Where are all the animals?

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November 21st 2006

Published: November 21st 2006

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Againstall

Smelly Van

This is beyond BO

11/17/06-11/20/06

Beep...Beep....Beep....What time is it? 4AM...oh crap, I thought I decided to go on vacation so I wouldn't have to wake up at these crazy hours. Oh well as soon as I remembered why I was getting up before the rooster crowed, I jumped out of bed. Today I was going on my very first Safari to Kruger National Park! I left my backpack at Purple Palms(the hostel I was staying at in Joburg) and packed a pair of cargo convertibles and a couple t-shirts along with a rain jacket just in case it rained. I was contemplating taking my fleece but I though nah forget, this is freaking Africa...its hot as hell here. That decision would come back to bite me in my ass but more on that later. I grabbed my daypack and was out the door and into a minivan with the smelliest man on earth. I'm not exagerating about the smell. All I could keep thinking about was the Seinfeld episode where the valet has such foul body odor that it permeates into everything. Its kinda cold in the morning here so all the windows were shut. Oh God! help me. I couldn't take it

Timbavati Safari Lodge

Amazing little cottages and a comfortable place to sleep and eat.

any more and I cracked open the window a little bit despite the cold. But I swear the smell was so strong it felt like the air blowing in from the window smelled just as bad. Now before everyone gets upset at me for making such a big deal out of this, let me tell you that I've seen the nastiest and smelliest stuff in the world when I worked in the hospital, but this smell was beyond BO. Anyways 6 hours later and with the hairs in my nostrils burned off, I got dropped off at a small grocer where another minivan came to pick me up.

Thats when I first met Voosi. Voosi was to be our guide and driver or so he told us. Before he even introduced himself, he told me that we were late and to hurry up and get in so we could all get some lunch. I told him I was a vegetarian and his reply was "thats going to be a problem".

When we reached the Cheetah reserve, the group that I was to meet was pretty pissed off. Upon talking to them I found out that Voosi was about

Elephant

The biggest vegetarians I've ever seen

an hour late to pick them up. All the while, they had been standing outside in the midday sun and were just being annihilated by the blistering heat. That kind of explained why they were a little less than friendly when we first introduced ourselves.

But hey, at least we were off to Kruger and after a quick lunch we saw our first elephants. In fact it was a whole massive group of them and it definitely got my heart racing to be so close to such a massive creature. That first day we saw tons of impalas, elephants, and zebras. It was a beautiful day and later that night we went on a night drive where the experienced driver showed us a group of rhinos and giraffes. The night drive was definitely the highlight of the safari since it was an open vehicle and our tour guide for this portion was an actual park ranger and knew what the heck he was talking about.

We ended up staying at a place called Timbavati safari lodge. The place was amazing and our chalet was sweet with an ensuite bathroom with hot water. Turned out we made a much