle John met us at the door. The airport was more crowded and noisy than I remembered it to be, and smaller too. But nothing smells like Los Angeles.