Trip of a Lifetime Our 10 month journey around the world.

Africa   April 21 - 29

Today we arrived in South Africa at 5:00am and travel to the Backpacker Ritz to be picked up by our Safari Tour truck.  7:00am and we were all loaded up and ready to hit the road.  We would spend the night 8 km from Kruger park.  It is surprising cool here only 8deg when we arrived.  In the day it is about 30 deg.  We are very surprised that the landscape is very similar to home along with the weather.  We will see when we get out into the park if we get the true Africa feel.  We awake early to see the sun rise over the horizon in the park and right away we caught a glimpse of a lion in the long grass only 5 meters away.  We waited to see what he was going to do when another male walked right out onto the road and past the truck almost close enough to touch.  It was amazing to see the size of the large males.  We hung around for a bit more time and a female also joined the party.  The guild explained that the two males where competing for the female.  We could see lots of scares on all three from the battles that had perused.  After another few minutes we heard over the radio that a elephant had been spotted and we were off  “with speed” as the guild would say.  Along the way we saw two Hyena hunting for a fresh kill and lots of Impala.  When we arrived that elephant had left the site but know they radioed that close by another lion had made a kill so we rushed over to watch.  There was vultures everywhere and a few lion feeding.    After a few photo ops we headed down the road to see what we could fined.  The park is huge, we drove for hours and never retraced our steps.  We did see the Giraffe, White Rhino, Zebra, and many other animals including birds.  After lunch we got the call “Elephants” and “with Speed” we were off..  This time there they where 1 meter away right on the road Two large males standing two feet taller than the truck.  They posed for a few minutes and then disappeared into the long grass and shrubs.  All in all the park was great we saw four of the big five animals.  It was along day so we headed back for dinner and went to bed as we had to get up at 5:00am because we had 500km to drive the next day.  We would camp at the Great Zimbabwe camp for the night (Second oldest structure in Africa after the pyramids.  We visited the great enclosure the next morning where the kings had lived. We were shown the Kings quarters the royal stash the queens quarters and all the passages and buildings.  The next day we spent camping at a hot springs and swam in the hot pool.  We would travel on to Antelope park the next day and relax as we had two days here.  It is very nice with a lake, nice restaurant and lots of animal activities.  Holly and I got to play with the Lion Cubs.  You could ride an Elephant, Walk with the mature Lions, and they even did a night safari where they had female lion make a kill.  After relaxing we where off to the backpackers paradise which was a nice 15 acre property.  The next day we would be tracking rhino with a guy that was a little crazy but he carried a big rifle.  It took at 2 hours of walking to finally find a Rhino.  We slowly approached and got so close 30 feet or so from a large female and café.  It was amazing that you could walk right up to them.  They were not really scared but always had an eye on us.  We also saw Giraffe and some wart hogs.  On the way back we spotted another group of Rhino and we got a picture just 20 feet from the Rhino.  It is a little disconcerting with your back to them as you can almost feel there breath down you neck.  We just hopped everyone would yell run if they charged.. J    One last stop at a pond to view the Hippo wallowing in the deep water and we were then back at the Camp for the night.  Again we would be up early to get to Victoria Falls early so we would have time to view the falls in the evening.  The falls were overflowing and you couldn’t really see them all that well as the spray was insane.  At one point it was like being spared with a fire hose.  We both got completely soaked but it was really fun as it was warm out all day.  The next day we had booked the adrenaline rush the GORDGE SWING a 70 meter drop and then swing across the Zambezi river.  We went tandem. It was really cool jumping off the cliff falling falling falling and then the rope catches you as you swing down another 20 meters.  I of course took my camera with me and recorded the whole thing. The fall seemed like it took 10 seconds but on review of the video it was more like 2 second free fall.  We would head back to camp and hang by the pool for the next two days before heading to Cape town by plane.