Monday, June 21, 2010

Day 6 – Wrestling The Big 5







Woke up at five to earn my Big Five merit badge and also got my 1,000-km-behind-the-wheel-on-the-wrong-side-of-the-car-driving-on-the-wrong-side-of-the-rode badge in the process. Kruger National Park opened at 6 a.m. and we were one of the first through the gate. I’m not only glad we got up so we could be to the park early and spend a full day in there but because it also meant we got to see the sunrise, truly something else. The sunsets are equally as impressive, there’s just something about watching everything come to life after the orange and amber sunrises.

The park rangers checked our trunk before they’d let us in. I’m not sure if this is an every day occurrence or if it’s because they caught a poacher the other day who had shot a rhino. And by “caught” I mean shot, he had to get air lifted to the hospital and as soon as he’s stable enough to leave the hospital he has to go to court. I like the way they roll down here. Either way, I told the ranger I was already packing the most powerful guns anyone had ever seen then kissed my biceps. He backed off cautiously and let us in.

Once we were in we wasted no time conquering some big game. The first victim was Simba, a lion who created quite the little traffic jam and I think was starting to get upset that there was a gaggle of cars in his way. He wasn’t as big as I remembered him, then again it’d been a while since I watched the documentary on Pride Rock. I punched him in the nose, he tucked his tail between his legs and ran off. Shortly after Simba fled Price Rock we came across some zebras. Their stripes reminded me of pinstripes, which reminded me of the Yankees, which reminded me of how much I hated them. Zebras are lame, but I bet they taste good. Next up was an elephant. He couldn’t fly, I already had a bar of Ivory soap, and, unfortunately, didn’t have and cinnamon or sugar to snack on his ear, so he became dead to me. We found a watering hole that a hippo was swimming around in. This proved to be the ultimate challenge for me, not having any malaria pills I was risking getting malariaped by mosquitos. I wasn’t going to let that get in the way of my bucket list of wrestling The Big 5, so I swan dove in to the lake and punched that hippo square in the mouth. Next up came the giraffe. It was no challenge. I heard they break their necks if they fall over, so I put my slide tackling skills to work and took him out. We also saw some monkeys and baboons, but they crack me up so we just had a couple Black Label’s (THE South African beer) and told funny stories. There were all kinds of impalas and various other antelope-like animals, but there were so many the traffic jams they caused made me hate them more than I hate squirrels. OK, maybe that’s an exaggeration, squirrels are the worst. We also saw an African Bush Cat, which was perhaps our most interesting discovery. We were deep in the thick of it, a good 20+ km and came across this African Bush Cat. Truly fascinating. I’ve never seen one in the wild before and have always wondered where they were native to.

After a long day of bush whacking and Big 5 wrestling we decided to find a place to eat. Since Bufana Bufana (South Africa’s national team) was playing the late game we decided to find a sports pub to get rowdy with some locals. All I can say about that is, woops. Some guidebook we had described the place as having all soccer games on their big screen, we plugged it in to our GPS and tracked it down. It ended up being a swanky white tablecloth sort of establishment and their “big screen” was smaller than my computer monitor. We were hungry, so we decided to stay. I have no idea what I ordered, but it was nothing shy of a party in my mouth and I want more of it. The owner was a mingler, which was quite entertaining. Also, I’m pretty sure he was drunk. Now, let me describe “mingler.” He’s the kind of guy that will walk over to your table, ask how everything is, crack a joke, and next thing you know he’s saying, “Mmm, that looks good.” then reaching on to your plate and grabbing a bite of something off of it. I also saw him pour a lady a glass of wine, start to hand it to her, pull it back, sniff it, take a swig, then hand it to her. I’m pretty sure the majority of the people in there were locals, but still, it was pretty entertaining. Not quiet as entertaining as when he asked us where we were from, then responded, “Oh God, you didn’t all order cheeseburgers, did you?” He came by a few minutes later and checked to make sure it was our first time in the country. Once he knew what we were all about he smiled, said, “I’ve got something for you,” then disappeared behind the bar. Next thing we knew he was delivering free shot after free shot of local liquors. After enquiring about the shot he said would put us on the floor, to which Carlos replied, “I like the sound of that!” he brought the bottle of Litchi over and it was wrapped in barbed wire. Way cool! Needless to say our plans to grab a quick bite, grab the beginning of the game and head home early so we could get to bed and be well rested for our 5 a.m. wake up call for day two of our safari didn’t go as planned. But we had fun!

Full album from safari day 1 here.

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