PAFURI CAMP, KRUGER NATIONAL PARK

HAIR EATING SPIDER

I must admit that I’m afraid of spiders.  But my fear has been greatly reduced by my experiences staying in 5 bush camps (15 days) while we were in Africa for 19 days.  It was a matter of face your greatest fears or pack up and go home, which definitely was not an option.

My husband and I arrived in Johannesburg, South Africa, after two VERY LONG overnight flights from San Diego via London.  From O. R. Tambo International Airport we boarded vans to drive to a smaller airport for our flight of several hours in a 12 passenger plane to Kruger National Park.

This was the “Cadillac” of bush camps and one we would always fondly remember as the quality of the “bush tents” in the next 4 camps paled in comparison.  These different bush tents all had one thing in common…….lots of open spaces around all the plumbing in the bathrooms where the pipes came into the tents.  In some tents the floorboards had half inch spaces between them.  And they were all in the bush where creepy crawly things can enter, and enter they did!

Which brings me to the story of the “hair eating spider”.  On our very first morning in Africa my husband and I were busy getting ready to meet our group of 10 travelers and go on our first of many morning game drives.  I was dressed but still barefoot and standing next to the bed.  All of a sudden this huge brown hairy spider with at least a hundred (?) legs came out of nowhere and ran right across my bare foot and quickly disappeared under the bed.  I let out an ear-piercing scream and my husband came running into the room thinking a lion had attacked me in our tent.  He immediately wanted to look under the bed to find the spider.  I strictly forbid him to even peek under there.  All I could think about was that we had to sleep in that bed for a week and I really didn’t want to know what was lurking beneath it.  I had to suck up one of my biggest fears and be brave or I wouldn’t enjoy this trip of a lifetime.

When we met our small group that morning I told the guide my story and he laughed and said, “Oh don’t worry about that, it’s just a hair eating spider and it’s not dangerous.”  Of course I knew he was kidding so I laughed too.  

That week in Kruger I never saw the hair eating spider again, but every single night when we got into bed with the mosquito netting all around it I prayed that the spider was on the outside of it and not waiting for me to fall asleep so he could enjoy himself.  

On the last day in Kruger I asked our guide, "You were just joking with me about the hair eating spider, right?"  Straight-faced he answered, "Oh no, there really is such a thing as a hair eating spider."  I'm not sure if he was telling me the truth or still kidding around, but I was very glad to be leaving there.

And that was just the beginning of my numerous close encounters with spiders of many sizes on our trip.  I learned to coexist with them as well as lots of other insects that made there way into our tents.