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Published: December 3rd 2009
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On safari
Amanda, Fiona, me, Clare and Mandy In our middle weekend at the Foundation, we were allowed to take a few days to go on a Kruger National Park trip. Fiona and I had been excited about this ever since our last game drive on the tour, and we knew Kruger would be really good - we weren't wrong! There were 5 of us (the 5 Spice Girls infact, haha) going, and we were picked up right from our front door in the 4x4 that we would be in for the next 3 days. Although it was a 2 hour drive to the entrance to Kruger, we'd barely driven for 20 minutes before we saw our first wild animal... A dung beetle rolling his ball of dung across the main road! We also saw a herd of buffalo and some warthogs at the side of the road. After arriving in the National Park, we went straight to our campsite - we were staying in huge permeant tents, complete with 4 beds, a fan, and a fridge freezer. We dumped our bags and went for a swim, since it was roasting! Too hot for any animals to be out and about. When we came back to the tents, I
realised that we'd been raided - either a baboon or a monkey had got in through the 3 levels of heavy duty velcro tent windows and stolen my apple and packet of biscuits! Thief! (You'd have thought I'd have been used to the ways of monkeys by this point lol)
We set out on a late afternoon drive - we saw several elephants, giraffe, zebra, crocodiles, hippos, a large herd of buffalo, and plenty of antelope and gazelle. Nothing too exciting (bearing in mind that Fiona and I had seen a lot of these already!) but it was a good start to the weekend :-)
That evening our driver set up a braai for dinner (a South African barbeque). We were right at the edge of the campsite, and we thought that we might see some hyena appear on the other side of the fence, wanting some of our dinner. Although we were in an enclosed campsite, and supposedly there were no animals actually in the campsite (apart from the monkeys...), there was definitely something hiding in the bushes watching us as we wandered off to the toilets in the dark that evening - we could see two
eyes glowing in the torchlight)... Hopefully just an antelope, but I guess we'll never know! None of us were eaten anyway!
The following day we were up before dawn to leave the campsite as soon as the gates were opened. Today we saw lots more elephant, buffalo and giraffe, and then finally we spotted a lion! Just having a snooze under a bush. That evening we went on a night game drive. It was really cold, rainy and windy, but they gave us all blankets, which was nice of them! We'd barely been driving for 30 seconds when we came across an elephant uprooting trees! They prefer to eat the roots, so they push over the small trees (I say small... they were still 9 or 10 ft tall...) to dig out the roots. We watched it kill push 3 trees into the road before we headed off into the darkness. We soon came across a whole load of cars parked by a tree that had a dead antelope lying at the base of the trunk. Leopard! We only got a glimpse of it through the trees though. When it was really dark, we had the spot lights out,
and since Fi and I were sitting in a back corner, we wer put in charge of one. Just as well, because Fiona (with her sharp eyes) noticed a leopard right by the road, so we screetched to a stop and it came right along side us and in front of the truck!!! That was the excitment for the evening, apart from when our driver got out to pick up some elephant poo and passed it round for us to hold. It was really dry and not very smelly at all. Obviously we all posed for a photo with it!
We had enough braai that evening though we sat inside in the warm and dry while our driver cooked for us lol
The following day we were up bright and early once more, and this time had a very successful day. Or rather, a very successful couple of hours - we'd seen the big 5 (almost twice) by 10am! We saw a pride of lions, about 10 or so, but they were quite far away. And we came across a leopard in a tree, again quite far away, which is a shame because apparently there was a cub
playing round the base, but we couldn't get close enough to see it. We then found another tree with not just one leopard in it, but three!! Six leopards in one weekend wsa quite an achievement!
We had to start heading home after lunch, and we were exhausted by the time we got back, but it was sooooo good :-D Can't wait to go on safari again!!
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