I have been procrastinating the writing of this blog for a week now, there is just so much to write about I don't know where to start. We are in South Africa which will be one of our last stops on our 5 year around the world sailing adventure and are trying to make it a final "hurrah" and thus have been on a bit of a splurge. The first order of business was a safari. In South Africa the safari options range from budget South African, drive yourself and cook your own food types to all out luxury holidays. We opted for the first. Who knew you could simply rent a car and drive yourself around a game park? Well you can and we did. We joined forces with our friends Will and Karen on Chantey to share a car and costs and lots of fun. We rented a mini van named it the "Pope Mobile" and we were off on 2 weeks of adventure. First stop, the grocery store, where we bought all the essentials for a 4 day trip to St Lucia Wetlands and Imfolozi - Hluhluwe National parks. We did buy a family Wildcard pass which allows access to all SAN Parks for a one time yearly fee. It was $275 but paid for itself in 4 days. Our first day we stopped at the Empangeni Cheetah Project. It is not a SAN park but it was very reasonably priced, as is most of South Africa. It is a rehabilitation project for Cheetahs and also has a breeding program. It is fairly small and the tour is about 90 minutes. You walk around in a group with a guide and he educates you about the various cats. They have African bush cats, serval, caracals, and of course cheetahs. You take turns patting each one and taking photos. It is well done and the animals seem well cared for.

We then headed up to the St. Lucia Wetlands, again not a SAN park but inexpensive. We booked into our hotel, had a swim and rest and then walked up to the pier to take a hippo tour. There is a river that is just full of hippos. Numerous boats go out several times a day and you can get very close to the hippos. As we were sitting on our boat waiting to depart David recognized some old friends of ours walking down the dock. It was the crew of Belissima, a French boat we had met in the Pacific. We ran out and said our hellos. They were booked on a different boat, but the guide said they were welcomed to switch and come on our boat. People in South Africa are very laid back and genuinely nice. So Remy and Sylvie joined us and we were off to see the hippos. It's a 2 hour tour which basically involves driving around and watching hippos in their natural habitat. We saw some yawn and push each other but they are not all that active of an animal. We did see a couple of crocodiles and some great bird life.

The next morning we were up and off at the crack of dawn. We wanted to arrive at the Imfolozi park gates by 6 am for the best animal viewing. On our way to the gates we saw giraffe, and water buffalo, this was going to be amazing. It was! Imfolozi is a "big 5" park and it did not disappoint. The park was green and lush due to recent rains, and the landscape was beautiful. When checking in the staff warn you about the camps and instruct you on the proper safety protocol. The camps fences are only effective at keeping out the elephants. You need to be careful when you bbq or hyenas will steal your food, do not even leave your food to go for a beer. The speech seemed designed to scare the foreign tourist and add the allure of danger to your safari. It did nothing to scare us. Our first night was in a safari tent. We had not expected much as the prices were very reasonable. Karen on Chantey had made all the reservations so we had no idea what to expect, I did the food, more my skill set than booking stuff online. The tent was fabulous and the best accommodation we had on the entire safari. It was a hardwood platform with a tent, no ordinary tent, it had 2 full size beds in it, a bathroom with shower off the back and a sperate kitchen tent with everything you could ever need on a vacation. The grill, or braii, as it is called in South Africa was off the porch in the yard. After a day of driving around viewing animals a big bbq cook up is just perfect. I was in the kitchen getting stuff together and Will got the braii going. He was having a good time of it and David had gone for some beers. He came out and unfortunately he did not have his camera with him. Will had a plate of meat in his hand ready to put on the grill and was totally oblivious to the hyena just 10 feet away from him. I guess the safety speech had more merit than we gave it credit for. The hyena was easily shooed away and we had no problems with it, although it did come around several times. Our drives around Imfolozi were amazing. Basically there are numerous roads in the park, some paved and some dirt. You have a map and can drive yourselves around between the hours of 5 am and 6 pm. There are also game drives with rangers but we did not try that option as it was a bit pricey. Imfolozi is famous for its rhino breeding program. We saw lots of rhinos, especially the endangered white rhino. We also had a great giraffe encounter. The animals are literally on the sides of the road. Some are in the bush and you do need to look into the scrub but lots are right out in the open to see. Giraffes are especially easy to see as they stick out of the bush, being so tall. Impala are everywhere, to the point that we no longer even stopping for them. We saw lots of zebra, wildebeest, water buffalo, monkeys and baboons. The highlights were getting stuck in the middle of a herd of about 30 elephants. We were surrounded by them! Huge elephants and tiny babies! It is wild, you are just driving down the road and you see an elephant and so you stop to watch and here comes an entire parade of elephants crossing he road! Total magic and a bit surreal. The animals seem resigned to the cars driving around and don't pay you much attention at all. You do need to be somewhat aware and keep some distance, but we never felt threatened. We had pulled over to watch 2 big rhinos on the side of the road. We were filming them and were very focused. I looked up and a third rhino came out of the bush about 3 feet from our car. He just walked by to join his mates, no big deal. I think we caught some of this on our first safari video which is on you tube.

