Day 31 – Kruger Safari Day 3

February 22nd, 2008

On the first day of the Safari our guide, Karen (but pronounced like Coreen), asked us what we all were wanting to see on the Safari. I instantly said either a Cheetah or a Leopard, two of the most awesome animals ever, at least in my opinion. However, these are two of the rarest animals to see. Our guide hadn't seen a leopard since early January. We had seen all of the Big Five prior to today except for a leopard. At this point we really didn't think that we were going to see one either. We woke up today for breakfast at 5:30am (yeah, we got to sleep in) then ate some breakfast before doing our last morning drive and heading out of the park to see Jessica. About half way through the morning drive on our way out of the park we were all half asleep when our guide slams on the breaks 'guys, guys! A leopard! A leopard!' There was a leopard right on the left side of the road in front of us. AWESOME. By the time we all could get our cameras out it had gotten scared off into the bushes to the left of us. We lost her for a while but then eventually found her again and were able to take some photos and such. I actually didn't take any photos myself because I decided to record her on my video camera. It has a better zoom than my digital camera anyway. So I have about 10 minutes of us following this leopard before she ran away from us. At one point she was calling for her cubs (who were probably on the other side of the road). I can't even describe the sound but it's all on the video. Seeing the Big Five on a 3 day safari is really rare. I think our guide was just as excited to see it as we were, which is saying quite a bit! Not more than 10 minutes later we also saw some hyena's. There was two of them but one of them was extremely pregnant. Our guide thought that she was probably on her way to have her babies when we were seeing her. This was our first sight of hyena's as well, which just topped everything off.


We stopped to get some breakfast on our way to see Jessica and had some awesome breakfast. It was so good and looked so good that I took a picture of it.

Jessica the Hippo was absolutely awesome. When we got there we went right down to the river where they have a dock that Jessica was around. We fed her pieces of corn on the cob and pet her nose. She also really liked it when people got down and kissed her on her nose so we all did that. It was one of the coolest things, I can't even explain. Once she was done with the corn we gave her two 2-liter bottles of tea. Both of the bottles had a little thing for her to suck on and get the tea out of the bottle so we rotated giving her the bottles (which went really fast) until she finished them. She only likes her tea luke warm and very sweet, otherwise she won't drink it. She did fart a few times when we were done feeding her which I thought was pretty hilarious. During the afternoons she goes out and plays with the other wild hippos in the area. She always comes back to the house though. Sometimes she even brings a friend or two with her. The corn that we gave her is just a little extra dessert for her. She eats with the other hippos and does everything that they do. She just loves humans. The two people that are taking care of her are able to go into the water and swim with her or ride her. That would be so awesome to do. One guy from Animal Planet was there filming for a week or two and after a week he was able to get in there with her and swim as well. She has to be the sweetest hippo ever. Before leaving we put our feet in the water and put them on her head or under her head. She started to fall asleep while we were doing this. So awesome.

After seeing Jessica we started our ride home to Johannesburg where we had an 8:30pm flight. We took the scenic route there though with all of the mountains around us. We stopped at a canyon as well. I can't remember the exact name of it but it's the 3rd largest canyon in the world behind the Grand Canyon and one in northern Africa. No pictures can do justice to how awesome the view was here. I took a lot though so you can get a small glimpse of how awesome it was.

Our van started to break down right before we were about to eat lunch. A light came on saying the fuel was over heating or something, then the shifter knob came off. Karen blamed the light on getting bad diesel fuel at our last stop, but it could have also just been that the fuse was going bad. The light hadn't came on the entire time until then. By the way, Karen was awesome but she was kind of a crazy driver. It made things interesting to say the least.

We stopped about a quarter of the way to eat in this small town. At every meal I've been ordering something that you wouldn't see on a regular menu in the US. Here, I got a crepe (I think that's how it's spelled/said). I had never heard of these things but everyone else at the table knew exactly what it was and couldn't believe that I had never had one. It's basically just a thin pancake that acts like a tortilla around something. Almost like burrito-style but not quite. It was delicious of course. I haven't had any bad food here yet. At this point Karen went back to Kruger to give another safari and we met up with another guy to give us a ride the rest of the way to Johannesburg airport.

We got to the airport in plenty of time and I was even able to get a little bit of Internet before having to board. The airport kept on screwing up though. They changed the terminal that we were suppose to board at 4 or 5 times. By the time we were all at the right terminal they loaded us onto buses and took us to our plane, wherever it was. I haven't ever had to take a bus to my plane either. It was interesting. By the time we got onto the plane and left we were about an hour and a half late.

Originally we had planned on going out in Cape Town the night we got back because we were suppose to arrive around 11:30pm. However, since we got in a lot later than expected I determined that it was too late to go out, especially since I had planned to go to the winelands tomorrow, which started at 8:30am.

Security was a lot like airports in the US except not nearly as strict. There's no restrictions of liquids of any kind, and one of the girls that we were with managed to get on a pocket knife in both Cape Town and Johannesburg (without even really thinking about it) and only got it taken away after going through security for a second time in Jo'Burg because she left the terminal to see if she could get bumped to an earlier flight.