10.5.09
We woke up at 0500 to get ready for our game drive. We went to the lobby and grabbed our packed breakfasts and headed out to John’s car. We all stayed in our same cars from the day before. Our car, in addition to Leigh-Anne and I, we also had Charlie and Carol Morris and 2 other girls. I LOVE Charlie and Carol. They are so fun! We ended up leaving late because stupid people don’t know how to wake up on time.
We went into the park and saw so many animals – steenbok, giraffes, elephants, warthogs, hornbills, hippos, buffalo, kudu, and more impala. Poor John related everything back to the Lion King. The whole day whenever we saw a hornbill flying he would be like “There’s Zazu!” Everytime we saw a warthog all I could think of us Pumba and then think of lice. Thank you Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique.
The best part of the day was in the morning. We were making conversation with John and asked him what his favorite animal was. He said Honey Badger. What the heck is a honey badger? Well it is a badger that eats honey…go figure. He likes it because it is the worst tempered animal and no other animal will mess with it. They have even been known to attack truck tires. So here we are just driving along looking out the sides in hopes of seeing animals. We zoomed passed this animal that I thought was an anteater and I got really excited so John stopped and went back to see what it was. And it was none other than a honey badger! John got so excited. He couldn’t believe that we were seeing one. Apparently he hadn’t seen one since January. Yay me!
My spotting skills came in handy one more time. I just happened to be looking right along the road while we were driving and saw this long lizard looking thing. It was moving along in the grass. I asked John to head back because I thought I saw something. Of course when we got back there, you couldn’t see anything. Luckily, we could hear it moving around in the grass. We waited a few minutes and then this 3 foot long iguana type thing appears out of the grass. It is called a rock monitor. I totally made myself look like an idiot. When I was trying to say where I saw the rock monitor I could not think of ‘grass’ for the life of me. So I just said ‘whatever you call it.’ He looked at me like I was a total idiot…oh well.
During the rest of the game drive we saw lots of lions, which was really cool. We saw some that had a kill and were eating. The kill was kind of under this log, so we couldn’t see what animal it was. While we were watching the lions, John was telling us how Disney came up with the names Simba and Nala in The Lion King. Turns out that Simba is Swahili for lion and Nala comes from another African languages word for lion. The word is actually Ngala (n-ga-la), but I guess Disney decided that Nala sounded better.
We stopped at the same camp to eat both breakfast and lunch. It was called Skukuzu, which the camp in which John grew up. He was telling us how his mom was a botanist and ran the nursery. His Dad also did something within Kruger. John also talked about his passion for birds. He is a professional bird watcher – he just reached his 700th bird. So after talking about birds, he moved onto honey badgers and bees. Charlie then proceeds to ask him if he learned about the birds and the bees. It was pretty awkward and John was just like “It’s going to be an interesting game drive today.” Pretty funny. At the camp they pavilions, under which were tables where you could eat. The interesting part was that the ceiling had a conical shape and where the roof came to a point there were a tone of bats just hanging out. It was slightly creepy, but neat.
After lunch, we went back out and Leigh-Anne and I tried to think of questions to ask John. Leigh-Anne asks “what is that tree in the distance?” John replied with “That tree in the distance…really?” Keep in mind that we were SURROUNDED by trees. Blonde moment #2 for us.
We saw some more animals including hippos, crocs, cranes, herons and vultures (which were around the lion and their kill). All in all I thought it was a successful game drive. We had much better boxed lunches and we saw 4 of the Big 5. We almost saw a leopard, but we barely missed it. ☹ We also didn’t see any zebra, but I guess a honey badger and a rock monitor make up for it. Throughout the day, Leigh-Anne was making eyes with John in the review mirror. It was pretty funny. Whenever you asked him a question he would look at you in the mirror. At one point Leigh-Anne and I switched places to take a picture. So when we headed back to the lodge, she cuddled up with me so she could still make eyes at John – hysterical. When we got to the lodge, she showed him pictures of Birmingham and some birds that just happened to be on her camera. He said that the southeast was not at all what he pictured.
We had a few hours to kill before dinner. Leigh-Anne took a nap and I went and got on the internet to figure out my schedule for the Spring at WKU. That took a good hour. Afterward, I went back to the room and relaxed with Leigh-Anne. We eventually made it out to dinner. We ate with Becky and another kid I have never met named Brett. He is on SAS with his brother Kevin, also on our safari, and they are from Denver. We ended up outing tables together and about 8 of us sat around and talked. The conversation was awesome. I learned some interesting things. Brett and I ended up getting into a conversation about hockey. He was totally hating on Shea Shea! He is an Avs fan being from Denver and all.
After we excused ourselves, Leigh-Anne and I went back to the room and found Poltergeist was on. Leigh-Anne had never seen it before so we watched and we eventually fell asleep.