Day 8 - Africa

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Day 8 - Africa
After a long flight, we finally arrived in Johannesburg about 7:00am. We had another short flight to catch around 9:00am to Richards Bay. After landing, we had an hour and a half van ride to the resort. You get a feel of the poverty of the people here as you drive through some of the towns. Very sad. There is still a very definite division of blacks and whites here. A man I met at the airport that lives near Durbin says there are large black gangs in Johannesburg that are trying to take over parts of the city. Lots of drugs and killing. Many of the white people are moving out to smaller areas leaving the city vulnerable to these gangs. He seemed distressed over it. He gave us some tips on other safaris to take and places to see. It was nice talking to him. We arrived at our resort just to make lunch and then a late safari ride. It was great! We got in this open air jeep, kinda like the ones on the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland and started out into the park. We picked up two other men at another resort. They were from Puyallup. I think everyone here is from Washington. The people leaving as we were getting here were from Olympia. Anyway, the guys from Puyallup take professional photos and the son paints them for a living. His paintings were awesome! His name is Ryan Perry. If you go to ryanperry.com you can see his paintings. He’s just getting started but has just sold some to a major hotel line. They each had these huge cameras with 18 -24 inch lenses. We all had small digital ones. Major camera envy! They were great to safari with. There were zebras, nyala’s (like antelopes), impalas, wildebeests, lots of birds. The most awesome today were the giraffes. They were beautiful. Our first look was of a mother and her two month old baby. You are just in awe of how graceful these huge animals are. Our ranger said they get up to 19 feet tall and can weight up to two tons. We drove on and saw elephants up the road but on our right was a watering hole with hippos so we stayed there a while and took pictures. The lighting was great as the sun was just setting. We took off after the elephants but lost them in the brush. There were rhinos up on the ridge but they were too far away to get a good picture. Another day… As we were looking for the elephants, we can across another herd of giraffes. They amaze me. So beautiful when they run. I could watch them all day. We headed back to drop of the photographers and then back to our place.
At dinner, they had African dancers. Our camera was charging but we’ll get pictures at tonights dinner.
We got up around 7:00am to hit breakfast then out for another safari. Ted went with the others. Sandi and I are sitting out looking over the pool and the awesome view in the distance, typing up our blogs. It’s very relaxing. I know it’s only 11:15am but Sandi and I broke out a bottle of wine. Life is good. Hey, it’s 2:15am back home. Well, I’m about done for now. I’ll type up more later.
Okay, I couldn’t wait until later… as we were sitting out looking over the awesome view, a family of elephants came over the ridge. Unbelievable…too cool. By the time I got the binoculars out the mother and baby had gone into the brush somewhere but another adult was shading under a tree. I’ll get you pics later.
Miss you Bre & Amanda! Love you all. DeNise

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