Let’s begin with last night, however, or rather, early this morning. You see, we were awakened at roughly 1am by the guttural growls of a territorial monkey who must’ve been perched on our roof or somewhere very close by. Being completely confused, I thought that perhaps it was the wakeup call, until I checked my camera (doubling as my watch) to see that it was clearly not the case. It stopped after 5 or 6 calls, so I went back to sleep. A short while later, around 1:45am, Mr. Monkey decided he needed to howl some more, although he was farther away this time. Between the head cold and the howling, this was once again a poor night of sleep.

Wakeup came at 6am, upon which I threw on some clothes and made my way to the lodge for an apple and some morning tea to get things started. About 6:45, we climbed into the open-air Land Rover featuring a seat out in front of the vehicle for the Tracker, 10 seats for guests tiered in rows of 3, plus a seat for the Ranger and a place on the dashboard for his .375 bolt-action rifle. Considering that it was in the 40s when we started, we were given a heavy blanket and a bladder full of hot water to keep ourselves warm. Let me preface this by saying that words cannot do this full justice and pictures will eventually make its way up here when I can get enough internet access to post them.

Throughout the next 3 hours, we traversed roads, dirt paths, brush, bushes, trees, and pretty much anything that got in our way. Our first animal sighting was a lone young elephant that was feeding itself on the side of the road. Following that, we came across a few Impalas, which, in fact, are not crappy American cars stranded in the wilderness, but are related to the antelope and look somewhat like deer. These were everywhere throughout the course of the day and are generally food for some other predator. Then we decided to up the ante a bit as we went off-road for the first time. The next animals we went to see were lions. First we passed by a lioness who was sunning herself and sleepy, so we then found her male counterpart in the brush, eating grass. It will be tough to imagine this, even with the pictures, but our Land Rover was “parked” in a ditch at a strange angle, leaving us (by design) roughly 5-10 feet from the lion. Of course, I was on the side of the vehicle closest to said lion, so in the event he should decide grass wasn’t so tasty and human would be much better, I’d have been first on the menu. Eventually he decided he’d had enough grass, so we followed him back to the lioness where he proceeded to lay down in the sun and stare at us for a while, before turning on his side to catch some rays. We came upon a watering hole next that featured a crocodile sunning itself and a belligerent hippo making his presence known to all. Apparently hippos are actually timid creatures when confronted by other animals, except for when humans surprise them. Guns don’t kill people, hippos do.

Moving along, we soon came across a pair of buffalo. Buffalo have some quite large horns on them; however, they too are herbivores and were eating grass as we followed them around. I should mention that in our particular game reserve, which is a private part of the Kruger National Park, there are 7 lodges that share information amongst each other when they go out on drives. While it seems like cheating, it’s a great way to ensure that the guests see what they want to see while out on the drives. I bring this up now because this is how we found our next animal, a female leopard. We followed her for a long time, hoping that she would bring us to her cubs. Instead, she brought us through ever-increasing brush, getting us stuck numerous times on rocks and branches before we got as far as we could go without encroaching on someone else’s property. I should also mention that the Tracker, who is responsible for pointing out any animals in the distance along with the direction the Land Rover should go while off-road, is getting hit in the face by a variety of tree branches, many with extremely long and sharp thorns. He is a brave man.

At this point, it was time to stop for a bit of tea and stretch our legs before heading back to the lodge. On our way back, we happened upon a giraffe. Giraffes, for being as tall as they are, blend in exceedingly well if you are not looking for them. Apparently giraffes have no social structure and just sort of roam as they please. They are able to use their long, sticky tongue and flexible lips to eat the leaves from the thorniest trees. These trees have these thorns because their leaves are the tastiest. Giraffes laugh at their efforts…or something. Unfortunately, though giraffes can run quite fast due to having 6-foot-long legs, they are food for lions, which are rather smart when it comes to hunting and usually find a way to make the giraffe fall down before going to town on it.

So all of that happened in 3 hours. Crazy, right? This was just the beginning. Breakfast was a delicious spread of eggs, beans, sausage, bacon, sautéed onions, mushrooms and tomatoes, yogurt, and fruit. Once that was finished, it was time to get ready for the bush walk. As I came out of our cabin, I noticed a rather large antelope-like animal standing 10 feet from the porch. Not knowing exactly what it would do, I hung out on the porch for a bit and took pictures of it and some birds until it sat down and looked docile. I then swung out the other side of the porch and took the long way around to the lodge to go on the walk.

There were two rules for the bush walk – always stay behind the rifle, and listen to any instructions the ranger gives. Seemed easy enough. We got to observe rule #2 pretty quickly, as we were walking out the front entrance of the camp only to find a pack of elephants feeding about 25 feet away, including one pissed-off mama elephant. The mama took 3 charging steps in our direction as we stood still and silent, before it returned to eating grass with the others. We took a bit of a detour to get in better position to view them while also waiting for them to move along. Eventually they left, and we went to take the long route around the camp to get to the watering hole that those elephants would most likely be heading towards.

Once we arrived there, we noticed a hippo in the water, giraffes in the distance, and a large male elephant making his way down to the water as well. On the other side of the bank, there were a few Waterbuck (another antelope-like animal), along with some Egyptian Geese (neither geese nor in Egypt) and a Water Monitor Lizard, which is not small and is related to the Komodo Dragon. Eventually, the pack of elephants from before made their way down to the water, where they eagerly paraded through it for a few minutes to cool themselves down. One female elephant decided to stay behind while the pack left, and we were waiting for the hippo to try and assert itself, but it never did. Outside of the few times when hippos bellow and make angry sounds, they’re pretty lame animals; all they do is sit underwater with their eyes and snout sticking out. Once the elephants left, we did the same and returned to the lodge for some rest and a football match to watch.

written by  nucappy on June 15, 2010 from Justicia, South Africa
from the travel blog: London and South Africa - World Cup 2010!
tagged Safari, SouthAfrica and WorldCup
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Oh yeah? Well the new place I'm working at has a petting zoo with buffalo in it! Once I scrap together the $12 fee from the loose change in my car I'm totally going to go and put your safari to shame. Any rhino sightings? My friends and I at NC came up with a new animal, the rhinosaurus. Its a rhino head on a t-rex body. Let me know if you come across one.

written by  norbert on June 16, 2010

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T.I. told me that he likes his beat down low and his top let back, chrome feet down low, and his Impala wet back. Let me know if you find out what this means. TI's from Africa, right?

written by  Jere on June 22, 2010

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