Lions, Cheetahs, and Elephants. Oh My!

So I'm usually complaining about all our travel experiences, but this time I get to tell you about how lucky we were.  We are taking the 14 hour flight from Sydney to Johannesburg and find our assigned seats in economy plus.  We were so lucky as we had a section of two seats all to ourselves, and regular economy had three seats across.  Economy plus also came with a bit of reclining chairs and larger TVs.  It was nice just to sit back and watch a whole bunch of movies as we had the movie on demand option.  Bill watched 7 movies, while I slept a bit and only watched 5 movies.

More sleep probably would have been a good idea as we arrived to Johannesburg at 3:30 in the afternoon.  Neither of us had slept very much, too many movies to choose from.  We did get lucky and got to the customs line pretty quickly being in the front of the plane as the line went fairly slow.  On the other side, there were so many people in front of baggage claim that Bill squeezed his way through to get our two bags which had already arrived.

Next, we had to go pick up the car we rented.  And that process took quite a while, which I'm not sure why as we already had a reservation.

But anyhow, we were finally on the road trying to get out of the airport and on our way towards Kruger National Park, but we knew we wouldn't make it too long before we needed to find a hotel since we were so sleep deprived. The only problem was that we missed our turn off to the R21 and we kept going because we knew the N12 was coming up which was actually the road we wanted.  The only problem being once we finally got on it, we kept going and going and finally stopped at a gas station to realize we were going the wrong way.

We had just wasted a good hour of driving and so we turned around and passed the airport.  We stopped at the first town we saw, but it was too small to have any places to stay, so we had to keep going. I was having so much trouble trying to stay awake, but I didn't want to leave Bill driving by himself.  And we finally arrived in Whitbank and the first hotel we saw was the casino, but there weren't any vacancies.  So we kept going and finally ran into another hotel, and the we made it to the room and passed out.

The next morning we ate at a great breakfast spot called Cappuccino's Cafe and Pizzera, they had the best open face omelet. We then literally stumbled upon the tourist info office even though our hotel had given directions, we just hadn't quite understood them.  The office gave us some great advice and booked us a night at a private game resort they had recommended, and then two nights in the Kruger National Park.  We booked the private game resort first because she said to book in the park you needed a few days notice to get reservations.  So we were all set for the next few days, and checked our email and head 300 km towards the game reserve.

We arrived at Tsbukudu Game Lodge just in time for the afternoon drive at 4:00 as it took just a bit longer to get our there than we had expected.  As we drove into the game reserve towards the lodge, we saw a giraffe staring straight at us.  We got excited thinking about all the other animals we'd see shortly.  When we arrived at the reception, they welcomed us with a drink and some afternoon tea snacks before the drive started.  We were introduced to our ranger, Shadrack, who would be taking care of us for the next day.

We headed out on the first 3 hour game drive and almost ran straight into zebras. Shadrack kept looking down at the animals tracks trying to find the buffalo, and finally, he had success as we found the herd of buffalo, one of the big 5.  The big 5 are the more dangerous animals of Africa that everyone wants to see.  Put your guesses together for the other four and I'll tell you later what they are... Then we took a break around the lake area and watched a hippo as it slept in the water.  They look like rocks out there with two eyes sticking up, and they come out at night to feed and return to the water during the day to sleep.  We saw some wart hogs and impalas after that.  Then it was time to return for dinner.

All the meals were included in our stay along with 2 game drives, and a walk with lions in the morning.  So we had a buffet dinner that included ostrich skewers which weren't that bad. Shadrack had dinner with us and told us a bit more about the animals.  He then took us out to feed the porcupines.  I was just thinking they'd be the little one we've seen before, but they were the size of a large dog, and they ate away at the food that Shadrack had laid out.  Then the jackals came out to try and sneak some of the food away, but they were only a little successful as the porcupines were good at keeping them out.

The next morning we got an early wake up call of 5:30 to get ready and then grab some coffee or tea before our walk.  As we were walking to get my coffee before the walk, we met Savannah.  Savannah is the cheetah they had that they've raise since a cub.  She comes to the lodge sometimes to get feed. Shadrack made it sound like she comes every morning, but another ranger told us later that she hadn't been up to the lodge in quite a while.  They had a collar on her, so they can find her in the wild.  But we got lucky as when she comes up to the lodge, she's just like a big kitty and you can pet her.  She even has the loudest purr, which I didn't know that all cats do purr.

Now it was time for our walk with lions.  When you say walk with lions, you can really only walk with lion cubs.  As lions reach the age of 2, their instincts are too strong and they could attack.  So we were walking with Singy and Tingy, two brothers, who were about 6 months old.  We still did have to sign a waiver in case anything happened, and the rangers were also all carrying guns as a precaution.

