Lions and Tigers and Bears.. Well, Lions anyway...
Trip Start
Feb 14, 2006
1
22
104
Trip End
Ongoing
Nelspruit,
South Africa
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
We drove to Kruger Park and went to get in. Once again the omnipotent Lonely Planet let us down. We were expecting to pay less than $5.00 per person to get in. We were surprised by a $22.00 per person kick in the groin. Ouch... That's still cheaper than a round of drinks, or an X-tra large meat lovers stuffed crust pizza, but I guess I'm just a cheap ass. The guy at the gate was amazing though. He spoke to us in fluent English, clicked at his co-workers in whatever clicking language they spoke, talked with someone on the phone in Zulu, and somebody else in German. I felt more than a little dumb around this cat.
Upon disgorging most of our cash on entry fees, we got into the park. We were stunned by the size of the shit that covered the roads. I know that sounds crass.. but Elephant poop is HUGE. Each piece is about the size of a bowling ball and the piles were often three feet high. This, of course, got me really fired up. Nothing is more exciting to me than a massive bowel movement. That, and elephant poop, can mean only one thing...
As we drove through the park at a painfully slow speed, we came across numerous Impalas but nothing huge. That is until we found a watering hole, and saw some hippos lounging in the mud. We then stumbled upon a family of very rare water bucks. These are beautiful creatures and we watched them for quite a while even though they weren't doing much. We kept driving and seeing lots of other animals, giraffes, zebras, crazy deer and antelopes, weird birds, etc.. And then we saw it. A gargantuan grey form behind a tree. I'm not kidding, I about peed my pants with excitement. Seeing a bull elephant in the wild is one of the coolest things I've ever experienced in all of my 31 years. He just kind of looked at us, and we at him. Later, we saw a black rhino, and the same near pissing experience happened all over again. We ended the day by seeing a whole bunch of Baboons right by our camp ground. One was kind enough to hump his friend in the middle of the road for us. Hilarious. By the way, Baboon ass is real. That's not just the make up artists on Mutual of Omaha getting a little carried away with the rouge.
That night was FREEZING. Evidently, no body bothered to tell Africa that it's supposed to be hot. So we lay awake, in our tent, listening to our teeth chatter and the hyena's barking at the fence. Not the best night's sleep ever.
The next few days in the park were absolutely incredible. I won't bore you with a laundry list of animals that we saw, but we had some really cool experiences. Towards the end of the second day, we were crossing a river heading home and I saw a beautiful bull elephant drinking and giving himself a bath in the river below us. There was no one else around.. so we just parked the car and watched him do his thing. He was absolutely regal. Not a word I use often. Anyway, he's about done doing his thing when I notice that there is a stirring in the water just below him. "Kelly, he's got a baby with him" I whispered/screamed excitedly. Low and behold, out of water comes, not a baby elephant, but a full grown hippo. Hippos and elephants usually hate each other. But these two were clearly buddies. The hippo climbed out of the water and slowly walked through the grass to the woods. The elephant faithfully followed his friend into the woods. We backed up hoping to get a better view of this weird phenomenon. It paid off, we could see them eating and hanging out in the woods. Later, the elephant crossed not 10 feet from our car and crossed the road. It was absolutely amazing. None of the rangers we talked to believed us that elephants and hippos were hanging out together, until we showed them the pictures.
Not ten minutes later, after we said good bye to that dynamic duo, we were surrounded by a pack of wild dogs. Wild dogs in Africa is different than in the states. These are actually a breed of dog with common traits. They are highly endangered so we were lucky to see them. They were clearly hunting and proved it by chasing an Impala out of the woods right in front of us. It was pretty surreal to watch this life and death struggle unfold literally feet from our car. I guess the Impala got away... but that didn't disway these dogs. Soon they stumbled across a family of Baboons in the road. The dogs circled the Baboons while the large males went out to scare them away. This was clearly part of the dogs strategy. With the males drawn out, there was no body to guard the babies that were left behind with the mothers. We sat there, mesmerized as Animal Planet took place right outside our windows. It was completely primal and it made me realize that I live a pretty sanitized existence, when it comes to food and death.
I'm running out of time at this Internet cafe.. so I'll spare you the verbal slide show.
Africa is great.. I'll try to get you more stories shortly..
