Giraffrica

Early Saturday morning the five of us (Dan, Sarah, Jessica, David, and I) were picked up from my apartment to start our long journey to the Kruger Park.  The trip can be done in 4-5 hours I believe, however our trip took about 8 hours.  It was two hours before we even left Joburg since we were the first to be picked up and had to make a few stops along the way.  On our way, we picked up two guys traveling alone (Sean from England and David from Denmark), both here on business.  We got to know them on the ride there and hung out together for the rest of the safari. 

We arrived at Tremisana Lodge in the Balule Private Game Reserve attached to the Kruger Park around 4:30pm.  From there we went on our sunset game drive.  It was great!  We saw tons of impala (antelope, extremely common in the Kruger Park), water buffalo, wildebeest, monkeys, a giraffe, jackals, and three lionesses with six cubs!  It was awesome.  They were so close!  One of the lionesses had just killed a zebra (well the night before I think).  We could just see some of the zebra under a bush and could hear the bones cracking as mom crunched away while the cubs came to drink milk.  The pictures aren't great unfortunately because we were losing the light and the guide couldn't shine the light on them due to the cubs' developing eyes.  It was an excellent memory though.  After the drive, we had dinner at the Tremisana Lodge (chicken, rice, butternut soup, salad, and bobotie, a ground beef dish with an egg and cheese topping).  After dinner we were taken to our treehouse lodge.  Unfortunately we weren't really staying in treehouses.  My disappoint though was slightly softened by the fact that we had an ensuite bathroom as opposed to having to climb downstairs to use the toilet in the middle of the night.

The next morning we left for the Orpen Gate of the Kruger Park for our full day game drive.  We started off with a bit of drama between some South Africans on the drive and the driver.  Nothing too intense, just arguing about when wildebeest (I think it was wildebeest) have babies.  That day we saw two of our missing "Big 5", elephant and rhino.  Unfortunately we didn't see any leopards but they are the most elusive.  We also saw plenty of zebra, giraffes, hippos, and surprise surprise, more impala.  That night we had more butternut soup, chicken stew, and gem squash (delicious!).  The lodge had plenty of drinks for sale so we hung out by the fire and continued having "just one more drink" with Sean and David until about 12 am.  Quite late considering we had a morning bush walk starting at 6 am the following morning. 

Most of us woke up in time for the bush walk the next day (Sean didn't make it).  We learned about what branches to use as a toothbrush and which leaves to use as toilet paper.  We also learned the difference between poisonous and venomous.  For example, the spiders around the treehouse camp were poisonous so we were only in danger if we decided they looked tasty.  We got back for breakfast and then got back into our van for the long ride home.  Fortunately we got to stop at the Three Rondavels view point to take some awesome pictures before continuing on to Joburg. 

Lioness and cubs

Zebra crossing

Monkeys!

Elephant family

Elephant sunset

Giraffrica

Christian rock band album cover at the Three Rondavels