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Saturday 3/3: Jo’Burg, South Africa
After only sleeping for a few hours, we got up bright and early to grab some breakfast (toast and homemade jelly) and wait for our safari guys to arrive. We ended up paying 140 rand for the hostel to sleep and have 2 meals there…FYI -- 140 rand is $20 USD! Not to shabby, eh?
Our guides, Sam and Gavin, arrived and we piled into 2 vans and started our long long drive to Kruger National Park! Sam is a 52 year old guy who used to be a sound engineer, but has been doing safaris for about 4 or 5 years now. Gavin is a little younger than Sam…after going to college, he spent 2 years in the military and then has been a safari guide ever since then. We stopped a whole bunch of times on the way to Kruger. The ride took about 6 hours or so. It was an interesting ride because it was so bumpy and loud since we were pulling a trailer behind the van. I don’t know if it was the van or if South African roads are just not up to par, but it was impossible to fall asleep because you’d wake up with a case of whiplash!
At one of our stops, the guides stocked up on groceries while we ate at Nando’s. Nando’s is a great chicken place in South Africa. I hear that there’s some in the States? None where I’m from! I had an amazing chicken pita with peri-peri sauce. Peri-peri is basically the hot sauce of SA. It’s so good!! After hours of driving past small towns and beautiful scenery, we arrived in Kruger. Yay! The first animals we saw as we drove to our campsite were wildabeast, impala, and zebras! Zebra has become one of my favorite South African words because it sounds like “ZAYBRA” because of their accents! We quickly pitched our tents at the campsite before our open-vehicle game drive that evening. I’m so glad we were camping --- that’s the only real way to do a safari! Some of the SAS groups were staying in lodges --- LAME! Our campsite, Maroela, was right in the middle of the park, but it was surrounded by an electric fence.
A guy named Rodney was our guide for the night game drive. He was black just like my teddy bear Rodney. He drove us around and we saw impala, wildabeast, zebras, owls, jugit (I’m butchering the spelling – it’s like a mix between a raccoon and a cat), wart hogs, vultures, and lizards. ***Impala are the most abundant animal in Kruger…They’re known as the local McDonald’s because they have stripes of dark fur on their butts in the shape of an M, and also because so many animals eat them***We also witnessed our first African sunset – SO BEAUTIFUL! As that was happening, we also watched the moon rise. It was like a big orange pumpkin rising in the sky – oh, and it was a full moon!
Once we got back from the drive around 8:30, we ate dinner that our guides had prepared for us while we were gone. It was amazing! Gavin did most of the cooking during the trip. He says that all his recipes are from his “safari cookbook” that’s in his head, haha. We had creamed spinach, salad, chicken, peas and carrots, and rice. Sounds pretty simple, but it was so so so good! Afterwards, we just hung out around the campfire and some of us played cards. Although we were completely exhausted, we waited up because there was supposed to be a lunar eclipse! The last one that occurred during the night at Kruger was about 5 years ago. How lucky were we that we ironically got to the park the day that there was supposed to be a lunar eclipse!? Couldn’t have been better timing. I have to say that seeing the lunar eclipse was one of the highlights of the safari even though it didn’t have to do with animals at all. IT WAS INCREDIBLE. AMAZING! UNBELIEVABLE! First of all, the only time I’ve seen a bunch of stars back in the states was when I was at East Coast fh camp one summer. Seeing the stars here was 10 billion times better than that! Did you know that stars really do twinkle? Yeah, I’ve never seen them twinkle before. They were twinkling like crazy – all kinds of colors – red, blue, green, purple…I also saw at least 5 shooting stars in about a 20 minute period. As you can imagine, there were SOOOOOO many stars. We could even see part of the milky way galaxy. It was SO cool. Gavin taught us how to tell time by the stars. In the southern hemisphere, they don’t have a north star but they DO have a southern cross. You can use the southern cross to tell time! I swear you could see every single star in the sky by the time that the shadow completely covered the moon. I’ll stop babbling about it now…but it was just one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. We went to bed around 1ish, only to wake up at 4:30 for our first morning game drive! Ah!
