Addo Elephant Park

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Flashback to Sunday night for a minute, even though I took it as an early night, there was a little bit of excitement. At around 8 o'clock, I heard a high pitched sream come from one of the other cabins. i could only find one slipper so I threw that on and ran towards the screaming. Come to find out, as Alex was packing her waterproofs, a giant spider came out and crawled across her hand and totally freaked her out. The worst part was that they couldn't find it in the room. The people who weren't afraid of spiders had to look around the room for it with everyone's flashlights. We finally found it behind the bed. I had heard Alex explain how big it was but I hadn't really believed her, once I saw it though, woah man that thing was huge. We tried to catch it in a cup to put it outside, but it wouldn't fir in the cup so we had to kill it. Ashley took a shoe to it and once it died, we tossed it outside. By this time, most of the volunteers had made it to the cabin because of all the yelling and screaming. Once the spider had left the room, Josh thought it would be funny to throw the waterproofs on Yara. He was right, it was quite funny, because she ran out of the room screaming, but I also felt pretty bad. its a good thing that the spider crawled out because making it into the suitcase or that would have been an awful surprise when Alex made it back to England.

Okay so back to today!

Today was my day off, and a bunch of us went to Addo Elephant Park on a trip. We went through Seaview which was just awesome because one of the guys who works here, Delano, worked just outside Addo, so he knows all about it. We had to be up by 7, which isn't too bad, it's the time you have to be up in order to walk the tigers. On our way there, we listened to the radio, which had olympic news. Funnily enough, it was mostly about US olympians. There was quite a long segment on Loche and Phelps and peeing in the Olympic pool. The people who worked at the radio commented on how funny it would be if they put the chemical that changes color when someone pees in the pool. Also in the news was something about someone throwing a banana at one of the olympians, but I don't know the full story because the radio cut out. Someone was tired of people speeding by his house, so he set his own speed trap. For this he bought a blow up sex doll and dressed it in sexy underwear. People would slow down near his house to get a better look, only to be disappointed. I thought that was really clever though. Good for him. Someone also called into the radio to talk about how some people were throwing stones at cars just to cause crashes so they could rob the people as they lay there dying. There are some pretty sick people in this world

We stopped at the gas station and I got a Cadbury breakfast bar, which was actually really good, and I've never seen them in the US. We also passed by someone in a Santa hat walking on the side of the road. We also passed by the slums which is really sad becuase it's exactly how you would picture a third world country. There was stuff littered everywhere and yet all of the cows were still grazing over it all. It made me so sad, not only for the people, but also for the cows.

Once we got there, Delano gave us a speech about how they have released lions and hyenas into a part of the park, but recently they have had to reduce the amount of lions they have down to 7 because they were killing off all the buffalo. Thats bad in itself, but this buffalo are different because they are clean. This means that they don't have any of the 4 diseases buffalo normally get. If sold, these clean buffalo would go for about 2 million Rand (8 to 1, Rand to Dollar) whereas any other buffalo would only get about 180,000 Rand, which I thought was just amazing.

When we go through the park, there is a little game you can play. When you spot an animal, you have to call out the name of the animal as fast as you can and Delano keeps track of the points. The more common the animal, the less the point value, for example warthogs are worth one point, whereas the leopard is worth 100. I personally think the leopard should have been worth more because the last official siting was 2003. They know its not dead or anything because they still find tracks and they haven't seen any skeletons or anything.

You have to stay in your car the whole time because these are wild animals and they will attack you. You are only allowed out of your car at one particular dam, so we got out but there wasn't anything to see there. When lunchtime rolled around, we made it to the picnic area and we had a braii. Delano made the fire while I grated carrots. We had lamb chops and sausage as well as a salad and grated carrots and pineapple seasoned with pineapple juice. It was surprisingly yummy. We also snacked on the leaves of a pork bush which is the kind of bush that the elephants eat from. It honestly tastes like sour grapes. The funny/awful part was that it was relatively good weather all morning and once the fire starts, it starts to pour and poor Delano has to be in the rain tending to it. Once we are finished braiing, the rain finally stops, I think Mother Nature was mad at Delano for something.

Whilst in the park, we ended up seeing hyenas, buffalo, kudus, elephants, mongoose, warthogs, jackal, zebra and a few others. I was pretty bad at the game, I could tell that there was an animal there, I just couldn't guess which one it was. I was sitting in the middle and out of habit I looked out the front windows and not the side ones so I didn't see many of them. One of the few points I got was for some monkeys that were just chillin around. We also saw bush pigs, and Delano said that was the first time he has ever seen bush pigs in the wild, so that was pretty cool.

On the way home, we stopped at the grocery store because Katrina was going to cook again tonight. Country fried steak. Fried steak with egg, cheese and a bunch of other stuff, but it all melted in your mouth and was delicious. We had made it back in time for feeding but since none of us were here all day, we weren't really of any help. I did get to bottle feed Amber though, which was cute! I love bottle feeding the animals, they are so adorable! When you think of tiger, you certainly don't think of bottle feeding it which adds a whole new spin to things 😊

Lazy night again tonight, nothing special, just chilling together talking in the communal cabin because there is nothing better to do at night time....well except freeze your butt off!

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