After a 4:30 wake up call, we headed to the Cape Town airport to fly to Johannesburg and then onto Kruger National Park.
As soon as we landed at the airport we started seeing animals...impala.
We had an hour drive to the park, but this guy was waiting for us when we crossed over the river to the park entrance.
After a 45 minute drive through the park, we finally reached Lukimbi Safari Lodge.
The warthogs greeted us!!!
With about 2 hours before our first game drive, the girls hit the pool.
I was a little nervous about them being loud. There are only 16 rooms at the lodge, so it isn't very big. While we were there 27 people were checked in and 8 of them were from our group. They did a pretty good job staying under control!
At 4:00 it was game time! We traveled with our ranger, Shane and tracker, Michael our whole stay.
Our first sighting was a White Rhino...one of the BIG 5!
A popular theory of the origins of the name "white rhinoceros" is a mistranslation from Dutch to English. The English word "white" is said to have been derived by mistranslation of the Dutch word "wijd", which means "wide" in English. The word "wide" refers to the width of the rhinoceros' mouth. So early English-speaking settlers in South Africa misinterpreted the "wijd" for "white" and the rhino with the wide mouth ended up being called the white rhino and the other one, with the narrow pointed mouth, was called the black rhinoceros.
More beautiful landscape of South Africa.
It is a country with varied lands and we were lucky enough to see a lot of it.
Another rhino sighting....apart from the impala, we saw rhinos the most on our drives.
Every car/jeep ride needs a few Oreos!
Another BIG 5 sighting.....2 leopard cubs.
Shane said they were about 7 months old and the mom must have been off hunting.
1st one:
2nd one:
I was impressed enough, but our ranger, Shane, thought we needed to get a better view of this one.....so we drove around for a bit to get on the other side of the river bank.
By the time we got over to the other side, it was quite dark. We couldn't find it.....and this is where it got real exciting......I turned and it was only about 10 feet way from us. If you know me well, you know I am not a real animal person and cats really freak me out. So imagine how fast my heart was beating when a huge wild cat was staring me down at dusk! I may have also let out a little scream and leaned into the middle of the jeep for awhile!
By the time we got over to the other side, it was quite dark. We couldn't find it.....and this is where it got real exciting......I turned and it was only about 10 feet way from us. If you know me well, you know I am not a real animal person and cats really freak me out. So imagine how fast my heart was beating when a huge wild cat was staring me down at dusk! I may have also let out a little scream and leaned into the middle of the jeep for awhile!
I couldn't get a good picture....a mix of nerves and not knowing how to set my camera correctly. Luckily, Shane loves photography so he took these two shots for me.
I'm happy to report that we all made it back safely!
Life is Good on safari!!!!
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