Sunday 4/4: Kruger National Park
Gavin and Sam put out stuff for coffee and tea and we also had biscuits. At 5:30, we left our campsite to begin our drive that lasted until about 11am. One of the first things we saw was a white-backed vulture. We learned that if there’s more than one type of vulture in a tree, there is most likely a killing nearby. Next, we saw some giraffes. I love the giraffes! They get to be about 5.5m high. Giraffes tend lean up against a tree when they sleep because if they put their heads down on the ground, that makes them extremely vulnerable to the lions. Male and female giraffes travel both alone and in groups. They have really tough tongues so they can eat thorny branches! Did you know that ONE KICK from a giraffe can kill a lion? Ouch! We saw a bunch of birds during the drive. Sam told us that there’s 950+ species of birds in South Africa, and you can find over 500 of those species in Kruger! We came upon an elephant alongside the road that was literally less than 15 feet away from us!!! Elephants and giraffes were my favorite animals to see during the safari. Anyways, this elephant was a big one. At one point, he started to charge at our van because we got too close, so Sam quickly put it in reverse! Elephants flap their ears to cool their body off. They have 6 sets of teeth and eat up to 150kg a day! Most elephants live for up to 60 years. The largest tusks on an elephant in Kruger weighed 105kg EACH. This elephant that we were watching had one tusk that was half broken off. Sam explained to us that sometimes the number of elephants exceeds the carrying capacity for Kruger. When this happened in the past, they used to just kill them, but now they transfer them to other places. FYI -- There’s about 8,000 elephants, 2,000 lions, and 16,000 impala in Kruger.
Along the way, Gavin would stop and get out of his van to point out tracks, fruits, or animal dung. He picked up a maroela fruit that’s about the size of a walnut. This tiny little fruit has more vitamin C than any citrus fruit! Maroela trees are very common in the part of Kruger that we were in. We saw some wart hogs and buffalo laying the mud. They do this in order to remove parasites that cling to with bodies. The other van didn’t see the three buffalo that we saw! Seeing buffalo is kind of a big deal because they are one of Kruger’s “Big Five.” We also saw a kudu, which pretty much looks like an elk except they have really long twisted antlers. They’re related to antelopes.
Guess what! We ran into some monkeys that were just hanging out on the road! They were Vervet monkeys that are white, black and gray colored. The monkeys were running around in the road and then hanging out in the trees. They had blue balls. Enough said, haha. Shortly after the monkey encounter, we saw a giraffe. We’d seen plenty of giraffes by this point, so you’re probably thinking that this was no big deal. WELL – it was a big deal! The giraffe was about 10ft back from the road. After a minute or so he started walking towards us and CROSSED THE ROAD RIGHT IN FRONT OF OUR VAN. You don’t realize how darn big they are until they walk right in front of your nose. OH MY GOSH it was huge! This was one of my absolute favorite parts of the safari!!! The thing that makes it even better is that the other van was already up ahead of us, so they totally missed it. Anyways, here’s some more facts about the giraffes. To tell the difference between a male and female, you can look at the bump on their head right below their eyes. Males tend to have bigger bumps. An even better way to tell the difference is to look at their horn things. Females have hair on their horns so they can “tie a bow in their hair to impress the boys!” Also, birds eat parasites off of the giraffes and use their mane for nesting. Did you know that giraffes chew sideways instead of up and down? One more thing – giraffes only live to be about 20 years old.
When we got back around 11, Gavin cooked some brunch for us. It ended up being a huge feast! We had eggs, bread, cheese, granola, yogurt, bacon (the best bacon I’ve ever had!), sausage (different from the stuff we have at home, but still good!), fried tomatoes, and a mixture of corn and beans. YUMMY. The great thing about South Africa is that all their food is so much less processed than ours. The orange and mango juice that we had is mostly fruit. The first couple ingredients listed on the label are mango, orange and pear, fruit particles, and water. There’s some preservatives but NO added sugar and definitely NO high fructose corn syrup! Even the soda and cookies taste different here even though they have some of the same brands (Fanta, Coke, Oreos) because of the difference in ingredients. After breakfast, we packed up our tents to get ready for our afternoon game dive to a different part of the park.
One of the first things our van saw was 3 ostriches…2 female (grayish) and one male (black). This was the FIRST time Sam had ever seen ostriches in Kruger! We passed a watering hole and saw a pod of hippos and a herd of elephants. Apparently the oldest female dominates in a herd of elephants. The herd we saw consisted of a couple females and two babies!!! It was so cool! It sounds like females really reign in the safari world. Lionesses do the killing…Female hyenas lead the pack…While we drove around, we saw tons of different kinds of birds including the korybuster, which is the largest bird that can fly in the park. When we passed another watering hole, we saw a waterbuck just hanging out by himself under a tree. He was a big guy! There was a dam nearby where we saw a whole bunch of zebras, elephants, and giraffes all wandering around! The zebras in Kruger are a different type than the ones we see in zoos in the states. These ones are brown and white instead of black and white, and they have 3 alternating stripes instead of just two. Here’s a little fun fact…Sam said that there is a type of animal that is a cross between a zebra and a donkey, so people refer to it as a zonkey or a debra! Haha.
It took us a few hours to get to our next campsite, which was so close to the border of South Africa that we could actually see the mountains that separate South Africa and Mozambique. Our second campsite was in the Olephontas area. Before we got to our camp, we booked a night drive/night sky thing for about $17 that included a game drive, looking at stars through a telescope, and “sun-downers” (cocktails). Our driver for the night game drive was a gorgeous blond South African named Matthew. He’s out of school and has been working for Kruger for about 2 years now. All us girls were pleased that he was our guide, haha. We watched the sunset as we drove to the lookout point for our night sky thing. The place we went to was right above a river that had tons of hippos. By that point, it was too dark to see them, but we heard them! It sounded like they were real close to us. We were able to look at Venus, Saturn, the jewel box (located inside the Southern Cross), orion, and the moon through the telescope. It was really neat! The jewel box was my favorite to look at. Saturn looked like a cartoon…it looked exactly like what we see in books! Kind of weird, haha.
Afterwards, Matthew drove us around in the open-vehicle until 10pm. We saw some hippos wandering through the grass. He told us that hippos walk up to 15km from the rivers during the night. FYI – they are in the water while the sun is out because they have really sensitive skin. Next, we saw a TON of impala. We finally made it close to a hyena den and I caught a glimpse of my first real-life hyena! At first, they look exactly like the hyenas from the Lion King. Creepy! But, once you really look at their faces, they look almost innocent. Their ears are rounded. If they were pointed, they would look a lot creepier. Anyways, they still look pretty scary when they’re walking around. They have the strongest jaw out of all the animals in the savannah! I actually think I might have already told you that, but it’s kind of a big deal. That makes them all the more scarier when you see them because you know they could tear you to shreds.
Matthew got us safely back to camp around 10pm. Gavin and Sam had dinner waiting for us. Once again, we had an amazing meal! This time we ate salad, beef, broccoli and cauliflower with feta cheese, veggie stew, gem squash with corn and cheese inside, and potatoes with cream cheese (yes, cream cheese – not sour cream!). For dessert, we had fruit cocktail and custard. We chose a campsite on the outer edge of the camp. I’m not so sure if this was a great idea because there were two hyenas lurking behind the fence RIGHT behind our campsite all night. Plus, we had decided we wanted to sleep under the stars instead of in the tents, so we were just out in the open about 10 feet from the hyenas with just an electric fence separating us from them. When I finally put my head on my pillow to go to sleep – a little after 1am – one of the hyenas started howling. So much for going to sleep right then! A couple of us sat up real quick and eventually started laughing after we got over the initial shock! We ended up surviving the night…
Monday 3/4: Kruger National Park
We didn’t have to wake up at 4:30 this morning! We woke up at 5am so we could pack up all of our stuff and start our game drive by 6am. This was our last game drive before we left the park. It took us until a little after lunchtime before we got to the exit of the park. Game drives are really fun because even though seeing the animals is obviously awesome, the anticipation is fun too. Wondering what and when you’re going to see more animals is what keeps you alert. Everything is always a surprise!
