Day two of our safari kicked off at the unfortunately familiar hour of 5 a.m. again. We weren’t as early to the gate as we were yesterday, not sure why that was, could have had something to do with drinking African fire water all night last night. We’d already plotted our route and since we’d seen a boatload of elephants, giraffes, antelope-like creatures, and zebras, there was no need to stop when we saw any of those. Once we got to our uncharted territories we started seeing some new wildlife, starting mostly with some funky birds. Soon came a warthog, some more crazy birds, more hippos, and then we found a damn cool dam. It was the happening place to be. There were a heard of elephants doing their thing, crocodiles waiting to be hunted, by me, hippos swimming around and lurking underneath the Pistia Stratiotes, or for those of you non-educated plant aficionados, Pistia Stratiotes is Water Lettuce and covered the top of the water. Pretty spectacular. We spent quite a bit of time there as it was a rather stunning view and there was lots of doings transpiring.
Once we decided to pack it up Micah decided it was time he tried his hand at backwards driving. Made sense, Kruger is like the Grant Watts Elementary School parking lot that my mom took me to learn how to drive in. Nothing really to run in to, there are no lines in the road and people drive all over the road looking at stuff, I figured it was a great relaxing place for him to learn and tossed him the keys. We backed out of the spot we were parked in, pulled out on to the road, and turned the first corner only to come face to face with a massive elephant. I’m not sure if he was so pissed at us because we drove in on him going number two, or because we were in his way. Whatever the reason, he was pissed and came right at us. Luckily, I was snacking on some trail mix just then, pulled out a few peanuts and offered the to him as a peace offering. Dumbo and I are now good chums.
Next up was a particularly good find. Ever since I’ve been on the mend from tearing my ACL two weeks ago I’ve been curious if I still had the cheetah-like speed I possessed three weeks ago. And, wouldn’t you know it, we came across the Cheetos family. I challenged them to a foot race and won. It was actually pretty amazing, they were way out in the grass when we spotted them, which was really difficult considering how well they blended in. But after a few minutes they all got up, walked towards us and crossed the road right in front of us. Probably because I kept saying, “Heeeeeere kitty kitty kitty.” trying to lure it in to the car so I could give it to Nichelle as her belated birthday present. Pretty sure I remember her saying she wanted an orange, black, and white kitty. Sounded like it fit the bill to me.
Having now seen the majority of the big game we were focused on spotting the likes of hyenas and wild dogs. We failed miserably. But we did see a few more pretty cool looking birds, a municipality of baboons, a giraffe, a zebra who was almost as close to us as the elephant, buffalo, a rhino and a hippo in a place where we were allowed to get out of our car but I might not have had I known how close that thing was! We drove out the gate just before closing and the sun was setting and providing an amazing backdrop behind us.
Our first long haul is coming up tomorrow as we’re off to Durban to gear up for our next Holland game. I think it should be about ten hours, not too bad. Especially considering Carlos gave me his vote confidence at dinner saying, “I bet you could do it in 8 and a half, Scotty.”
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