Hope you welcomed the new year in a lavishing way. Since last night's dismal DJing and Andrew's party-saving music we stayed up quite late and celebrated till 12:30am. Today we awoke to a glorious morning topped off with hot breakfast overlooking the park. We prepped up by 9:30am and headed off to see the game at the game park, 1500kms of nature I believe. We took both Des and Pete's 4wds and our one and only 'Curtain Wondervan' to look for the big 5 game; Buffalo, Elephant, Lion, Rhino, Cheetah and other animals that Africa had to offer. Everyone took their massive cameras including Alex, while Andrew and I had a tiny cameras to capture the moments.
We drove through bitumen and then onto dirt roads constantly on the lookout for anything moving. The geography was typical Africa, always changing, and always breath-taking and amazing. We looked high and low looking through every available window Curtain Wondervan had to offer. We pulled up to the first waterhole and saw the elegant Zebras with ostriches doing their thing in the background. The main highlight at this first waterhole was in the water itself. We could see a few nostrils poking out of the water and then WOW, 3 Hippos emerged from the water. It was a momentous sight and it felt like I was in the heart of Africa.
Driving for another hour or so we searched everywhere for the big 5, however all we could see was impalas and buffalos, one of the big 5. Curtain Wondervan was keeping up with the 4wds, but, the rough dirt roads were not helping the trip. We pulled into a picnic area to have some lunch and to work out what to do next since we weren't seeing much animals. It was decided that the younger kids, Debbie and Des would take the van back to our camp site while the rest of us would go further and quicker in the 4wds. We departed after lunch and drove a few for a few minutes when we saw another big 5 animal, the elephants. These gentle giants were covering themselves in mud as a means of cooling themselves down. It was great actually seeing this in real life and not on some David Attenborough documentary. Further down the track we continued seeing impalas, kudus, waterbucks and more elephants in the different environments. We were now desperately wanting to see the ever elusive lions, but to no avail. In fact, there wasn't much animals out today, possibly because they partied too hard for New Years.
We had been driving for about 5-6hrs and we decided that we had to turn around and head home. It was disappointing not being able to see lions or rhinos but we did see a group of baboons doing their monkey business. It was a really cool sight. One last highlight was seeing a giraffe. Man, they are just a fantastic creature.
So u may not hear from us for the next 5 days, because we will be on a houseboat cruising down a river fishing.
Thanks for reading
Jonno
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| Kudus and Impala in the background |
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| Damo taking photos |
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