South Luanga National Park

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Well the last two days have been unbearably hot. I got up early yesterday as I was on breakfast duty. Even at 7:00am the combination of the heat of the day and the heat coming from the fire that I was making toast on was nearly enough to make me pass out. Most people spent the day lazing around by the pool, I tried but only made it 30 minutes because the heat was too much for me. I have not been able to go in any of the gorgeous swimming pools at the places we have stayed at because of the dressings on my foot needing to keep dry so whilst everyone else can jump in the pool when they get to hot, I can only sit and continue to bake - not fun. I mainly spent the day sat by the river which runs by the campsite, in the shade, watching and listening the hippos who were mostly submerged in the water. Everyone was talking about a hippo that stampeded through camp the previous night. I was the only person to have slept through the whole thing - ha ha!

4:00pm came around quickly and we went off for our night time game drive. It was four hours long so the first couple of hours were in daylight, then we saw the sunset and then we had two hours of darkness. This time our jeep held nine people and was completly open topped. As we set off we immediatly noted that the landscape was completely different to the Ngorongoro Crater and the Serengeti. We are really in the bush here and it definitely made it harder to spot things. We saw some of the usual animals, impala, hippos, loads of birds etc. The first excitement of the night was when we came across some elephants. Well, when I say some there were about 25-30 of them all mooching around. They were all different ages, some who looked so old and a few babies too. It was great to see so many at once and to have them so close and it was hilarious (but at the same time a little scary) when one of the baby elephants decided he wanted to charge our jeep. He came hurtling towards us quite agressively and then right at the last minute thought better of it. Wimp!! We had a nice break with some cold drinks next to a watering hole at sunset before beginning our drive in the dark.

We drove along in total darkness apart from the headlights of the truck and a strong searchlight which the guide was sweeping in an arc in front of us, backwards and forwards, trying to spot any animals. It wasn't long before we spotted a pride of lions, we guessed we were looking at about 12-17 lions in total, all females and younger lions of all ages, no male lion to be seen. It was amazing to see so many all together and once again, so close up too. The were literally walking right next to the jeep and it was much scarier than safaris I had been on before as this time it was dark and we were in a completely open jeep - nowhere to hide! We realised that there were some Impala nearby and that we might be interfering in a hunt so all lights were turned off so we didn't blind the Impala and we sat and waited. This was so scary! It was pitch black, we were surrounded by lions and it was totally silent. It was then even worse when the guide suddenly turned on the search light to show us that there was a lion right sneaking right past the jeep. I could have reached down and stroked its back. Eek! We decided to move on and spent about another 10/15 minutes spotting more and more lions before we headed off. A few minutes later, not far down the road the jeep suddenly came to a stop. After much fiddling around under the bonnet the guide finally had to admit that he had run out of petrol. 50 minutes later we were rescued by another jeep sent from camp after we radioed through an SOS. So on the way back we were disappointed to have missed the last hour of our game drive due to stupidity and were only slightly cheered up by a glimpse of a Leopard. Exhausted from the scary expereinces of the night I went to bed early.

Today has been pretty uneventful. The heat once again made it difficult to do much. At least the campsite is really nice with good food and a good TV room to catch up on some news at last. The water here is safe to drink and the bar give you free glasses of water with ice. It sounds like such a simple thing but when you have been used to having to constantly buy bottled water and having that bottle get warm/hot in a matter of 30 minutes, a glass of ice cold water is like heaven. Especially in heat like this. I watched the sunset over the river and a group of Giraffe were kind enough to come along to have a drink at the perfect moment for a sunset picture. Whilst we were cooking the evening meal a hippo came into camp and was no more than 15 meters away from us. No one seemed to take this very seriously at all except for me. I climbed onto one of the tree platforms which have been put there exactly for that purpose whilst the others took photos of the hippos. Everyone seemed to find this hilarious and so started taking photos of me. I took the opportunity to remind them of the Aussie girl who had bled to death in two minutes after being bitten by a hippo (she got too close when taking a photo). I rest my case!

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