Here’s another fun fact…Hyena crap is white in color and very calcified. Lions and elephants and some other animals eat it! During our last game drive, we saw a whole bunch of animals that we had already seen. No lions or rhinos! Bummer! We did see a great big herd of buffalo and witnessed zebras fighting each other. Seeing the zebras fighting was almost as cool as the giraffe walking right in front of our van. We saw a bunch of elephants. One of the ones we saw was walking by himself. It was DEFINITELY a “he.” His 5th leg was huge. I’m glad I’m not a female elephant. Wow. We were all laughing pretty hard about seeing that.
We sadly said goodbye to Kruger as we headed on our way back to Jo’Burg. The safari was so so so sooooooo much better than I could have ever imagined it to be! I’m so glad I hopped on an independent trip rather than an SAS one. For one thing, it was SO much cheaper. Everything totaled to be about $550 rather than well over $1,000 for any of the SAS trips! If I had gone with SAS, I wouldn’t have had such a great time at the hostel and we would have had a much bigger group of people. The whole trip was just amazing! We made a couple stops on the way back to Jo’Burg. The first one was at Three Rondavels Canyon. This is the third largest canyon in the world! (1st= Grand Canyon, 2nd = somewhere in Namibia)…Some of the oldest mountains in the world are in this canyon! One of the mountains was shaped like the huts that some people live in. On our way to the next stop, we passed a bunch of people randomly walking along the road. African people that live far away from cities must walk miles and miles everyday. We would pass by a person and then drive at least another mile or two before we saw any houses or little markets along the streets. It’s crazy! You wonder how far they’ve come from and where they’re headed. A lot of the women that walk along the roads carry huge bags on their heads. They don’t even use their hands to balance the stuff on their heads! I think it’s pretty fascinating considering I can’t even walk normally with a book on my head, let alone a big black trashbag full of stuff! During this trip, I’ve really turned into mom. I took so many pictures of things from the car – BUT, I opened the window, I didn’t take them right through the window, haha. The African landscape is so beautiful. You pass by savannahs and then a little while later there’s huge mountains! We passed some baboons along the road while we were winidng around one of the mountains. Our next stop was Lisbon Falls. The falls were about 40m high. They were beautiful, but it was actually kind of scary because there was no ledge or fence up so you didn’t fall. We were literally sitting on the edge of the rock that jutted out over the falls so we could get a good view. Don’t worry, no one fell! I’ll admit that my heart rate was racing the whole time I was taking pictures, though! Our final stop was at God’s Window, another great lookout in the mountains. After that, we did actually make a stop at Pilgrim’s Rest, a restored gold mining town, to grab some lunch. Some of the women in the market there were selling such cool artwork. I found something really cool for mom and dad but I obviously won’t tell you what it was. I didn’t end up buying it until I got back to Cape Town, but I first saw it at Pilgrim’s Rest and fell in love with it!
After that, we drove and drove and droveeeeeeeee some more until we finally made it to the airport in Jo’Burg. I called dad from the airport while we were waiting for our flight. We landed in Cape Town around 11pm and made it back to the ship by 11:30. Ellie, my roommate, had returned from her safari earlier in the evening so we swapped stories and then I finally took a shower. I can’t tell you how dirty I was. My clothes still haven’t been washed in the sink yet…oops. I was covered in layers of DEET and sweat. MMMMmm.
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