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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.
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