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Tuesday September 30th
Last night we got to know one of our tour guides really well. His name is Toby and he is from Australia. He gave up working in defense in Australia and came to South Africa with his wife, who is South African, and now became a safari guide because he had such a passion for the animals and the bush. Well, he volunteered to lead us on a bush walk this morning at 6am and even came and woke us up. Only a handful of us actually got up for it. We all met at the "office" of the camp, which was one of the buildings around the fire pit area and we walked out of the camp and into the bush. We were walking on pre-made dirt trails and Toby was pointing out the different forms of plants, birds etc. Bush walks are usually just for the nature aspect but we saw two adult giraffe and a baby giraffe right away. Towards the end of the walk we saw the herd of buffalo and also 3 rhino. Rhino are not rare to see but we were able to get very close to them. By very close I mean probably about 100yds. The buffalo and rhino are two of the "Big 5". The big five are the elephant, lion, leopard, rhino, and buffalo. They are the five most dangerous animals to hunt on foot. This was the closest Toby has ever been to a rhino on foot. So needless to say the bush walk was a lot of fun and we got to see more animals than usual.
We got back to camp around 7:30ish and waited for 8:00 breakfast. We had cereal, muffins, and toast. There are monkeys that hang around the camp and show up for breakfast everyday and will literally climb on the table and sit next to you waiting to take a piece of bread or whatever they can. One made off with three pieces of bread. We all loaded up in our van and drove the 45mins to Kruger for the day. The small group of us made sure we were going to get in Toby's vehicle once we got there. On the way to Kruger I met two English people in the van who quit their jobs and are traveling the world and going to get jobs and live in Australia for a while. They had some great stories and were very cool to talk to.
Once we got to Kruger, 10:00am, we went into the gift shop at the gate and bought some water and goodies for the road and set off. There is a very good road system throughout the park. The park is narrow and long. I won't go through hour by hour because that is pointless. But after driving all day, we basically drove across the park and we only covered a very small portion of it which gives perspective of how big it is. The parts that we drove through were all bush with the grass, shrubs and trees. There were some open fields, but Toby told me the savannah I was looking for was in the southern part of the park, we were only in the middle section. We stopped at a "rest stop area" for lunch and got sandwiches and more bottled water. Then were on the road again. We saw a ton of impala, Kudu, water buck, elephant, giraffe and zebra. We also got to see hippos and crocodiles. We were lucky and actually saw the crocodiles eating a carcass. They don't chew food so the bite down and roll to tear it off. Very cool to see up close. The highlight of the day was seeing a pride of lions eating a zebra. They had caught it earlier in the day and we didn't get there until later afternoon. By the time we got there the adults had all ate and were napping in the shade while the younger lions finished it off. We were worried that we were not going to see lions at all so it was a relief to see them, not to mention see them eating. We also saw all sorts of birds, some baboons, monkeys, wildebeest and more buffalo. We did not see rhino in Kruger, but luckily we saw them this morning on our bush walk. Our truck had open sides but a canvass roof which was good because it got very hot in the afternoon. It is the dry season right now and they are in a very long draught. Everything is very brown and there is little color anywhere. Driving in the afternoon was hardly refreshing having the wind in your face because it felt like a blow dryer. After a long day of driving we headed back to the main gate and had to be out of the park by 6. Instead of riding back to camp in the van we got to go in the game viewing truck which was very cool. On the drive home you could see a ton of stars. It was a good day in Kruger.
All of the boys were in our truck, plus a few of the girls. I think we really showed Toby a good time and he seemed to enjoy himself a lot. Probably relaxing for him to have college kid's roll through. He was very good in explaining everything about what we saw. Even asking him a simple question as broad as "tell us about zebra", he could talk for 20 minutes about them. Now, we did not see animal after animal. Sometimes you would drive for 10-15 minutes without seeing anything. But basically, it was a very large zoo and the animals were well adapted to cars driving through. It is against the law to get out of the car though because a few years ago, a guide got out to go grab an iguana off a tree and a leopard jumped down from the same tree and killed him in front of his group. So it was a long day of driving but seeing the animals took our minds off of how much we actually drove. Toby sat in the back with us and an African man named Aphilus drove the truck, this way Toby could talk to us and point things out. We only saw 4 out of the big five. We saw elephant, buffalo, lion, and rhino. We did not see leopard. They are very hard to spot and very rare. Similar to cheetah, so only a few are seen everyday and we were not so lucky. Overall, it was a great day at Kruger.
We got back to camp and compared storied of what we saw with everyone else over dinner. Dinner was at 8pm again, and then a lot of people went to bed. The boys stayed up and talked to 2 girls from Australia and a brother and sister from England (not the same two I talked to earlier). It is neat talking to people visiting from other countries and hearing what they have to say about their travels. Tomorrow we are going to do another bush walk at 6am, but with Nelly this time instead of Toby.
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