The last days at school before my winter break went by in a haze of National Day, packing, and the lingering thought of "In two days, I will be in SOUTH AFRICA!"
I spent my last day quickly packing while fitting in as many showings of The Lion King as I possibly could before jumping on a plane to Johannesburg, South Africa!
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Our safari company sent our guide to pick us up from the airport to begin the five hour drive to Kruger National Park. When he first drove up, Clive seemed like a sweet old man. We were soon to learn otherwise...
After the long drive with the couple that would be joining us, Diana and Romy, and a quick breakfast stop for Clive, we entered the Kruger. While Clive was off doing paperwork, we got out of the car to stretch our legs (which Clive said was fine). When coming back, we saw people on a bridge overlooking Crocodile River checking out the sights. We wandered around and watched some hippos and crocodiles (from a far, safe distance). When heading back, we witnessed the first indication that Clive was anything but a sweet, old man. He yelled at us to get in the car because "I'VE SEEN LIONS HERE." If you know what a South African accent sounds like, you'll get the effect. We got back in the car like scolded children and continued the journey.
We very quickly started seeing wildlife. Not two minutes in, we saw a huge group of cars huddled along the road and we learned a leopard had just been spotted! We waited around for a while, but he had slinked away already. Bummed, we sped off.
We quickly saw impalas, warthogs, a super close giraffe, and a buffalo! I became used to scanning the landscape while we zoomed by (Clive doesn't drive slowly), making sure to yell "stop!" if I spotted anything.
We got to our camp for the night, Berg En Dal, and unpacked a bit. Cheryl and Chase (a newlywed couple) were nice enough to share a three bed hut with me. I'm sure they enjoyed sharing their entire vacation with me...
We noticed that there were monkeys all over the camp so we watched them run around for a bit. The monkeys were getting closer and closer and soon they were trying to unzip our bags and then charged at us. Cheryl ran straight into our hut and I ran straight into a tree. Whoops.
That night, we had a nighttime game drive.
As it got darker, a lot of what I saw was this (there's an elephant in that darkness). It was very beautiful, though.
After over 24 hours of traveling, I completely crashed when we got back to our hut so I could be ready for the next day!
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