over the cliff

I got up at 5 this morning and I’m dying to go back and take a nap so I’m gonna make this relatively quick.

The 17 hour flight from Atlanta was… not quite as bad as I expected, but that’s really not saying all that much. Once we got to Africa though, everything turned fabulous. Free alcohol everywhere. My favorite drink thus far has been something called Savannah Dry which tastes slightly of apple cider and it’s delicious.

On the plane flying into the remote area where our camp lay, I happened to spot a giraffe. And this may sound dorky, but that was so totally cool. Our first game drive was that night and our guide is gorgeous. Black curly hair, dimples, too cute. And as I expected, I’m now sick of seeing Impala. The suckers are everwhere. We did happen to see a Rhinoceros and her calf, and we pulled a little ways from her, got out of the landrover and had drinks.

We’re not allowed to walk around at night because of the possibility of wild animals entering the camp, and so we have to be escorted by armed guard from our rooms to the boma (sp?) where they serve dinner and back. Our rooms though… gah. So fabulous. Each room has its own plunge pool which looks out over the Savannah and though the water is rather chilly, it gets hot enough in the middle of the day to make it worthwhile.

Yesterday on the game drives we spotted giraffes, buffalo (we drove the landrover right into the middle of their herd), Elephants (a bull, a momma, and a little baby! too cute), hippopotimi (sp?) more Impala and other deer/bovine like creatures the names of which I can’t spell. During the afternoon/evening drive we tried to find a leopard that had been spotted in a tree with a kill, no luck, and then we went to where two lions had been heard roaring from the camp. We found the lions, and drove right up to them. Maybe… 15, 20 feet away? And he couldn’t have cared less about us. One of the other vehicles shined a light with a red filter in his face and he and his brother started roaring for us. That was cool.

So this morning we had seen all of the big 5 with the notable exception of leopards. So when Simon spotted tracks, he and Elmon, our tracker, got out of the landrover and tried to hunt them down. Our vehicle and several others were also trying to find them (there were two sets of tracks, a male and female). At one point Simon and Elmon left us in the landrover and trekked into the bush. Half an hour later, we saw Simon running towards us, sans rifle, and he said that he and Elmon had been growled at. We then took the rover into the bush after the growl but couldn’t find the kitties. Then another group radioed in and said the leopards had been spotted so we high tailed it out of there and towards the river.

Sure enough, the monkeys were giving the alarm, two baboons were skittering across a field (baboons are favorites among leopards) and then we spotted them. They crossed the road twice (once they came within a couple of feet of us to pass behind our car, and have I mentioned yet that these landrovers don’t have tops?) and while the male was skittish, the female paused a couple of times so we could get a good look at her.

Anyway, that’s my trip so far and now if you’ll excuse me, I really need to go take a very long nap. Ta ta.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 8th, 2005 at 6:16 am and is filed under Bio. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.