A Kruger More Scary Than Freddie

(In order to convey the feelings i had while writing this blog, please have the following paragraph read out loud by an overexcited, out of breath 5 year old.)

This one time in Africa. We saw Lions. And Zebra. And went on a boat. And Then. There was this huge waterfall. And Hippos. And We ate cake made of candy bars. And there were monkeys. And I jumped off a bridge. And we rode in a big truck. And we went to a birthday party. And we played with baby lions. And then I pooped in a hole.

Needless to say, we've been quite busy. So much so, that the last three weeks will have to be split into a pair of blogs. I will be covering the South Africa portion of our adventure, while Jenny will write about our time in Botswana and Zambia.

So we finally left South America and hit the ground on the Dark Continent. Our time here started out a touch on the slow side. Those who know us from our Bacara days will undoubtedly remember Craig. He did a summer internship at the Bistro and we became good friends. We spent a couple of days hobnobbing around the malls. (I suppose I should mention that Johannessburg is pretty much world known as the most dangerous city on the planet. However, we settled into the suburbs which have proven to be relatively safe. Even so much that they're a little too safe. Sometimes I forget I'm in Africa and not in Burbank.) Finally we met up with Craig and spent a few nights in his company, with his lovely girlfriend Leann, his sarcastic dad, incredibly spunky mother and adorable Chow Chow (the dog had an inpronouncible african name, so we just called her Muffins.) All of us, minus Muffins, went out to a Lion reserve a few miles out of town. There we were treated to the amazing experience of driving (in a Mazda Miata no less) through a number of pens where we passed countless full size, man eating, monsters of the flesh lions. (This is Africa remember, the only regulations were "don't open your window cuz you will die.") It was unbeleivable to see the sheer size and power of this incredible beasts as they all sat around on their asses and sunned there genitalia. Once the drive was complete, we got the even better oppurtunity to frolick with four 3 month old lion cubs. Holy Crap, they were cute. However, frolick may not be te proper word. A more appropriate term would be serve as chew toys. These cubs were insanely rambunctious. They behaved just like kittens (kittens that could bench press a small moped). The whole time was a rapid rotiation between the overwhelming adoration of extreme cuteness and intense pinching pain that borders on terror. Tons of fun.

Next, we went to a restraunt nearby called Carnivore. It's an all you can eat buffett that serves mostly game meat. We all ate Crocodile, Kudu, Hartebeast, Ostrich, Gammon, Eland, and of course Jenny had chicken. (unfortunately, they were out of Giraffe and Warthog. Seriously, they usually have it.) I ate like a wild beast and felt sick for the next four days. which is fine because outside of visiting the Apartide museum (far too depressing to write obout here) we pretty much sat around until the weekend when we joined Leann for her 21st birthday party. It was a great chance to see how a real South African family lives. However, we spent the entire time either anticipating, eating or recovering from her BAR ONE birthday cake. (Bar One is a candy bar they have here that's very similar to milky way. Chocolate, caramel. nouget. you get the idea.) Later we spent the night in a tent in Leann's yard and had a good old fashioned Braai (SA for BBQ) before teaching them all volleyball while they taught me cricket (best i can figure, you stand around for ten hours in the sun while everyone in the stands gets drunk.) Sadly we had to part ways with Craig and Leann because we had set ourselves up for an epic adventure that the quaintness of the Burbs could not supply.

We booked a two week adventure that would take us through eastern SA then through Botswana to Victoria Falls. We awoke at four am and hopped a van east to Kruger National Park. It is arguabely the best venue for veiwing the world's greatest wild creatures on the planet (sorry Isla Vista). It's a wild reserve that makes up 6 million hectares of land (which i think is big. I have no idea what a hectare is.) The park has over 13,000 elephants, 2000 lions and at least 500 Germans. We arrived at the park and immediately met up with our guide Rhulani who take car of us for the next 4 days. Rhulani was hilarious. He is this gigantic african man full of animal knowledge and lame jokes. He had an obsession with rocking. Every time we'd leave for a drive he'd say "OK Let's Rock" and our average daily itenerary would be "OK, so we wake up at 5, clean up camp, go for a short walk, have breakfast, then we rock."

We spent three days driving around in our epic 4x4 looking for animals. Africa is all about the Big 5, a list of the 5 most exclusive, famous and dangerous animals on the planet. The big 5 consists of Lions, Buffalo, Rhinos, Elephants and the elusive leopard. Most people who come to Kruger see 3 or 4 of these animals in a week and feel good about their luck. Few people are lucky enough to see leopards at all. We talked to a a tour guide who hadn't seen one in over 3 weeks. It took us 3 hours to find 4 of the five, missing the leopard of course. We were rewarded in the end though as we saw 2 on the next day. One of which was maybe 10 feet from the truck. We also capped off our hunts by adding in a pair of cheetahs, countless hyenas, a buttload of baboons, eagles, bats galore, some of the most incredible bugs in the world (you should see the spiders megan, big enough to kill a cat), warthogs, zebras, crocodiles, wildebeest and more antelope than you can shake a severed forelimb at. We even went on a night drive where we used spotlights to spy all sorts of crazy animals. The darkness and glow of their eyes gave the whole scene an otherworldly etherial air that was truly intimidating. We drove off road within about 20 feet of pride of 12 or so female lions preparing for the evening hunt. We also took a bike ride through the open park. We had two guides, both armed with automatic weapons. Our guide started out the ride by telling us safety procedures, including a delightful little ditty about the time he had to put 13 slugs into the skull of a crazed elephant because it was goreing one of his guests. It's how everything we did started. (I can't tell you how many times I've heard, "don't run, everything here is faster than you are. Even the Hippos. If something charges, stand your ground and tryu to soil yourself so you don't taste good.") It's like if you were at Disneyland getting onto Splash Mountain but before you strapped in they warned you about Briar Fox potentially pummeling you to death. You're never 100% safe in the park, which is part of what makes it so amazing. These animals aren't on schedules or tracks. You could see nothing at all or see far too much of any Our last day of the tour was spent in this incredible lodge on the game reserve. It had open air bathrooms and we showered with frogs at our feet and slept with mosquito nets over our heads.

We returned to Jo-Burg for one night before waking early the next morning for the Botswana phase of our travels. That's covered by Jenny in our next blog (or last, depending on who types faster.)

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