Kruger National Park, South Africa
Our 3G was really bad the last day of safari, but a LOT has happened.
We were able to go on three more game drives over the last night and day. The morning drive yesterday was very uneventful. There were reports of a lion sighting and our guide spent most of the day chasing said lions with no luck. The closest we came to a lion were some fresh lion tracks.
It was raining during the evening drive yesterday but we finally found the lions. Two young males hiding from the rain under a tree. They were pretty far away, but we could see them well through binoculars.
Seeing the lions completed our Big 5 mission. Seeing the Big 5 is said to be the ultimate goal of a safari. The Big 5 are the five most dangerous animals to hunt on foot and they include Elephant, Rhino, Water Buffalo, Leopard and Lion. Water Buffalo is surprisingly the most dangerous, as they give few warning signs that they are about to attack. Leopard are apparently the most difficult to find, but we lucked up and found ours the first night.
Today, we had one final morning game drive and we finally got to see some Zebra up close. We had seen several, but none close enough for good photos. We also came across a dung beetle and a crocodile (both of which were on my list of things I wanted to see) and tons of giraffe.
The only animal I wanted to see more of and didn’t was hippo. We saw two from a distance, but none up close. It’s the dry season and the Sabie River near our camp was almost completely dry, so most of hippos had moved on somewhere else.
The most incredible things we saw were a new born (our guide said less than 2 weeks old) elephant and a hyena feasting on a buffalo carcass. The newborn elephant was with its mother and sibling, a baby elephant most likely born a couple years ago.
The hyena was the very last thing we saw before ending our final drive. It was dragging a buffalo head (horns and all) and spine and eating it near the road. It was a very cool find and even our guide was excited.
Speaking of our guides, we’ve been lucky to have mostly good ones. We had a scary/interesting experience yesterday during our evening drive. A few minutes after our lion spotting, our guide parked the car for us to watch some impala. When he went to start the the 9-person safari van again it wouldn’t start! He tried everything but it would not go. He was getting visibly upset and everyone was a little nervous as there were very clearly lions and elephant in the area near by and we had absolutely no means of escape if something were to go wrong. It was actually Josh who made the suggestion that since the vehicle was manual, they could push start it. The driver agreed and Josh and few other people got out to push. Finally, the van started without incident and we were only a few minutes late for dinner.
That transportation issue was only the FIRST of our transportation issues over the last two days. Today we nearly missed our flight to Cape Town (we literally had to RUN through the airport) due to a flat tire in our bus leaving the safari.
We were honestly very lucky to have come out unscathed from this. The tire blew on the highway in the middle of nowhere surrounded by mountains and steep cliffs, Had our driver not maintained control of the bus we could have easily gone off the side. Right after the tire blew, a rainstorm came through. Our driver was a super hero and changed the tire using a make-shift jack (it looked extremely dangerous) and had us to the airport just in time.
This safari was beyond incredible and I wish we had another day at least. Seeing the animals was so fun and Josh and I both enjoyed getting to know the other people on safari. Josh made friends with a Canadian couple from Montreal (I’ve never seen him talk as much as he did with them!) and I ended up spending time with two american (soon to be sister-in-laws) from DC and NY. I also got to know a guy from Spain who arrived last night and ended up sitting with us on this morning safari. He was semi-professional photographer and showed us some amazing photos he had taken. We also got to know a couple from the UK at dinner last night. They were celebrating their 10 year anniversary and had been road tripping around South Africa for the better part of two-weeks already. They met in their physics doctorate program but were way more fun then I ever imagined two Drs of physics could possibly be!
As you all know, being as much of an “inside girl” as I am, this whole staying a tent thing really had me nervous. The first night, as you may remember, I practically forwent personal hygiene just to rush through a shower so as not be alone with any snakes or dangerous bugs.
Things didn’t get any better for me or Josh that night after our blog posted. Being that Kruger Park is in a malaria zone, we’ve had to take anti-malarials once per week for the last couple of weeks and through the end of the year. Lucid/bad dreams are the most common side effect and we’ve both experienced it. Josh dreamed our cat could talk the first night on the medication.
Our tent was completely dark inside – darker than any place I’ve ever been. It had four single beds and so we began the night in our own separate beds. However, around 3 am possibly due to the malaria medicine (as Josh would have you believe) but absolutely, most likely, definitely, probably due to angry baboons and/or vicious predatory snakes and/or lions I heard a very scary noise outside the tent.
I fled my bed like toddler in a thunder storm. And, thus, Josh and I found ourselves sharing a twin sized bed for the first time since college.
Josh was less than pleased about being woken up, shoved over and having half his space taken, but he let me stay. He did draw the line with taking shifts to keep watch for angry baboons coming to pillage our tent and attack us. But, he did – at least – agree to ready our shoes in the proper position for easy access in case we needed to make a run for it and I kept watch by myself with my cell phone flash light that Josh kept trying turn off when he thought I had fallen asleep.
I never did fall asleep, but nothing attacked us either – so I’d say there was absolutely a correlation between those facts.
The next day, I requested our guide elaborate more about baboons and it seems they typically sleep during the night, as well, and are not really a threat as long as you don’t leave food out in your tent.
So, I was less afraid and actually slept (in my own bed!) last night.
It was good that we both got more sleep last night because after our 5 hour bus ride to the airport and the 2 hour flight (which we’re on while I’m typing), it will be another day of nothing but transit and those days are exhausting.
We should be arriving in Cape Town around 9:30 pm, our hotel arranged for a car to pick us up and I imagine we will both be ready for a good night’s rest in a real hotel with a real bed and no deranged baboons roaming outside.
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