We spent a night in Hluhluwe Park which is actually attached to Imfolozi. Karen had rented us "Rondavels" for the night. Rondavels are traditional African huts with a thatched roof. These were concrete replicas but did have thatched roofs. They are cute and well done, but the circular shape does seem difficult to furnish. It was raining on our day at Hluhluwe so our braii was a bit damp and we all ate inside our little rondavel to stay dry. Still lots of fun. We drove around Hluhluwe for the day which was lovely. We had many more animal encounters but although we were really looking we were unable to spot any of the big cats. Imfolozi is about an hour and a half from Richard's Bay where our boats were docked, so we headed back to avoid the weekend crowds, check on the boats and provision for the next part of our adventure, Kruger National Park.

Kruger National Park is about a 10 hour drive from Richard's Bay, but you cannot come to South Africa and not see Kruger. It is the oldest game park and an icon. We decided to break up the drive with a stop at Roarke's Drift, a famous Zulu battle ground. It was about a 5 hour drive through some beautiful country. Roarke's Drift is in the middle of basically nowhere, down a long dirt road that leaves you wondering if you are lost. Strangely there is an extremely fancy resort there, like thousands of dollars a night fancy. There is nothing around so not sure who stays there, maybe some extreme history buffs. We did find the sight and the museum. It was small but well done, giving credit to both the Zulu warriors and the British soldiers. We viewed the battle sight and an hour later we were back on the road. Unless you are a big history buff, this one could have been a miss. It didn't really live up to the reviews.

Kruger, on the other hand, did live up to the reviews! We saw multitudes of animals. There are lots of different camps at Kruger and we spent 2 nights at Crocodile Bridge, 1 night at Lower Sabie, and 1 night at Oliphants. We had brought all of our own foods but most everything is readily available at the camp stores. It is a bit more expensive, but not ridiculously so. We did all of our own game drives again. With wild animals it is all about getting out early. The camp gates are locked at night and at Kruger they open at 4;30 am. So we were up and out at the crack of dawn each day. It is absolutely worth it. We saw all sorts of animals and most of our footage on the safari videos comes from these early morning drives. The animals are far more active in the early hours and tend to just rest in the heat of the day. We saw lots of impala jumping around and head butting each other. They were probably just happy to have made it through another night without being eaten. They have a black "M" on their behinds that sort of resembles the arches of McDonalds, it sort of marks them as food, and all the predatory animals eat them. They are the bunnies of the bushveld. It's a shame because they are beautiful and have big sad eyes. There are a few smart ones that would come into the camp at night and hide out under the tents, their fear of humans less than their fear of lions. One night we watched a lone baby trying to figure out how to get into the camp gates, but it was late and I don't think he made it. We also witnessed a couple of warthogs wrestling and some wildebeests having a go at each other. There are lots of animals at Kruger and sometimes it was difficult to know which side of the road to look on as there were animals on both sides. We had some amazing sightings, here are a few of the highlights. A mother jackal with four cubs. She was chewing on the remains of some poor creature, most likely a baby impala while her cubs played around her. The cubs staged a coup and stole the leg from her and ran off with it. She let them have it and it was probably part of her training program for them but it was fun to watch. We saw a mother cheetah with two cubs. They were in the bush but still beautiful. We saw a mother hyena with cubs on the road and stopped to watch them play in the rain one morning. And finally in Lower Sabie we did it, we found the lions! It was the highlight of our trip. A big male lion feeding on what most likely was a poor little baby impala. He was with 2 females and we watched them for at least half an hour. We were about 50 yards away from them and it was unforgettable. The females stayed mostly behind the bushes but the male was in the open and not afraid of anything. He had to be 300 pounds, a lot bigger than we had expected. We have some great footage in the video on youtube. We did see another female lion on one of our later drives but it was a brief sighting. We had seen almost everything, except for the leopard and Will had his heart set on seeing a pangolin. The pangolin being a burrowing nocturnal creature he left without seeing it.

Going on safari was overall one of the highlights of our entire cruising adventure. It was great family time and great friend time. We saw lots of animals, had some great breiis and a lot of laughs. An African safari should certainly be on everyone's bucket list!