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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.
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