Advertisement
Published: October 5th 2006
Edit Blog Post
Safari Game Lodge
Leaving the first lodge to move to the tents. Not Sure What Day - Africa
The night ride was very cool. It was awesome to listen to the birds and the sounds of the night. As soon as we got away from our lodge, the elephants were right along side the road. We got a few pictures, but it’s hard to take a picture in the dark. It was still cool to see them. We saw a bush monkey, an eye-eye and a few other night animals.
A few days ago we went to St. Lucia for a river cruise and to see the Indian Ocean. It was very cool. The ocean was really windy and reminded us of Cannon Beach. There was a kite surfer taking advantage of the large waves and high winds. The guy was awesome! He would jump waves then the kite would take him up into the air about 50-80 feet above the water. He was very good. He never crashed which amazed me and he always got himself right back to where he started. We watched him for awhile, left for lunch then a boat trip around the St. Lucia wetlands. There were many hippos in the estuary, birds and crocodiles. This estuary was
linked to the Indian Ocean about 10 months ago but the sands have closed up the only fresh water to the area. They are planning to reopen this area but they haven’t got anything started yet. The boat captain says if they don’t get the fresh water back into the estuary it could potentially harm the wildlife. This area is on the National Heritage Sites list. We’ve visited a few on our trips to Europe and Ireland and now we have added one from Africa.
It was Ted's birthday while we were here. We had the cook make us a cake and all the staff came out to sing him happy birthday. He was very surprised.
We’ve moved to another resort on the game reserve. It’s the Heritage Lodge and Tent sites. We all got into the tents. They are canvas topped tents but they are way nicer than just a tent. The only issues were the wind at night blowing the top canvas around and there was no air conditioning on the one day it was 98 degrees. We had a ceiling fan but it was still too hot. Our ranger said it was a dry heat. We
all started cracking up! Sounds exactly like comments we make about the heat in the Northwest. We had a small herd of zebra right in front of our tent each night around 5:00-6:00 in the evening. They were so close you could almost touch them.
Our second day here, we took a safari at 5:20am to get to the Hluhluwe/Umfolozi Game Park to see the elephants and lions. This park is approximately 100,000 acres. The park that we are staying at is Zulu Nyala and is approximately 10,000 acres. You must have at least 20,000 acres to have a bull elephant and an additional 20,000 acres to have lions. So the park we are in only has 3 female elephants because they are not large enough to have a male and there are no cats all though there is a leopard that jumps the fence from the Phina Game Reserve and has been seen in Zulu Nyala. The Hluhluwe (spoken Shisuliway) game drive was awesome. The evening before they saw a pride of lions so we were out to find them. We drove around for 6 hours and saw no cats but we saw hundreds of elephants. The park as
600-700 elephants. We saw a herd of 150-200 and a few smaller families around the park. It was unbelievable. They said we were lucky because most don’t get to see that many elephants because the park is so large. At this park, you can only drive on the main road. At our park, the rangers would drive all over the brush, over trees and logs to get close to the animals. At the Hluhluwe park, the elephants walked right in front of the jeeps. They are massive! You could see the wrinkles they were so close. It was great!
We got back to the lodge in time for lunch then a nap. The next morning we went for another ride around our park and some of the gang went for a walking safari trip with another ranger. Our reserve butts up against the Phina Game Reserve with has all the big five animals, the water buffalo, elephants, lions, cheetah and the rhino. Sometimes when they drive along the fence they have seen some of the cats so we drove along the fence line for awhile. We didn’t see the cats but we did come across a giraffe from the Phina
Reserve hanging out with a giraffe from our park. We watched them for quite awhile because they were stretching their necks really high then they would rub their heads against each other. One of the giraffes would back up about 30 feet then come back to the fence and the neck stretching would start all over again. I need to find out what they were doing. The ranger said he had never seen that before between the giraffes. We wandered around some more to find the rhinos. It’s so funny because as soon as we first got here you would see hundreds of nyala and impalas and we were so excited. Now that you see them every time you turn around you get kind of “Oh, it’s just another impala” and we move along.
We went back to the lodge to meet up with those that went on a walking tour. I didn’t barely get out of the truck, we Ted had scheduled a pigeon shoot with one of the rangers, so Ted, Jim and I went to shoot some clay pigeons. I’ve never shot a gun before but I did get 2 out of 20. I thought that was
pretty good. Ted hit 12 or so and Jim hit 4 or 5. We bought a few extra shots to let our rangers show their skills. Well, Phin, who went on the safari walk with the group and had the gun, didn’t shoot a single one and Absolum had never shot a gun before so he was excited to try. We had a great time except I have a bruise on my shoulder from the kickback from the rifle. Back to the lodge for lunch, then off to a craft village to spend our extra money! We did get some great African statues, baskets, jewelry and other small things. We had to have our ranger drive us to the nearest town to get another suitcase to bring everything home in! We weren’t the only one though. After shopping we went to a cultural ceremony on the property we were at. They talked about how the villages are set up to protect them from enemies and animals, how they make spears and baskets. They have a medicine man and a fortune teller for each part of their village so you go see the specific medicine man for your specific aliment. It
Zulu Village
A young man from the Zulu village welcomes us in. ended with an African dance that was very cool. Another interesting fact about the Zulu culture is that each family homestead builds a round hut in addition to the home they live in. They range from approximately 10-15 feet diameter maybe 8 foot walls and about 15 feet up to the top of the center of the roof. They all have thick grass roofs. These homes are not lived in but are built out of respect for their ancestors. As we drove around the small towns and villages, some of these huts were nicer than the homes the families lived in.
Back to the room to pack for the 36 hour trip home. Not too excited about that except for the first class seats. My favorite animals were the giraffes because they are so graceful to watch. The elephants were also awesome to watch because there were so many together. All in all, a great trip to Ireland and Africa. I’m sure I’ve left out a few things but we’ve been on the go since we got to Africa. I’ll see you all at home shortly.
Miss you Bre & Amanda! Love you both. Mom & Dad
Advertisement
Tot: 0.232s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 6; qc: 60; dbt: 0.0488s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb