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.

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.

A Chance of A Lifetime

April 21 - 22, 2013

Today we left for South Africa. I still can't believe we are getting this opportunity. After the Spring Game, we  headed north to Washington D.C. and spend some time with our friends, Jordan & Charlotte before we went the the airport. Since we were going to spend a lot of time traveling, we decided to challenge ourselves by packing everything in carry on backpacks for our trip.

We left DC on Sunday evening, our first flight was a quick eight hour flight to Amsterdam. We spent our layover getting a little sleep before hopping on our eleven hour flight to Johannesburg, South Africa. We were so excited when we landed in Johannesburg. Our driver was there waiting to take us to our hotel once we got off the plan. By the time we left the airport, it was after 10 pm on the 22nd. So it was dark driving to our hotel. We didn't get a chance to see any of the city on our drive.

We stayed at the African Moon Corporate Guest House. It was not your traditional hotel, it was much more like a Bed & Breakfast. When our drive dropped us off, he walked us immediately to our two bedroom guest room with a little kitchenette. The place was really cute.

We tried to get a little sleep that night but between the many flights, six hour time change, different country and all the excitement, we didn't get much sleep at all. In the morning, we would start our four day, three night safari!

A Day at the Zoo

March 23th & 24th

This weekend we headed up to Washington DC to meet Ben, Shelby and Ryn. After a relaxing quiet evening Friday night, we were up and out ready for adventures Saturday morning. (Ben was up so early, he took apart his truck, brought it into our hotel room, worked on it, fixed it and put it all back together before we all got us!! That dude is crazy!)

Our first stop was a little morning shopping. We headed down the road to the Leesburg Outlets. We didn't find a lot of great deals but we had a great time running around with Ryn.

After shopping we headed into the VERY CONGESTED Washington DC to go to the zoo. We struck out with find lunch in a near by neighborhood and after so ridiculous traffic situations we decided to just go park at the zoo and eat there.

The zoo was great! Even though it was pretty chilly, we were able to see the panda bears, monkeys, an elephant, and tons of birds. It was so fun to watch Ryn run around and check out all the animals and people.

That evening we were able to meet up with one of Ben's old buddies for dinner at a diner near our hotel. It was so great to see him!

Sunday we headed down to the outlets south of DC and the IKEA. We even got play with Ryn in the play area at the outlets and grab lunch at IKEA. But it wasn't long before it was time for everyone to head back. We had such a great time with them and I look forward to our next adventure.

On our way back home, we made a quick pit stop to visit Jordan & Charlotte. It was so great to see them and catch up on life before hitting the road.

Unfortunately, we ran into a snow storm so we got to extend our weekend by an extra night. We made it as far as we could before we found a place to stop for the night. We got back on the road early the next morning and made it home in time for work and plenty of snow!

SURPRISE!

March 16th & 17th

On March 11th, Joel turned 40 and we missed it. But thankfully, Leigh planned a surprise party for Joel the weekend after his birthday. It was so much fun to spend time with friends and family celebrating Joel.

Joel's first "surprise" was when Jed was there to pick him up with Kilby and Jeff for a belated birthday breakfast at Waffle House and a trip to the Flea Market. Once all the guests has arrived and the house was ready. We sent word to the boys to head back to the house for lunch.

After the surprise birthday afternoon, the boys when out to do boy things and the ladies stayed back to hang out.

On Sunday, we headed to church and spent some time relaxing outside enjoying the weather.

Joel gave KJ &Viv a haircut

What a fun, warm weekend!

Happy Birthday Joel!