Safari (Day 2)

April 24, 2013

We beat the sun up this morning and we were so excited about it. Breakfast started at 5:30am and we were there and headed into the park by 6am just as the sun was coming up. Today we are going to spend the day looking for wildlife in the Kruger National Park. I still can't  believe all the things we were able to see. These pictures just can't do them justice.

Spotted Hyena

Waterbuck

Cheetah

Klipspringer

Giraffe

Burchell's Starling

Crocodile

Baboon

Beautiful Scenery

So we pissed off an elephant today. We had been driving around for a little while when we came up on five or so elephants that were eating along the road. On one side of the road, there was a baby and their mom with another elephant and on the other side of the road there were two additional elephants just hanging out and eating. We pulled up to these guys and turned off the car and just sat and watched. Mark had just finished telling us about safety with large animals and how you know when they are mad.

We learned about how elephants do something called a "mock charge", to let other animals (& people) that you are in there space. And a few minutes later we watched one of the two elephants that was on the other side of the road from the baby elephant demonstrate the mock charge. It was really cool as we sat / stood and watched as this huge elephant walked onto the road right in front of our vehicle and flap his ears, kick up dirt from the road and hit his large trunk on the road. Mark set there watching and explaining each step. We just watched in awe of seeing it. It wasn't until Mark started whispering instructions ("sit down", "don't move") that we knew we might be in a little trouble. Jed and I sat frozen in the truck too nervous to take a picture of it happening or a video. We were too scared the the noise of the cameras would push the elephant over the edge. But after a few tense moments, the elephant chose not to charge us (and flip the vehicle with his trunk) and followed the momma elephant and baby elephant into the bush.  Mark started up the vehicle and we headed to find more animals all the while telling us (and showing pictures) of when "animals attack" in the wild to him and others.

Momma & Baby

The Elephant we pissed off

At this point in the day, it was time for lunch so Mark took us to a very unique place to eat in the National Park. On our way to lunch, we were discussing the Big Five animals and he was talked about a leopard when we ran into this little guy.

Leopard Shelled Tortoise

The other fun thing that we were able to witness on the way to lunch was a hippo. Because of the hippos skin, they spend almost all of there time in the water so you rarely see them outside of the water. So much to all of our surprise, as we were pulling in to lunch we heard a rustling in the bush and all of a sudden, a huge hippo comes out, bolts across the street in front of our vehicle, heads into the bush on the other side of the road and then you hear the splash. I had no idea an animal that big could move so fast. All three of us were excited to see this happen and it happened so quickly.

Can you spot the hippo butt?

Right after we watched the hippo take off we turned the corner and saw this...

The Skukuza Gholf klub. That's right, a golf course, right in the middle of a wild animal National Park. People can now golf along side the wild animals. It was really cool to see but can you imagine playing golf and all of a sudden, you see a giraffe on the 3rd hole and then a pride of lions decide they are hungry and go attack the giraffe. Sounds pretty silly and crazy, except it had just happened about a week before we got there!

The view from our lunch table

Warthogs on the fairway

Hippos in the water by the green

After lunch, we were on the look out for the last of the Big Five that we hadn't spotted yet, the lion & leopard. We spent hours driving around sometimes thinking we were in a zoo with no animals while the next minute being shocked and amazing at the randomness of animals that all coexist in the wild.

Little Louie

Warthog

Mark took us out to an over look to see how large the National Park is. We told us that the park was the size of Ireland! It was all park as far as we could see. It was beautiful.

And before we knew it, the sun was setting and it was time to head back to camp. The evening was pretty uneventful, dinner, laundry and crashing early. We have a bush walk in the morning that leaves camp at 5:30 am.