Safari Time!

One thing I neglected to mention in my last post was that a couple weeks ago we went to Kruger National Park for a few days! It was too awesome to include in the summary post, so I'll attempt to do the trip justice here.

Day 1: We set off on the 6 hour drive to Kruger. This is nothing compared to the drive to California every year, so it's all good. We made one stop at  a pancake house where our renter holds the record for eating 21 pancakes (or something like that). We got to the park entrance around 5, drove around seeing some impalas and distant elephants, and got to our camp. We were staying in the Pretoriuskop Camp, which was overrun with baboons who would eat whatever scraps you dropped on the ground. I actually saw one youngster make off with an entire orange that was bigger that it's head!

Day 2: We left camp at around 6:30 and started driving south to the Berg-en-Dal Camp. Not long after departing, we drove into a herd of Cape Buffalo. It started when we saw about a hundred of them right next to the road. We drove right alongside to get some good pictures, but before we knew it they were on all sides of us! Despite Mom's occasional gasps of fear whenever one looked at us, it was awesome! We kept driving to Berg-en-Dal and saw three rhinos walking along next to the road, so we followed them for a while. Going further, we witnessed an elephant uprooting a tree to find bugs, a bright blue lizard doing pushups, and a few warthogs (PUMBAAA!). On the way back, though, is where it got really interesting. We decided to take a dirt road along the river instead of the main road back, hoping to find hippos, crocs, and other water-loving fauna. What we got was much, much better. We were driving along when, suddenly, an elephant appeared in the road! We looked around, and saw more on both sides of us, including a baby hiding behind its mother. It was too good to be true, until one of them got nervous around us and started waving its trunk around. We sped off, only to encounter another group of elephants, with another baby, and another over-protective adolescent anxious to get us out of there. Perhaps my rendition of "Colonel Hathi's March" from the Jungle Book didn't help to calm the beast, but it was worth it to see my mom's face when I trumpeted.
We kept driving until we saw a group of cars near the side of the road. After stopping, we found out that there were sleeping lions about 40 feet away. Problem was, we couldn't see them! Other cars had the best view and we weren't allowed to leave the car (since there are lions and stuff, naturally). Luckily, the guy in the car next to us came to the rescue. I swear this guy is Ron Swanson's brother or something, because he just stepped outside, picked up a rock, and threw it at the lions. One of the males stood up as we applauded  our savior. He looked at us blankly for a couple minutes before crumpling to the ground comically. Still, my first lion sighting is definitely one I'll remember.

Day 3: On the third day, we left Pretoriuskop for a hotel outside the Crocodile Bridge entrance to Kruger. Along the way we would pass through the popular camp of Skukuza and the Lower Sabie Camp. On the way to Skukuza, we were driving along the river when an elephant materialized in front of us (this was becoming a habit). Dad braked violently, and narrowly avoided hitting it. Sensibly, he then wanted to back away from it a bit. After a few meters in reverse, I yelled out for him to stop, but it was too late. The elephant he had nearly hit stumbled back, reared up its head, and blared loudly its war cry. I've never experienced such fast acceleration in my life. After making it to Skukuza, we continued along the main river, seeing hippos galore, as well as one lioness. At one point we saw a waterbuck carcass that a leopard had dragged onto a branch 12 feet off the ground.  We waited a few minutes to see if the predator would come back for its meal, but didn't want to waste too much time so we left without a sighting. The drive from there to Crocodile Bridge was uneventful apart from oodles of zebra, giraffes, elephants, hippos, wildebeest, and thousands of impala.

Day 4: We left Crocodile Bridge at 5 to go on a guided bush walk. The only was we were allowed out of the was was with an armed guide, so we jumped at the opportunity to walk around the Savannah safely. We didn't see many animals apart from some distant elephants, a few kudu (deer-thingies with 4 foot, twisted horns), and an up close giraffe, but we made up for the lack of wildlife with a lesson on reading footprints and dung. Tim, who had been excitedly identifying spoor for the past 2 days, was enthralled as he soaked in the difference between giraffe and kudu poop, and why white and black rhinos don't have the same spoor.
Afterwards, we drove back north in hopes of a cheetah or leopard sighting, since those were the only two major animals we had yet to find. The only notable finding then was when we found 5 lions walking by the side of the road, and followed them for about a kilometer before they decided it was naptime. The male lion was the biggest I'd seen yet, with a head the size of my body. The best lion-sighting yet was made infinitely better by the fact that for once, there was no traffic jam as other people jockeyed for position.

SO! To recap the highlights for those of you who skimmed!
1: Dad almost hitting several elephants.
2: Getting trapped inside a herd of cape buffalo
3: We saw a hippo doing barrel rolls in the water, and others play fighting
4: Followed a group of lions
5: Did a walking safari and got really close to a giraffe
6: Lots of animals in the road, including giraffes, elephants, and lots of Ungulates
7: Pushup-Lizard!
8: Lots of cute baby animals. My favorite was the baby baboon that was so little it didn't know how to walk with a tail and kept tripping over its rear appendage.
9: We didn't ever see a leopard, but there was a traffic jam around what was a clump of dirt that looked remarkably like a leopard until we was baboons playing on it.