After almost 6 months of preparation, dreams, and planning, the highlight of our around the world trip finally came to fruition on day 29.. much to the surprise of the animals, our little posse of 8 city boys arrived in the bush to see what wild animals really looked like..
We flew from Cape Town to Mpumalanga International Airport (Yes, that's really the name!) just outside of Kruger National Park and rented two 4x4 vehicles… Driving on the "wrong" side of the road (for the first time!), our group drove hours into the absolute middle of nowhere and crossed into Southern Africa's largest National Park and game reserve. Just minutes after arriving at our first camp we were greeted by a herd of elephants...
After getting unpacked, we went on our first excursion into the park.. escorted by armed rangers, we went on a night safari. Our friend Deep has a longstanding love of animals and nature and used a spotlight to help identify all sorts of animals doing their thing in the dark as we passed by..
The next morning we went on a sunrise morning drive. The sunrise itself was worth the trip but seeing all the animals wake up and start interacting was equally wonderful..
We had lunch near a beautiful dam and met a few thousand new friends -- starlings, a beautiful blue bird with freaky intense yellow eyes that will happily jump right up on to your hand to help himself to your food..
His much larger relative the Southern yellow billed Hornbill is much more gracious and simply sits at the foot of the table and waits for fall out.. or for you to leave, when he get's the king's share of anything left behind and the starlings get his leftovers..
After lunch we continued driving all day and had the most amazing (and rare) animal sitings! We saw this lion and lioness so close to our car that you could spit on them.. although that would certainly not be recommended.
A half mile later we saw a mother and baby rhino (very rare, only about 1000 of some subspecies left!)
And after a long day of driving we arrived at our second camp. We checked in to our fabulous tent right by the river. The river was full of hippos (which are the most dangerous animals by far to humans in the reserve). They spent the entire night making very interesting (and loud!) hippo noises that were like nothing I had ever heard before. After 6 PM and the camp's 10 foot tall electric fences were closed (both to keep us in, and the animals out) we set up a campfire and BBQ'd a fabulous dinner for 8 .. while the hyenas cackled outside our fence.. That was a magically creepy night for sleeping.
The next morning was the most exciting. At 5:00 AM we departed camp accompanied by two ranger/guides armed with very large automatic rifles. (Robert and Marty) They drove us about an hour into the bush and then we set off, on foot, to see what wildlife we could find. This was a totally real experience and not at all "packaged" for tourists. Walking parties are routinely stalked and attacked by animals with our rangers each telling stories of having to creatively flee or in some cases even shoot charging animals (or spitting king cobras!)
We almost immediately found a herd of huge cape buffalo and tracked them until they suddenly ran off. The ranger's well trained skills immediately identified why after hearing a few discrete "gruffs" in the distance.. it appears that a lion was in the immediate area. Rather than go the other way as you might expect, we instead tracked the lion using his "gruffs", "roars", footprints, and the tracker's skill. We closed on it for a while but never caught it. This was perfectly fine with Christian and I. We then spotted several rhinos and a hippo. The hippo even made the rangers nervous so we quickly retreated from it. They are very territorial and frequently charge humans and cars.. they are also maddened by the color red and you'll notice what Christian is wearing….
We continued on for hours on foot, all of us completely lost in the scrubby savannah which ranged as far as the eye could see. We eventually found our vehicle again (the rangers, of course, went directly to it as if they had built in GPS) .. then while driving out we came across a huge herd of elephants which allowed us to drive right up to almost touching distance..
The baby elephant was very curious about us and came over to investigate then put on a little show of throwing his head around, raising his nose in salute, then attempting to eat a tree branch half his size.. which was hilarious to watch.
We finished the ranger guided walk after seeing tons of other very active and interesting animals then set out in our private Jeeps to drive ourselves all over the park, looking for game on our own. One isn't allowed to be out of their vehicle at any time and anyone caught inside the Reserve between 6 PM and 6 AM and not in an official electric fence protected camp can be shot on sight as a presumed poacher. The rangers told us that 6 rhino poachers had been "fatally injured" just the morning before. While driving around we ran into several pickup trucks with 6-8 large rangers in back with REAL machine guns patrolling the park for poachers. It's a really big problem.
And here's something you never expect to see.. I was driving and looked in my rear view mirror and a giraffe was looking at me! He was walking right down the road behind me coming to investigate a nice tree we were parked under. Not the kind of traffic one expected to have to yield the right of way to!
Christian shot 1,406 pictures during our four days on safari. This is just a tiny portion of them. We'll be posting a hundred or so to Facebook in the next few days.. but if you want to see more, just ask.. we can't wait to show them to you!!
If you have ever even remotely considered going on safari.. DO IT! And that's coming from the prissiest city boy around. Me!
The next day was spent driving back to the huge (22 flights a day) Mpumalanga international airport through beautiful (but very, very poor) rural Africa, then flying to Johanesburg, then Paris, and now Barcelona…
More to come!
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