Safari (Day 1)

April 23, 2013

After a little sleep the night before Jed and I were so excited to start the day. We were headed on a safari! We were up early, packed, eaten breakfast and checked out by 9. Our safari driver was a little late getting us so we had the chance to check out the place we had stayed at that night. It was really cute in the day light.

When Verity from Nhongo Safaris picked us up, we learned so much in our drive back to the airport. We learned that we will be taking a van to the town of Nelspruit and her brother in law, Mark would pick us up from there. She also let us know that we didn't need to take the anti-malaria pills since this time of the year there are no mosquito's. Which was great news for me since they kept making me sick. But the coolest news was that it would just be Jed and I on the safari. Although we were a little disappointed that we wouldn't get a chance to meet other people from all over the world during our safari, there was something pretty fun about it being just the two of us.
The trip from Johannesburg airport to Nelspruit on the Citybug was uneventful. We spent our 3 1/2 hours sleeping and reading to pass the time. It wasn't long before we were meeting Mark and driving in our safari vehicle the last hour.

As soon as we past the gates to the entrance of Kruger National Park, we spotted our first wildlife sighting.


Impala

Apparently impala are there version of deer. They are everywhere and they are the bottom of the food chain so everyone hunts & eats them.

We made it to our camp in the National Park around 4:30, checked in and got unpacked before our sunset tour at 5:30. As we had a little time to kill before the sunset tour began, we went exploring around the camp ground and saw some birds and the first of the big five animals! (Big Five are Elephant, Rhino, Buffalo, Leopard, & Lion)



Our Tent

The camp pool (way too cool to go in)

ELEPHANTS!

Vincent was our tour guide for the sunset tour. We clearly hit the best time to come since it was again just us on the sunset tour. Vincent did a great job. You could tell he was nervous and he was definitely the new guy but we had so much fun and he was a cool guy and he was Filipino. Right out gates, we ran into more animals and this time they were way up close!
 

White Rhino

 We just sat and watched as these large animals just went along with their everyday lives roaming and eating. They really were not bothered by us being there but you can obviously see that they could see us and in there own way acknowledged us being there.

We drove to an overlook where we could see for what seemed like forever. There was a beautiful lake and we enjoyed some drinks, snacks and the amazing sunset.

We could hear as animals made noises all around out. I loved listening to the hippos down in the water below as they "talked". Once the sun had set it was completely dark so it was time to head back to camp. Jed and I got to hold the spot light as we drove through all the dirt roads to make sure we didn't run into any animals. In the dark we saw buffalo, owls, rabbits, frog (that buried his head when he got scared), a huge beetle and a tiny tree monkey.

On the way to and from our sunset drive we also ran into poacher guards. They just walk around the brush with large guns hunting rhino poachers. Those guys looked very intimidating. We made it back to camp at 7:30 and headed to dinner with Mark and then we were off to our tent. We had a wake up call at 4:40am so it was time to call it a night.