The cubs were so full of energy just like to little kittens except they were a lot stronger.  The rangers tried to get them to run around because when they sit, you could go stand behind them to take a picture.  Though as soon as you did that, they had a tendency to run once again.  We were walking through the brush, but we didn't see any other animals as we were too loud.   The cubs did take a few breaks, and we did get to pet them a bit and get a few pictures.  Bill and I tried to get one together but you can see the results, the skittish brother was trying to get out of the picture.  Though we really enjoyed our walk, and shortly, after that picture, they went back to their area.

When we came back to the lodge for breakfast, Savannah was still there and we were able to pet her more.  We had a nice big breakfast as we got to chat with a few people who joined us for the walk.  Yesterday, there was just one other person on our drive, and today a few more had joined us for the walk.  One girl had been volunteering in Africa for the last two months working with baboons and then in a school.  She was the only other person to join us for the morning game drive.

Again as we started to drive, we saw zebras.  Then we barely spotted a crocodile as it was hidden looking like a pile of mud, and no they are not one of the big 5.  We then saw some wart hogs with wildebeests.  Then we weren't having much luck finding anything, so Shadrack took out the tracker for the elephants.  They were at the other side of the reserve, though at times he says they leave for conferences with other elephants. The whole reserve is surrounded by barred wire fence, but the elephants can take branches from trees and place them on the fence to bend it down and then the fence pops right back up, and so he never knows if they're in the reserve or not.  The elephants also will put branches in the road and dig holes trying to stop the cars from coming through. They're pretty tricky and one of the Big 5.  Three more to go, and no Savannah isn't one of them.

So we finally tracked the elephants, and Bill spotted them first because Shadrack thought they'd be on the other side of the road, and the rest of us were looking that direction.  There are five of them in the reserve, two large males, one large female, a young female and a baby male who was 15 days old.  Elephants carry their young for 2 years, and so they give birth about every 4 years.  Though this female has two males, so she may get pregnant sooner than most.  She also use to take the morning walks with the lodge and then one day just stop coming.

Only one of the males had the tracker device around his neck, but they're usually together.

After we found the elephants, we saw giraffes for the first time after finding the one on our own arriving the day before.  They were digging into the ground, and then chomping away on bones.  They eat bones for calcium, I'm glad we can just take vitamins.  The zebras were also close by though not eating bone.  Then we buffalo and saw more hippos sleeping in the lake.  We also seen quite a few birds over the past two days, such as eagles, vultures, lilac breasted roller which Bill loved the colors of, and more but I can't seem to remember all the names.

We headed back in, and were going back to our room to pack our stuff in the car to realize that the room we had, named Charles and Di for the Rhinos (another on of the big 5), was now belonged to two nuns.  All our stuff had been moved to the main lodge.  We packed all our stuff and joined everyone for breakfast.  It was a much larger group for this afternoon as the group of nuns were from Poland leaving in South Africa working at a school for the blind, and they was their reward.  They came here once a year, and had been living in South Africa for 2 years with 3 more to go.  There were also 2 couples from England who were part of this group as well.  We were lucky to have such a private tour and the guy who had joined us before said a large group had left that morning.  So we arrived right in between two groups.  Lucky us.  After another good meal, it was time to head out.

We were quite tired though after having such an active morning.  They keep you pretty busy there because they only break is after lunch and before the afternoon game drive, which we didn't get the day before as we were still driving towards the lodge.  Bill tried to take a short cut towards the area we wanted to find out the road didn't go all the way through.  So we had to turn around and go the long way anyhow.

We stopped a couple of times to look at the view.  And there was one beautiful stop call God's window that made you feel like you were looking out a window onto this beautiful valley.  The trees looks like dark green piles and piles of marshmallows.  It was a pretty view.  We were have wanted to take some walks around, but the weather wasn't that nice, and we were still a bit tired from our long morning.

Though we did stop to take the 700 meter walk to the Bourke's Luck Potholes.  They're called potholes because they are large cliffs that you look down into, and the water has shaped holes into them.  It gives the appearance of potholes since you are looking down into them.  There was also a beautiful waterfall falling down into these holes.  The water swirls around at the bottom as the holes and rifts in the rock change the water's direction frequently.

After that we headed towards Graskop, which I kept wanting to call Grasshopper (I guess I was in Asia too long).  It was a bit smaller of a town than we had expected but we found a cute little B&B called Autumn Breath that Lonely Planet had suggested.  The only problem which we realized after paying was there wasn't AC or a fan to speak of, though the bed had 5 blankets on top of it.  We left the windows open and the mosquitoes kept buzzing around my head all night that I finally slept with my head under the sheet.

And so, the Big 5 are...The first two I've already mentioned the buffalo and the elephant.  The lion cubs are almost there, but adult lions are part of the big 5.  And the last two are the rhino and leopard which we didn't see in this reserve, but they were there somewhere.  Safariing does take a lot of patience...

Michelle